PORT ANGELES — This is a story of metamorphosis, of new beginnings and of liberation from pain.
And Kelmie Blake’s story bears poetic parallels to that of the namesake for her business, Dragonfly Healing Arts.
A dragonfly spends its early life underwater, a nymph moving below the surface, inhaling and exhaling through gills.
When the nymph — let’s say a female — is ready to metamorphose into the next stage of life, she ascends a reed or a blade of grass.
The instant she senses air, she breathes it in. The new dragonfly climbs out of her old skin, spreads her wings, looks out with her multifaceted eyes, and flies.
In flight, the dragonfly can carry herself upward and down, forward and side to side — wherever she sees fit to go for nourishment.
Blake, who’s made her new life in Port Angeles, came here after a series of automobile accidents. The eighth one, in April 2001, “put me over the edge,” she recalls now.
A licensed massage therapist, she was in so much pain she couldn’t work. Medical doctors, Blake said, could identify no form of therapy that would give any lasting relief.
Move to Northwest
Blake left her hometown of Boulder, Colo., in summer 2001, shortly before the attacks of Sept. 11. Attracted to the Pacific Northwest, she moved to Indianola, somewhat near her mother Diana Somerville’s home in Port Angeles.
Blake found some relief from the traffic and crowds that had overtaken Boulder. She also found good chiropractic and acupuncture specialists — in Port Angeles. The single mom decided to move here, along with her son, Zennon, then 6. They settled in a house near downtown in summer 2002.
Then Blake began learning about energy medicine, as practiced by Donna Eden, an internationally known author and teacher.
This modality, Blake said, is based on the body’s energy systems, which she believes are equipped to naturally heal themselves. Energy medicine involves the chakras, something called the body’s energy “grid,” the “radiant circuits” and other concepts that many are skeptical about.
Blake, however, already had a background in anatomy and healing touch, so she understood the interconnectedness of what she calls the “energy body” and the physical body.
This form of health care, which draws from ayurvedic, acupressure and other alternative modalities from around the globe, uses something that’s altogether free: the body’s own healing impulse.
Energy medicine, Blake says, “got me well when nothing else did.”
She went from being able to work just a few hours a week in a reclining chair in 2003 to earning her certification as an advanced energy medicine practitioner and opening her Port Angeles office.
Today, she teaches here and in Phoenix at Eden’s Energy Medicine Certification Program, and assists Eden at workshops across the country.
Class this month
Blake returned last Tuesday from Phoenix and began preparing for a weekend class in Port Angeles: “Fertility, Cycles, and Hormones, Oh My!” starts Friday night, Nov. 19, with a look at how hormonal trends can affect moods, weight, fertility, sex drive and general zest for life.
Participants, Blake says, will learn to stop the “confusing hormone drama” they may be experiencing, whether they’re in their teens, 20s, 30s, 40s or older.
With co-presenter Titanya Dahlin — Eden’s daughter and a professional dancer — Blake will teach about nourishing one’s vitality throughout the reproductive cycle, into menopause and beyond.
The sessions will run from 6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. on Nov. 19, and from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 20; the venue is the new Elwha Klallam Heritage Center at 401 E. First St. The fee for Friday only is $25, or participants can take the entire seminar for $100. Details are at www.Kelmie.com, while Blake can be reached at 360-809-0401.
The workshop coincides with the recent release of Eden’s book, Energy Medicine for Women: Aligning Your Body’s Energies to Boost Your Health and Vitality. This latest volume is among the books and DVDs available on Eden’s website, www.InnerSource.net.
Blake, as she practices both massage therapy and energy medicine at Dragonfly Healing Arts, is well aware that there’s a lot of scoffing going on about energy work.
Patients are proof
The proof is in her patients’ stories, she says.
Port Angeles pediatrician Christine Rose learned about energy medicine by chancing upon one of Eden’s books at the library.
“I looked up practitioners on the innersource.net website,” Rose said, “and discovered Kelmie,” who has helped her cope with insomnia and everyday stress. Rose says she feels “much more grounded and less anxious,” after her energy treatments.
Rose has been doing a quick daily energy routine, recommended by Blake, for a few months, and now doesn’t want to start her day without it. The five-minute routine, known as the morning “tuneup,” is composed of simple exercises: a stretch to the ground and then the sky, seated and standing twists, tapping around the ribs and breastbone to stimulate energy flow and the “crown pull,” a head massage. Blake emphasizes that these home-based routines are the principal aspect of healing.
“Here we are, with [conventional] health care so expensive. This is empowering. You take your health in your own hands,” she says. “Your best results are going to be from practicing at home. If you’re not going to do self-care, we’re going to plateau.”
So if energy medicine is effective, why isn’t it more pervasive in society?
“We don’t have a lobbying group,” Blake says with a smile. But mainstream physicians, such as Drs. Christiane Northrup and Mehmet Oz, known for his appearances on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” are talking about the modality in positive terms.
Amelia Andaleon, another Port Angeles client, started seeing Blake six years ago for chronic pain and then for prenatal massages, which were, she said, “the best.” These days she goes in for energy medicine and says she enjoys increased energy, muscle flexibility and an overall sense of well-being.
‘I was open to it’
“I personally walked in slightly skeptical, but I was open to it . . . and I have experienced positive results,” Andaleon said. “But don’t expect [an energy treatment] to be a magic pill,” since one also needs self-discipline to do the routines at home.
Julie Smith of Port Angeles says she has learned from Blake how to use her body’s energy to move pain out of her neck and back.
“Kelmie is amazing,” said Smith, who sees Blake for energy treatments once or twice a month. She calls her energy work a benefit for her spirit as well as for her body.
“Kelmie has been blessed with a unique gift of healing,” Smith added.
Blake, meantime, is developing her practice, and enjoying her new surroundings in a downstairs space in the old Carpenters Hall at First and Peabody streets. At 42, she’s also enjoying being a newlywed, having married Tyler Spires a little over six months ago. He lived across the alley from her back in 2009; though he’s quite shy, Spires befriended Blake and helped out when she moved to another house in Port Angeles.
When they announced their plans for an April 22 — aka Earth Day — wedding, the pair surprised just about everybody.
“People told me, ‘You’ll never find a man in Port Angeles,'” Blake recalls. “I didn’t even have to leave my yard.”
Her husband, owner of Spires Roofing Co., helped transform Blake’s new office and treatment space.
“It was ugly and cavernous,” she says, so she could scarcely picture it as a place for healing.
Today, Dragonfly Healing Arts is a mellow, lavender-hued hideaway, lined with books and a few wall hangings depicting butterflies, hearts and the chakras.
Blake is reveling in her new life, and in attending to the balance of work and family. Practicing and teaching her chosen form of medicine, not surprisingly, continues to refresh.
“I love it. I love seeing people get better,” she says. “I love seeing people take charge of their health.”
