... me | the healing dance

I am the dancer between the stars.
I am the catalyst for your transformation.
I am the gentle softness to hold you through your healing process.
I am a weaver of realities, creating and dissolving and creating anew.
I am a sovereign soul, and my purpose is to build a bridge from this reality to the next - so that all souls may find their path to ever higher levels of harmony.
To the highest benefit of all sentient life.

Hello,

I'm Joy. That is not the name you'd find on my birth certificate, no. It is, at this point, not even really a name, not anything that an "I" identifies with, and more a sound that expresses the vibration of my soul. I am Joy.

I have been on this thing called spiritual journey for all my life, it sometimes seems. Certainly from the time I was in my early teens. Feeling that there had to be more to this existence than what I could see and feel and know; looking and yearning for something bigger. For connection.

Having grown up strictly Roman Catholic, I tried to find this in organised religion first. When that did not lead me to that sense of connection, I went the other direction and tried organised paganism. But I quickly realised that it was the same thing, basically, just with different names and trappings. Disillusioned, I decided this whole esoteric, spiritual thing wasn't for me and went into academia.

Six years later, I left the ivory tower again. I kept trying to stay, to re-connect, but my soul wasn't having it. Lost, confused, not knowing where to go from here and just about at the end of my rope, I seeked out professional help.

It said "life coach" on the sign at her door, but the lady in question was a lightworker and a shaman. She guided and supported me through one of the darkest years in my life, through the breakdown of all internal scaffolding. And when I could see the light again, she introduced me to energy work.

That was - not quite it, but the sense that his could lead me where I had always wanted to go. Sadly, she passed away soon after, from a long illness. So I kept going on alone, as best as I could. And there were beautiful moments, times of a sense of expansion and joy and light and such endless, all encompassing love. But I kept losing the connection and worse, I started getting visions of being stuck in a deep rut in the ground, with a rock rolling towards me, about to bury me.

So, at the end of my wits again, I pleaded: "Universe, please let me meet someone whose vibration is so high that in resonating with them, I can pull myself out of this rut." Four months later I attended my first Openhand retreat. Universe had answered me.

From that very first retreat, I knew, felt, that I had found the way that was right for me. I resonated strongly with the philosophy and the approach, as well as the work itself. This was the kind of work I wanted to do, for myself and for others. Because even before I had attended that first retreat, I had felt a strong pull towards the Facilitation Programme. This, Universe seemed to tell me, was it.

That was in 2016. In quick succession I went through the three level courses of Openhand work, and in late 2017 was invited into the Facilitator Programme. The first training course was in January 2018, on the beautiful island of La Palma. It confirmed that for me, this work was what I was called to do. I spent the next three years practising my facilitation skills in one-to-one sessions and my energy worker abilties in supporting groups. Especially the latter filled me with such joy and such deep sense of knowing, feeling, that I had found my purpose. There is no doing in that work: it is simply me, the soul, expressing itself.

Because, ultimately, there is no separation between supporting others on their journey and walking my own path - we are mirrors of each other, and in working with you, I will always also work within my own self. And there is nothing more beautiful than that.

So to bring a long story to a temporary end: I was accredited as Openhand Facilitator in January 2021. Synchronistically on the first full day of not just a new year of my life, but also a new decade of this incarnation.

And here I am.