Golden Visions center brings a variety of practitioners under one roof to address healing and personal growth from many angles.
"We're not just about the 'healing'—you know, 'physical' stuff," says MaDonna Kettler, a practicing hypnotherapist and founder of the Golden Visions healing center tucked away in a quiet neighborhood in Silver City. "And we're not all woo-woo, either," she adds with a laugh, making a friendly yet humorous reference to the more esoteric alternative healing arts, sometimes called "energetic" or "spiritual" modalities.
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MaDonna Kettler stands near a bookcase filled with some of her books
and CDs. (Photo by Donna Clayton Lawder) |
"We've tried to incorporate a wide range of practitioners and tools so that wherever a person is on their path, or in their personal or spiritual growth," she explains, "there's something to help them move along and experience what they need."
Kettler's direct gaze and open smile are complemented by her calming voice—the kind of voice you'd expect a hypnotherapist to have. In fact, her honeyed vocals have provided the voice for safety tapes used by ProScan Avionics on its airplanes. It's that soothing. She sits bathed in golden shafts of light coming through the windows of the main exercise, workshop and meeting room of her healing center, surrounded by tools and symbols of the alternative healing trade.
A table sitting off to the side is pulled front and center every Wednesday night when the "Wednesday's Wisdom" group meets. A bookcase nearby holds an assortment of books, pamphlets and CDs, many of them instructional media that Kettler has authored and produced. On the other side of the room, representing the more physical aspect of change and bodily wholeness, is an assortment of Pilates exercise equipment.
Carol Watson-Brand, an advisor/director at the center, teaches the Pilates system of fitness and exercise. Having a few minutes between her morning client and the one coming soon, Watson-Brand munches a sandwich during her "break," happy to join in the conversation about Golden Visions.
The backbone of Kettler's work is hypnotherapy. Through this center and Golden Visions at The Ivy Cottage, a center she founded and maintains in Minnesota, she offers workshops and individual and group hypnotherapy sessions aimed at everything from smoking cessation and weight reduction to "relaxed childbirth" and releasing fear. Kettler also travels widely, speaking at expos and training others to become hypnotherapists.
She also facilitates the Wednesday's Wisdom personal growth and support group, as well as an ongoing class called "IAMWOWED."
"It stands for 'I Am Worthy of Whatever Empowerment Desired,'" explains Kettler. Enrollment is open and ongoing, and the program includes journaling, hypnosis, some form of fitness enhancement—a whole grab bag of modalities designed to enhance wellbeing and encourage change and personal growth.
Watson-Brand is a Pilates instructor with advanced certification, and a personal fitness trainer and movement specialist trained in body mechanics. She offers individual sessions and group classes. Combining her fitness training with her love of the outdoors, world-travel experience and climbing expertise, she has led camping and hiking trips and, with a business partner, is starting a company designed to offer participants personal development on all levels through adventure travel.
Also along the more physical line of modalities at the center, doctor of oriental medicine Jeanette Cruz-Poulsen operates her practice, Timeless Medicine, offering acupuncture and oriental herbal treatments. Cruz-Poulsen offers care through an "Affordable Preventative Health Care for Women" sliding-scale program, which will soon be complemented by a similar program for men. (See last month's Business Exposure column.) The acupuncture clinic is housed in a separate building on the property.
Giving earthbound humans guidance written in the stars, specifically their individualized natal charts, Don Musser, a professional guitar builder (see "Strings Attached," Desert Exposure, July 2006) offers astrology readings—a passion and study of his for many years—through the center.
Going further into spiritual realms, Susan Davies, who also goes by the spiritual name of Priya, offers six-to-eight-week classes in The Michael Teachings. These teachings are described on the organization's Web site as a body of channeled information from a benevolent group consciousness-entity who have made this knowledge available to assist those dealing with life on earth, particularly as it relates to handling change, fear, difficulties and the soul's evolution. Davies has had ample audiences in her classes. She also gives individual spiritual and tarot-card readings at the center, as well as at Rejuvenations coffeeshop on Bullard Street in Silver City.
Nasya Gelbart, a certified wholistic health practitioner, offers a comprehensive package of therapies. Like a number of wholistic practitioners, Gelbart says her interest in the alternative healing arts arose after she personally received relief from an assortment of chronic illnesses through alternative treatments. A certified practitioner of several "Light-Touch" therapies, including Reiki energy work, BioTouch and the Healer Method, Gelbart holds a bachelor's degree in Metaphysical Sciences and Spiritual Counseling. Gelbart also offers flower essence therapies and in-home therapy sessions and supportive counseling.
Boyd Sibley, founder of The Healer Method, and Kelly Lynn, a consultant and presenter specializing in a self-mastery course, also teach through the Golden Visions center. The two travel extensively, and offer personal sessions and workshops in the healing approach that combines the use of "universal symbols," meditation, anointing oils, tapping on energy points and chant, in conjunction with a one-hour musical CD. Sibley was "gifted" the Christ-based healing method during a meditation in his recording studio. Participants can learn the methods strictly for their own healing, or to become practitioners of the energetic system.
Last year, Golden Visions held a two-day open house, giving participants a taste of what the center has to offer. Watson-Brand and Kettler recount the different practitioners and variety of modalities represented—hypnosis in this room, massage in a separate part of the building, Reiki healing over here, tarot-card and intuitive readings over there, and proper movement and body mechanics out on the lawn and around the neighborhood. A similar event is planned for later this year.
Even with such a broad array of options, offered through such a wide variety of practitioners, Kettler quickly finds the words to describe a "typical session" offered through her Golden Visions healing center.
"The client walks in one way, and they walk out differently," she says. "No matter what the modality that they need for their growth, their journey, they come in and they walk out lighter. That says it all."
—Donna Clayton Lawder
For more information about Golden Visions, or to make an appointment with MaDonna Kettler, call 534-1291 or see www.goldenvisionscenter.com. To make appointments with other practitioners: Carol Watson-Brand, Pilates and personal fitness training, 534-1261; Jeanette Cruz-Poulsen, Doctor of Oriental Medicine, 388-4706; Susan Davies (Priya), The Michael Teachings, tarot and intuitive readings, 313-7049; Nasya Gelbart, Light Touch Therapies, hypnotherapy, wholistic care and intuitive counseling, 313-1969; Don Musser, astrology readings, 534-4087; Kelly Lynn, The Journey Home: Course to Self-Mastery, 928-427-6462; Boyd Sibley, The Healer Method, (928) 427-6462.