Treatments We Love: Innerdance with Lisa Butcher
The last time I met Lisa Butcher, we were in the foothills of the Himalayas, where I was reviewing the (incredible) Ananda Spa for YOU Magazine, and Lisa was continuing on the spiritual journey she’d embarked upon after a career as a model and TV presenter.
It wasn’t our first encounter. That happened – again, for YOU Magazine – many years ago, when she was newly married and crazy in love with polo player Gabriel Donoso, with a beautiful little baby, Olivia.
I didn’t quite imagine, though, that the next time our paths crossed, I’d be lying on Lisa’s living room floor experiencing the shamanic therapy that she’s studied, by the name of Innerdance. On her holistic path, Lisa’s studies have taken her to many different, exotic corners of the globe, and today, Lisa is an in-demand holistic therapist, offering hypnotherapy, shamanic practice and reiki (with a string of qualifications that also include NLP and Emotional Freedom Techniques), having discovered via her own personal journey how powerfully helpful these treatments can be; Lisa’s husband Gabriel died in a polo accident, leaving her with two young daughters – and she’s had more media hassles to wrangle with over the years than most.
Now, I’ve experienced many different treatments, techniques and processes myself. (Nobody gets to my stage of life without a bit of baggage and trauma to deal with, frankly.) Innerdance appealed to me because it uses sound and music – and I’m a huge fan of sound therapies. I often emerge feeling like I’ve had my ‘molecules rearranged’ (in a good way!), and I’m magnetised to gongs, drums and singing bowls.
But Innerdance took it to a whole other level. Developed by a man called Pi Villaraza in the Philippines, it happens to a specially composed playlist of all manner of sounds designed to take you through different brainwave states. During that time, working with intuition, Lisa uses touch to realign energies, occasionally layering drumming (on her jaguar-painted drum) over the soundtrack.
So, wearing comfy yoga gear, I lay on blankets on Lisa’s floor. The sounds washed over me and (it felt) through me, for an hour and forty minutes. The most accurate way I can describe what happened is that it was like taking drugs, without a single drug (even caffeine) involved. I travelled to outer space. I was a mermaid, beneath the ocean. I saw colours and heard wild animals (no idea if they were part of the soundtrack, or howling from some corner of my brain).
Photo: Sandra van Aalst
She’d told me what to expect – in as much as anyone can – but I was still slightly freaked out by a twitching right knee and other body parts that moved of their own volition. As Lisa explains, ‘You may see visions, feel intense emotions, or experience spontaneous movements as your body responds to the energy flow, allowing suppressed trauma cycles to complete, achieving homeostasis. Participants often have vivid visions, achieve intense emotional breakthroughs, and feel physical sensations that can include electrical impulses or an urge to move.’ I’m quoting her… because frankly, I was in another galaxy and need someone else to explain it thoroughly.
At one point, meanwhile an injury to my right arm – memo to self: do not answer your mobile while descending the stairs and holding onto the banisters, because you might slip and tear something – became almost unbearably painful. And Lisa admitted: ‘Ah. Yes. I did forget to mention that, but it does happen that an injury will surface.’ The weird thing was, thought, that when I emerged from this trance-like experience, the upper arm was exponentially better – and the pain has now almost vanished.
Innerdance – do watch the little film, here, to hear about the experiences of others – can be used to treat everything from sleep problems to trauma, menopause to stress, grief to anxiety. For some people, she explains, one single treatment is enough; others book in for an occasional ‘top-up’, to re-centre.
As I settled back into myself on Lisa’s sofa, coming down to earth after my treatment while sipping rose tea, I chose one of the oracle cards she proffered, and we talked it through. All in all, it is an extraordinary therapy – and I reckon I’ll be back for one of those top-ups, in due course.
I certainly left with a lightness in my heart and a spring in my step – and a smile, at a little bonus encounter on the way out with Olivia Donoso, now all grown up and living with her mum.
Who may be famous for her beauty – but the real beauty, trust me, is in her soul…
