It doesn’t surprise Rod Kelly that modern society has people turning in droves to spiritual teachings to find a deeper meaning to life.
After all, stress is built into everyone’s daily work, home and over-scheduled personal lives. It’s why books and lectures by lifestyle gurus like Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer and Eckhart Tolle are so popular for those seeking to find the mind-body balance to health and success.
Some people do well in dealing with stressful situations and get energized by the pressure of deadlines. Others buckle under a stream of negative thoughts.
“When it comes to stress, the situation is not the problem, it’s your response to it,” says Kelly, owner of the Eye of the Eagle Retreat and Wellness Centre in Pointe au Baril.
He’s trying to get the message across that stress and negativity is not just a contributing factor to illness but is “in itself a disease.”
Through simple calming techniques like deep breathing, people can change their lives for the better.
“Once you can understand the magic in the world around you, you begin to start changing your perspective. We create our own reality, our perspective. Once you change that, you change the world around you.”
For seven years, Kelly has run a bed-and-breakfast woodlands retreat near the Georgian Bay resort town between Parry Sound and Sudbury.
Thanks to the power of the Internet, and the visitors arriving at his place from Vancouver, Ohio and Denmark, the business focus is shifting more to a full-service healing retreat.
A trained hypnotherapist with expertise in Reiki, he always helped teach clients on how to heal their own bodies from ailments as severe as cancer.
Now he’s taking his message on learning the art of self-healing out to the masses.
While waiting for his book, The Empowerment of Self-Healing, to hit store shelves this summer, Kelly wants to create an outreach program this fall with stress management services for corporations. “With the understandings I’ve gained it’s important to reach as many people as I can.”
His seminars cover a wide range of topics from stress management to increasing one’s metabolism, and also self-healing techniques, a complex topic which stretches into a two-day workshop.
“The biggest thing is teaching people they have absolute and total dominion over their bodies.”
Currently he uses meeting space at a lodge up Highway 69 in Byng Inlet for seminars. But he’s contemplating building an addition to accommodate small groups of 20, and also expanding his treatment rooms to bring in contract staff with expertise in a variety of holistic practices.
“This has the potential to become an alternative healing centre for Northern Ontario.”
Speaking to groups comes naturally for the 61-year-old Connecticut-raised Kelly.
As a former sales trainer for U.S. home improvement companies, it was a near-death experience that profoundly changed his life.
A string of medical problems beginning with complications from a pacemaker wire implanted at age 33 set up a scenario for a staph infection.
Seven major surgeries later, including two on his heart, blood clotting problems in his veins and lungs became so severe, doctors considered a transplant.
In his mid 50s, while being treated in a Connecticut hospital for a pulmonary embolism, a clot moved into his lungs and immediately cut off his breathing. As medical staff scrambled to resuscitate him, Kelly had an out of body experience and so enjoyed the sensation, he began silently screaming at doctors to leave him in peace on the gurney.
It took a quick-thinking nurse pinching his chest to revive him.
“I did not want to be there, I wanted to be on the other side.”
Kelly says it dramatically changed his personality into a softer, gentler person. It also planted a seed to seek out the more spiritual side of life and become more in tune with the world’s natural energies.
Through the teachings of his spiritual mentor Archie Cheechoo, he became a hypnotherapist determined to help others learn, not only how to create a healing energy within their bodies, but more importantly how to maintain it.
Recently he’s started to heavily promote his seminars with one talk in Parry Sound and another at a Curves fitness franchise.
There’s also growing corporate interest from a large Northern Ontario mining company, a chamber of commerce and a tourism attraction.
The proceeds from his soon-to-be released book are earmarked for a foundation he’s establishing to provide funds for the seriously ill who can’t afford individual treatments.
He’s also setting up a board of like-minded people, including practitioners, medical and legal professionals, with a keen interest in holistic health services.
