All About Yoga

 
About Gabriella

Gabriella also known as Elle McDonald, PhD was born and educated in the United States. She received degrees in medicine, psychology and business.  For fifteen years Gabriella lived in Southern Africa. While living in Southern Africa she had the opportunity to explore the diversity and cultural aspects of Africa. She was initiated as a Sangoma (diviner and healer) in the African Healing Tradition and became a Traditional Doctor.

In 1989 she became preoccupied with the task of attempting to cope and heal herself from acute physical, mental and emotional pain. This condition manifested in daily indescribable agony and suffering that brought her to the point of tears and thoughts of suicide. Now in hindsight only does she realize these symptoms were the beginning of  kundalini awakening.

At the time she was married, living in Santa Barbara, California and working as a financial consultant for a major wall street firm. Gabriella was told by the American medical and psychological professions that they could find nothing wrong and prescribed pain and anti-depressant medication. She was told that she was a candidate for alcohol and pain killer addiction and suicide.

Gabriella left the financial industry. In 1994, after years of suffering through conventional medical approaches, medications, and experimentation with alternative therapies, she embarked on a quest to heal this condition herself through 'trusting her own experience as a barometer and guide'. This intention initiated an odyssey that took her beyond the  confines of her cultural upbringing and conditioning, beyond the parameters of her imprinted perceptual framework, and deep into an ongoing journey of the heart.  

Gabriella began to travel to other countries in search of the healing they might hold in their traditional cultures that the United States would not allow or didn’t recognize. In attempts to find relief, she tried many avenues of alternative healing. Included in this desperation was becoming initiated as a Traditional Healer in South Africa. As a traditional healer Gabriella learned about plant medicines, rolling the bones, dancing and honoring the Ancestors, ceremony and ritual. She also discovered how little one actually needs for functioning daily life.

As the odyssey to find relief and release unfolded, Gabriella began becoming acquainted with profound perceptual circumstances. These experiences led to an opening of a paradigm where Gabriella became heighten with a non-ordinary sense of awareness and consciousness. This non-ordinary reality seems to run parallel, but hidden from, the conventional and mundane world experience. 

Gabriella discovered that repeated entry into and deeper penetration of this heightened state of being resulted in a decrease in her painful condition to the point that it subsided completely. She accomplished this through ceremonial practice, the use of plant medicines and consciously connected breathing - It also opened the doors to a realm of self-empowered experience in which she was able to embrace responsibility for the quality of  her life. This included physical, mental, and emotional encounters and led to the stopping of blaming others and circumstances. She began to learn to navigate with full awareness the experiences she desired.

This journey into a culture unknown to her required a visit to a Sangoma (diviner/healer) and having the “Bones” read. This is a tradition where the Sangoma blows on a collection of various stones and bones and prays to the Ancestors in order to diagnose a problem. The Sangoma told Gabriella that she had the “sickness of calling and the call of the Ancestors." In another culture this would have been named as kundalini awakening, the road to Nirvana, higher spiritual experience, ecstasy of enlightenment, God intoxication or mental illness. 

This call would require her to travel some 1500 miles away to Botswana, live in the African bush and apprentice with a Sangoma. In order to be healed of this affliction she did not rationally understand, she would have to go through rigorous training and surrender to find relief.

She immediately rejected this offer and continued to search for other means of healing that were more familiar to her. She traveled to Australia where she studied sound healing. She traveled to the UK where she apprenticed to a teacher of channeling and energy healing. Gabriella became a Reiki Master, massage therapist, hypnotherapist, body stress release practitioner and experienced many other modalities. Her search for healing took her to Tibet, India, Asia and then back to the United States. At that point she followed any and all recommenced allopathic medical treatments, course of prescription, medication and many complimentary medical suggestions. She found only temporary relief. The only possibility for relief that she had not been willing to do was the African healing.             

Gabriella surrendered and called a friend in South Africa. He told her to come back to South Africa and together they would go through the Sangoma initiation of the Ancestors. At this point she was completely disillusioned with life and ready to die. She was hearing the unheard and seeing the unseen. Back pain and emotional confusion plagued her daily with night sweats, dreams of snakes and body temperature swings to name a few of her symptoms. She moved to South Africa and began the long journey of healing and letting go of her life that she once lived. She embarked on a quest and committed to healing herself.

Gabriella met the Sangoma. She became his student, along with others suffering from similar maladies. The students lived in the African Bush. She danced, sang and ate the food of the ancestors. More pain came, excruciating pain that ran through her back, body, mind and spirit. Then over time slowly, slowly the pain began to subside. After six months and becoming pain free, she returned to the city and established a life in Cape Town, South Africa. There she lived for fifteen years. She didn't know how to integrate the rituals, ceremonies, the dress and belief system of the African Healing Tradition into daily life. She stopped dancing, moving, breathing and being in stillness.

The pain began to return, little by little. Gabriella began to explore ways to discover the factors that created the pain and discomfort. A friend told her about Kundalini Yoga. With practice and observation the pain subsided and seemed to be able to be controlled with participation in this yoga. It consisted of silence, stillness, breath, sound and movement. The same activities she did daily in the bush training as a Sangoma. With Kundalini Yoga she was able to maintain an elevation of energy that kept her above the pain. Only now in hindsight was she able to understand the awakening that was taking place inside her. 

Gabriella returned to the United States in 2006. She now has a private practice, travels, writes and teaches Kundalini Yoga, Sampoorna yoga, Tantra Kriya Yoga, meditation and facilitates Eyes of the Heart workshops. Through her own synthesis, integration and the experience of many others Eyes of the Heart workshops evolved. This workshop is the culmination of Gabriella insights of healings, ceremonies and techniques that she learned in her sojourns to various cultures and traditions. Gabriella shares with others how to access their own personal energy frequency. This enables them to be more present in their life. The opportunity to be responsive instead of reactive to people and situations then becomes accessible. She now assists others in integrating awakening experiences into daily life. Everyday becomes a spiritual experience and pregnant with personal growth.

Gabriella continues the process of her own evolution of consciousness through exploration, integration, travel, working with others, and study. She is currently in a graduate program at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock for professional and technical writing with an emphasis on non-fiction. If you, or someone you know, is interested in becoming more present and alive you are invited to join Gabriella and others for inner awakening adventures by attending  Eyes of the Heart Workshop  (See classes for schedule). 

If you or someone you know is experiencing symptoms such as neurological or psychiatric conditions that are confusing and disorienting careful evaluation to differentiate kundalini awakening and pathology are necessary.