Bruno Mertens, Dabney’s Vipassana Teacher
At age 20, Dabney Alix traveled to New Zealand on a quest for self-discovery. After meeting a Vipassana Meditation teacher, she decided she would try to meditate. Little did she know that it would lead her on a journey far beyond her imagination.
It all started with a 10-hour meditation that left Dabney with one foot on the ground and one foot in the spirit realm. After weeks in extreme visionary states and with no one around to offer guidance, Dabney was admitted into a psychiatric unit and put on medications. The medical staff in New Zealand did not label her with a life-long diagnosis. Instead, she was given time to rest and told she just had a brief psychotic episode.
It was later, when she returned to the states, that she was labeled with bipolar disorder. She was told that something was wrong with her brain. She struggled to make sense of what had happened, always knowing deep inside that for her it was a profoundly healing spiritual experience and hugely important to her life purpose. Despite being told that she would never become well and needed to accept her illness, Dabney got off the medications and out of the psychiatric system.
Years later she apprenticed with a Shamanic Healer and mentor. She learned that what had happening to her in New Zealand was commonly known as a shamanic initiatory crisis and that her ability to journey, see energy and communicate with the spirit realms was not an illness, but actually a gift! Determined to answer the call, Dabney regained her sense of self and learned how to use her abilities in service to others by founding the popular program and website Shades of Awakening.
It is so great to see the increase of people who are speaking out and sharing their stories! As Dabney put it during her interview, “One of the most profound ways that we can increase the tolerance in our culture for these non-ordinary states is for people to talk about them.”
