sun Hailey
•
Ketchum
•
Sun Valley
•
Bellevue
•
the weekly
Carey
•
s t a n l e y • F a i r f i e l d • S h o sh o n e • P i c a b o At least 2,000 Trick-or-Treaters Attend Hailey’s Halloween Hoopla
Thanksgiving Baskets Benefit Many in Our Community, Deadline Nears for Requests Page 3
Bali Szabo Talks About Food for Plants and the Soul Page 4
Cure Boredom with The Valley’s Most Comprehensive Calendar Pages 8 & 9
read about it on PaGe 6
N o v e m b e r 6 , 2 0 1 3 • Vo l . 6 • N o . 4 5 • w w w.T h e W e e k l y S u n . c o m
Shamanism
the way i see it
finds a following in the Wood River Valley Sage is used as a cleansing tool.
STOCK ART
Boston Strong in the Wood River Valley BY CHRIS MILLSPAUGH
L
ast April, the finish line of the Boston Marathon was a scene of horror, blood and death due to a bomb being set off by terrorists. Last Saturday was an entirely different story as the Red Sox halted their parade there and outfielder Johnny Gomes jumped out of one of the floats and placed the World Series trophy draped with a team jersey with lettering on the back declaring “Boston Strong 617” at the exact spot. The crowd sang “God Bless America” and for a moment the citizens of Boston and the world could rejoice and remember the three dead and 217 wounded folks who suffered that day. It was a gesture that seemed to restore the spirit and hope to the city again. Like their darling team, they had gone from worst to first in their hearts. I mention this today because of the inordinate amount of Red Sox fans there are in the Wood River Valley. Ball caps with the letter “B” were seen all over the county last week as the Sox triumphed over the Cardinals four games to two, bringing the trophy back again to Boston for the third time in 10 years, where it rested on the finish line of the tragic marathon. The parties went on for days and nights in both areas of the world. Some of the most loyal fans of the Boston Red Sox dwell in this area. They work as bartenders, writers, photographers, politicians, carpenters, entertainers, clerks, lawyers and every other occupation you can name. They are Boston Strong in the middle of the mountains of South Central Idaho and talk baseball all year long. These same fans went through the tragedy of the wildfires here last summer with the same grit shown by their Boston area counterparts. Triumph wears many hats… or should I say caps? As we begin yet another winter here in the Valley, we will always remember the summer that will never be forgotten and the spirit that arose from the ashes. Keep the celebrations going. Nice talking to you. tws
Holiday shopping? Keep it local. We’ll help!
5 Weeks of Holiday Pages Begin Nov. 20
Ann Christensen shows some of the tools she uses to conduct her shamanistic rituals. STORY & PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK
A
nn Christensen unwraps her medicine bundle made of woven alpaca wool culled in the Andes and begins laying out her medicinal tools. There’s sage, with which she cleanses her space before a ceremony, calling in the winds from the four corners. There’s a white owl feather that she uses to stir up energy. There’s a rattle made of seed pods and a Tibetan bell. And there’s a crystal, which she uses to extract unhealthy energy from someone’s body. Christensen’s feet are firmly planted in Ketchum. But her spiritual consciousness is developing roots in the ancient practice of shamanism. At the age of 75, Christensen traveled to the Andes of Peru where she visited Inca temples, took part in ceremonies led by Laika medicine men and women, learned the teachings of the master shamans and about ancient traditions speaking to the directions of the medicine wheel. Now she counts herself among a small group of practitioners in the Wood River Valley who use shamanistic practices to help others heal from physical and emotional trauma. “I’m a nature nut and shamanism dotes heavily on our relation with nature,” said Christensen, a longtime conservationist who has spent countless hours teaching
Wood River Valley youth about animals, fish, butterflies and bugs. “Shamans believe everything has spirit in it, even rocks. And they teach you that you can listen to and learn from them.” Christensen, who was raised a Presbyterian in the Bible Belt of Kentucky, became interested in shamanism after hearing Alberto Villoldo speak at the 2008 Sun Valley Mountain Wellness Festival. Villoldo left a professorship at San Francisco State University where he was investigating how energy healing can change the chemistry of the brain to reduce pain to study with the Inca of Peru who claim to have used energy medicine for 5,000 years. He supplemented that by studying with shamans in Tibet, Mongolia, Africa and even Europe. “The things he was saying mystified and fascinated me, even though I found it difficult to believe a lot of the stuff,” Christensen recalled. “But he did some tricks to grab us. He weakened us, for instance, so we couldn’t hold our arms up, no matter how hard we tried. And I was intrigued.” Christensen began training as a shaman several months later in Salt Lake City and then took further courses at Joshua Tree in California, and in Peru. She visualized traveling along a creek and stepping into a mountain meadow in search of her helping spirit and came back with a salmon—a fitting power animal for Christensen who has long fought to save the salmon in Idaho. Back home, Christensen has used her energy work on a dog with cancer and with friends. She also joins two shamanic healing practitioners and other interested people for ceremonies around a bonfire every full moon and new moon. Heidi Reeves, one of those healing practitioners, also studied under the Q’ero— the master shamans of the Andes—learning ancient rites and rituals, including cleansing and balancing ceremonies, illu-
mination and soul retrieval. “I always wanted to help people,” said the former social worker. “But for me, social work felt like more of a Band-Aid.” The Hailey woman leads occasional meditation sessions, teaching her followers how to pull in energy from the luminous white energy field that she says surrounds us. And she helps people enhance their creative flow, clear problems in the energy field before those problems manifest themselves as a disease and heal emotional trauma from the past. She starts out her 90-minute to 2-hour sessions reviewing a person’s history. Then, as they lay on their back fully clothed, she has them do breathing exercises, releasing negative energy into a stone. She cleans their chakras — clockwise-spinning energy centers that she says can – Ann get unbalanced Christensen and sluggish. Occasionally, she extracts something that’s not good for her client using a crystal. She then directs a deep cleansing light toward them, reweaving their energy field by moving her hands through the air. Sometimes, Reeves says, she gets a vision or a word pointing to a certain area in the body that needs work. Reeves says she generally works with a client one to three times, sending them
“I’m a nature nut and shamanism dotes heavily on our relation with nature.”
continued, page 12
AVAILABLE AT:
SEE PAGE 3 FOR DETAILS