Patrick Combs - Stories

God Bless

I picked her out of a free newspaper. Her ad said "Massage & Energetic Healing." I wanted both and I liked her photo. When I found out her price, $55 for an hour, I almost cancelled. I figured any true healer would surely charge at least $100. Then she told me her location: Encinitas, more than a half-hour away. I could just see myself driving all the way up there, getting an okay massage and some ridiculous charade of healing. I'd tried one other time in my life to get a "healing." It was years ago in San Francisco and the woman massaging me just kept belching and belching. Short belches and long belches. It was so gross. She claimed she was releasing negative energy from my body through her burps. I wanted the f__ out of there, but felt too polite to leave early.

FIRST

None the less, I decided to take the risk again. I really felt like I needed a healing. I walked in the door and Marsha, the woman I came to see, greeted me. She looked nothing like her photo. Her almost-black hair was pulled back tight against her head. Her skin was lightly freckled. Her age didn't seem obvious, but probably she was older than me. And her eyes looked serious, almost skeptical. She didn't seem to care if I felt welcome, which surprised me. She just asked me some questions.

"What kind of work do you want today?"

"Some massage and I'm hoping for some energetic work too. I want to find a person who while massaging me can pick up on what else I might need, you know, and energetically heal me." I never felt as ridiculously new age as I did after that statement.

"That's exactly what I do. Is there any particular issue or injury that brought you here?"

"Well yes. Sort of. I had a very angry September. And even though the issue is resolved, I can't get rid of this ball of anger and shit right here." I put a tight fist to the spot on my abdomen right below my rib cage."

"That's very intuitive of you. That's exactly where anger gets stuck in the body. Good, that guides me a lot."

She told me to undress and lie face down under the sheets of the massage table. She gave me a minute to do so, returned and massaged me for 30 minutes. She had good, strong hands."Are you ready to begin with the hands-on-healing work?" she asked. "Sure," I replied. She pulled the sheet up to my neck and placed her hands over my abdomen. Relaxing music played softly from the portable CD player near my head.

Within seconds I felt heat coming from her hands warming my belly. I was a little confused wondering how I was feeling the warmth of her hands since they were above the sheet and not even pressing. At first, my guess was that it was because they'd really heated up from the friction of giving a massage. But I knew logically that her hands were hotter than friction could explain. They felt like she'd dipped them in Icy-Hot. So I asked.

"Did you rub Icy-Hot onto you hands?" I thought for sure she was going to say something like, "Of course not -- I dipped them in a natural, homeopathic, ancient, Indian lotion that aids in healing."

Instead she said, "No. That's just our Chi interacting."

"I can't believe how hot it is."

"Yeah it's the energy that powers the body.Pretty cool huh."

Soon after, the same heat began rising in my stomach just underneath her hand. "Now I'm feeling the heat in my body under your hand!"

"You might feel energy shifts elsewhere in your body to."

I didn't. But I noticed that I thought her hand was not on the right spot. I could feel this exact place just a couple of inches lower that needed attention. So I told her and she adjusted her hand. Then it happened. My entire abdomen lit up with heat. No longer just underneath her hand. Like the size of a heating pad. It was incredibly vivid. My stomach began gurgling. The ball of anger began melting. "I'm feeling all this heat! I'm totally feeling this! I can't believe it."

"You're multi-sensory."

"What's that mean?"

"You can feel beyond the five senses. You can feel your energetic body too. How old are you?"

"Thirty-six."

"Really? Oh, I thought you were much younger. More and more young people are multi-sensory and you look younger."

"I can totally feel this. I've never felt a healing working before. Can you tell me what's going on?"

"It's actually pretty straightforward. Someone figured out how to work with the bio-energetic body and created Shen Therapy."

I was surprised she could talk and work, but we were talking a lot because I couldn't believe I could feel so much heat. Then I noticed my body talking to me again, this time requesting her hands up by my heart. I told Marsha.

"Yes, I was just headed there." She put her hands over my heart and I didn't feel much. She'd not placed her hands exactly where I felt my bodies need, but within two inches so I waited patiently. But hardly anything was happening. So without even asking, I adjusted her hands to the left a tad bit. Five seconds tops went by and then boom! A tidal wave of red heat rose up in my knees and legs and raced toward my chest. From my knees!

"Oh my God! I'm really feeling that in my knees and legs and all over my chest!!" Marsha kept her hands in place while I burst out talking about what I couldn't believe I was feeling. "Oh my God, now I'm feel all this joy," I said almost laughing from the happiness that was washing over my body.

"That's good. That's your heart energy."

"Unbelievable!! I can't believe this! Does everyone feel this with you?"

"Shen is very powerful. Your body seems to take to it especially well though. Often people don't feel this much for a number of sessions."

The joy became a wave of sorrow. Enough to put a lump in my throat. I thought maybe something was going wrong. "Why am I feeling sorrow now?" I doubted she'd have an answer. "Because we're opening your heart chakra and joy and sorrow go together. That's good. That's what we want."

Marsha kept her hands in place for many long minutes until the heat and feelings subsided. The ball of anger that I'd felt jamming my system for a month, was gone. When I sat up, I took a deep look at the woman that had just amazed me. This time I saw confidence and peace in her face. The next thing I noticed was a tall white wall poster with seven pastel colored, flower-like symbols. It was stunningly beautiful."What's that poster of?" I said feeling completely peaceful. "The Chakras. The yellow lotus flower is the one that we worked on today for your anger. The green is your heart Chakra."

For the first time in my life I knew that I really did have an energetic body and that Chakras were real, so I had to have the same poster. She told me the shop down the street where I could get it. Before heading to the store, I scheduled another appointment and paid her. She said I owed her $55. I wrote her a check for $100.

I walked out of Martha's place, feeling renewed physically, happy, sort of tingly, and clear. Most definitely healed. I was also starving -- with a capital S -- something I hadn't been for a month. That night I didn't sleep well because my body was ringing with energy.

SECOND

Three days later I returned to Marsha's office. "This time we won't talk. Last time you were so excited and wanted to talk about it so much, it was okay. But today let's work in silence." We also agreed to skip the massage part so I laid on the table fully clothed.

The session went very different. I felt almost nothing except when she put her hands over my throat. That produced a lot of heat. Outside of that, I felt so little I assumed the session was a bit of a bust. Perhaps there was nothing else for me to heal. At the session's end, Marsha asked me what I'd experienced. I told her about the only other thing besides my throat that I had to report: imagery that would come and go. Some image would pop into my mind, a few seconds later I knew the meaning of it, but as soon as I did, it was gone and I couldn't remember a thing about it. I thought Martha would shrug it off. She said, "That's exactly what we want. We're clearing a lot of old stuff. As it releases, it momentarily passes through your mind. But when it's gone, it's gone and that's why you can't remember it." I felt good thinking stuff was being cleared.

As I wrote Marsha a check, this time for $75, she said that she'd been instructed by the Master Teachers that were guiding her, to expand and stretch my energy field during this session. "You should feel pretty good the next week from the work we did here today," she said.

I made an appointment to come back. I requested Monday at 2 p.m. Marsha said okay, but then requested I come at 10:00 a.m. "10:00 a.m. is a peak time for our bio-energy." I left feeling great. Literally, I could only assume that the last time my body felt so vibrant had to have been back in my teens. The feeling would last for days. It was an amazingly clear feeling.

THIRD

The following Monday I was back in her healing room. The previous day had brought a lot of upset. I felt tired. I knew my energy wasn't flowing. Because I felt like I'd gone backwards since I last saw her, I felt guilty. She asked me if there was anything in particular that I wanted to work on.

"My heart chakra. Last time, you said it was a little wobbly." I climbed up onto the massage table. Marsha put her hands over me. I wasn't feeling much, experiencing any imagery, or having any intuitions as to where my body needed work. The way she was placing her hands reflected what I thought was happening. They kept searching for a better position. They couldn't find their right place. The session was going nowhere. I began praying for results. I'd been told once before by a psychic that my heart energy was wobbly and I wanted to get to the bottom of it. I wanted it healed! I pleaded for help from God any spirit guides I might have. My praying dissolved into spacing out. I don't know how long I spaced out, but it was interrupted by a vision. The most vivid vision I've ever had. No, not like a vision. Like it was really happening:

A girl, probably 12 or 13 years old, opened a door to let me out of a pitch-black space. I must have been in a shed or an outhouse. She was standing under a blue sky, in the backyard of a farmhouse. I could see a cornfield behind her, edging the unmowed grass. I had time to gaze at the beautiful girl. Olive skin. Defined cheek bones. One beauty mark. Brown hair in braids stuck close to her head. Staring at her holding the door open for me, I began wondering who she was, and what this was about. Is she someone from my past? Is she an angel? Why this yard and shed? There were no answers. Just a girl I felt like knowing and thanking. Then the vision ended.

With one of Marsha's hands on the top of my head, and the other between my legs at the base of my spine, I felt the first thing I'd felt the entire session: heat travel down my spine, top to bottom.

I began to think about my mother and how she became suicidal when I was sixteen. Having no dad, and with my brother having already moved out, it was a tough. But I don't get emotional about it anymore. I worked all that out in therapy during my twenties. But staring up at the ceiling I realized that the one thing I couldn't get from my depressed mom was kindness and comfort when I felt stressed. I realized it was what I was looking for from women ever since. Made logical sense.

Marsha moved her hands to my waist. They shuffled around for position. Then she put one hand on my ab and one on my left hip. Without warning, I burst into crying from a wave of sorrow. No, not burst -- exploded. And my belly erupted into a swirling red heat. My crying expanded into a hard convulsing cry that would not stop. And then a heat, unlike the heat I was used to, filled my entire chest. It was not swirling. It was rising and it was golden. Perhaps it didn't even feel like heat, but rather like pure energy. I was being worked over by two separate energies that divided my torso into halves. Marsha said loudly, "This is what Shen's all about! Just let it all go. Try and keep your breathing grounded." My crying was out of my control. It was like water rushing through a dynamited damn. I couldn't fathom where this lake-load of sadness had been stored.

Marsha's hand moved as if they were holding a crumbling wall together. My hands jumped in to help cover spots I intuitively knew needed it. "Good, you're assisting in your own healing," she said.

When my crying finally subsided, a good half-hour later, I felt totally upended. Damp with sweat. Somehow 5 pounds lighter. Empty of whatever energy enables a person to move. Completely spent. It would be almost another half-hour before I would move.

While resting, I realized that the girl in the vision had opened the door to my healing, and I wondered if Marsha had seen her too. I bet that she had. I also knew that I'd been crying about the hardship I suffered because of my Mom's severe depression.

"Do you know who the girl was?" I asked.

"I didn't see any girl, but I saw your Mother."

Not once, ever, had Marsha and I said a word about my mom. The confirmation hit me like another wall of water. And crying broke out again. This time a conscious reaction to how good it felt to have had the buried sorrow specifically acknowledged and addressed.

I told Marsha of my history with my Mom. She said, "Yeah, well I definitely saw her right here in your body." She pointed to the right side of my chest. "Your mom also gave you great gifts."

I took her comment as a pleasantry. "Marsha, what just happened?"

She explained that when I'd arrived, energetically my body was cut in half. That's why I was so tired. For the first hour she worked and worked to reconnect me but was getting nowhere. She said that she was practically yelling for assistance from the Master Teachers. "And they were all here for this one she said. Buddha, Maitria, Jesus, Krishna, Muhammad, and finally they gave you a golden shaft of light down your spine."

"I felt it! I felt that light down my spine."

"It was a great gift. And when your body reconnected we were able to work. I brought in Theta energy which most people can't handle but I thought it might really help with you..."

"What's Theta?"

"A higher frequency of energy. Usually we spend our waking hours in Alpha and small amounts of time in Beta, but Theta and Delta we only experience in sleep. Anyway, it really worked for you."

"How do you know when different Master Teachers are assisting?" I had so many questions.

"Oh, the longer you do it the more you get to know how they feel, or sound or talk. One will have a real sense of humor, another just a particular feeling."

I had more questions. For one thing, I wondered about the humming-bird like vibration I was now feeling in my outstretched arms. "This vibration I'm feeling in my arms isn't like the tingle you get from hyperventilating. What is it?" I asked marveling at the sensation. "Well, technically, it's energy from the Sun. It's very good for you so just enjoy it," she replied.

The vibration soon spread to my chest and legs. While it was doing so Marsha told me more. "When you got your breakthrough and started crying, a huge wave of Joy exploded through the room. That's very, very good," she said. "And your guides gave you the gift a total cellular-level memory clearing."

'A total cellular cleaning?" I asked. "What's that and how do you know?"

"I saw it," she said almost surprised that I would ask such an obvious question. "It's like a golden-laser beam that goes over every inch of your body and refreshes each cell with a clean wash. It's a very great gift. Don't be surprised if the world never looks quite the same to you again."

Laying there, I knew nothing in my life ever would be the same because of what I'd just experienced. Not only had I released something huge, but I'd experienced the mystical. Now I knew that everything --energy bodies, chakras, spirit guides and Master Teachers --was true. And I would be able to live from that truth without reservation. I still couldn't move an inch -- I was steam rolled by spirituality and I could barely believe what had just happened to me.I asked Marsha if all her clients get a major healing like this?

"Some take longer than others, especially war veterans who often take more than 30 sessions to get their breakthrough. Three sessions is rare. Like I said, you responded really well and even participated in your own healing. You could probably do this work with training. But more often it takes seven to twelve sessions," she explained. "But you were courageous today."

"Why do you say that?" I asked.

"Because it takes courage to come in say you want to heal your heart. And these healings don't take place unless you really want it." I remembered how sincere my prayers were when the healing was going nowhere and felt good about myself.

I wanted to know everything this woman saw and knew. But as I slowly lifted myself off the table and realized our session had gone an hour and a half over the scheduled time, I thought to just ask one more question. "Why did you say my Mom gave me great gifts?" At first I'd assumed it was just a courtesy remark, but now I wanted to check. Marsha again looked as if I'd asked an obvious question. "Because I was told. I don't know why I'm told certain things during the healing but I am."

I'd long ago concluded that my gifts for speaking and inspiring had been the other side of the coin of my mom's depression. But now I knew it wasn't just my rationalization. Marsha had more to say about it. And what she said floored me, because I'd never thought it before.

"It takes an extraordinary amount of love between two people to agree to play the roles you and your mother have played for each other this life time. And apparently you followed through and used the experience to develop the talents you wanted."

Her words touched me deeply.

I asked Marsha if I needed to return for another session. She laughed as she pulled on a sweatshirt that surprised me because of a Billabong surfer's logo. "My son's" she said. "No, you're done. You are definitely done. You may want to come in for a tune up six months from now. But I don't need to see you again anytime soon."

"Marsha, what were you before you were a healer?" I realized I had to ask. She smiled somewhat sheepishly. "A social worker." I connected the diplomas on the wall with her statement. "Believe me, I didn't want to be a healer. But once you get the calling you can't deny it. I was like, okay, I'll do some massage, but I'm never running an ad that say's 'Energetic Healer.' That was 15 years ago."

This time I wrote her a check for $500. "Here, some of it wants to go to charity" I said hoping she might allocate some to a person who couldn't otherwise afford her help.

And then I headed home. On the car ramp onto the I-5, I found myself spontaneously yelling, "God Bless! God Bless! God Bless! Thank you!! Thaaaaank you!!!" I felt so wildly fantastic.

###

I suppose this story wouldn't be complete without an epilogue. Ever since my healing, it's as if I have the same thoughts, even the same emotions, but an entirely different capacity for dealing with the emotions. My emotional hardships do not register in my body in the same painful or blocking ways. I continue to feel clearer/lighter on the inside which makes me more connected to those around me.

Three of my close friends have since gone to see Marsha. Each person has had a different, yet magical and healing, experience. I might note one other thing. When I reread this story, it sounds somewhat contrived as it lacks almost all the emotion of the actual experience. So certainly many will question it's truth. (Hell, prior to having had the experience, I sure would have.) I'm sorry I can't yet write well enough to put the actual emotions over, but I promise that all my stories are true. If you'd like to contact Marsha, email me.

Accuracy note: Shortly after writing this experience up, I emailed Marsha to ask her the specific names of the masters that had shown up to assist in my healing. (The ones used in the story above are might be called a groggy recollection). This was her reply:

"Dear Patrick,

To answer your question, the masters I work with are extensive and are, in fact, the same or close for many of us. They consist of The White Brotherhood, which is St, Germaine, the archangels (Michael, Raphael, Uriel, Metatron, others), Sanada (Lord Jesus),. Mother Mary, Qwan Yin,(goddess of mercy, Buddhist), El Morya (GWB-eastern) and I know each of us has personal guidance, and also there are Reiki guides. As you can see this work is highly supported by the spiritual realm.

Love and light,

Marsha"