8 August 2022
Today is a really good day.
Not only is it 8/8/2022 which means the lions portal is open for strong manifestation, it is also the day that the renovations, on the new Healing Studio, are given the green light to start.
This journey began in 2009, when I started offering healing aromatherapy sessions as a home service in Doha, Qatar.
With a fold up bed and a roller case full of towels and oils and music, I would carry fifty kilogram up and down many stairs, because of course the clients all wanted the treatments in their bedrooms. In Qatar, most everybody had their bedroom upstairs.
After witnessing an appalling accident approximately, a year later, I decided to give up driving and home service, and I created a treatment room in the very large dining room of my rented villa. I used a cupboard to divide the space and my very first, tiny healing room was established behind the cupboard.
It didn’t take long for this arrangement to become uncomfortable with more clients finding me and it was time to move.
The next villa I moved to then, had a cozy little room outside with adjacent bathroom/laundry, which worked very well as a healing room. This space had its issues but overall, my young practice flourished. I could take clients at any time without disturbance to the members of my household and with more privacy and a little bit of glitter, women from all nationalities found me to assist them on their healing journeys. It was while working in this space that I continued my studies in Tibetan sound healing and I was offering sessions anywhere and everywhere – mostly for free, as I didn’t have a suitable space to welcome clients.
After I had to undergo major surgery, the healing room became lodgings for a lady who looked after me for a while and when I recuperated enough to work, she stayed on in the room, while I opened my practice again. This time, from one of the upstairs bedrooms in the villa.
This space was not optimal and once again I was bound by household issues and timings. My once flourishing practice had to start over. I struggled to find clients and it seemed as though my time in the Middle East was coming to an end.
Soon we were heading back to South Africa and after a two-year hiatus period from the expat life, I returned to Qatar in 2018. While in South Africa I continued to offer guided meditations and sound therapies whenever and wherever anybody would have me. The gypsy healer is a nick name I obtained during this time. I didn’t offer any oil or reflex work as I simply did not have the space.
When my time in SA ended, I returned to Qatar to start my practice all over once more. The furnished villa we rented had a tiny outside room which could just fit a massage bed and small cupboard with a small bathroom on suite. This became the Reflex Room.
My skills had improved and the services I offered increased but space was still an issue. I believe in do what you can with what you have and so I offered sound therapy sessions from the entrance hall close to the staircase, in the center of the villa. This was incredibly in-efficient but the dining room, which had its own entrance and was rather large, had a heavy wood, eight seater dining room set in it and there was just no other simple solution.
After a few months of setting up and packing up, the landlord granted my request to remove the table and to create a sound healing studio in the dining room space.
It was perfect and quickly clients started contacting me again and my practice grew. I had some powerful group and private sessions in this space, especially when Covid came around and these two separate rooms provided a safe space for many struggling people. This was my last space in the Middle East and I decided that the time has come to move my practice and my household back home.
Now I am back in South Africa. For the first time in over ten years of working and building and falling and crawling and standing up again, I have the perfect space for the @psychesoundsmell facility and eventually I can settle down long term.
The space is a one-bedroom flat which will, starting from Monday, be converted into the mind-body healing studio. Because I own the building, I can build and paint and convert to my heart’s content and I can create a space that will transport the client to another world during their healing journey. A safe space. A long-term space. And the second last steppingstone to the final manifestation and dream retreat space, which I am sure is in the not-so-distant future.
I am grateful and excited and look forward to sharing more of this journey with you.
Home at last.
The photo was taken in the garden of the Antara Spa at Banana Island in Qatar. This is my friend Hanli, whose birthday it was on that day. One of the more obscure places I have done a sound therapy session. Healing can happen anywhere.
