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May 1st, 2006
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After
a near-death experience in the Andes, yoga
teacher Lara Shah discovered an ancient Inca
healing technique……Clare Tyrell
tries it out
THE
SHAMAN STANDS at the counter of Pacific Coffee
on Central’s Hollywood Road and watches
me scan the busy café for her. I weave
through the tables, looking for a half Indian,
half Turkish 34-year-old. Seeing no likely
candidate I retrace my steps and order a green
tea. And there she is.
She is tiny, only 1.52 metres tall, and casually
dressed in a tie-dyed green cotton top. She
looks at me with an amused smile and says
“You must be Clare.” Lara Anuradha
Shah landed in Hong Kong last week. She is
here for a month as part of a tour of Asia
from her base in Florida, offering one-to-one
treatments of an ancient form of healing known
as Transmutation Therapy. It is a rare form
of energy work that is practiced by only a
handful of people in the world –all
of them in Peru- and is said to have originated
thousands of years ago in Ancient Lemuria,
the continent that reputedly once existed
in the Pacific Ocean. The tradition was passed
on to the Incas and then moved through a tight
lineage to modern man.
Shah is the first to bring the tradition from
the distant mountains of Peru into the world’s
cities. She moves elegantly with her cappuccino
and we settle into a sofa. The story of how
she became versed in the strictly guarded
tradition is remarkable. The former journalist
– who once worked as a freelance writer
for the likes of Financial Times, Business
Week and the Washington Post – was living
in Mumbai, India, when a little over four
years ago her life began to change. Teaching
yoga, more and more clients became interested
in learning about its healing aspects. She
began to study various forms of healing, such
as Sekhem vibrational healing and Cranio-sacral
therapy. Then in early 2002, she upped and
left for Miami with her Siamese cat.
“I just felt it was time to leave even
though I had nothing to go to,” she
pauses and, as if reluctant to use such language,
adds, “It’s as if as it was all
divinely guided.”
Continuing to follow her “intuition”
she wasn’t in the US long before she
took a trip to Peru (leaving the cat with
friends). No sooner had Shah arrived in the
Andes, at an altitude of 4,000 metres, than
she became ill with a virus. Within 48 hours
she was close to death – her organs,
in particular her kidneys, had begun to fail.
“I was in excruciating pain, she says.
“I slipped into a coma.”
No medical doctor was called. Instead, a shaman
from a nearby area arrived and began to work
on the patient using the rare Incan Transmutation
therapy. During her three hours in the coma,
Shah remembers hearing “beings –
angelic beings or whatever you want to call
them. They basically reassured me that all
this was not as it appeared to be. I had been
brought there for a purpose. They actually
told me that it was necessary for me to experience
the healing that I was going to experience.”
Over the course of a week she received intensive
treatments from the Shaman and was miraculously
cured. “It’s all energy”,
she says in her soft voice, with the mildest
traces of an American accent, and with her
hands dancing. “There was nothing to
be taken internally, no medicine, no herbs.
I just drank water. It’s a method of
light touch on very specific body parts, mostly
on the head.”
The Shaman then announced that he wished to
initiate Shah into the technique, a rare offer
considering that it is only known by a strict
few. Taking her to sacred ruins, Shah says
that he opened up her energy channels at the
top of her head. “I have experienced
Reiki but this was very different. Everything
got heightened. I could see the difference
after the initiation.” She looks at
me intently, smiles and nods.
But how on earth does it work? After an hour
and a half’s conversation I am nowhere
nearer to understanding. Although there is
talk of raising the body’s vibrations
and working with the “12 bodies”
that make up a person, it is hard to know
exactly what she means. There is only one
way to find out. Although Shah works with
people with serious diseases, she stresses
that the treatment is equally suitable for
perfectly healthy people “who would
like to grow spiritually, to open up their
perspective and their powers..to become more
intuitive, for example.” I book an appointment
for two days later. Arriving feeling a tad
sick from an evening of overdosing on sushi
and wine, I lie on the massage table and am
soon aware that something unusual is at work.
She gently lifts up my head (which feels strangely
heavy in her small hands) then gently lays
it down again, softly pressing either side
of my scalp. With my eyes closed, it feels,
in the darkness, as if gravity is slipping
away. As she eases the pressure from side
to side, it begins to feel like I’m
turning somersaults in space. She moves to
my feet and applies what feels like her thumbs
to my soles. They become hot almost to the
point of burning, and then subside.
The rest of the 90 minutes is spent in a profoundly
pleasurable state. At times I can feel my
internal organs being massaged – even
though her hands are working nearly 30cm above
my stomach! As she lays her gentle hands on
points on my knees and face, I can feel my
body doing all the moving, internally. Something
she mentioned in our previous meeting comes
to mind: “It’s not my energy,
it’s universal. I just function as a
conduit of it. The actual healing is done
by the patient.” I then feel her cleaning
and swiping “stuff” from the air
around me and as she does it, clear thoughts
and realizations about my life hit me. By
the time she has finished I feel spectacular.
My energy levels are racing and my body feels
internally cleansed. “People ask me
all the time,” Shah says, “is
it magic that you do? I answer absolutely
not. It’s very scientific. You can go
into laws of physics and explain a lot of
it. It’s not magic at all. And I would
love for left-brain people to understand that,
that it’s not hocus-pocus. It’s
not just laying your hands on somebody, there
is a process which occurs.” Beyond the
energy work, Shah has personalized her form
of healing to fit the modern world. She has
a set of 12 “Universal Laws” which
she says are channeled to her from “ancient
knowledge that has always been there”.
She gives an example: The Law of Frequency.
“Everything vibrates at a certain frequency:
our cells, our thoughts, space, plants, everything.
Let’s say someone has a virus in the
body, that virus is vibrating at a certain
frequency too. Like frequencies attract. If
the body’s vibration is at a much higher
frequency than the virus, then it cannot attach
itself comfortably…the environment
(the body) becomes hostile for the virus.
In this case, the aim is to raise the frequency
of the whole being.” She will be expanding
on these laws in a workshop this Saturday,
and publishing a book next year. “In
my opinion these laws have largely been forgotten
by humanity. I’ve taken it up as my
project,” she laughs. “My mission
in life is to address these laws in the healing
process.” Her mission to bring Transmutation
Therapy to the masses is also revolutionary
move for a technique that has remained secret
for so many years. Does the Shaman who taught
her approve?
“He feels it is a practice that should
be kept to only a few; that it should be kept
in the right hands. Partly yes, I agree. It’s
meant for everybody to receive, it’s
not meant for everybody to do. However, I
don’t think it should be kept so tight.
It’s a wonderful thing, and wonderful
things are meant to be shared.”
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