Today we’d like to introduce you to Bindy Johnson.
Bindy, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
Since I can remember, I could feel energy. I remember I used to sit before a floral Persian tapestry my parents had hanging on the wall. I was maybe 5 or 6 years old, I would watch the flowers dance around on the tapestry. They were alive and full of joy. I remember calling my mother over to show her what I was seeing and not understanding why she only saw a beautiful tapestry and not flowers dancing around. It wasn’t until decades later, when my mother gifted me with it, that she shared the story of the tapestry. How as a baby my grandmother would put her in this tapestry ‘hammock’ and get the swinging motion going. The tapestry was tied from one wall to another inside their home in Tehran Iran. As an infant, my mother would lay and play in the tapestry hammock while my grandmother cleaned their home. It was the pure love that was infused in the tapestry that I was seeing and feeling as a child. That sensitivity to energy, it has been with me since my first breath.
But being so sensitive hasn’t always been easy. It took many years to learn to navigate what I was feeling or picking up on, discerning what was within me or outside of me and how to move and release the energy. I am still learning this. One frequency that has always stood strong inside of me is Love. How beautiful the energy of love is, how in one way or another we are all trying to find our way back home to Love. How powerful love is, its vibration, which through compassion and surrender can transform energy. Of course, love has been challenged in my life over and over again, bringing me to my knees many times, right at the edge of uncertainty. But through my years, love has always found its way to gift me, teach me, guide me. Each time I have been able to let go into love, I have grown and so has my heart. All of which continues to guide me in every moment I experience through all my senses.
Going back to my story, I have been many Bindy’s in this life and I know I have many more to be. In my twenties, I became a personal trainer and followed that path for 13 years. I had two office locations and a team of trainers. I focused on empowering my clients, increasing their connection with their inner and outer strength, building their confidence and self-love. During those years, I also used to teach spinning and smoke cigarettes. What a combination! I would have a cigarette, teach a high-intensity spinning class, then go outside and have another cigarette. Today, when I think back to this memory I can’t imagine how I did this. Cigarettes helped me move energy in a false positive way. Then one day, backpacking was brought into my world. My husband took me on my first hike and a deep connection was made. The trouble was, my legs could get me up the mountain but my lungs could not. After smoking for 12 years, I woke up one day and quit. My love for backpacking was greater, a higher frequency was entering my energy field and I was remapping myself to it.
In 2004, I completed my Reiki Teacher training with Susan Carson and celebrated teaching a decade of Reiki in 2017. By 2007, after the birth of our daughter Bella, I had begun transitioning out of personal training and stepping in more fully to energy and sound healing. I began traveling to locations across New England offering Sound Baths. I studied Shamanism with Steve Wilson of Mason NH and began a deep inward journey of healing myself, raising my vibration and understanding my path more. From there, I opened Illuminations of Gaia in 2012 with the intention of holding space for people to “Find Their Temple Within” and the community has continued to grow. That same year, I recorded my first CD “Elevated Pathways” and in 2013, while pregnant with our son Bodhe, I recorded my second CD “Sacred Union” which will be released soon. In April of this year, I relocated Illuminations of Gaia into a larger space and birthed a Crystal Tones Temple within Illuminations of Gaia. I have been working with Crystal Tones for 11 years now. They are the creators of Crystal Singing Bowls used in Sound Healing.
Opening the temple was my next step in spreading the healing power of sound. This is New England’s only Crystal Tones Temple, which means it is a place for people drawn to sound healing to come and choose a temple crystal bowl set that speaks to them. The temple sets are harmoically, grouped together. They are truly exquistite. It is a deep honor for me to create and hold this space.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
It’s not easy being different. I know this deeply. I have always beat to a different drum. I am raising two incredible souls who beat to a different drum. Dialing into that drum beat has meant identifying with my light and my medicine while also being open and willing enough to see where I have needed balance and grounded energy. Combine that with allowing the lessons coming my way to guide me when I was not living in my light and medicine. All the different ways we try to escape, cope, soothe, and deny what we already know from within. It can be tough waters at any age. So, we come to a point where we have to witness all aspects of our life and ask ‘ Is this lowering or raising my vibration’. As a spiritual healer, I have found this to be a very important question that I ask myself daily. I witness more than ever what raises and lowers my frequency. Whether it be something I consume through drink or food, my thoughts and emotions, my environment and so on. I share my experiences with clients and students with the intention for us all to be aware of our vibration. Our world is changing around us, many things are coming up for healing. If I want to hold healing space for myself and others, then I need to tend to my vibration garden and notice what weeds come up or what affects the vitality of my garden.
Of course, within that are boundaries. Witnessing the areas where my own heart needs healing. Paying attention to when I am falling off my path. When my ego is leading the way instead of my heart. Tending to my inner child and remembering to have fun.
I am grateful for all the bumps. We came here to experience it all and grow from it. In finding the gratitude for the bumps, I feel closer to the wisdom of love and my journey here on earth.
We’d love to hear more about Spiritual Healer and owner of Illuminations of Gaia.
I have been offering private spiritual healing sessions, a combination of energy healing, sound healing, and communication, for the past 14 years. There is much power in two open hearts. The more open the person is, the more information can come through, and the deeper we can go dimensionally. Often times layers of each individual’s spiritual being may come forward for healing; pieces of the child self, elder self, energies from another time, akashic records, as well as loved ones carried within your heart or field. You may consciously or unconsciously be aware of this.
As I am intuitively guided, I bring sound healing into private healing sessions, using crystal singing bowls, Himalayan singing bowls, and gongs. The sound frequencies are drawn in close around the body and placed directly on your body, allowing the sound to move around and through you, as you enter into different brainwave states for healing. Other vibration tools I use are tuning forks, drums, healing crystals, and essential oils. Sound heals on a cellular level, we are finding it used more and more in hospitals and spoken about in articles and publications.
Over these years, I have worked with those journeying with autism, schizophrenia, depression, terminal illness, post-traumatic stress syndrome, infertility, loss of loved ones, anxiety, sleep disorders, migraines, Lyme disease and many other disharmonies of the heart and spirit. I also work with families finding their way through all the movement they experience in today’s world.
In addition to my private healing sessions, I teach monthly public sound bath classes at Illuminations of Gaia. I also travel to public and private schools and businesses offering sound baths. My sound bath classes are a place for a community to come together to find peace and release. We begin with breathwork or chant to clear the energies we are walking in with and unify our hearts together. By the end of this short practice, most everyone in the room feels a positive shift take place from when they first walked in. From here begins the sound healing session, everyone lays down on their yoga mat, with their head on a pillow and a blanket over them for comfort. Through the beautiful sounds of the crystal singing bowls and other harmonious instruments, I lead the group on a soul journey to other worlds and deep spiritual levels that connect to your chakras, your guides, and the Divine.
Illuminations of Gaia also offers monthly guest teacher workshops. We have some amazing events coming this summer. This fall we will be returning to offering a selection of weekly yoga classes.
When I think of what I am proud about when it comes to my business, I would say it is staying true and authentic to my heart. I want each person that enters this sacred sanctuary to feel safe enough to journey into the depths of their heart so they can feel more whole. To find community and a place where as our planet continues to heal, they can find peace. I also love more than words can say that my children are witnessing me create from the space of my heart and truth. That through witnessing and experiencing all of this, they are gifted with confidence and have space held for them to step more fully into their own light and medicine because they saw me embrace myself.
We’re interested to hear your thoughts on female leadership – in particular, what do you feel are the biggest barriers or obstacles?
In my years as a spiritual healer, I have not encountered barriers as a female towards leadership. Female leadership and male leadership in my experience have both been embraced among the spiritual communities that I am a part of or have taught at. In other occupations I had leading up to my spiritual practice I did experience barriers, some of them were of very low frequency. I learned from each experience and found myself adjusting, and by adjusting I mean I now had different energy threads in my toolbox to recognize. They became indicators for the vibration of different environments or people. Over time, I learned how to listen more closely to this, which has helped guide me. And when I have missed it and found myself in energy that feels like a barrier, I try to slow myself down, breathe, and look at the fork in the road to what my next step will be.
Contact Info:
- Address: Illuminations of Gaia, Crystal Tones Temple
Harbor Village Plaza
18 Main Street, Suite 206
Townsend, MA 01469 - Website: www.bindy.org
- Phone: 508.517.2291
- Email: bindy@bindy.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bindyjohnson/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bindy.johnson
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/BindyJohnson
- Other: https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=illuminations%20of%20gaia
Image Credit:
Kelly Fitzsimmons Photography, Bindy
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