When Publisher Sharon Bruckman mentioned that she was anticipating the opportunity to spend some quality time with her daughter, Alina, at the family cottage in Michigan, I volunteered to write this month’s letter. I’m sure that synchronicity provided the nudge, as I’d been reminiscing about how massage, which is now considered an aspect of bodywork, had propelled me into the world of natural healing.

Bodywork, the subject of our September feature story, is something I’ve had the pleasure of writing about often during my 15 years with Natural Awakenings. In 1989, after reading Barbara Brennan’s Hands of Light, I fell in love with the idea that the body has an innate intelligence and the ability to heal itself when it has all that it needs physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Brennan’s concept provided the spark that lit a fire that, while it dimmed now and then, kept me on a path of exploration to seek ancient knowledge regarding higher states of consciousness.

Unconscious that I was really off to see the wizard in 2004, Sharon provided me the perfect tool of ruby reds for my exploration—interviewing shamans, healers and luminaries such as Gregg Braden, Dr. Bruce Lipton, Dr. Deepak Chopra, Dr. Jean Houston and many others. But first I had to read their books, so that I could understand their concepts and develop intelligent interview questions. Often, my one-on-one, hour-long conversations had to be digested and assimilated so that I could translate my subject’s abstract ideas into concrete terms capable of opening readers up to a world of wonder that I got to live in every month.

I’ve listened to many stories of how experience and many years of practice opened massage therapists up to developing and trusting their intuition, to ways of enhancing and expanding their techniques and even to fresh discoveries of new touch therapies. Last year I was invited to be interviewed and filmed for The Endless Question, a documentary that explores the truth of what we are. Several months ago, I was asked to contribute a chapter for All You Need is Love: The Importance of Transcending Spiritual Clichés and Living Their Deeper Wisdom. These felt like the Universe tapping me on the shoulder to dive deeply into the last 15 years of my exploration into the Universal Intelligence animating all life. It worked, as did the overwhelming sense of gratitude for how my reading, research and writing became my spiritual practice and led to a real natural awakening.

On this 25th year of appearing in print, I hope for all of you who have been reading Natural Awakenings to have your own natural awakening. It is possible.