My Dear Lesley - what a lovely post - brought tears to my eyes. Of course I remember many priceless encounters with you as Openhand evolved and grew, but I’ve not heard you put this one together before. How I laughed when you recalled the “passing the rugby ball” incident. It reminded me of another - when the sweat lodge got handed down to Openhand by “Great Spirit”. I felt just to share it here, so others might share a little in the magic that’s worked behind the scenes with Openhand over the years.

As I recall, when we met, you were on the team that took me through firewalk instructor training up in Scotland. I’d felt a deep soulful pull to integrate shamanic ceremony into the Openhand work. I remember experiencing the sweat lodge with you. What an incredibly transformative experience! A higher knowing landed almost immediately that I should incorporate the ceremony into the Openhand work, and asked you if you’d help me do it…. “But it has to be handed down by a native elder” you’d replied (or something like that). But peculiarly I didn’t at all feel disappointed by the initial rebuff, because something told me in my heart that this was meant to be and going to happen. I recall saying something like… “yes I hear you, and I understand the importance of respecting the tradition, but somehow, I feel it will be handed to us by spirit - that we should trust.

In the weeks and months that followed, the sweat lodge feeling didn’t at all diminish - it only got stronger! So I decided to include it on an event at a retreat centre in South Wales and asked you to lead it with me. I recall you being very unsure at the time, but nevertheless, eventually, you acquiesced to holding the space for the possibility and at least checking it out with me. I remember saying to you that we should “trust”, because I felt somehow it would be handed down to us.

I remember as the event got closer, you were getting lots of Red Kite (as in the bird) synchronicities - birds always spoke to you loudly, just as they do me (my power animal is the Owl now by the way). So you’d gone to check out the centre by yourself one day, only to find a huge Red Kite with outstretched wings lying dead in the road just before the entrance to the centre. A true shaman would know (just as you did) the incredibly powerful ‘medicine’ of the event - that it had a deep significance, and then how to release the spirit of the bird. The synchronicities continued to stack up and accelerate. I recall as you entered the centre, there was a bunch of leaflets at the entrance entitled “Red Kite Trust”. Again that word “trust’ piercing the field!

So some while later, leading up to the retreat itself, we built the lodge together, in a large garden of the retreat centre. And as we built it, we kept hearing the loud call of a Red Kite. I remember I kept wondering where it was. But no matter where I looked, I couldn’t locate it, and so carried on with building the lodge. The Kite kept calling, and it seemed remarkably close….Where was it? There were huge fields all around, and there were no trees close by. It wasn’t circling high overhead either. Yet the calling got ever louder and more compelling, more insistent. I remember we finished the lodge, and as we stood back, I think it was probably me who clicked first (or did we day it together?)….”In the Red Kite Trust!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

In that instant we knew….. the invisible “Great Spirit” had handed the lodge to Openhand, through the invisible Red Kite!

Namaste

Open
PS - I'm so pleased to be able to say, the Shamanic Sweat Lodge is now incorporated into the Openhand level 3 course "Divinicus". It's always provided such amazing alchemical experiences - profound thanks to the Red Kite!