Founder/Consultant – Stace

Stacy Stephen Povey  – Dreamglade Founder and Consultant

I was born in London and I have spent a good portion of my adult life traveling around the world, working aboard big sailing boats for around 5 years , crossing the Atlantic three times, exploring around most of the Caribbean, the east coast of the States, across the Panama canal and into the south Pacific as far as Tahiti.

In my mid-twenties I discovered the electronic dance scene that was blossoming in Europe at that time and I spent the next 5 years organising ‘raves’ (for want of a better word) and d.j,ing, mostly in the south of Portugal.

In later years, on a ‘dare’, I drove an old army truck from England to Dakar by myself, crossing the Sahara desert in the process. Around this time I also traveled overland from Florida to South America, visiting most of Central America and then into Colombia, Ecuador and finally Peru where I worked as a cook for 6 months in a beautiful hostel way up in the Andes mountains.

But I had finally realised something that I had suspected for quite some time.

That I was tired with being constantly “on the go”, looking for the answers ‘out there’ and that I needed to concentrate more on exploring ‘within’…

How I met Madre Ayahuasca….

In my thirties I suffered from chronic back pain and I spent many years and a huge amount of money trying to find some kind of relief, putting my faith in Chiropractors, Osteopaths, Acupuncturists, Doctors, Dieticians….. I tried them all but unfortunately I had little or no success whatsoever. The pain persisted and it became so severe that I became extremely depressed and despondent.

Towards the end of 2007 I packed up all my stuff in Portugal, sold everything I had and headed back to Peru, only this time to visit the Amazon rainforest that surrounds Iquitos to fulfil a long cherished desire to explore the local Shamanic traditions and in particular, the infamous brew named “Ayahuasca'” which roughly translated, means “Vine of the Soul”.

I was desperately hoping that someone there could help me with my back problems and I also felt that I needed to ‘cleanse’ myself on every level. Years and years of intense partying and some severe psychological traumas had left their mark. I was only 37 years old but I felt OLD !!

I spent the next several years working with various “master plants”, dieting with them in seclusion, usually in a small, basic hut in the jungle and I also worked a lot with Ayahuasca, Tobacco and the sacred leaf of the Incas, Coca.

I also discovered how to perform Liver flushes on myself at home (through the books of Andreas Morritz) which I continued doing 14 times over the period of a year and a half until I had completely cleaned out of all of the toxins that I had accumulated in my liver after years and years of abuse. I also discovered some powerful local Amazonian plants that were very effective at cleaning the kidneys.

Although I observed somewhat of an improvement in my chronic back condition, it stubbornly persisted until one day a friend gave me a book she had found in a small local bookstore in Iquitos.  “Healing Back Pain” by an American Doctor, John E Sarno, completely changed my life !!  After decades of research he proposed that a very large percentage of sufferers of chronic back pain (as well as many other common health disorders) were not, in fact, caused by physical malfunction but where instead the result of the unconscious mind deliberately creating physical pain in order to distract us from being overwhelmed by an accumulation of suppressed emotions. After doing some more research I found that an English Physiotherapist, Georgina Oldfield, had also discovered Doctor Sarno’s work and was using his methods with her patients with excellent results. I downloaded one of her lectures and started to practice her emotional/psychological writing exercises on a daily basis and within 3 months I had reduced my back pain by about 80%.  No treatments, no medication, completely free !!

For many years I had felt very sorry for myself, had labeled myself as a “victim” and could not understand what I had done to deserve such terrible pain, such a terrible fate…. But it was through the process of completely healing myself , that I was able to fully understand the root causes of many ‘physical’ problems that so many people are inflicted with in today’s modern society and then eventually apply that experiential knowledge through the healing work that we would later foster at Dreamglade Shamanic Healing center.

It has now become the primary focus  at the center.

Hidden within every difficult life experience there is always a gift…..

Sometimes it just takes a little while to figure out what it is…..

Throughout my life I have watched the world get more and more dysfunctional. Watched as a mind-based  humanity continues to abuse and destroy each other and also this beautiful Earth that is our Mother. After years of reading and observing I strongly believe that the only hope left to us is a change in consciousness. From one rooted in fear, stemming from the Ego and all of it’s insecurities, to one rooted in Love. Our higher selves are waiting patiently in the wings to be recognised and followed once more and Ayahuasca and the local Shamanic rituals can help us to do so in a relatively short space of time which is why, I believe, so many people from all corners of the world are being called to come here to work with these incredibly powerful medicinal plants.