Imagine a meditation class where, instead of sitting uncomfortably and getting hit with a stick if you doze off, you float on a cloud, imagine you are a lily pad and visit a star in another dimension. A drug-induced vision? No, it’s Healing Light Meditation, a class given by Raven Keyes at Equinox Fitness.
Keyes, who’s worked at Equinox since 1995, is a Reiki Master. One of her most memorable Reiki experiences was during open-heart surgery performed by the world famous cardiac surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz. Her client asked Keyes to perform Reiki during the operation. Keyes immediately refused, saying she was too squeamish.
But her client persisted and Keyes eventually agreed, hoping Oz would not allow it. She was shocked when he said yes. Oz graciously allowed her to stand at the head of the patient, next to the anesthesiologist. He introduced her to the operating team, who looked at her like what the hell are you doing here?
As Keyes performed Reiki on her client during the operation, the beeps and sounds of the machines lulled her into a meditative state. Suddenly the sounds stopped and everyone looked at the screens where the lines were all flat. “I’ve watched enough TV to know what that means. Dr. Oz saw the look on my face and said, ‘Raven, we’ve stopped her heart so we can do the operation.’ Then he took her heart out of her chest to replace the valve,” she said. “I didn’t know that was going to happen. I thought I was going to faint. I was so grateful to Dr. Oz for saying that to me.”
Her skills were in high demand right after 9/11, when Equinox allowed firemen and policemen to take classes for free. Not long after that, she began working at Ground Zero, along with a team of other therapists, masseuses and body workers, to support the men and women who worked on the pile.
Policemen and firemen trusted her. Before she even started working at Ground Zero they told her they had seen ghosts on the pile. “One in particular told me ‘You are doing something I don’t understand, but I know it’s good. I want to tell you there are ghosts down there. Is there anything you can do about that?’ I took it very to heart, “ she said.
Below is a clip of the documentary Healing Ground Zero, produced by Rae Stone and directed by leslie Shreve and Jennifer Kesseler.
Late one evening in January 2002, a policeman drove her onto the pile. She didn’t get out of the truck, but decided to do Reiki over the pit. As she lifted her hands, she felt spirits rush toward her. Momentarily panicking, she silently called on helping spirits and ancestors to assist. “I couldn’t say anything out loud,” she said. “I was mentally doing this. But I felt the spirits lift.”
Keyes also arranged for a shamanic ceremony to be held at Ground Zero. “There were a lot of ceremonies down there. A lot of people did work in different dimensions,” she said. “A lot of great things happened and a lot of spirits went into the light.” But she believes that there are still spirits at the site and not enough praying and ceremonies were done. “We should have prayed for a year,” she said. ‘A year and a day would have been good.”
While the men and women who worked at Ground Zero don’t come as frequently, her classes at Equinox remain popular. People lie down, concentrate on their breathing and listen while Keyes talks. Sometimes the class begins on an imaginary bank of large fluffy clouds. Often a journey takes place. Keyes is grateful for the opportunity to lead these classes. “I get to be in the presence of people who wouldn’t ordinarily come. I do spiritual work. They come because they just want to relax and do something good for themselves. So often they realize that there has been a longing in them all along. I hear all of the time how their lives have changed, how they are happier and feel more whole and find solutions to problems.”
Sometimes the class visits far away stars so chakhras can open and vibrate at higher frequencies. Or they might travel to a sacred temple on a large white reindeer to participate in an ancient ceremony that honors the Goddess.
The Goddess is very important to Keyes, who has begun writing prayers and putting together ceremonies to honor Her. She met the Goddess while at the Chalice Well in Glastonbury, England. “It’s a very magical place where people from all over the world go to plug into spiritual energy.” She was sitting by the waterfall when felt a presence.
“I know it was Her,” she said. “It was complete understanding that I was in the presence of the beautiful loving divine sacred feminine energy. I was totally floored by it.” Since then, Keyes has been trying to resurrect the Goddess. It is not an easy trail to follow, since much of the ancient religion has been stamped out. “The most important work I do is to bring people to the Goddess so that they may awaken to their own greatest, most loving self. We get to go deeper into the meaning of the Goddess and into the core of What Is.”-Sherry Mazzocchi
Raven Keyes will be holding a Fairy Workshop this weekend. For more details, visit her website.
Go Raven, go.
I know you aren't really voting Republican.
xo
c
Posted by: celeste | June 24, 2008 at 03:39 PM