Receiving Ngangkari Healing: A Shamanic Practitioner’s Personal Experience
An encounter with the Anangu Minyma that brought me back to Spirit, creativity and Hope.
I want to start this unfolding with the current result of my healing. I feel as though the clouds have lifted and my sight has been cleansed on some deep level, renewing my sense of faith and love for this earthly world.
I am no stranger to thoughts of leaving this world. I have questioned whether my place here is warranted or needed, whether my existence as a human is helpful to the land we walk upon, the animals, the waters and the plants. I am a deep thinker and always have been, sometimes to the point where the threads of my mind get hooked or snagged upon certain concepts and struggle to find their way free.
The irony in this particular sharing is that I also sink ever so deeply into the knowing that my Soul is leading the way. I trust that a force, the great unnameable one, holds me in my pain and my light, and that the reality of living in a world of polarity comes with this tension between light and shadow. We all walk it. To deny one aspect and become all fluffy and “love and light” is to reject some of the very medicine that helps us grow.
My path as a shamanic practitioner and energy worker was guided by my own calling to heal myself. Why does anyone pursue a path of helping others if they do not first explore how these ways might help their own heart? I also want to burst the bubble around the idea that therapists, healers and energy workers somehow have it all figured out.
We don’t!!
Darkness does not skirt around those who are therapists or healers. In fact, I have often found the opposite. It is the people willing to plunge into the depths of their souls, to unravel the meaning of life and explore the riddles we have been dealt, who can become very familiar with these clouds of difficulty. Perhaps that comes with the willingness to dive so deeply.
So here we are, 2026.
Standing with my beloved Grandmother paintings at the medicine festival
I had just arrived home from one of the biggest exhibitions of my watercolour paintings, at Medicine Festival, where I had shown my work alongside a number of incredible visionary artists.
You can read my experience of the Medicine Festival here.
Indigenous Art Gallery Tent at the Medicine Festival August 2026
Next door to our tent was an Indigenous art exhibition, which included some of the most profound paintings by Anangu Minyma, Anangu women.
At the time, I had no idea that just days later I would be lying in front of some of these women, receiving one of the most profound healings I have ever experienced.
The festival had been exhilarating. It was a lot of people, and as a natural hermit who has not ventured much into these places in recent years, I found it both challenging and nurturing. My Soul had been calling for a return to “my people”, the artists, the seers, the creatives, the musicians, and this opportunity had been perfectly laid out for me.
I showed up for my sacred appointment with bells on, but I was also very happy to be home in my Soulbird nest once again.
Upon my return, I received a message from a dear sister of mine who had long been my supervisor and mentor during my most recent five-year training in shamanism. To me, this woman will always be one of my Earth allies, a guide who walks this side of the veil with me, so when she speaks, I listen in much the same way that I would listen to an elder within my community.
She sent me a link to receive healing from the Ngangkari desert healers, the Women of Anangu.
Australia had already been calling around the edges of my life through a number of recent synchronicities. There had been a shift in the way I was working with some of my clients, with more exploration of Dreamtime within the healing, and then there was the fact that the only artwork I returned home with from the festival depicted the spirit of an Aboriginal male healer.
Without thinking too much about it, I booked my place.
The following day I doubted everything.
I wondered if I had done the right thing. I questioned whether I could afford the healing and whether my money might be better spent elsewhere. This is the reality of the ego when faced with REAL change. It likes to find doorways of doubt, ways of keeping us at just the right level of comfort so that we can continue circling the same experiences day in, day out.
But I pushed through.
No, I said kindly to my head. I am in the right place. Spirit has shown me the signs that I am meant to explore this path. I have no idea what might come from this healing, but right now I am willing to step into the unknown with the power I have in my heart at this time.
For the two days leading up to the healing, I cried so much. The tears felt like mine, and yet they also seemed to belong to my ancestors and perhaps something beyond them. The release was already underway, and I knew it was important not to resist the process.
Saturday came around and I made my way to the place where the women were based.
I lay face up upon a mat on the floor with two women sitting beside me. A large window at my feet opened onto a garden, with a great river running along its edge.
Before we began, I expressed the essence of why I had sought healing. I remember thinking how poorly I had explained myself, yet my heart gently spoke to this insecure part, reminding me that all words are energy. They would feel what I was saying, even if our languages differed greatly.
One of the women spoke some English. Pollyanne, the second healer, spoke only in her own beautiful mother tongue.
They spoke together in deep, low voices in their mother tongue, and without knowing the words being uttered, I immediately felt soothed by the container their voices created. I felt held once again by elder forces, by Earth spirits experienced in the arts of healing. I was in safe hands. My heart knew it, even through watery, tear-filled eyes and an aching heart. Somehow, someway, I had returned to a space that felt ever so familiar.
I gazed out into the garden before they fully began and a fox, one of my beloved spirit allies, trotted past.
She looked directly at me.
It felt as though she were saying, “It’s okay, dear. You are in the right place, at the right time.”
Then she trotted down towards the river and disappeared.
As a shamanic practitioner myself, having lived and learnt many ways of working with Spirit from medicine men and women, I had to hold myself back from being drawn into analysing what these healing women were doing. There was naturally a part of me that wanted to watch, understand and follow the threads of their work, but I also knew that I needed to let this go and sink fully into the position of the client.
The women got to work quickly, gently, efficiently and with love.
Their hands were extensions of a healing force. Physical touch was necessary as they assessed my body, moving their hands over me and locating specific areas where something needed tending to. When an area was found, I felt a pulling sensation as something was drawn out and thrown away from the body.
Within my own shamanic understanding, I experienced these as something similar to psychic forms or object intrusions. I could feel what they were removing and saw them inwardly as long, writhing things, resistant to leaving. And yet, somehow, they too seemed to know it was time.
There was a lot of pulling and cleansing. Once something was removed, I felt a contraction in the area of my body where it had once filled space. As the women continued working, I softened and relaxed, and wherever their soft yet strong hands moved, I felt the love of their hearts.
I want to say how much love I felt in their touch because this was an important part of the healing for me. As someone who has had a troubled relationship with touch, their hands upon my skin, as wise elders, were medicine in themselves.
I felt blessed to be in their presence and to have the opportunity to sit with women who remember ways that feel old and close to the Earth, and who reminded me of the simplicity of what healing can be.
Here in the West, I sometimes feel that healing has become intricate, twiddly and elaborate, when the bare bones of our healing paths can be simple. They need not always be wildly formal, clinical or timed in the way so much therapy in the West unfolds.
I LOVED how naturally these women worked.
There was no fuss around it. It seemed second nature to them and, dare I say it, at times it felt as straightforward as making a cup of tea!
They were true medicine people. Women with power. I still couldn’t quite believe I was lying there receiving this healing.
As their hands continued to move across my skin, pulling and squeezing particular areas, I began to see Spirits working through them. Kind ones. I could also feel the threads of their ancestry very clearly.
At one moment, I looked up at Pollyanne and saw what appeared to me as light threads of men and women channelling a great light into and through her body. I felt there was something here for me to learn. Power is passed from one generation to the next, and as far as I understand, Ngangkari healers are often called to this path through family connections.
Throughout the healing, the women continued to exchange words in their mother tongue. I did not understand them, but their voices soothed me.
The final and most crucial part of my healing was to locate my missing spirit.
They found it swiftly.
All the while, wherever their hands moved, a bush medicine balm was smoothed over my skin. I experienced the balm as something protective and soothing, not only softening the places they had worked upon but somehow sealing the healing too, so that these newly tended places did not feel quite so exposed to the rawness of the world.
My Spirit was located, and a short story was shared with me about its retreat to another location within my body before it was oriented back into its rightful and holy place.
As the healing came to a close, a huge wave of peace moved through me.
My spirit returned.
My tears had come to a close. No more were needed for today.
I had been blessed with a complete healing.
No words will really come close to describing my experience of this Indigenous healing, nor can I fully describe the sensations I experienced in those moments. It felt so multidimensional that trying to mentally unpack every detail of what happened that day almost seems impossible.
Before I left, I was given some medicinal bush medicine balm to use over the following weeks. When I peered into the jar, a warm yellow balm gazed back at me. Its scent was earthy, and over the following days I even found the scent seemed to change.
I also gave the women my own offering.
I knew that the money I had paid was already an offering in itself, but it felt important to give them something that came more directly from my heart and hands. I gave them a pouch filled with plants I had tended in my garden over recent years, namely the great leaf of tobacco and my beloved lavender, all held within a natural pouch adorned with one of my paintings.
Despite not speaking the same language, I trusted that they both felt the sincerity of my gift.
After all was said and done, I walked ever so slowly back towards the train station.
As I walked, I realised I could still feel their hands upon me.
Spirit hands, I call them.
It felt as though they were continuing the good work that had begun in the room. There was a moment when time seemed to stand still and healing was still pouring into and through my body. The sensations were not disturbing. In fact, I felt as though I were still being tended to with so much love and care, as though there were a few final threads of healing that still needed attention and the Spirits would finish when the work was done.
I sat in the sunshine and had quite a while to wait before the train arrived. I shed a few tears of gratitude there as I spoke words of love to my ancestors, my spirit allies, the women and their ancestors, thanking them for allowing and holding the space for this work to take place.
As I said at the beginning of this personal song thread, I am no stranger to the darkened veils of depression, and these last few years have been very difficult to walk.
The following morning, I awoke without the usual harassing dark thoughts hammering into my skull.
There was quiet instead.
I went walking in nature and found myself connecting the dots in creative ways that had previously seemed elusive to me. Something felt different. The clouds that had hung so heavily over my sight were no longer quite where I had left them.
I had finally found Hope.
Or maybe Hope found me.
Bush Medicine held in Roberta’s hand
A few days after the healing, I had been honouring the work by applying the bush medicine to my body and otherwise going about my usual ways of life, although with a keen eye upon how I was feeling, what was shifting and what was occurring within my dreaming.
I often find, and see this with my own clients too, that if we pay close attention in the days following a healing, we may glimpse the ways in which the work is still unfolding. From my own understanding of these things, the healing Spirits do not necessarily disappear simply because the healing itself has come to an end. Sometimes their presence can still be felt around us, quietly supporting whatever continues to move and settle into place.
This happened to me in a rather obvious and delightful way.
I was wandering through my local town and, as I often do, decided to pop into one of the charity shops. I have always seen charity shops as wonderful little places of Spirit. You never quite know what you are going to find in them, and perhaps because of this I find them very easy places to listen and commune with Spirit.
On this particular day, I felt guided to go inside and walk directly towards the bric-a-brac section.
Something caught my eye.
Hidden behind a collection of old clunky mugs was a tiny, colourful box. I reached behind them and pulled it out.
My heart immediately began pounding with excitement.
Upon the box were two black hands surrounded by the familiar dot patterns I associate with Aboriginal art. Something in me knew straight away that this little creation was coming home with me.
I turned it over.
On the back was a certificate of authenticity identifying it as an original work made by a Central Australian Aboriginal artist, along with the name and photograph of the artist, Anyupa Treacle.
I was THRILLED.
Not only had I stumbled upon something so beautiful, but in that moment I felt the presence of the Ngangkari healing around me again. I looked at those two hands and remembered the hands that had tended to my body only days before, and the Spirit hands I had continued to feel upon me as I walked away from the healing.
Perhaps another person would see coincidence.
I am quite happy for them to.
For me, this is one of the ways Spirit has always spoken. Something ordinary appears in an ordinary place, yet somehow it reaches directly into the living thread of what is already unfolding.
Since the healing, my dreaming has also been unusually alive, and I have found myself dreaming of painting what I experienced that day, alongside some of the images and encounters that have continued to arrive in my dreams since. As an artist, perhaps this is another way the experience is asking to move through me. There are things that words can only reach so far into, and I have a feeling that some part of this healing may eventually need to find its way onto paper through paint.
For now, I am allowing the images to gather.
I stood there in a little charity shop, holding this tiny box in my hands, marvelling at the strange beauty of finding a piece of Central Australian Aboriginal art only days after receiving this healing.
And once again, I felt their healing hands.