Skeptical London Journalist Falls into the Sedona Vortex
I’m continuing to celebrate our 14th Anniversary and it was so much fun to come across this article that was written about us way back in 2004. I stayed in touch with Tessa and it’s so interesting to me that over the years, the “Sedona vibe” continued to stay with her.
It’s so interesting to see what happens when skepticism and doubt confront the magic and beauty of Sedona’s red rock temples.
Good Vibrations by Tessa Boase
“On the road to Sedona I began to feel nervous. After weeks of tentative email correspondence, I was about to meet Debra Stangl, my Angel Guide, who was to take me on a Soul Adventure. This trip to Arizona was initially meant to be a low-key spa break in Phoenix, but at the spa I’d decided I was ready for something a little more life-changing.
Surfing the Net, I’d found out about Sedona, a scenic town, which had been slumbering quietly in obscurity, occasionally featured as the backdrop to Hollywood cowboy films, until 1981. That year, Page Bryant, an American author and psychic, channeled through spirits the information that this small farming settlement was in fact the heart chakra of the planet. So that’s where I was headed, driving through the other-worldly landscape of Arizona in anxious anticipation of a customized, made-to-measure mystical holiday.
Great wind-winnowed rock formations in stark, red sandstone rear up all around Sedona, each with its own distinctive shape and presence. Bryant pinpointed a series of vortexes in the area — the points at which psychic and electromagnetic energies can be channeled for personal and planetary harmony. As word of this got out, the town quickly boomed as a New Age Mecca, attracting four million alternative practitioners, artists and retirees each year.
“Whether you love it or hate it”, says the Rough Guide to the USA, “will probably depend on whether you share their wide-eyed awe for angels, crystals and all matters mystical. “I wasn’t sure if I shared this awe, but I was ready to try something different.
True, the landscape was incredible, I could hardly tear my eyes away from the red rocks as they surged into view, dwarfing all around them. But was it really necessary to rename yourself Starr-Light Taylor (as had the girl at the health-food store check-out) just because you lived in their mystical midst? The New Age theme seemed to be all-pervading. Wherever I looked, crystals or wind chimes hung from every veranda and Perspex fairies peeped out of desert plant borders. By the time I swung into the plush driveway of my Angel Guide, I was uptight and prickly.
‘Hey! Tessa! Welcome!’ cried Debra, spiritualist and escapee from Nebraska’s legal world (Debra was a barrister for 20 years). Like many people in Sedona, she’d come here on holiday and it changed her life.
First stop was a meditation on one of the vortexes, said to have masculine energies. To get to the mediation spot we had to climb, sometimes on hands and knees, up the warm, red sandstone. Close to the summit, Debra and I sat down cross-legged and closed our eyes. “Dear Mother-Father-God”, she began, “thank you so much for this amazing place”…. I was told to imagine a surge of energy entering my feet, moving up my body and out of my head. Yet I had the sensation of a metal skullcap resisting this beam with all its might. The harder I tried, the more capped-in I felt.
Opening Up To Sedona
At last, something like the beam of a torch seemed to shoot out of the top of my head and I felt a sudden lightness of heart. Debra asked me to say what I wanted from my soul adventure and after an embarrassed silence, I muttered, “I want to be more open”.
“Good thing!” she enthused. “When you said that I saw a shaft of white light go right through you. It was really sweet!”
‘Sweet’ wasn’t quite how I’d describe the experience, but it was certainly powerful.
The next day, I had an Inner Journey with Breath and Sound. The aim of the session is to travel deep into your inner being and to heal emotional traumas and hopefully experience an altered state of awareness. I had no idea what to expect but I soon found myself lying on a mat with an eye shield on (to avoid distraction), trance music playing, breathing deeply and waiting for something to happen. Every time my mind wandered, I was told to reign it in with the mantra “I am willing”.
I was willing, but it seemed I wasn’t able. Then, suddenly, I was vividly present in the garden of my childhood home, about seven years old, but shrinking: smaller, smaller still; a toddler, a breastfeeding baby, in the womb…. At the point at which I was born, I realized I was crying, tears blotting my eye mask.
But that wasn’t all. The sides of my neck began to feel stiff, as though I had no neck at all but gills. In a flash I realized I was a snake! I could see myself weaving my belly over the desert floor, flickering my tongue. The vision continued like a speeded-up film as the snake fell into a deep pit and the story cut to a male executive (me, again) in a helicopter, flying over a jungle. The helicopter crashed, the executive burnt to death, and out of his body calmly stepped a young girl. She ran through the forest and joined a circle of dancing women.
After what felt like five minutes, the music stopped and he drew the blinds. He leaned over me avidly. “So? What happened?”, he asked.
I didn’t really want to talk about it; the visions had been too personal, too intense, but I didn’t want to disappoint him, so I told all. Tom said the snake symbolized a connection with the Earth. The executive in the helicopter was the old, corporate me who, three years ago (as I’d told him previously), had broken my back in a riding accident (“You crashed and burned”). A softer, more feminine me emerged, healed by the community.
It was an intriguing interpretation, but more astonishing to me was the news that I’d been deep-breathing for 1-1/2 hours. “Welcome to the Sedona time warp!” laughed David knowingly when I told him about it later (my practitioner for my Intuitive Integration session).
The Inner Journey experience marked a definite watershed in my soul adventure. I felt an expansion of spirit and a relaxing of inhibitions. I also began to understand why the Native Americans held Sedona to be such an intensely sacred place.
Taking It Home
Once my mind had been opened, my soul adventure was over all too quickly for my liking. The final morning was spent walking and meditating with Debra. When I admitted my reluctance to leave, Debra responded by putting something heavy in my hands. It was a large rock crystal. “It was talking to me earlier”, she shrugged. “It said it didn’t belong to me. Now I understand it was meant for you”.
Whether it was the landscape, the crystal, or sitting on top of lots of masculine vortexes, I can’t say; but six months on, I’m still feeling those Sedona good vibrations.”
We were able to figure out a few months ago that over the past 14 years, we’ve helped over 8,000 people transform their lives and their relationships. We didn’t have the correct numbers before, because we’ve changed databases 3 times over the past 14 years, so we always had duplicate numbers. Now we were able to eliminate that and when we discovered it was over 8,000 people, I was stunned. Especially because we only work with individuals and couples, not with groups. But I was mainly humbled, gratified and in such awe that all of that has happened.
14 years ago I came up with our motto, “Transforming Lives One Soul At A Time“, and it’s so amazing to me that this is exactly what’s happened.
Thank you for being a part of this journey, it means so very much to all of us here.
And if you are one of those people who wants to have your life (or your relationship) transformed, please contact us and do something about it right now. Over the years so many people have said to me, “I should have done this years ago”. Don’t wait another minute. We’re here to experience the love and joy and happiness that is our birthright. If that’s not happening for you, come here and do something about it.
Come to Sedona and experience for yourself the transformations that thousands of others have experienced over the past 14 years.
Click here and one of our Angel Guides will call you. Or if you’d prefer, call us toll free at 1-877-204-3664 (US and Canada). For our friends outside the US and Canada call 01 928-204-5988 or click here and one of our Angel Guides will call you.
Wishing you a week of magical transformation,
Debra
Debra Stangl / Founder
Sedona Soul Adventures – Transforming Lives One Soul At A Time
(877) 204-3664
https://sedonasouladventures.com
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