Feeling low? Sick and tired of carrying the same old baggage? Karen Simons spoke with Lifestyle about the life boost she’s offering next weekend.

The specialist in metaphysical healing and transpersonal therapy will help people to find the thoughts and feelings hidden inside their chakras at an intimate, two-day workshop.

She’ll also provide the tools to stay healthy in body, mind and spirit.

Q: What is a chakra?

A: An energy transformation. The word chakra is a sansrkit word which, when translated into English, means wheel, because it spins. Chakras are little areas of energy that spin and affect how we think and feel about ourselves.

There’s a lot of interest in them right now; I get a lot of requests from people who want their wheels balanced. When they’re out of balance, the energy in the wheels starts spinning the wrong way and goes out of whack. The more balanced our energy is, the better we can navigate our life.

Q: Why do you think there’s increased interest in chakras?

A: A lot of people are into yoga right now. People are reading more about this sort of thing online. The concept has been around a lot of years and it’s talked about a lot in India [but recently] a lot more information has come out.

A scientist in California, [Valerie] Hunt, devised a machine that can pick up electronically where this energy is.

That shows it’s not an imaginary thing, it’s something scientific. [Knowing that has] helped people pay attention to it more.

Q: How do they help a person’s emotional wellbeing?

A: There’s a lot of information online about psychospirituality and how it affects relationships. There are all these crazy takes we have from childhood; we have all these different beliefs that are stored and chakras are like a house that our thoughts and feelings live in.

This workshop is designed to help understand the relationship between life and chakras, and how we need to release a lot of old baggage from the past. In doing so, we allow the chakras to become mature and healthy. It’s a fascinating subject.

Q: Why is it important to release the baggage?

A: So that a person can finally feel lighter and freer, so they can move forward and not feel stuck in their life, so they can get more meaning out of their life; so that their relationships with themselves and others can improve and so they can be happy.

Q: Is this something you’ve practised?

A: Yes. I had three baggies — sexual abuse, abandonment issues and low self-esteem. I had to basically do my own healing around difficulties I had in my childhood. I attended Delphi University & Healing School as a student but I [really] landed there to help me heal from the childhood issues I had that were impacting my life as an adult.

From those studies I decided it was too important not to help others. I got my doctoral degree in metaphysical healing and transpersonal psychotherapy and in addition to that I [am certified so] people [can come to me for] acupuncture, energy balancing [and other things].

Q: How long have you been interested in chakras and healing?

A: At about the age of 14 I became involved in martial arts. I decided to continue my journey reading books on Eastern philosophy. I used to be special ed teacher and school principal at Friendship Vale, a school for children with mental and physical challenges, and I would use my vacation time [to learn about] different principles.

After the school closed, I [eventually] decided to work in the holistic medicine field, to do it full-time because it could help people. So I’d guess it’s been about 15 years that I’ve been practising it altogether, but I’ve been doing it full-time for more than ten years, since 2003.

Q: What’s the difference between this and any other self-help course on offer?

A: It is experiential. It’s not a class where you just sit and hear me talk, you start to experience them within yourself.

People [at my workshops] feel very comfortable. It’s a safe space. It’s extremely meaningful. People can take the information and directly apply it to their individual life, but the experience is probably the biggest difference; it is an experience as compared with just a lecture.

Q: How does it work?

A: Transpersonal psychotherapy is a step by step [process] moving through your pain to a place of healing. It works a lot faster than mainstream healing.

You can be on the table and a therapist will put you through a process and you can have very quick healing right there — it just depends on the person and how willing they are. Some people aren’t ready; they just have to live in the mud for a while.

It’s for anyone who is really tired of living their life feeling unhappy and wounded. If they’re ready to move, transpersonal psychotherapy is really an amazing route.

These classes help give a taste of what I can do for them. [My clients offer] tons of testimony of how [my workshops] changed their life. It’s amazing what can happen. The issues we have, we can master them so they no longer control our life and we finally feel we’re in the driver’s seat.

Q: Is confidentiality ever an issue?

A: Everyone very quickly realises it’s not a situation where people are talking about what their problems are and I do small groups so everyone gets the attention they want.

The way I manage the information, no one ever knows what [the person beside them is] healing from; it’s not necessary to say what you’re healing from. It would only come up in a one-on-one session.

It’s kept safe because this is a small community and so confidentiality is extremely important.

Some people may get emotional, they may shed a tear, but they can feel safe to do so because it’s a non-judgmental environment.

• The Wheels of Life: How to Know your Chakras in a New Way takes place at 4 Riviera Road, Southampton, on February 20 and 21. Admission is $250. Register at My Sereni-Tea on Queen Street by Friday. For more information call 296-2114, e-mail info@drkaren4u.com or visit www.drkaren4u.com