I straddle Rachael, my client, in a deep squat while I listen to the voice of my Spirit Guide.  “Open, Mellissa, we have a large gift for this one.  Open your crown chakra.  Open your yoni. Here it comes!”  I feel the warm rush pour down through my head.  I release a deep sigh at the pleasure of the energy rushing through me, through my third eye, coursing through my throat, my center, and out through my open yoni.  Smiling, Rachael arches her back slightly and gasps as this energy gift from the Universe flows into her center and seeps through every cell in her body.  The transfer is complete, and I find myself in a state of giggling wonder at the divine healing power I am permitted to move through me on a daily basis. 

 Rachael is now glowing, laying back on the pillows of my workspace I’ve nicknamed “The Goddess Room.”  I stand over her, with a black foot-long feather in my hand, and wait for further instruction from my Guides.  I see images float to the surface of Rachael’s body.  The energy gift has unloosed bits of old trauma, fears, and controls from old relationships, so that they might float to the surface and be removed.  I see them with my third eye – my “imagination” – as collars, dark gooey tar, hot lava, arrow wounds, and parasitic creatures.  Without conscious thought, I flick my beaded feather through her energy field, carefully cutting free the negative matter and noting the symbolic visions I am given for her so we can discuss them later. 

 Each symbol means something different to me.  Collars are often old co-dependent relationships that need to be released.  Dark gooey tar is the festering remains of very old painful trauma. If I look into the tar further, I can see the event that caused it.  But this is not always necessary.  Spirit does not always require that we re-live, or even remember, old trauma before it is released.  As I remove the dark matter from Rachael, I Know that she will never suffer with the fears, pain, and limitations that it caused her in this lifetime and the lifetimes before.  Healing through Grace makes that suffering unnecessary.

 We (my Guides through me) have removed many layers of trauma and fear from Rachael now.  She is laying back on the pillows, hearing the trickle of the water fountain, smelling the lingering cleanse of Sage smoke in the air.  Although she is not one to meditate typically, she is deep in trance now.  I feel my Guides pulling me down to the deeper level with her.  Now that the superficial cleaning is done, her deeper Wounds are revealed.  I am shown a deep darkness residing in Rachael’s womb.  I feel the shadow of the pain and sadness that reside there.  I ask my Guides for more information, and the vision of a dead fetus appears.  I speak aloud to Rachael, “You have a dead baby in your womb.”  The voice hardly sounds like me now, deep in trance.  Rachael nods her head silently as tears slip away from her eyes, trailing down into her hair.   I do not know whether Rachael had a miscarriage, an abortion, or whether this baby represents a basic loss of her creative power at some time in her life.  To me, it doesn’t matter.  The images belong to Rachael.  I am only the instrument through which they come at her request.

 I feel a Guide named Shala come forward to channel through me.  Shala is one of Rachael’s Guides. (We all have a team of Spirit Guides working with us, regardless of our awareness of them – they are our “Guardian Angels”)  In an instant, I have consulted with my own Guides to make sure that Shala should come through.  Shala is in charge of this Release Work.  “Lean back onto me, My Darling,” I hear Shala say through my voice,  “and we will birth this child.”  Rachael leans her back up against my belly, and her head falls back onto my shoulder.  With Shala’s encouragement, Rachael shifts into the state of a woman in labor – not the painful labor of modern industrialized childbirth, but the deep trance state of tribal women in total surrender to the process. 

 Rachael is in deep trance, relaxed and open, her knees up and supported by pillows.   I feel Shala drawing energy through my crown chakra, down through my body channel, and out through my yoni, the birthing channel.  Once this circuit is established in my body, I feel us linking to Rachael’s body, creating and sustaining the same circuit in her.  Shala speaks through me again, “Feel the wave flowing down through your body, My Darling, and out through the birth canal.  On the next wave, you will release the baby into the current and let her slip out of your yoni.”  The baby arrives, an invisible bundle of old pain, loss, and shame.  “Now reach down, My Darling, and hold your baby for a few moments.  She wants to be Acknowledged.”  Rachael is cradling the invisible bundle, weeping in awe and humble joy.  She is plugged into the Universal Truth that every experience in life, even if it is painful, is a valuable learning process.  There was a reason for this baby to die.  She learned what she needed to learn.  And now, she no longer has to deny the reality of this baby as a part of her history, and she no longer must hold the pain and shame of it in her body.  At Shala’s urging, Rachael holds the baby up to the sky, and she gives the baby back to Spirit.  Rachael collapses down, sobbing with relief, release, accomplishment, and reclaimed wholeness.

 Twenty minutes later, I watch a brand-new shiny Rachael wave goodbye to me, and then bounce into the driver’s seat of her parked car.  She is still grinning madly as she drives away, waving goodbye frantically like a giddy 6^th grader leaving for summer camp.  With a lingering grin on my face too, I remember the day my power tool was revealed to me. 

 Every shaman has a “power tool” – the main tool that she uses in her practice.  My power tool, as revealed to me by my guides, is my Yoni, a.k.a. my vagina.  When I first heard this news from my Guides, I thought perhaps Coyote was just giving me a hard time, as he is known to do.  So I asked again.  Again they told me my power tool was my Yoni – my “lower mouth,” they said.   I remember how odd and scary that sounded to me that day.   But now, after working with and through my Yoni with many clients, I realize the perfect sense of it all.  Yoni is the primary channel of a woman.  She is the perfect instrument for channeling healing energy, whether it is my Yoni channeling into another, or my client using her own Yoni to release trauma.   And so I am honored and dedicated to continuing my work as Yoni Shaman.  My full Spirit name is Mellissa Andromeda Yoni Ashwan, and I will continue to serve as I am Called.