Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Healing the Wounds of Abuse: Esther Austin

Even amid the riot of colours and the storm of human forms surrounding you at the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival, Esther Austin is easy to spot. Dressed in traditional African attire in the brightest shades of orange and red, complete with turban-like headgear, she is a tall woman of African origin with a bright and ready smile. A resident of the UK and originally from Nigeria, she gets even more interesting when you find out she’s a ‘spiritual’ healer and her book titled ‘Wounded Lives, Wounded Healers’ is going to be out in the stands very soon—February 2015 to be precise.
So how exactly does a spiritual healer work, you might want to know. “A spiritual healer is able to feel and sense a person’s pain and see what’s going on inside a person’s body,” Austin explains.
She talks about her book which explores all forms of pain in a person’s life. “In my book I've interviewed a lot of different people about pain and handling it. The people who help others to handle what’s inside them. So I’ve interviewed counsellors, shamans… people doing lots of spiritual work… they share their journey about their own emotional pain and also how they used t
hat pain in the work they did with their clients.”
Her own clients are a lot of people who have dealt with sexual abuse and physical violence. And she also reveals the abuse she has been subjected to. “The book in a way also reflects my life story because I’ve been through emotional abuse and maybe some physical abuse as well. Pretty painful expereinces. But I’ve come thru it and it’s a very powerful place to stand, and it empowers other people to say I can stand strong in my place too.”
It’s how we deal with the pain in our lives, she says, that creates the kind of person we are.
Her interviews are spread across 5 different countries in 3 different continents. “There are people from the States, then there’s a gentleman from India who practices laughter yoga, and there’s a lady who’s a shaman , so she deals with a lot of emotional pain people. In fact talking to the guy who does laughter yoga was a learning experience, you learn how laughter is a very cathartic and healing activity. The idea is to get a good mix— this whole eclectic view of different experiences from people with different capacities, a mixture of men and women and their experiences with pain.

So you can also find in there a lady from the US who practices Tantra to heal people, a lady who was emotionally abused as a child. Not to mention an activist for whales, who also works with human beings. Austin feels this book would prove to be pivotal in her life, and that it is a book for everyone “who is searching for peace, for freedom and liberty—who wants to say to life, I’m ready to explore and enjoy you. The thing is to be able to out your pain down somewhere, instead of having to carry it around. And that is what liberates you.”

No comments: