The remedy? A healing touch
An American Indian medicine woman develops a technique called "Kolaimni," which is based on manipulating the electromagnetic sheath that surrounds the body.
By SHERYL KAY
Published April 28, 2006
TEMPLE TERRACE - In her regal buckskins with beaded and turquoise adornment, Mechi Garza is the ultimate vision of a proud American Indian elder woman.
It is a part of her heritage that the 82-year-old Temple Terrace woman fully came to embrace only during the second part of her life, eventually becoming an honored medicine woman.
Garza, affectionately called "Grandmother Mechi" by all who know her, was born in Oklahoma to a mother of Irish descent and a father who was half Cherokee, half Choctaw.
At the time, it was common practice for white families to simply snatch Indian children and raise them as their own. Rather than lose track of Garza completely, her mother arranged for a white family to adopt her when Garza was 22 days old.
Raised a Protestant, Garza had no clue about her American Indian background until one day an aunt sprang the news.
"She thought I'd be shocked," Garza said, "but I was thrilled. It was kind of glamorous at first."
Garza was only a child at the time, but she vowed that when she was old enough, she would return to her Indian roots.
Years passed during which Garza reconnected with her birth mother, trained to be a nurse, worked for the FBI as a fingerprint technician and lived in Mexico writing romance novels, all the while waiting for the right moment to learn about her American Indian heritage.
That moment came in the early 1970s, when Garza moved to West Virginia. There, by chance, she came upon an intertribal meeting group. She learned the Indian concept of totality - the oneness of the grass, the animals, the earth, the people and the stars.
"I was coming home," Garza said. "It was a spiritual approach I had all my life."
Garza was quickly recognized for her storytelling abilities, and she began to function as a tribal storyteller. Then she began to sense a certain healing capability.
"Everybody can heal," she said. "But there are certain people that receive a knowing, that it's their work to be a healer. It was my work to be a healer."
Garza said a medicine man approached her and offered to help her develop her talent. At first she said no.
"Being a medicine man is not such an easy job," she said. "You're always getting called up in the middle of the night. No different than a doctor."
Eventually the medicine man prevailed, and Garza became his apprentice, eventually becoming a full medicine woman.
In 1981, she developed her own healing technique. She called it "Kolaimni," which means "connecting with light."
Garza's method is based on the electromagnetic sheath that surrounds the body. By slowly moving her hands about an inch above the recipient's body, Garza said, she is able to manipulate the body's etheric field and infuse the pain centers with healing energies.
"We are all healed with energy," Garza said. "It's the energy in the herbs that heal us, it's the energy in the sun that gives us light and life, it's the energy passed on through me during a Kolaimni, and it's all the same energy."
When she is not performing Kolaimni treatments or conducting workshops about her healing techniques, Garza writes books. Her newest is The Gaia Connection, an autobiographical portrait of Mechi and the "masculine part" of her soul, Lothar. The book also discusses environmental concerns and ancient healing techniques.
She is writing a new book, tentatively titled The Everyday Atlantis, and preparing to teach a workshop in June at the International Women's Writing Guild symposium at Skidmore College in New York.
Far from slowing down, Garza believes in keeping busy.
"I'll be writing clear up until it's time to go someplace else," Garza said. "At least till I'm 92. That's a good round number."
For more information about Kolaimni, contact Garza at mechime@msn.com
Contact Sheryl Kay at skreporter@hotmail.com or 813 230-8788.