I’m sitting at healer Rahea Ferguson’s kitchen table when she offers me some tea. “It’s a homemade herbal cleansing tea,” she says. I politely accept, but am a little concerned about what “homemade” implies. Roots and leaves from the garden? Caterpillar’s legs and rabbit’s claw? To my pleasant surprise the tea is subtle; fruity yet flowery, and, ironically, collected from an Ottawa nutrition store on Bank Street. I comment on its taste, as well as the appetizing aroma that is wafting over from the oven. “I’m making scones,” Ferguson says with a smile. “I always think it’s important to honour my guests. What are humans without honour?”
The house is a modest country home of average size, telling of family life and a few frisky felines. Ferguson drifts around her kitchen and I notice she is taking deep and slow breaths. It seems more like a calming ritual for anxiety than the meditative type of breathing, and I wonder if she is feeling my nervous energy. But once she sits down and starts talking, the conversation flows as if we’re old friends. I can tell she is very excited and happy to share this knowledge with me, as I am to receive it.
Before spending the last seventeen years as a healer, Ferguson worked as a nurse at various Ottawa hospitals. “So I am aware of how the human body works. It’s not all just hocus pocus,” she laughs. She left the medical field after becoming disheartened with the way doctors treated their patients. “No compassion,” she says and I can feel her sadness. When I ask her how her gift came about she tells me that she has had a sense of her ability all her life, but in her late thirties it became apparent. “People started being drawn to me. I would listen to them and sense their ailments without knowing what I was doing.” And she has become extremely receptive: speaking on the phone before the interview she explained that meeting at a coffee shop was out of the question. “I’m too sensitive [to people’s energies]. I would get overwhelmed and wouldn’t be able to give you the right answers.”
Despite Ferguson’s knowledge of the terms and techniques that exist in the spiritual world, she does not follow a particular healing method. “Everyone’s different. I just talk to each patient. You know, all those methods: Reiki, Acupressure? They are all just names people give for the same energy that I work with. I receive insight and I heal based on that.” Ferguson is confident in her gift and has helped many people. “When people come to see me they often end up crying at some point, but leave feeling great.” And I believe her. Before we part ways she says a few words about me, personally, and I shed a few tears too.
Next I meet with intuitive healer Jennifer Clark, coincidentally in a coffee shop. I find out very quickly that she is an astoundingly forward woman. No bullshit. It’s a bit unnerving. Since people surround us, I ask if she is currently feeling everyone’s energies. “Nope. I can… I just shut it off,” she says. “A lot of sensitives get overwhelmed quicker. I have thicker armour.” I am not surprised. Despite her small size I can picture this woman taking on an army of men and holding her own quite well.
So what does she do exactly? Clark regards herself as a life coach to the general public, but she is also an intuitive healer. She sees people’s angels and receives insights from them, and the universe. This helps Clark to guide her patients in the right direction and to get what they want out of life.
“I also get access to the Akashic Records,” she tells me. The Akashic Records, I’m told, are a nonphysical place that holds the records of everyone’s lifetimes: past, present, and future. Sound crazy? Well Clark certainly has her head on straight. She graduated Queen’s University in Kingston with a Bachelor of Arts, Honours in Political Science and worked in Risk Management for an insurance company for eight years. However, she was laid off from her job in 2001. At this time she was twenty-eight and had been receiving insights. Fancying herself crazy, she visited a doctor, a priest, and a psychologist about her “problem” but none of them could provide her with a concrete answer. Clark then decided to see a healer who told her “you’re doing what I’m doing.” The healer offered Clark office space in her building and so began her new career.
Clark has been extremely successful in Ottawa’s spiritual community. She works at the Somerset Health and Wellness Center, writes for Ottawa’s alternative health magazine Tone and has done countless workshops and presentations in Ottawa. “I just did a big lecture on energy medicine for the Royal Ottawa Hospital. Their patients were seeking out people like me,” she told me. But Clark does not boast despite her success, or her collection of certifications, which include but are not nearly limited to: Reiki Master, Advanced Student of Shamanism, and Basic Neuro-Linguistic Programming Practitioner.
Ferguson and Clark could not be more different in personality and style. They do their jobs completely differently: Ferguson, the caring mother figure, and Clark, the smart and straightforward businesswoman. Both have qualities that made me trust their ability, and yet the cynic in me still finds ways to doubt. As for recommendations for others? I think it depends on the type of healing you’re looking for. If you’re looking for someone who (in less than an hour) can give you practical advice on how to change your life, then Clark is your woman. If you’re simply looking for someone to really hear you, and care, I can imagine no one more suitable than Ferguson.
I believe that all energy is the same: plants, animals, Buddhists, Wiccans, healers, Reiki masters, priests, yogis... They are all connected. They just have different names. And that belief, if nothing else, is something both Ferguson and Clark have in common.