You Are Your Health: Healing in the 21st Century
As I grow and explore both personally and professionally, it has become increasingly clear to me that life is about choices. Daily, we make a decision to either drift through life in an ordinary way, or we decide to experience ourselves and our world in a way that connects us to the vast expanse of all that is possible in order to experience our highest potential.
With his life enhancing techniques as a Healing Artist Todd Simon consistently assists me in my journey of healing and growth to become the best “me” I can be on a daily basis. Simon’s overlying message for all his clients is to embrace life and awaken them to “a way of experiencing yourself that opens you up to a more connected and vaster expanse of what is available to you and for who you really are.” Simon encourages his clients to make their daily practice whatever “doorway” works best for them, reiterating that his work is only one method of attaining that experience.
The primary role Simon plays in his clients’ healing is to help them slow down both the mind and body enough to connect with his/her spirit, source, teacher inside, i.e. whatever each client chooses to call that inner sense of peace and connectedness. He believes that our body is in us, not the other way around, and that love is the ultimate elixir.
Studying pre-med in college, Simon instinctively felt that in order to maintain his passion in the realm of work, he needed to incorporate both creative and psychological elements. Graduating with a degree in human biology, Simon soon became disillusioned with traditional medicine and found himself drawn toward the social sciences of mass communications and applied cultural anthropology. “I was interested in how various elements affected one another. It was much easier at that point to see this phenomenon in the marketplace than in the body.” explained Simon.
Several years after getting his Masters Degree in Integrated Communications. Simon began experiencing psychosomatic bodily manifestations while going through some dramatic shifts in his own life. When these shifts or “traumas” in his life began to outweigh his own coping skills, his body began exhibiting a myriad of symptoms and he could not determine what prompted them. “My body was shutting down and ! was too disconnected from my own feelings at that time to understand what was happening. I moved into panic and fear.” Ultimately, he ended up in the hospital not being able to swallow, which coincidentally was the problem he was having on a psychological level.
Through this experience, Todd gained access into his own understanding of how the emotions and repressed, unexpressed feelings had affected his body. This enabled him to better understand the changes his clients were going through in their bodies in conjunction with the shifts in their careers, living situations and relationships.
Subsequently, Simon was faced with the daunting yet exhilarating prospect of determining what brought on his bodily collapse and the message his body was trying to communicate to him. Under the guidance of a series of healing therapists and teachers, Simon was able to see how his body and mind interacted and communicated to create his bodily suffering. And it was the introduction of an intense Kundalini Yoga meditation practice, through which Todd began to experience energy surges in his body, especially directed in his hands.
He would instinctively place his hands on someone and they would have a profound reaction. When asked what he was doing, all he knew was that his hands sought out places that needed healing. As a result of these experiences, Simon began to focus on learning how to elicit the energy flow through his hands while in a state of real consciousness and connectedness.
By studying such principles as unconditional love and complete surrender, Simon began to act as a channel of healing for his clients and as an extension of their own bodies “I would often be experiencing the same feelings and physical sensations as my clients, but sometimes a few minutes ahead of them. Sort of like a guide a few paces in front of them on the unseen path.”
It was then that he knew that the healing arts was his path. Subsequently, Simon quit his job, enrolled in massage school and immersed himself in the work of body, mind and spirit. He became a client to many great teachers and healers as well as a student to many masters. He studied neuromuscular re-education and psychology simultaneous to deepening his practices of meditation and tai chi.
“Soon I was getting all kinds of pictures, sentences and visions when I was working with people. Some I shared, some I did not, all the while just allowing what was happening to happen,” explains Simon. “Lots of people began to move into a state of dreamtime while I worked on them. I also noticed their bodies begin to twitch and self adjust.”
According to Simon, nature and our bodies constantly go through changes and growth. Our minds tend to get stuck and this conflict creates an imbalance. In turn, he developed Transitions Therapy™, which in three sessions seeks to help integrate the mind with the body during life transitions. Todd then developed a system called Be Your Answer in conjunction with Virtual Acupuncture™. This system of healing works with the energetic body and helps people to experience the infinite capacity to self-heal. It seeks to help people become aware of their own specific mechanism of communication between their mind, body and spirit.
“My hope is that I can help my clients begin to interact with their own healing artists within and experience themselves as both teacher and student. Art to me is about connecting the seen with the unseen. Thus as a healing artist, I work with what is seen and “real” and with what which is felt or “unseen”. There is a rhythm to the work, just like there is a rhythm to painting, singing or playing a musical instrument. Through the work we engage in, one is able to begin to honor his/her own rhythm and consciously raise it to a level that is more in sync with nature. Ultimately I hope for a deep sense of peace and well-being to be something that is always lingering and present, accessible,” adds Simon.
With an office by the beach, Todd recommends that his clients take the time to go down there after a session and just “marinate in our work and integrate it with nature. Nature is the great teacher and healer. It is a macrocosm of our body and vice versa. The natural elements remind us of what we are and we can commune with this energy and great Mother,” he explains, “it is a beautiful way to really allow the work to sink in and take hold. I highly recommend a more gradual approach.”
Simon’s training includes the following; Massage Therapy at the Institute of Psycho Structural Balancing (IPSB), Neuromuscular re-education and cellular recall therapy with Joan Wulfsohn; Tama-Do, a modality that uses sound, color and movement for the benefits of healing with Fabian Maman; Sound Healing with Tom Kenyon, The Way of Nature and Qi Gong with John P. Milton, visionary cranial sacral therapy with Hugh Milne, and Kundalini Yoga meditation practice with Bruce Joel Rubin. He has also studied EFT, quantum physics and integrative yoga therapy.
Tim Freytag, a massage therapist currently practicing his healing techniques in Ibiza, Spain, says the following about Simon’s work:
“I met Todd Simon around the beginning of 2002 at a party and immediately sensed a unique energy and quality about him. My healing sessions with Todd were a vital support to my process and my respect for Todd’s abilities as a healer runs deep. He has a unique ability to transform weakness into strength and destructive emotions into supportive ones.”
Freytag provides the following example: “One day I said to Todd, ‘I am angry. . .I don’t know where it is coming from but I know it’s not healthy. What can you do for me? At the end of my session with Todd I felt pure love and lightness of being. It was like night and day. This stayed with me for days. Thanks Todd for making my life more and showing me a special spiritual place that serves as a beacon for where I want to be all the time.”
Interior designer Barbara Brown explains her experience of Simon’s healing: “He has the capacity to transform people’s energy and wellness through his intuition and carefully cultivated healing energies. He enables people to transcend their ordinary body awareness and delivers the body into a space where it can heal itself. He can put one finger on my back and I feel my whole world changing.”