Shamans-for-hire lead latest wellness revolution – dust off your crystals and singing bowls
Like the seekers of the 1960s and ’70s, a new generation of self-care devotees is taking up New Age beliefs and practices – and there are people on call to help them
Twenty souls sprawled on the floor of the hotel wellness spa, swaddled in earth-toned blankets. Their eyes were closed. A jelly-bean-sized crystal rested on each forehead.
Shhwwwoo! That was Deborah Hanekamp, audibly sucking up the air as she placed her hands on one of the young women, who trembled at the touch.
A stylish woman in her late 30s, with a wrist tattoo peeking from her long, flowy dress, Hanekamp is a modern shaman, the preferred healer of New York’s fashion crowd – though on this day she was chanting for an audience on Washington’s K Street power corridor.
She’d come to give a “medicine reading”, a ceremony that at various points had her shaking a rattle and letting loose a musical wail, spraying strange, fragrant concoctions into the air and stalking the room with a leafy branch, which she rhythmically tapped on the supine bodies below.
Among them was Myra Chung, 26, who later described the experience as connecting to the greater vibes of the universe. “It’s all about energy, you know?” she said. “Kendrick Lamar said that. ‘I can feel your energy from two planets away.’”
Wellness, the 2018 Edition, certainly seems to be catapulting us further into the astral plane. Like the seekers of the 1960s and ’70s, a new generation of self-care devotees is taking up ceremonial sage burnings (known in New Age circles as “smudging”), singing bowls, Japanese reiki, crystals, Mayan sweat lodges and ayurvedic massages. Sephora is selling a US$160 rose-quartz Crystal Energy Comb. And the spiritually lost are seeking face time with shamans – in the case of Hanekamp’s clients, paying US$325 an hour for the privilege.
