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EPISODE 008: Shamanics - The Womb of Mediumship with Faye Harrison

podcast May 07, 2020

If you’ve ever felt empty, or like a piece of you is missing or if you’ve felt at times like something is wrong but you are unsure what it is – this is the podcast for you! Faye Harrison is on the show – she generously shares her incredible knowledge and speaks to us of effective ways to connect with the natural healing energy of music & vibration in order to empower our lives, promote healing, achieve our natural potential and access our inner strength. Faye is a healer, a visionary and soul worker, who will teach you how to work with both the seen and the unseen; how to listen to & trust your intuition; and how to work with both your soul and mental health, keeping them in balance so that you can follow your heart and your own unique calling in this world.


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Ann Théato, CSNUt, Psychic, Medium and Spiritual Tutor, investigates psychic development, mediumship techniques, and paranormal science, so that you can come to understand your own innate psychic ability and expand your knowledge, whilst learning to develop a curious mind.

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PM 008

Hi there, my name is Ann Théato and I am here to teach you proven techniques for spiritual and psychic development from the comfort of your own home. I’m also here to investigate the teachings of experts across the globe, to bring you their wisdom, their advice and their spiritual wealth.

If you’ve ever felt empty, or like a piece of you is missing or if you’ve felt at times like something is wrong but you are unsure what it is – this is the podcast for you! Faye Harrison is on the show – she generously shares her incredible knowledge and speaks to us of effective ways to connect with the natural healing energy of music & vibration in order to empower our lives, promote healing, achieve our natural potential and access our inner strength. Faye is a healer, a visionary and soul worker, who will teach you how to work with both the seen and the unseen; how to listen to & trust your intuition; and how to work with both your soul and mental health, keeping them in balance so that you can follow your heart and your own unique calling in this world.

You’ll Learn

  • Why psychotherapy can help heal

  • The importance of having a good therapist

  • How by healing yourself, you can heal your relationships

  • The importance of not conforming to other people’s expectations

  • How sound enables us to access different levels of consciousness

  • Why connecting to ancient energies is vital

  • How to acknowledge and listen to the voice within

  • Why we are all connected to the bigger collective unconsciousness

  • The importance of archetypal imagery in the dream state

  • What is soul retrieval

  • How working with both your soul and mental health can change your life

  • The benefits of Gong Healing

  • Why music is a very powerful tool for healing

  • How to use music as medicine

TRANSCRIPT

Hello everybody! My name is Ann Théato and welcome to the Psychic Matters! Podcast – episode number 8.  This week, I have an incredible guest on the show.  You won’t believe how much knowledge this lady holds.  Qualified Psychotherapist and Soul Worker Faye Harrison is in the house! If you’ve ever felt empty, or like a piece of you is missing or if you’ve felt at times like something is wrong but you are unsure what it is – this is the podcast for you! Faye Harrison is on the show – she generously shares her incredible knowledge and speaks to us of effective ways to connect with the natural healing energy of music & vibration in order to empower our lives, promote healing, achieve our natural potential and access our inner strength. Faye is a healer, a visionary and soul worker, who will teach you how to work with both the seen and the unseen; how to listen to & trust your intuition; and how to work with both your soul and mental health, keeping them in balance so that you can  follow your heart and your own unique calling in this world.

So, if you’re ready, let’s begin.

Ann
I’m here today with an incredible guest who specialises in psychotherapy and Soul Work, Faye Harrison welcome to Psychic Matters.

Faye
Thank you very much Ann, thank you for having me.

Ann
It’s a pleasure I cannot wait to begin this conversation with you Faye.  Just to let everybody know, Faye and I met on a couple of training courses, one I think was Lisa Williams and another was one of Tony Stockwell’s at Tony Stockwell’s studio where you work, you must tell  us about that too at some point and so that’s how Faye and I know each other but I actually don’t know much about the depth of work that you do Faye, so, let’s start with, well I’m going to hand over to you so you can begin to tell everybody what you do and what you’re all about.

Faye
Okay lovely thank you.

Where do I start?  There is such a vast subject of the different things that I do do.

I think it probably would help to give people a little bit of insight into how I came into this work.  At a very young age actually, I was about 18 when I had my first experience of being bereft and bereaved and was very drawn to speaking to mediums and spirit workers and very quickly realised that I myself had an ability to do that very same thing.  That started me on a pathway of eternal learning really.  I think in my early years I was very interested in helping people  and being helpful to people – becoming a hairdresser and a Beauty Therapist and all of those kind of things, very interested in making people feel good about themselves but more in a practical way and it was only when I kind of stumbled upon mediumship and the gift of what Mediumship is really, which you do learn some years down the line, that it is not just the present of giving people evidence and handing them their loved ones, there is a much bigger part of what Mediumship is what it resonates with in all of us. That kind of started me on a journey really of self-discovery, which I believe is the gift of mediumship.  It is understanding our soul is eternal and our soul will move through different life stages and spiritual incarnations and I went on a kind of quest to find myself really. 

Going and learning a lot about psychotherapy, which is very intensive kind of mental health work. So, it was very much looking at a lot of unconscious processes.  You have to have a lot of your own therapy, so I had my own therapy for about 7 years and that’s quite hard going. You do find out a lot about yourself.  And you do have to do a lot of shadow work which is something that we look at a lot in Shamanism which is another element of the work that I’m very interested in and very passionate about and when you are starting to look a lot at shadow and hidden aspects of self, you learn about how you are functioning, how you are integrating with other people, the relationships you are having, the depth of those relationships and how you can heal people within those relationships to help heal yourself as well within those relationships.  There is a lot woundings that take place within all relationships that we encounter in our life I think with all relationships that we encounter in our life and I think the mental health route for me at that time, was helping me with my own self development on a mental health level but also being able to share that with other people.

I’d always had strong beliefs in there being something more than this and something greater than ourselves. I’ve never been part of a religion as such, I supposed I’d grew up in a very cockney East End family which we were quite atheist if anything. Although my nan was a tea leaf reader and used to hold seances in her lounge and round the dining table.  So, I was kind of introduced to that to some degree at a young age.  And as time went on obviously, I started this quest of learning mental health and working within the field of drug and alcohol addiction, working with people that have been victims of rape and sexual abuse and domestic violence and really kind of quite heavy going mental health issues like schizophrenia and DID which is Disassociated Identify Disorder which is kind of where the personality fragments into different sub personalities.  So very interesting work actually but very heavy and could be at times quite emotionally burdening as well, especially when raising a family, which at that time I was raising two young children as well. 

So as we come along from that point of my work, subject to that and to the side of that I was still working very much within learning and developing as a medium myself, really kind of self-taught really for the vast majority for the beginning of my training, it was very much just a knowing of what to do and just knowing how to develop myself, sitting in meditation, sitting in the power, very guided by my own intuitive abilities. 

I think perhaps when I look back now, it was most probably just something that was more ancestral.  That it was just there within me to be that person within my family unit and to go down that route.  I studied a lot of holistic work as well with aromatherapy, lots of massage, reflexology and all different kinds of healing modalities, reiki healing, shamanic healing, drum healing, you name it I’ve learned it crystal healing, I just was very drawn to that aspect of helping and self-helping yourself to heal internally, physically, mentally and spiritually.

And I think my journey took me through that route of, you know, from a young age, doing a lot of the spiritual work and then moving into my middle age, more along the lines of the mental health aspect of the work that I do now.  And then I think I learned very early on in my work as a medium, that I really didn’t want to be pigeon-holed or conform to any religious group a s such.  I don’t really call myself a Spiritualist. I call myself a spiritual person.  I believe in spiritualism.  I believe that there are many different modalities to access spirit as I know it which is an energy that is there and is transient in all things and I think that is where my work has taken me really. 

Over the last few years I have worked especially more so with sound and learning a lot about how sound can help heal on a physical level and on an emotional level but also how it really helps us to access different levels of consciousness within ourselves.  There is many layers to a person that some of us are maybe not even aware of.  We maybe not even tried to do this before, but there are many different layers of consciousness that we can access you know, and we can have some amazing experiences within those levels of consciousness.

So yes, I’m just literally in the process of finishing a diploma in Gong Healing, a Master Gong Training, with a wonderful woman called Sarah Gregg, so anybody who is interested in something like that definitely look her up. She’s a fantastic lady and very, very knowledgeable in her field of work.  And I’ve just finished an introduction into the Munay-ki rites, which has been a fascinating journey with that as well.  That is another shamanic practice. It’s like initiatory sacred practices that are taken from the Lica of shamans in the High Andes in the Peru in the Amazon and they are just an initiation that take you through a journey of connecting to ancient energies and medicine people: healers, shamans, care takers, wise sages, so you are just connecting with all those different energies really.  Kind of like when you are initiated into the reiki levels. It is similar to that but more of a shamanic kind of way of working. We are looking at the traditions and looking at the healing and karmic and Ancestral woundings, so you are working very much within all of that so you can kind of give those rites to people within your healing work. 

So, where we are at with that right now then is that, keeping you up to speed is that we’ve gone through the kind of mind, body and soul aspects of things and now I very much want to incorporate that as one really.  Bring it all together as one big whole.

Ann
My goodness Faye. 

Faye
It’s an interesting journey.

Ann
I don’t know where to start.  You’ve given us so much information.  This is incredible.  I’ve been making notes as you’ve been talking and I’d like to go back if I may, over some of the things that you’ve said and go a little bit deeper into some of these practices and aspects and things that you’ve mentioned.

Let me go back to the beginning when you first started talking, you told us that your work sort of began at the age of 18 when you suffered a bereavement and that at that time you went and spoke to several different mediums and realised that you had an ability to do the same. So, can you tell us how you came to that realisation?

Faye
Yes certainly.  I mean, I think my first inclination of me being able to kind of tap into other consciousnesses and other levels of consciousness and was at a time when my sister had had a very bad accident.  It’s a bit of a boring story but I’ll tell you this just very quickly. Basically, we’d had a big argument this one morning because she wanted to borrow my tracksuit bottoms to go to school and they were white, and I didn’t want her to wear them because she’d make them dirty.  So she went off in a strop and we had a big argument and the moment she left the house, I had this awful feeling and not just an awful feeling, and not just an awful feeling that, ‘Oh my God we’ve had an argument,’ but this feeling I cannot describe, almost as if someone was saying to me something really bad is going to happen. Something really bad is going to happen.  And I started to run.  I opened the door and began running after her. 

And unbeknownst to me she’d been hit by a bus.  Literally a few moments down the road.  Literally five minutes out of the door. And it was just awful.  I can still remember it to this day, but it was as if something was telling me that I needed to be there.  And I mean luckily for her, it wasn’t a very serious accident.  She had some head injuries and she was bleeding quite a lot, but she was okay. She was only 14 and she managed to recover from it, thank God and she managed to be you know, her normal self as she is now.  So that is fantastic.  But that kind of started me realising, actually what was that? What was that? 

And then we had a bereavement within the family and then I went to see a medium and I started to realise that you know, I myself felt connected to something bigger than I was.  And I kind of just knew little things as well.  Around the time of my 20’s I lost another member of my family, my father-in Law.  And it just seemed… I just knew that things weren’t right with him, before he was diagnosed with cancer I kind of just knew he would pass.  I just had this feeling that that would be the case.  And I’d kept urging him to get second opinions about what the medical profession were telling him and unfortunately for him it was a bit too late in the diagnosis and you know, quite quickly he passed to the cancer.

And throughout that time, I felt a real huge connection to him on a soul level.  And you know I would try to help my partner going through that process of bereavement and grief. And at that point I hadn’t done my psychotherapy then, so it was purely just knowing that his father was going to be okay in the spirit world and that his soul would live on. And then would have conversations almost, with him to a degree after his passing with my partner. Things I would never of known and that’s when it really made me start thinking wow this is something.  What is this?  I need to explore this more.  And then I think in my early 20s, maybe 24/25, I had my first experience of the Arthur Findlay College where I went.  And weirdly I have moved from London where I was an East End girl and I’ve moved to Essex, so I was now an Essex girl and I’d moved literally about 15 minutes away from the AFC which was absolutely unbelievable. You know of all the things that were happening at that time in my life, becoming a new mum and you know, waking into this spiritual movement and the abilities and all that pertains, I then moved ten minutes away from a psychic college, I mean what are the odds?   And yes, then I started attending the AFC on a regular basis and had some wonderful inspirers along the way that helped my development, you know, as I did myself.   Like I say at the beginning, I have been a lot self-taught. I didn’t join a lot of circles at the early stages of my development. I felt it was something I needed to do on my own, although I did attend courses, so you could consider those circles if you like. But I am a great believer that you need the traditions of mediumship to help your development, but you also have to be guided by your own intrinsic self and your own spirit in the journey that you take in evolving your gifts.

Ann
Let’s speak a bit about that Faye because you’ve said that you were questioning what was that? How did I have that feeling when my sister went out of the door that day when I was younger? And you said you felt connected to something bigger – bigger than you were, and you’ve got this knowing.  What is that?  What do you think that is?

Faye
I mean back then I wouldn’t have been able to give you an explanation. I think now being a lot more versed in spiritualism and spiritual practices, I would say that that was my Clair cognisance kicking in and that is the knowingness of something. But I believe that I was also very much submerged in that other world, you know, that other energy that is a big huge part of who we all are you know, the Divine source of where we all come from, and I think unbeknownst to me at that time, I was clearly still one foot in and one foot out. You know, I think as a child and when we are growing and Carl Jung, who is another psychotherapist in the movement of psychotherapy, talks a lot about personalities number one and personalities number two and how that you develop psychologically through those phases of life.  And that personality number one tends to be more your childhood until your kind of late 20s early 30s maybe even your 40s, where you are developing much more on the external planes and external things in your life; and personality number two develops later on in life when you start looking a bit more internally and that’s when you’re kind of having your spiritual experiences and your feelings of individuation. But I personally think that some people develop their personality number two before they develop their personality number one, if you look at it from that perspective.  And I think I must’ve come into the world still very connected spiritually to that much bigger collective unconscious that we all come from. You know where I believe that we all come from. Obviously, you are all entitled to your own belief system.

Ann
I am interested in you, you spoke about your Nan, who used to, that you were a family of atheists but that your nan who used to read the tea leaves and hold seances, so tell us about that.  How did that go down in a family of atheists? How does that work?

Faye
Well we weren’t very privy to it growing up.  It was kind of sheltered away from us to certain degree.  My Nan at times would be considered a bit off the wall.   She’d have what she used to call these bilious attacks, where she’d put a tea cosy over her head because she had a headache.  She was a bit of a strange character.  I suppose maybe in this day and age you might have said that she was either schizophrenic or quite away with the fairies but even so she was a character.  She lost her son very early on in his life, he was 23 when he was shot and killed in the war.  And my, this is my Great Nan I’m talking about, not my actual Nan, my sort of maternal nan.  And she used to run seances in her living room and set a place for her son and talk to him as if he was still alive. And some would say that was grieving but she would have full on conversations with him and other members of the family had passed away.  And if you’d had a cup of tea, you know it’s just a thing in our family at points where that if you’d had a cup of tea years ago when tea leaves were the main source of tea, everyone would have a little look in your cup and say ooh what’s going on here, ooh be careful with this.  You know just little things like oh you might meet a nice young man in a couple of weeks just little things like that that would be said to me.

Ann
Yes, that used to happen in my family as well.

Faye
In jest you know, and you didn’t take a lot of notice of it to be fair when you were younger, you didn’t really understand it, you know, it was just a bit of fun.

Ann
Yes, it happened all the time though.  It happened like, we drank tea all the time obviously, so it happened every mealtime, somebody would be looking in your cup.

Faye
Yeah, exactly. And it’s only when you get older and you have a bit more of an understanding of how all of this kind of stuff works.  You know, I was quite lucky in that respect that I was introduced to it at quite a young age really, the understanding of it, at least the awareness of it you know.   I wasn’t..  I’m quite grateful actually that I was brought up in an atheist family because I didn’t have any kind of preconceived notion of religion or spiritual things in anyway and I kind of had a bit of a clean slate to build my own perception of how I wanted to experience the world, and you know the spirit world. So, I’m quite grateful for that really.

Ann
It’s incredible and you talk a lot about, well you don’t talk a lot about it but you have mentioned the ancestral energies I suppose or, talk to us a little bit about that because that leads into your shamanic work and …

Faye
Yes, it does.  I think we’re all very much aware of our own ancestral kind of connections to people within our families, but we all come from a long line of ancestry. People that have passed even before us.  I mean we could look at an ancestor as just being your Nan that has passed over.  You know she is an ancestor and she was part of your family.  But we also have ancestors that you know are archetypal figures as well you know.  So, they are part of our collective unconscious.  I believe that we are, you know, a drop in the ocean if you’d like to visualise it in that way.   We are just a raindrop in the ocean, and we are all part of that big ocean and we all derive from that ocean.  So, there is so many.  I think a lot of people sometimes when they are working with their Mediumship and they start to experience guides, if they want to call them that, or visions of archetype figures in some way, that they can become a little bit confused about who are they to me, you know. Were they a family member? Are they just a guide? Why are they showing their selves? Why is it always Native American Indians that come up as your guide? It’s all those kinds of things isn’t it that people ask questions about. And my answer to that is that we all derive from this at some part in our lives and if we believe in the evolution of compulsively reincarnating into different lifetimes, there is the element that we have once been or have once been connected to, in some way from a DNA perspective, to all of those different religious cultures and you know, we are all one.  And not just in this world.  This is the only world that we know about but if you start to get really deep into it, you can start looking much further into the different planets that we may be connected to.  You know it’s such a vast subject it could go on all day.

Ann
No, it’s fascinating.  So, if somebody comes to see you Faye, in your capacity as Soul Worker, not necessarily psychotherapist but maybe it is a blend of the two, how do you.. you mentioned that you have a lot of healing modalities that you’ve trained in, how do you… what is a normal sitting for you? What happens when somebody comes in your door? How do you decide I’m going to work with you on this particular way, or this particular way?

Faye
Okay so like you say, it is a mixture of all of those things.  I think having all of those tools in my toolbox, does make life a little easier for me in that way. But every session would start in a similar way but would progress down a very unique holistic route. So, it would start with an assessment. It would be a kind of mixture of a clinical assessment as well as a holistic assessment. So, we would go through certain avenues of you know, exploratory stuff to just make sure that that person is understanding where we may go down, what routes we may go down and get a little bit of an understanding. But I’m also at that same point when I’m doing that assessment, I am allowing my energy to blend with that person, allowing my energy to feel into the soul of that person and see where there… Because sometimes people are not aware of what needs healing within themselves as well.  Sometimes it is repressed material, it is soul loss you know.  And then that’s another subject altogether you know, that ties into shamanic work and also ties into psychotherapy to a degree, when we look into different theories and fragmentation and all that kind of stuff, it can get quite complicated Ann, so I don’t want to complicate matters.  Basically, how I would work with that, would be I would allow myself to feel on a psychic level but also on a soul level to that person.  Picking up on information and just noting it down for the time being.  It wouldn’t be necessarily important for me to deliver that back to the client at that moment in time. And we would work a little bit with that. 

On our first session we will get all that information collated and I would record some of my own findings that I have kind of picked up on that person and then I would do one of many different, depending on the client and their need… maybe a Gong Healing session; a Reiki healing session; a drum healing session; a crystal healing session.  It would just depend on what I felt drawn to do at that moment in time.  And then we would work together in that session, the person would surrender and allow me to do that energetic work with them. I would be looking at you know, what needed to be done. And then we would discuss it at the end.  We would discuss my findings, their findings. I would very much be interested in another Jungian term, looking at the kind of dream state if you like, when they are relaxing or meditating in that space when I am healing them. Looking at what kind of archetypal imagery may have come up, may have risen within them that we can explore in more depth as well and make connections on a psychological perspective and a psychotherapeutic way but also in a shamanic way. So like for example I can give you an example of maybe a person who came to me that maybe wouldn’t necessarily have voiced that they had been abused at some point in their life, but through doing their healing session and energy work it may have come up that there were some energy issues around that area of work and I would, it would come to my consciousness that that is an area we needed to work on and then sensitively I would approach that. And we would then do some more work on there and we may need to do some soul retrieval work, which goes a lot deeper and that would be kind of…Then Journeying may be with me with a drum and me guiding the meditation to take part those lost parts of the soul that have either been stolen or they’ve given away their power to other people. It’s about just reconnecting all those fragmented parts of self, back into that person. There’s lots of times people come to me and they say they don’t really know what’s wrong. They’ll say I just feel like a part of me is missing. Or I feel empty is another thing that people say. And I think that is because on an unconscious level that something has been taken or something has been lost in some way from the psyche or from the soul in some way and the whole aim of the therapy sessions is to try to reintegrate that back into self.  And I wouldn’t suggest that people be doing this who aren’t qualified psychotherapists because it can uproot a lot of repressed emotional stuff that can sometimes take maybe more than 1 or 2,3,4,5 weeks to work through and sometimes may need even longer-term therapy. So, it is very individual for each person.

But alongside that I also do my readings as well. So, you know, I do my healing work which is my passion really. And then I do my readings as well. I do demonstrating as well. But you see I very much see my mediumship as really more the superficial aspect of the work that I do.  Because I kind of feel as if, you know, when we’re getting up on the platform were giving out that information and yes fantastic it’s great but it’s much more about delivering the evidence isn’t it and we can’t really go in real depth.  And the whole point of mediumship for me personally, is to be able to help people to heal on a soul level and to help them to feel fulfilled and to help them to find their own purpose and their own passions and their own drives in their own life and for me mediumship is in the much bigger picture then just delivering the message. It’s explaining to people that the soul is eternal, there are other spirit energies that we can harness and manifest to help with our healing and that, you know, is an intrinsic part of the work that I do.

Ann
And Faye what sort of results are you getting from your clients that come and see you for these kind of wonderful healing sessions?

Faye
I mean some people will have revelations in their very first session, you know, and will feel as if that’s all they need.  That one session for them has you know made them see where they’re going wrong or what they’re needing to change about themselves or a different way of approaching things in their life. Some people, you know, it may unearth things that they may need a few more sessions to work through, but on the whole, I think a lot of people have come to me when a lot of other things have failed.   You know, when they’re not getting the support from the mental health areas in their particular area where they live; where they may be not feeling supported, you know, by the families and also within the movement that we work in, there’s an awful lot of people that are very wounded. And that’s another thing I’m kind of working on with other really good inspirers in the movement, about making mental health a priority in spiritual workers and kind of I’m looking into at the moment of potentially starting up some kind of, almost like what therapists have with like supervision where they have to be monitored with their work.  I feel there should be something that is put into place for spiritual workers, that they maybe come to see somebody you know on a regular-ish basis, where they can work through anything that is holding them back with their work or anything that is bubbling up for them emotionally and psychologically.  Because I feel it is quite a neglected area with the work that we do. We are very much focussing just on the spirit and just on the soul and not so much on the mental health aspect of our work.

Ann
That’s interesting you say that as well because I have had some experiences there. You said earlier in the interview that you had therapy for seven years.  That’s a long time and you learned a lot about yourself.  And I also had therapy for three years not as long as you, but I did go regularly every week I had a postpartum psychosis after the birth of my second child and I was in therapy it was awful I was in therapy for three years and I felt terrible initially because I felt so ashamed…

Faye
It’s quite common.

Ann
Yes, but by the end of three years it was the best thing that I have… it was the second-best thing I’ve ever done.

Faye
It’s amazing what it can achieve.

Ann
It was so…it was …the most important thing was finding out about me and what made me tick.  But after that, somebody asked me to help them, they were training to be a therapist in, oh gosh I wish I could remember, The College of Healing I think and I volunteered to go and have extra therapy which was … and what they did was they worked with my soul and my spirit and my mental health at the same time, and that was the most powerful therapy I have ever had in my life it was extraordinary.   It changed my outlook.

Faye
I mean it will be.  Because we are all three of those things and I think when we are working in any movement. Look at the medicine movements you know.  They are only focussing on the physical and mental health aspect they are not looking at the spiritual aspect.  But also if we are going to be looking at it from that perspective, we have to look at the Spiritual Movement tends to just look at things from a spiritual perspective and doesn’t really… it started to move a little bit more into the holistic areas of work but it’s not really focusing on the mental health aspect which a lot of us, when we go into this work, we are going in as wounded healers ourselves and I think it’s very important to work within your own capabilities, but also to acknowledge that you have to do some work on yourself too. That is all part of the package of being a spiritual worker, a medium, a soul worker, a healer, it’s all.. you know, you have to do the work on all of those things to be able to help other people you have to be aware of all of that.  That’s just my stance on it.  Some people may disagree with that. But that’s just the way I look at things.

Ann
Yes, I look at things the same way as well because I think once you’ve lived through an experience, you are in a better position to be able to understand and be much more empathetic to those who are going through similar experience.

Faye
And postpartum depression is quite frightening because a lot of it stems from hormonal imbalances which obviously need to be maintained but then you know it can also drag up a lot of unresolved issues that you know haven’t been dealt with and you know the postpartum depression acts as a kind of catalyst to move you into that space where all the work needs to be done.  And you do need people that know what they are doing when they are working with that element of vulnerability in a person. But there is always light at the end of the tunnel.  And I think that’s the most important thing that I gauge from all of this work.  I had a lady who once came to see me who couldn’t even swallow her own liquids, where she was so anxious and in such a space of fear from lots of different things and we worked through lots of stuff with her and you know, she was back eating properly and all of those things, so I think this work has the potentiality to be very, very positive and you know, helping people as long as it’s done in the right way.

Ann
Yes, it’s incredible and you are doing incredible work out there for you really, really are. And tell us about… I saw on the Internet last night you were offering a free gong session healing or gong healing session should I say, and it just looked so beautiful, I will tell everybody what I saw on my screen. I saw these beautiful gongs hanging, I think there were two of them there might have been more, and there were candles on the floor, and cushions on the floor, and this beautiful sort of sanctuary I suppose that you were standing in.  How does it work? It looked …I wanted to be there I wanted to be in that space. Tell us how your gong healing works.

Faye
Well gong healing is an amazing healing modality, and this is a new thing for me really because I’ve been introduced to this a couple years ago and I’ve spent the last year doing my master training with the Gong healing.  And basically, the gongs are a very ancient modality of healing.  They’ve been used in tribal communities for aeons, and you know they used to be used for a lot of ceremony and ritual and those kind of things but you know, very early on, we realised that the sound that comes from them has a resonance within our own body chemistry and our own cell vibration.   And the two gongs that I was working with last night – one is a symphonic gong and the other is a Moon gong, Synodic moon, and basically, they are tuned to the sound of vibration. They are attuned to the kind of vibration of our existence and our very first kind of manifestation if you like.  So, the sound of creation is the point to which they’re tuned to, so, you know, I suppose you could link it to, if you wanted to, if you needed a metaphor for it, the big bang, you know, the very moment of creation is what is coming from that gong. 

So, it resonates in different hertz and tones and harmonics throughout the body on different chakra levels.  And it vibrates and heals.  And if you have ever seen a cup of water on a speaker that vibrates and moves, well the gong has a similar effect on us, on our bodies, as we are 70% water aren’t, we, and so everything in our body is vibrated and moved.  And obviously when you are having a one to one session with one of these, they are a very powerful healing modality and it kind of retunes you in a way.  It’s kind of like being in an orchestra and if you have one instrument that sounds out of tune, you can hear it can’t you?  You’d be able to tell.  So, what the gong does is it retunes you so that you are in perfect balance and harmony, so that your body is orchestrating in its own natural harmonic level of what should be resonating at.  So, it’s kind of like a tuning system for the human body.  And obviously the things I was doing last night which was on my Facebook, which was just a Group Gong Bath, you are not going to get the same effect from it as you would having been in the energy of the gong and the vibration of the gong, but you still will hear it audibly and it will have an effect on your, you know, your subconscious and your different levels of consciousness and help you to get into a meditative state. But I like to work with them on a very one to one basis.  There’s lots of people kind of chucking up Gong Healing Sessions and Sound Baths now which is fantastic, because obviously we want people to be working more with this kind of thing but I think also we need to understand how and why they are specifically going to be helpful for one particular person. And I think sometimes I like to work a little bit more intimately, I think because of my counselling background, I’d like to have a session where someone will sit or lay in my room and have those gongs playing along with other instruments, to help heal and make you know put them into balance and into harmony. And also, they are fantastic to use in your mediumship as I found. I’ve done a few little workshops now and I’m looking at doing it on a larger scale at some point within Soul Space, where I am one of the tutors there as well and within other little workshops that I’m doing.  Using them when people are going into altered states of consciousness and trance, and also within journeying when I am doing my shamanic work, they are fantastic tools to use, as well as the drum. 

So, yes I’m offering at the moment, just like, people to join me on my Facebook, to just have a little taster experience, a half hour session of plugging in their earphones and kind of tuning into the rhythms and the harmonics that I’m playing and see what effect it has on them.

Ann
It sounds so beautiful I’m definitely, definitely going to join in one of your sessions. When someone has come to you for a Gong Healing session and you have retuned them and they feel wonderful and they walk out, they are going to get out of tune I suppose. Is there something they can do at home to keep themselves in balance?

Faye
I mean yeah, I think with most people in life we, obviously we do get out of sync, homeostasis is put out of balance, out of kilter with various things in our lives you know, stress, work, unhealthy diet, not enough exercise, all of those things really. We are not going to be able to function.  It’s like anything, if you are playing a guitar over and over again at some point those strings are going to need retuning.  And it’s exactly the same thing with our own bodies.  We push ourselves beyond our limits a lot of the time emotionally, physically, and spiritually you know.  And so, at times we do need to just recuperate and get ourselves back into that space of homoeostasis where we feel in perfect balance.

Ann
And for the people who can’t come and see you in person, or who maybe have not got access to Facebook or choose not to, is there something they can do at home to have a similar effect. Is there something they can self-treat?

Faye
I am a great believer that you know, music is a very powerful tool for healing.  I would say it is probably my go-to tool for healing in most ways. I would say that maybe get themselves a drum. There are some contra indications to drum work, if you’ve got pacemakers or anything like that but obviously to research this themselves as well before they start buying expensive drums. But having the drum at home to kind of drum themselves into a space of calm and relaxation or joining a drum circle is another fantastic thing to get involved with.  It kind of invokes a sense of community, it helps relieve anxiety and depression.  It’s had loads of amazing things written about it scientifically, very much more recently, about the therapeutic effects of drum circles. Going to Gong Baths themselves you know, outside of the home. Listening to the gongs maybe or just listening to any kind of music that lifts their soul and using Music as a medicine. I think we can all do that at home.  You know, when you are feeling… sometimes a sound medicine needs to be used in the opposite way.  So, for example, if you are feeling very hyper one particular day and you are not actually wanting to use that energy, it’s not conducive, it’s making you feel anxious, then put something on that is really slow and melodic and calming. And vice versa, if you’re feeling really sluggish and you’re feeling like you just can’t motivate yourself to get up and do something, you know and that’s not conducive to whatever it is you’re planning to do for that day, then choose a music modality that will help energise, you know, and make you feel passionate, and driven and focussed, you know.  So, I leave that to the individual to decide what music resonates with them on those frequencies. So, for me classical music is something that really relaxes and calms me and jazz and those kind of things and Billie Holiday and that kind of stuff. But then on the other end of the spectrum if I want to feel very energised, I like to listen to all different types of things.  It’s hard to say because everybody is so unique with their taste in music. But that’s how you can use music as medicine.

Ann
I love that phrase use music as medicine.  Isn’t that wonderful?  I just love it.

Faye
And it’s accessible to us all. So, you know.

Ann
Absolutely and Faye you say that you’re a Tutor at Soul Space.  Tell us about Soul Space and what you teach.

Faye
Yes, Soul Space is a centre run and owned by Tony Stockwell and he obviously travels all over the world doing his teachings of mediumship and being the inspirer that he is but he also has this Centre and Natalie Walker who also runs a lot of the workshops there. But they kind of have these different trainings for mediumship development and trance development and spiritual awareness and it’s a wonderful place to kind of, if you’re interested in this kind of thing, to kind of go and get involved, and start joining a circle.  A community of people that are vibrating on the same frequency as you mentally.  And it’s just a lovely place to be and involve yourself and be inspired by.  You know people that are working in the Spiritualist movement that have been working for very long time and who are respected tutors and workers in their own right. And I was invited to come and be one of those tutors last year and I ran a shamanic workshop for a period of five weeks and I had a few of my own personal issues going on where I had to focus, like we all do and we have to be mindful of this, at these times, to take ourselves out and retreat within and I had a period of time, Christmas up until probably February where I needed a bit of time out and then we’ve had a few things going on in the world that has maybe prevented me from being back in Soul Space but that will subside I’m sure and we’ll hopefully will be back teaching there in the coming months.  And maybe starting up some kind of more shamanic work or something that me and Tony have briefly talked about is that, maybe looking at the mental health aspect of things a little bit as well.  So, yeah, there’s lots of things to kind of talk about with regard to that. But nothing is set in stone as of yet so it’s all just hearsay at the moment but yes, I’m still very much a part of Soul Space and in the coming months and years hopefully will do much great work there with like-minded people.

Ann
That’s fantastic you are such a wonderful teacher Faye and coming from such a wonderful background of you know training courses and programmes and interests and you just hold so much knowledge to share with people. They would really benefit from coming to see you. So where can people find you Faye if they would like to get in contact?

Faye
Well, obviously I work from home. I have a little space in my garden which is a converted garage which is a lovely space where I have my gongs and my couch and I do my work my therapies so people can contact me via my email which is [email protected] and they can access my website which is https://www.fayeharrisonmedium.co.uk or they can contact me on Facebook which is probably the best option really.  That’s Faye Harrison or faye sacred soul https://www.facebook.com/faye.harrison.733450.  They can contact me on there.  I continuously post things on there about you know, things of interest to myself but also things that are good and interesting for you to look into.   And I’m going to start doing a lot more lives and things on there now.  I’ve put it off for a number of years because I am definitely one of those people that don’t like to be in the limelight as we say. My work is very much done in the shadow of night.  But then I think most people you know, I would never call myself a shaman because I think no one that actually practices in that way would call them self a shaman I think we do the work of shamanic work but it takes absolute years and years of training to even consider calling yourself a shaman and I am nowhere near at that point yet.  I still have all the plant medicine to explore yet and that should be fun.

Ann
It’s a life-time of learning is it not?

Faye
And this is the thing that the most important thing that I’d like for people to take from this interview really, is that once you start on this journey, it is about your own soul involvement and only when you kind of have an understanding of your own soul, can you then really start moving on to helping other people with theirs. You know I think it is a rite of passage. We have some fantastic inspirers I like to call them really, rather than tutors, because some tutors can be quite dictatory and they become dictators rather than inspirers and I think that is the message here you know, within this movement as well, within the spiritual work movement is that we need to be inspirers for people.  Don’t want to make people carbon copies of other people we want to make them individuals that go out into the world and inspire others to look within and that’s what we want to do as workers

Ann
Well Faye you’ve certainly inspired me today and I’m sure you’ll be inspiring a lot of people who listen to this podcast. I will put all of your links that you’ve talked about your Gmail address your Facebook page and your website into the show notes, so anybody who wants to get the links for those please head to my website and you’ll find Faye’s. And it just remains for me to say thank you so much again Faye for your time and for all of your knowledge and just sharing your work with us it’s absolutely fascinating and I will be keeping a very close eye on your Facebook page.

Faye
Lovely okay and you’re very much welcome to join the next Gong Bath when it’s on and I’ll hopefully have a bit of better luck with it then I did the last one.  I was playing Vera Lynn and apparently, you’re not allowed to do that on Facebook.

Ann
Oh, okay right yes, fair enough, copyright free okay well we live and learn. 

Faye
We do don’t we.

Ann
Well, we look forward to it.  Thank you again Faye.

Faye
Thank you, Ann, thank you for your time.  Take care. Love to everybody.

Ann:
Well, that was Faye Harrison, Psychotherapist and Soul Worker.  What a fascinating woman – out there doing some incredible work.  If you are interested in Faye’s work and I highly recommend that you go look her up, and really check out for yourselves what she is up to, you can find all her links, and her website link, Facebook page link etc etc on the show notes for this episode.  Just head over to www.anntheato.com and you’ll find them over there.

It just remains for me to say a very big thank you to all of you, Psychic Matters Listeners, as ever, I really appreciate you and thank you so very much for listening.

Please make sure to hit the subscribe button, if you haven’t already done so, so that you don’t miss out on any of the upcoming episodes and I have some fascinating content coming up for you.

Please know, that I am here to help you, so do get in touch if there is anything you feel you need help with.  You can head over to my website or you can go to the Psychic Matters Podcast Group Facebook Page.  And if you know of anyone who you think might be interested in the subject matter of this podcast, please do share this with them.  Lastly, thank you to everyone who has taken the time to write some really lovely reviews for this podcast.  I so appreciate you.  And if you haven’t done so yet, can I ask you to go over to Apple podcasts and write an honest review that would really help so much with algorithms and ratings and so on and so forth.

So, thank you. All that remains for me to say now is have a fantastic couple of weeks everybody, stay safe out there and I hope everything goes really well for you this week. 

Until next time… my name is Ann Théato and thank you for listening to PSYCHIC MATTERS!