Meet Sylvia

I believe that deep within each of us is a healer emerging, waiting to be birthed.

A healer is usually led to his or her career by seemingly strange situations. In 1978 when I was in Kenya, I had an extraordinary eye-to-eye spiritual communication with a large impala. While staring at the animal from a distance I had what I considered my awakening, my first experience of true spiritual love, and I became aware of my inner light. From that moment onward my healing pathway began to unfold.

At that time my work was in photography. While I was photo-graphing Calvary Church in New York City, famous for its architecture, the music director approached me. Out of the blue he asked me if I sang and if I would like to audition for a big production of Faures’ Beatitudes. After not having been in church for twenty-one years, I joined the choral group, church and theatre department and also had my first professional photography show there. During that time I found myself in the role of a ‘bridge’ between traditional and new age spiritual communities, and to this day I feel very suited to that role.

By 1981 I had become an assistant in Calvary Church’s weekly laying-on-of-the-hands healing service. Although I was not theologically inclined, I liked the way I felt in this environment.

That same year I travelled to Findhom, the spiritual community in Scotland when I re-awakened my connection with nature spirits, Goddess rituals and the use of universal energy. My life expanded to yet another level of awareness.

A few years later I met Barbara Brennan through a friend who was studying with her, and for a few months I became Barbara’s secretary during the time she was preparing her book “The Hands of Light” – for publication. I was amazed to learn that the simple healing service I had been practicing successfully for four years for fun had a solid foundation, and that I could be conscious and responsible for my energy when I touched someone. I knew I wanted to learn more about what I been doing naturally. I therefore enrolled in her four year training program where my particular qualities and uniqueness as a healer were developed and expanded. My awareness and sensitivity to energy was enhanced.

When I graduated as a healer I could not foresee becoming a teacher. My family was full of teachers – I never wanted to be like them. However, I eventually realized that as a healer what l am doing is teaching people how to be well.

This powerful feeling stayed with her when she returned home to New York. Right away, new spiritual opportunities began to open up for her. While photographing the interior of Calvary Church, she was invited to join the choral group. Taking it as a sign, she attended a service—her first in twenty-two years—and knew immediately that she wanted to be part of the church’s open-minded spiritual community.

She began to participate in the weekly “laying on of hands” services, where she discovered her powerful gift for healing.

Sylvia’s awakening reached another pivotal point in 1981 when she visited the New Age spiritual community in Findhorn, Scotland. Known for its miraculous vegetable gardens where forty-pound cabbages grow in sand, Findhorn is a spiritual community and eco-village founded by three visionaries in the early 1960s.

One of the founders, Dorothy Maclean, received guidance from angels and wrote the best-selling book To Hear the Angels Sing about her angelic visitors.

Sylvia’s visit to Findhorn reawakened her childhood relationship with nature spirits, as well as stimulating her connection with angels, ancient Goddess rituals, and channeling universal energy and light.

Driven by her passion to help others heal, Sylvia enrolled in the four-year program at the renowned Barbara Brennan School of Healing and gained her certification in Brennan Healing Science in 1990. As her unique healing abilities emerged, she expanded her studies to encompass other areas of expertise. In 1992, she became an ordained interfaith minister.

She is a graduate of the Transformational Energetics Training Program with Ann Bowman, master Bioenergetics teacher and psychotherapist, as well as the Life Works Guidess Training Program. She also studied with both Rosalyn Bruyere, a renowned healer, teacher and author who supervised the Ellen Burstyn film Resurrection, and Emilie Conrad, founder of Continuum movement work.

Sylvia built a thriving healing practice in New York City. Before long, her clients began asking her to teach. She traveled internationally, giving workshops to bring her healing skills to others. As part of her international outreach, she led a hands-on healing workshop at the Conference on Creativity and Art in Medicine, Psychology, and Education in St. Petersburg, Russia.

In 1992, she co-founded and directed the Healership Training Program for Energy Medicine Healing in Vancouver, BC. She subsequently led a similar Spiritual Healing Training program in New York City.