I have been experimenting with alternative paths to healing. I want to talk about the positive benefits I've found in a series that includes Reiki, Tapping (EFT), card readings, crystals, rituals, art therapy, nature walks and meditation. Other topics may come up, such as if I try a new technique. The reason I am doing this is because I am a skeptic who has always followed traditional, scientifically researched paths to healing. However, many of those paths have failed me. For example, doctors have never been able to find a medication that had greater positive benefit to my mental health needs than negative. Most medications have worsened anxiety, depression, both or caused me so many other physical symptoms they are not a viable choice.
As a writer, I have always used writing as an art therapy. It is my main form of release. If there is demand, I will talk about the whats and whys of that with you. However, as this series progresses, I will focus on other forms of art therapy I have participated in. It seems like many here are writers and already know the benefits of page-based expression.
So, where to start? With the practice I found the most ridiculous, of course! Card readings!
I was introduced to card readings in a group setting. Some women had gathered with the intention of supporting one another without competition or judgment. I was invited at a time I very much needed to discover that type of support. Several members of the group had brought along decks of cards (some had even made their own) and offered card readings.
At this point, I knew what Tarot cards were. Well, I knew what my mother had told me. She said that they were tools of the dark arts used by witches to commune with Satan and divine the future.
Take a minute to laugh. Go ahead, I'll laugh with you.
Now, when I attended the women's group, I had already broken with religion and set aside that manner of thinking. I replaced it with curiosity. Many of these women were like myself-struggling with mental illness off and finding little to no benefit in traditional therapies and medications. So I observed them with their various decks and asked questions to learn why and how they used card readings.
Here is what I learned:
- Some of the women believe that the card drawings and readings are divinely guided and are a direct communication with angels, deities, spirits or faeries including dark spirits.
- Most of the women believed the reading of cards to be an intuitive practiced that can serve to illuminate areas of conflict or promise in the lives of those being read.
- All the women agreed that a card reading is only effective if you believe it will be.
I apologize that I don't have numbers to offer with these observations. I made them for myself without considering I might publish them someday.
That last part may sound familiar to you. Google defines the "placebo effect" as: a beneficial effect, produced by a placebo drug or treatment, that cannot be attributed to the properties of the placebo itself, and must therefore be due to the patient's belief in that treatment.
Basically, everyone told me that card readings help you if you believe they will and you want them to. They cited the placebo effect, an observed scientific phenomenon.
Card readings are highly personal and based on what you bring to the cards and stated observations
I wanted to know more, and the best way to do that was to sign up for a reading. It took me awhile to get comfortable with the idea and stop frowning with skeptical distaste. I had to set aside an ingrained negative judgment to fully engage my curiosity and experiment with the cards. Eventually, I was able to be receptive to a reading. I did this by coming to terms with my belief that all people have innate, intuitive wisdom. As an empath, this should have been obvious to me. Sadly, my upbringing had stomped that knowledge to dust, replacing it with a stronger sense of self-doubt.
My first card reading was done by a breathless woman who kept looking at me with wide-open eyes and telling me I was in transition. I was suffering a death of sorts, and with it was to come a great rebirth. She asked me questions about what was happening in my life. I reflected on the images on the cards, the descriptions read to me from the book that came with them, and events that were unfolding in my personal life. I could see how I was in a place of death and rebirth, especially along the lines of my writing.
I don't remember all the details, but I can tell you the impact. While negatives came up in my reading, all were reframed with positive outcomes or potential positive actions. The result was that I applied the suggestions from each card to areas of struggle in my life and was able to enact positive solutions where I was otherwise adrift.
Oracle cards seem to offer the most positivity in their readings in my experience.
Since that reading, I have acquired three different card decks of my own. I use them in whatever way feels right in the moment, often drawing a card as a writing prompt. They have become an incredibly useful tool for helping me pinpoint areas of struggle; their suggestions for reading draw my attention deeper than the surface and encourage me to positively reframe my frustrations and take action for myself. Because I have had many positive outcomes with the cards, my belief in their ability to be an effective tool for alternative healing has increased, thereby making them more effective. You can read about the placebo effect in scientific studies to learn how this is true with medications and supplementation as well.
Have you ever tried working with Tarot, Oracle or other cards? I'd love to know about your experiences, favorite decks and so on.
images via pixabay.com