Vision Magazine September 12, 2012 Interview with Sara Burns
http://www.visionmagazine.com/archives/1209/1209_healing_art_Sara%20Burns.html
An Energetic Discussion of Healing
A Conversation with Sara Burns
Sara Burns is an amazing woman, and our meeting was one that surprised me due to her incredible knowledge and compassion. As I told her, she is the “real deal!” There are so many people that offer help and healing, but for some reason I am attracted to the work of Sara Burns.
Vision Magazine: What is Reiki?
Sara Burns: Reiki is considered spiritual and universal energy. The true source of that energy is actually is a person’s own Kundalini energy. When you start feeling the pulse of Reiki more in-depth, you realize that that is actually a person’s own spiritual energy getting activated to begin opening them up on their spiritual journey [so that they can] work on other people.
VM: If you had someone come to you and need a session, what would that happen?
SB: I do an assessment to find out what they’re there for. I also want to make sure that whatever their spiritual path is, we’re working within what their belief system is.
I do an assessment and then I explain what I’m going to do. Sometimes what I do in a session is incorporate shamanism along with doing the Reiki work. My techniques are a little bit different than most Reiki practitioners because I kind of created my own way of working to where I’m more focused on helping to transmute emotion in the body. I feel that moving the energy in certain areas of the body helps accelerate whatever issues or process is going on with them on a psychological or an emotional level.
VM: How did you come to this technique?
SB: Years and years of studying different things. I come from a Buddhist background, so I looked at a lot of the Buddhist sutras, and I came to realize that the symbols of Reiki actually come out of Taoist and Buddhist religion or philosophy. One of my sutras was how catastrophes come about because the elements are out of balance, and in order to make world catastrophes subdue, we have to work on the internal elements within ourselves.
During the fires of 2007, I was working with the sutra a lot because there was a lot of conflict in the neighborhood. When we had the fires, the area above my house was completely clear for about a 2.5-mile radius, and I had another friend who was working with that particular sutra also. He was in Washington D.C., and when he came home that night, they were doing voluntary evacuations in Chula Vista, where he lived. He sat up all night working with that particular sutra, and by morning they had called off the evacuations.
That was very strong discovery for me about the importance of working with Spirit, our balance, and the elements. And because I’m one person, I can’t really change the whole world, but what I can do is help people through the elements within their own body, which is the same theory a lot of acupuncturists utilize. That’s my goal: to transmute those negative emotions into more of a virtuous, peaceful state within themselves, and that eventually carries out into the world.
Also, because Taoism is a shamanic tradition—and I trained in shamanism with Sandra Ingerman and the soul retrieval work—and through the foundation of shamanic studies, I just came to recognize how those things can all bloom together and really accelerate people’s healing process. So, because I have my master’s in social work, I feel that in my sessions with people—not that I am doing therapy, of course, but in coaching them—I draw from a lot of my training in those areas also, to kind of guide people to come into their own internal ‘a-ha’s.’
In the classes, I actually try to teach that to my students, to really come from a place of guiding instead of coming up with psychic answers, because it’s going to be more effective and empowering when people come to this awareness in themselves. So I really try to instill this in my teachings in my class.
VM: Can you talk about your work? This combination of Reiki and Buddhist teachings, I think is amazing.
SB: In my work, there is a very strong understanding about the flows of energy through the body and how energy can end up getting stagnant in areas or being in excess. And people take on certain behaviors that kind of reflect when those things are imbalanced.
Very commonly, a lot people in this country have liver issues, and that’s where it’s believed that anger is stored. And so, on the other side, in the spleen area is where we carry our worries, so you see where the two go hand-in-hand. So when we’re worrying a lot, our energies begin to jam up and they don’t flow properly. And then we don’t digest our food properly, so we don’t take in the right nutrients to really help us be in balance physically as well.
So, when I go in and do the work on a more shamanic level, I’m just opening up to allowing my spiritual connections or spirit guide to come in to show me what that looks like internally for a person. What does that worry look like to them. Another aspect of the five-element theory is the belief that there are these five soul parts that go along with these five elements.
VM: What are the five soul parts?
SB: Each of the main organs carries an element. And each of those elements carries a soul. It’s kind of an all-living dimension of yourself. It’s actually part of your life force. The belief in regular shamanism is that each part of your body carries a soul part. And when you work with those soul parts, you go in and you connect with the living piece within the organ, the life force within that organ. So then I begin to converse with it and ask what it is it needs to find inner peace so that it can thrive within that organ. I tell my students that when somebody comes to you with an issue, some kind of chronic issue or chronic pain, I ask them to describe what that illness looks like to them. I say, “I don’t care if it looks like a cartoon. Tell me what that illness looks like to you.” And most people have no problem describing in their mind what that looks like.
Some of the answers can sound kind of frightening. But when you get that information from them, then you understand they’re actually intuiting on a different level, on the astro level, or that dream body, which is the emotional body.
I just know that, on a very intuitive level, things tend to show up, and more times than not, when you share what you are seeing, most people say, “That’s exactly what I thought.” I think that comes because, when I was trained in soul retrieval work, one of the things you do in soul retrieval is you lie next to the person and allow the spirit guides to do the work. On a more realistic level, I think the reason why that takes place is because my energy field is immersing with that other person’s energy field, and you do begin to pick up what that person is thinking.
There isn’t a single person in the world that isn’t capable of having the ability to do this. I think it’s a very natural part of our being. The energy creates heat, and that heat then creates movement, and when that movement begins, then you start experiencing what people are thinking, what they’re feeling, what they’re seeing. It’s kind of like shedding a light.
The first part is really about self-healing. And I do teach all of this in my classes [the five elements], and I also teach the shamanic part of it. My classes are also focused on their process after the Kundalini gets activated. A lot of people seem to think that after 21 days the process is over and it’s really just beginning, and it never ends.
I am going to give you the tools so you can know how your energy flows in your body and keep you on to recognize that these things could be moved through. But you need to stay continually aware of it. And a little goes a long way. I personally would not spend an entire weekend running energy in people; I think that’s dangerous. I think that working with little bits of energy along the way is the safer way to work with it.
And that is the other problem with Reiki. Their concept is “energy just flows where it flows.” But the truth is that energy follows certain patterns that can be controlled.
VM: That seems almost like a miracle.
SB: This is what acupuncturists do. I honestly feel that a lot of the things that can be treated with acupuncture can also be treated this way, without needles. It’s just that we don’t teach that anywhere in this country. And I am trying to begin this.
VM: I thought Reiki wasn’t about touching the body.
SB: You can go over the body, but the way I do it is I actually hold the organ gently, not putting pressure. I just support the organ. I let it relax. So when it relaxes along with the energy, it allows things to move through the body with the intention of creating an optimal space for those soul parts which are pushing the energy to go in the direction it should be going. That is how I can treat people. And a lot of times I see people move through things very quickly.
I think Sara Burns is a completely untapped resource. She has a perspective that is so incredibly important. Reiki on our organs from trauma or even past life residue is intriguing to contemplate. Sara is one of those people that have encountered a myriad of careers and studies, but what I believe is that she is doing what she was put on this earth to do.
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