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Much of what I’m going to share here goes beyond the range of what most people in our modern-day world are familiar with.
A true skeptic, which I consider myself to be, is someone willing to give themselves the opportunity to experience something firsthand, before deciding whether there is any validity or substance to it.
I ask that you keep an open mind.
For those struggling with trauma, attachment wounds, and other deep emotional injuries, this is especially important, because I’m going to be speaking about one of the most powerful means of healing available here on planet Earth.
Ancient Traditions of Healing
All around the world, there have been powerful traditions of healing. Among the Native peoples of the Americas, in the Philippines, and in places like Malaysia and Indonesia are some of the most gifted healers. Brazil also has not only indigenous healers, but a strong tradition of non-indigenous healers, particularly in the state of Bahia.
Sadly, many of these ancient traditions have been dying out.
Among Native American tribes, the traditional doctors desperately wanted to pass on the gifts of healing, commonly referred to as medicine, to younger apprentices. Since the time the tribes were forced onto reservations, this has been an ongoing struggle.
Very few were willing to accept the responsibility of carrying these powers. They weren’t willing to go through the extraordinarily arduous process required to become a traditional doctor. Many were afraid of the powers themselves. The same loss is happening in other ancient traditions as well.
For decades now, people have been increasingly drawn to the conveniences and bright, shiny distractions of modern life. And yet… So many people are disconnected, fragmented, carrying trauma and other deep emotional wounds.
Modern allopathic medicine simply does not address much of this. Commonly available holistic modalities can help to some extent but often do not reach the source of the wounding.
My Own Experience with Gifted Healers
In my twenties, as the traumas of my childhood and adolescence were being reenacted through my attempts to form intimate relationships, I had the opportunity to work with a few truly gifted healers.
One was known as Brother Max, a psychic surgeon from the Philippines. Another was Mauricio Panisset from Brazil, sometimes referred to as the Man of Light. During sessions with him, there were literal flashes of light going off in the room as he worked. In 2007, while in Sri Lanka, I did fourteen sessions in April and another twelve in August with Gnanasumana Thero, a Buddhist monk who possessed a powerful gift of healing.
The emotional wounding I carried ran extraordinarily deep. Of all the therapeutic interventions I’ve tried, these individual sessions with gifted healers were among the most powerful I’ve ever experienced. The only intervention I’ve encountered that exceeds them in depth and intensity is the vision quest, a traditional Native American healing practice involving fasting alone in the mountains for four days and nights without food or water.
During these sessions, I could feel the scarring left by trauma and reenactment being addressed directly. I could feel myself digesting deeply wounding lived experiences, along with the backlog of highly charged emotions tied to them.
Each time, there was an incremental easing of suffering. The problem was not the effectiveness of the work. The problem was how deep the wounding ran, and how infrequently I had access to these healers. This is one of the reasons I’ve gone on so many vision quests. I’ve been returning to the Wichita Mountains in the spring and fall since 1993.
Resistance to Deep Healing
When I see and feel the scarring caused by trauma in other people, I wish they too knew about, and had access to, this level of healing. Even when people do have the opportunity, many are resistant.
This work goes directly to the source of the wounding. It brings trauma and the emotions held in the body to the surface. When that happens, the emotions must be worked with, digested, and integrated.
This is often where resistance shows up.
The Problem with Modern “Healing” Culture
I’m probably going to offend some people here, but this needs to be said.
The field has become muddied, or more accurately, polluted, and clarity is desperately needed.
Sacred traditions have been profoundly bastardized.
These days, people go through weekend workshops, take level 1, 2, and 3 certifications, and then call themselves Reiki Master Healers. Others attend a few workshops and start calling themselves shamans.
These insta-shamans have never spent meaningful time around Indigenous peoples or their traditional doctors. They do not have access to the medicine, the healing gifts that have been carried for thousands of years.
And when it comes to these weekend-workshop “master healers,” I often ask people this:
If you were seriously injured in an automobile accident, lying in a hospital bed in a great deal of pain, and learned the physician treating you had only three weekends of training, how would you feel?
So why would you entrust your body, your psyche, and the trauma you’re carrying to someone whose training is so profoundly inadequate?
I’ve worked for many years with people who’ve experienced emotional, physical, and sexual trauma. I’ve seen countless cases where individuals went through repeated Reiki, soul retrieval, or other “healing” sessions, yet the trauma and the highly charged emotions were still very much present in their bodies.
Their subtle bodies, consisting of the chakras and layers of the aura, were in many instances still very much damaged and disfigured. The functions of their brain’s biochemistry, endocrine, and other systems were still very much compromised. I could see little, if any, significant progress.
Most people in our modern-day world simply don’t know the difference. Having never been exposed to legitimate traditions or lineage-based healers, they have no real point of reference for what it’s like to work with someone who possesses genuine healing power.
As a result, many who are truly in need of healing and transformation continue to suffer needlessly.
I probably wouldn’t have known the difference myself had I not been drawn to Native Americans from early childhood, lived among the Kiowa and Navajo people for years, and trained extensively with a traditional Kiowa doctor and a Chinese Master in Xin Yi Quan, Baguazhang, Tai Chi, and Chi Gong, internal arts rooted in Taoism. I've also spent significant time in both India and Sri Lanka, where individuals over thousands of years have also developed extraordinary capabilities.
Having experienced a great deal of trauma growing up and patterns of reenactment in my relationships, I’m very thankful for these opportunities. If I had only known life in our modern-day world and had sought out insta-shamans or weekend-workshop “master healers,” much of that trauma, as I see in so many other people, would never have healed.
Just to reiterate, I would not have healed the attachment wounds and other trauma I carried, nor experienced the healing and transformation that over the years made it possible for me to form healthier inner models of attachment and attract partners with whom I truly resonate, capable of reciprocal love, had I not worked with truly gifted healers such as Brother Max, Mauricio Panisset, and Gnanasumana Thero. Nor would it have happened without my going on dozens of vision quests, fasting alone in the mountains for four days and nights without food or water.
My intention is not to put down or discourage anyone. The problem is that there’s a great deal of ignorance in our modern-day world because these ancient healing traditions have not been a part of our culture.
Among Native Americans, there was a much greater seriousness and reverence around these practices. They were viewed as sacred. Traditional healers were the doctors people turned to when they had serious medical needs, and in many instances it was a matter of life or death.
The training required to receive these gifts and develop as a doctor was incredibly arduous. Among many of the Plains tribes, a person would not even be taken seriously if they had not gone through the vision quest, fasting alone in the mountains for four days and nights without food or water. Many of these doctors went multiple times, with their power growing stronger over the years.
We need a lot more healers in this world. I feel many do possess the aptitude. I simply want to encourage those who are committed to doing what it takes to develop these capacities, I suggest that you seek out truly gifted healers from these Indigenous and other ancient traditions. That may involve travel, living abroad for extended periods, and going through a one-on-one apprenticeship, which in many instances requires years of intensive training.
Carrying the Medicine Forward
At fourteen, when I first heard about the traditional Native American doctors, I knew immediately that this was what I would do with my life if given the opportunity. At seventeen, I made it as far as southwestern Oklahoma, where I ended up living among a community of Kiowa Indians. I spent many nights sitting up in peyote meetings with the Kiowa elders.
It was in one of those meetings that I met my mentor, Horace Daukei, one of the last surviving traditional Kiowa doctors. Horace passed on to me portions of his own healing gifts. He then had me go on the vision quest to earn the right to work with them.
While I possess extraordinarily powerful gifts of healing, there are limits to how many people I can work with. What I truly want is for as many people as possible to work with legitimate gifted healers, not just myself, but others who come from real lineages and who genuinely carry healing power.
People deserve access to what actually works.
When I made my way to Oklahoma at seventeen, I spent inordinate amounts of time with some of the Kiowa elders, and mainly with one named Jack. I spent many nights sitting with him at the kitchen table as he shared accounts of his people that had been passed down over hundreds of years. I was especially fascinated when he spoke about the traditional doctors and others who possessed various forms of power, referred to as medicine.
Native Americans lived with a foot in two worlds. On one hand, they were very much grounded in their bodies and in life in this physical world. On the other, some possessed an understanding of, and the capacity to work directly with, the forces of nature. Native elders from different tribes sometimes spoke of how certain traditional doctors, when someone was wounded, could extract a bullet or arrow and then seal the open wound. There were also individuals who possessed powers that enabled them to bring the rain or even change the course of a tornado. Some of these individuals were said to possess what we would now call paranormal abilities.
I first encountered these accounts in the historical books I devoured as a teen, which I checked out from the Stephen F. Austin State University library. Many of these accounts were shared by Native people themselves and later recorded by Christian missionaries, Bureau of Indian Affairs agents, anthropologists, and others who lived among or spent extended time with these tribes. I later heard many of these same or similar accounts directly from the Native elders I spent time with.
Indigenous healers work as conduits, allowing other forces or beings to work through them to facilitate healing that would not otherwise be possible. Trained by a traditional Native American doctor and having gone through so many vision quests over the years, like Indigenous healers, I too work as a conduit. I allow an extraordinarily powerful presence to work through me to facilitate healing in the bodies and minds of those I work with.
For many years now, I have assisted individuals with a wide range of health-related issues, including heart disease and stroke, digestive disorders such as ulcerative colitis and irritable bowel syndrome, asthma and other respiratory disorders, neurological conditions such as multiple sclerosis and ALS, injuries resulting from automobile accidents including traumatic brain injuries, and a wide range of other physical health challenges.
In addition, I have worked for many years with people suffering from trauma resulting from emotional, physical, and sexual abuse and assault, and combat and other wartime experiences. I’ve also worked with many individuals in the midst of painful breakups, divorce, or being ghosted, as well as those struggling with attachment wounds, patterns of abandonment, and unrequited love.
People I work with who are dealing with physical health issues often describe feeling the presence I speak of working through me, facilitating a regenerative process, repairing internal organs and tissues, and restoring organs and systems so they can function optimally.
Those who have suffered trauma, and other deep emotional wounding, breakups, or other forms of heartrending devastation describe feeling this presence working within them, facilitating a process in which trauma, and other lived experiences, and the emotions tied to them are digested.
They come out the other side lighter, more resilient. Their bodies, minds, and lives are transformed.
Like the traditional Native American doctors after their people were forced onto reservations and began to assimilate into the dominant culture, I, like other Indigenous healers, want to see these healing practices continue.
The level of disconnection, fragmentation, and unresolved wounding in our world is staggering.
I want to see people around the world benefiting from these healing gifts, whether they have the opportunity to work with me, with Indigenous healers from other traditions, or with other legitimate, lineage-based, truly gifted healers.
I encourage you to seek out those of us who possess these gifts, because we can facilitate healing within bodies and minds that is not otherwise possible.
©Copyright 2026 Ben Oofana. All Rights Reserved.
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