Healing Hands

Imagine waking up one morning in Illinois and realizing that your calling in life is to be a spiritual healer in a small town in Northern California. Now imagine packing up your entire family and life and traveling all those miles with only the feeling that this is what you need to do as security.

This is what Maya Cooper did 10 years ago and her instincts were right. She is now the soul-proprietress of The Isis Osiris Healing Temple, and the publisher and creative director of the Isis Scrolls newsletter. Through her hands-on healing, a team of massage therapists and the Isis Scrolls, Cooper hopes to enlighten and unite the healing community to better allow those seeking relief to receive it.

Cooper is a spiritual, hands-on healer specializing in Intuitive Spiritual Guidance. She has spent the last 10 years helping people to free their congested energy to create more constant streams of energy by helping people deal with mental, physical and emotional blocks. She does not see herself so much as a healer but rather a facilitator of "deep, profound healing with themselves."

The Isis Center started out small and grew in the community. It became a place of reverence as Cooper's clients found peace of mind and body through her hands-on healing and emotional support.

"It evolved into a place where people feel relaxed and non-judged no matter what they say," Cooper said. Her understanding of people led to expansion and redecoration of the center, Cooper said as she ran her hand over the beautifully painted walls that had been a gift from one of her clients.

As the facility attracted more clients, Cooper found her abilities to aid people in dealing with what she calls "contradictory energy." Contradictory energy is when the body is going through one process but the mind may fear for the exact opposite. Cooper said one woman came in for a healing session and when she laid her hands upon the woman's womb, she could feel that the woman was afraid that she was pregnant. At the same time, she could feel that the woman was menstruating. She asked the woman about this and the woman replied, "I have been afraid that I am pregnant for three weeks. I just started menstruating today."

Soon, between the new knowledge that Cooper gained from her clients and the peace of body and mind that the clients received from Cooper and her associates, it was decided that the energy of the center had changed to become a sacred place to those who entered. The center's name was soon changed from The Isis Center to the Isis Osiris Healing Temple.

The temple took inspiration from both Isis, the Egyptian goddess of motherhood, and Osiris, the husband of Isis and the Egyptian god of life, death, and fertility. Cooper regards her work area as a haven for troubled spirits in search of release.

People in the surrounding community have been very supportive of the healing center and have kept it alive and thriving these past 10 years. Cooper attributes this to the spiritual openness that the community possesses. She said that she has found here that people become much more spiritually aware and sophisticated at younger ages than anywhere else she has known. "The kids up here are so much more aware," she said.

Many of the inspirations to heal people in this unconventional way come from the idea of being able to help people through natural means without the use of Western medicine. Reiden Olsson, an Intuitive Massage Therapist, Foot Reflexologist and Reiki Master Teacher at the Isis Osiris Healing Temple, was inspired to learn alternative medicine when she was 19 years old and her mother was able to relieve her headache with a simple massage. Astounded to learn that not every ailment demands a pill for relief, she went on to massage school to perfect her art.

Foot Flexology, one of Olsson's specialties, is especially important to her. It allows her to heal and relieve pressure throughout the entire body simply by putting pressure on certain parts of the foot. Olsson said this ability to aid people become more hopeful about life or simply in less physical pain is exciting and gratifying for her.

"It is a transformation," she said. "We are part of our own healing. There's so much we can do for ourselves."

Rebecca Owen, who is a hands-on healer and Chakra energy specialist, used to work at the Isis Osiris Healing Temple with Cooper. Owen recently opened her own studio across the hall from the temple to house meditation classes and open sessions to the community. She feels that the hands-on healing and meditation are a highly beneficial way for people to deal with problems in life.

"Our whole world would be a better place if we were able to access ourselves," she said. Owen hopes that she will be able to use her hands-on healing and meditation sessions to communicate with people's feelings and help people let go of the baggage weighing them down.

Cooper and Owen, both trained and long-practicing healers, share a certain intuition about healing. They both believe that it was a gift that came naturally to them. Owen expressed that she felt her hands were like eyes that allowed her to read into people's energy and feel their aura. These women then use this ability to help people understand where energy is being blocked and assist them in verbally working through the things restricting the flow.

Malin Terpening, who has been working at the Isis Osiris Healing Temple since October practicing Reiki, also felt this innate intuition about her path in life. "It came naturally to me," she said. The raw ability to read energy and auras was then honed and developed in Seattle before coming to the Temple to work with Cooper. Working with other people's energy is an enlightening experience, Terpening said. "You learn a lot from each session and apply it to your own life, get stronger for every session." Some people come into the center expecting to heal one problem, she said, and through healing sessions, resolve something that they previously had not considered.

"I hope to carry on what goes on in here, out there and unify the healing community," Cooper said.

INFO BOX
The Isis Osiris Healing Temple offers healing sessions on a sliding scale from $90-$120 for one hour and forty-five minute sessions. Massages range from one hour for $65 and one-and-a-half hours for $90. The Isis Osiris Healing Temple is located at 44 Sunny Brae Centre in Arcata.
Rebecca Owen of the Redwood Area Healing and Meditation offers free community meditation events every second and forth Friday of the month from 7to 8 p.m.

Printed in The LumberJACK, 12-5-07