SpiritQuest in Sedona (2012 Rehab)

2012 was kind of a bitch. She whipped and whirled me. She tossed me this way and that. She brought some pretty amazing gifts, but they were hard-won and raggedly delivered. I spent most of the year going through a divorce and grieving a 12-year-marriage. We had to piece together a new family dynamic from the scraps. I broke my shoulder. And I freaked out about money. My whole body clenched up, as if preparing for impact.

As 2013 launched, my Soul was weary. She asked for massages and detox baths, naps and silence. She opted for meditation and slowness. She practically panted for mystical energy healing work and the laying on of hands. She turned down ambition and planning and dreaming big. She called those things forth, but it was with the caveat: after. After I rest. After I heal. After I stitch myself back together.

I vowed to follow her direction and give her what she needed, I trusted in her wisdom, her knowing about which way she wanted to go and how to get there. I committed to The Year of Yes. I was so exhausted that complete surrender was finally within my grasp.

My Soul’s directions led to a spiritual travel column for Bella Spark Magazine, which led straight to SpiritQuest in Sedona, Arizona. High Five, Soul!

Owners Ed and Katherine Preston manifested SpiritQuest because they wanted to give people an authentic healing experience in their own backyard. Their playground, the red rocks of Sedona, happens to be regarded as one of the most spiritual places on Earth, a Vortex of heightened, healing spiritual energy. During my stay I asked the healers and residents how they came to live in Sedona and nearly everyone said they had been pulled to Sedona by a magnetic force and then never left. One had stayed on “vacation” for a decade.

Each SpiritQuest client gets a personalized retreat based on their needs. Mine focused on healing and rebalancing my throat and belly chakras. Many people, including myself, believe that when our lives become out of whack in emotional or spiritual ways, our bodies manifest that in illness or injury. My thyroid has been slow (the chakra of expression) and my belly (the chakra of creativity and fertility) has been bloated and distended with hard knots of fascia. In Sedona, I took the opportunity to have healing energy work done on these areas.

Expression and creativity are my driving forces, so when they are unbalanced, off kilter or whacked out it significantly impacts my life. I often felt creatively inhibited in my marriage, especially when it came to my work as a writer and Authentic Power Life Coach. I found this to be very painful. So, to rev these chakras and the creative and expressive aspects of my life back up is essential to my overall wellbeing.

While I felt somewhat healed from my divorce, I was drained by the experience. Most important, I felt like my children were sucking me dry. I was short-tempered and impatient. I would often try to run away from their constant demands, squabbling and incessant complaining. I knew they were grieving and that they needed me, but I was depleted and had nothing left to offer.

I knew instinctively that I had to get away from them in order to replenish my energy. Depleted mothers make sorry substitutes for happy mothers. There’s no way around that. It’s nearly impossible to become a happy mother when children are gobbling up all of your energy like starving urchins. I arranged to take an entire week, knowing that my children would spend good quality time with the co-parent while I rejuvenated myself.

Relieved of responsibility and demands on my time and energy I was able to allow myself to experience the pleasure of healing touch therapies, meditation sessions, breath work, massage, chakra clearing sessions and some life coaching. I even got some great advice about men and gluten-free eating, which I’m sure I’ll write about soon. There were cleansing rituals and there was plenty of time to rest. I’ll get more in depth about some of the healing modalities I sampled during my trip in later posts.

When I finally got back on the plane to return home I had a tiny twinge of missing my children. Oh good, I thought. My Mom muscles aren’t completely broken. They just needed a good rest.  

I’ve been more patient with them and even implemented some of the more practical suggestions that one of the coaches, Anahata, suggested. We’re taking a different approach to responsibility. I’m not stretched tight like a rubber band about to fly off a sling shot and smack someone between the eyes for looking at me wrong. Lucky them.

I can’t wait for what else my Soul has in store for The Year of Yes. SpiritQuest was an experience that will be hard to top.

Tracee Sioux is an Authentic Power Life Coach helping people attract miracles and manifest magic, author of Love Distortion: Belle, Battered Codependent and Other Love Stories; and blogs at TheGirlRevolution.com. Contact her at traceesioux@gmail.com. 

Note: Though the author did receive a free trip for the purposes of review, these thoughts are her own.