After a Harrowing Two Years, Society Turns to Black Healers
A national health crisis spurred a spiritual wellness boom, and put Black healers at its forefront.
When someone contacts Maggie Wilson in search of healing, she sends them a DaVinci man. They circle the parts of the body where they feel any pain, where they’ve had any scars or major surgeries. The body remembers these things, and remembers their energy, Wilson says.
Then comes the work: the client comes in for their healing session, and Wilson spends time on the parts of the body they’ve circled, meaning those parts need the most healing energy. She lays her hands on their head, their feet, their belly — concentrating with her eyes closed. Sometimes colors will flash through her eyes, sometimes she’ll see images, and sometimes she’ll hear thoughts that aren’t her own.
Wilson is practicing Reiki (pronounced RAY-kee), an ancient Japanese healing technique. Her hands are preparing for an equal energy exchange, with Wilson as the messenger. Like the indigenous women who trained her, Wilson searches for energy imbalances. She lingers over her clients’ bodies, like a doctor over a surgical table, and they’ll begin to feel tingling. Sometimes they’ll feel heat, and other times they’ll feel cold and ask for a blanket. Often, when she places her hands over their hearts for a while, they’ll begin to cry.
The cathartic energy transfer is meant to vitalize the body’s cells, tissues, organs, and emotional centers. And after a 25% increase in collective anxiety and depression worldwide during the past two years, society is in need of emotional release and healing.
Amid the slew of traumatic events in 2020, “energy healing” began seeing a steady rise as a Google search term. Many reported that mental health surpassed physical in its importance to total wellness and general attitude, and conversations about self-reflection, self-love and mindfulness increased. As the BLM movement gained traction after George Floyd’s murder, spurring a national Racial Reckoning, Americans interested in racial reconciliation turned to Black voices for guidance, insight, and communal healing. Now, Black healers and herbalists are popping off on Tiktok — with the hashtags #Blackhealers and #blackherbalists amassing over 14 million viewers combined — and news websites and networks like NBC, Vox and CNBC have documented the Black spiritual boom.
While alternative wellness approaches — botanicals, acupuncture, meditation, energy healing, nature therapy and yoga — have been labeled the “modern wellness approach,” the Black, brown and indigenous people that practice and teach them have been doing so for centuries. It’s not just a trendy practice for them — it’s their ancestry, their history, and their way of life. Their rituals are rooted in spirituality, in a connection to their ancestors — and amid a national health crisis and a collective need for healing, Black healers like Wilson are finally being recognized in mainstream wellness spaces.
Destigmatizing Black Spiritualism
Most Black people who feel a pull to the spiritual world will face a “coming out of the spiritual closet” moment. In a country where 65% of its population identifies as Christian, mainstream Western practices haven’t left much room for exploring the esoteric and supernatural, and such practices are still generally stigmatized. As with any minority group, Black spiritualists may find themselves at a crossroads: Will I publicly embrace this part of my identity, or will I hide it?
For a while, Shontel Anestasia felt she had to choose the latter. Her Guyanese family has always been spiritual, but once she realized their traditions weren’t the norm, she internalized the cultural stigma around her family’s rituals. So she assimilated, working several corporate jobs she knew she’d never fit in to.
She was lowkey about her spiritual life, but if or when her coworkers would find out about her spiritual background, they’d begin treating her differently, and she’d eventually be let go from the job. Once she was let go from her last corporate gig, soon after COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, she knew it was time to focus her efforts into building her spiritual store and begin offering services as an energy healer.
“I truly feel that when I came out of the spiritual closet and started doing what I was doing, it made it easier for others around me to follow,” Anestasia says. “We’re in a time where a lot of people of color in our generation are questioning their faith, their churches, and ultimately going back to their spiritual roots. The media has often portrayed spiritualists as demonic and dark, but I’m just a girl with a longboard and tattoos, and I’m very spiritual. I feel the more society sees everyday people involved in spirituality, the more it’ll become normalized.”
Like Anestasia, Millana Snow was secretive about her spiritual practice for years.
As a child, she thought she had magical powers, like closing doors with her eyes and feeling people’s energy as they walked past her. With an agnostic mother and an absent, Christian father, she eventually buried herself in spiritual readings, finding an instant connection to integrative energy healing and breathwork.
“I can’t tell you how much of a struggle it was to be heard not just as a healer, but as a Black woman. I feel that people are finally looking, specifically to Black women, for healing messages and guidance.”
“I lived in places like Houston, Texas, where, you know, it was considered ‘the devil’ if I was doing this stuff,” Snow says. “It wasn’t until 2012, after I lived in New York City for nine years, that I started sharing this work and coming out of the spiritual closet. I really didn’t want anybody to know. And then finally, I was like, wait, I live in New York, why am I so scared about this? Nobody’s gonna burn me at the stake, you know? I’m very grateful to The City for that, because I know that if I would have shared what I was doing back then in some of the cities that we lived in in the south, I wouldn’t have been able to freely express and share myself like that.”
Now, two years after George Floyd begged to breathe, thousands of people — 35.7K Instagram followers, to be exact — look to Snow to teach them how.
“One of the benefits of an extremely challenging couple of years is that people finally understand that they should prioritize healing,” Snow says. “I mean, for so many years I was like, ‘Hey, everyone, trust me, you’ll like this, just try it.’ And now, people come to me ready to meditate, ready to heal from their childhood trauma. I can’t tell you how much of a struggle it was to be heard not just as a healer, but as a Black woman. I feel that people are finally looking, specifically to Black women, for healing messages and guidance.”
The Need for Black Healers
Since mainstream healing spaces are often white-washed, not accessible to Black communities or in-tune with the sacredness of their spiritual practices, women like Anngelica-Marie Eshesimua have begun building their own wellness brands.
Eshesimua launched Omekwa (meaning “nature’s vessel” or “God-given” in the Afemai tribe of Nigeria’s language) — a wellness brand dedicated to redefining self-care. She’s set out to build a network of healers, spiritual practitioners, and mental health specialists to provide personalized care to her clients, and has so far collected Sydney Elms, Omekwa’s lead herbalist.
Elms and Eshesimua emphasize that there’s a depth, an art to their ancestral practices. They’re not just New Age-y, “woo-woo,” witch-y rituals, but sacred spiritual arts carefully retained and passed down to the next generations of Black communities — practices that survived slavery and colonization.
“Doing yoga, for example, led by someone who’s white feels immensely different than when it’s led by someone of color,” Elms says. “It just feels like a workout. I’m not even tapping in. I’m sweating, I guess, but that’s not what I want. I need to stretch; I need to feel one with my body, and I don’t feel that here. It feels like crossing a boundary — doing the exercise without thanking the ancestors and paying respect to the lineage.”
“I think that’s also a major, major reason why spirituality, wellness, self care, mindfulness are starting to spread. Black healer representation — Black healers at the helm of their own businesses — are spreading the bounds of what is possible.”
Snow, who also leads her own wellness brand, is passionate about educating the next generation of Black healers. When she first delved into the spiritual realm, there was little to no Black representation in the spiritual healing space. She could barely find any resources on energy healing on Google, much less a Black energy healer, and it’s why she’s so intent on nurturing more inclusive spaces.
“Since (Black healers) are featured much more prominently in the media now, it makes (our communities) feel safer,” Snow says. It can make them feel seen, like the wellness space could be for them, too. I think that’s also a major, major reason why spirituality, wellness, self care, and mindfulness are starting to spread. Black healer representation — Black healers at the helm of their own businesses — are pushing the bounds of what is possible.”
~ Spiritual Healing Playlist: 12 songs, 1:39:00 ~
~Emotional Escape Room Guide & herbal remedies for the mind + spirit ~
Pinterest Predicts reports that people of all ages are driving searches for emotional escape rooms — music-themed rooms, crystal rooms and tiny reading nooks. The goal is to create a peaceful space to retreat to, a space that grounds you and brings you joy.
Once you’ve got your music playing + the vibes set, here are some tips on how to set up a healer’s emotional escape room.
