JOHN OVERTON

Professional musician 
keyboard player (organist, pianist and harpsichordist) composer and conductor

Practitioner of alternative healing therapies 
a Karuna Reiki^© Master Teacher, and a healing facilitator - trained in Acupressure/Traditional Chinese Medicine, Q'ero shamanism and the study and practice of Sacred Sexuality

Mentor 
through transformational workshops and individual one-on-one support

“I was born in England, spending a childhood split between my parents, my mother’s sister and a number of private schools. My early world was primarily musical and religious. I felt somewhat odd; I spent much time pondering my own experiences of spiritual and musical mysteries, and fathoming how they might fit into my familial world and the liturgical and musical traditions of the High Church Anglicanism in which I was immersed. One of my deepest joys was making up and playing worship. I loved improvising on the piano (and later on the organ.) I read a wide variety of books (we had no television until I was in my teens.) I knew about the reality of miracles, but I perceived few outside my inner play-world. 

Deep sensuality and sexuality emerged in me early. This confused me; there seemed no place for them in the orthodoxies of either my church (except as Abuse) or in “acceptable society” (which I challenged from an early age!). I had mystical and galactic visions well into my teens; eventually I began to learn to take these as "over-realistic imaginings" of an artistic soul. I had a mixture of inner conviction and deep guilt in me and an often pervading sense of inadequacy about who I sensed I was. From around the age of nine, music and Church and a few deep friends and not a few outside successes sustained and nourished me. By 13 I was already having some of my compositions performed; by 15 I was an assistant organist in the school chapel. I often found myself organising networks of people where no-one had really thought of doing it before. Deeper inside me, I found English life limiting. 

After boarding school and university (studying music at New College in Oxford,) despite some success in music, I took the first opportunity to emigrate. There is a strange, contrary nature within me; since I love warm climates and sensitive, artistic ventures, I found myself choosing Sweden, where I started teaching English as a Foreign Language and absorbing myself in Business Communications! I married (twice) and became a family man, whilst my secret self searched and yearned to find another soulful and earthly type of home.

For a while, as Director of a Business Communications and Language Centre in Malmö, I had the paid opportunity to immerse myself in all of that which lies deeper in our learning process. I spent much enthusiastic energy studying and doing exercises in the Feldenkrais Method, W Reich and his Orgone Energy and armouring, Counselling, Silent Way, Suggestopædia, Authentic Situational Learning and unscripted Role Play as well as plunging myself into such authors as Peter Russell and Ken Carey. Our business language clients became somewhat unwitting guinea-pigs in the renewal and transformation of body-based learning strategies! Most of them left our learning studio greatly re-empowered.

The opportunity came to work full-time as an organist in a very liturgically-aware Swedish church. I was unable to resist this adult recreation of my musico-religious childhood waters! After retraining myself in Music at Malmö's Musikhögskola, I emerged as a “fully-fledged musician” able to take my place conducting and playing in orchestras, composing for choirs and chamber groups, and forming an Authentic Ensemble which played 17th and 18th-century works by often forgotten composers. We started a yearly music festival and I toured abroad with my choirs. I was determined to make use of my musical opportunities; it was fun being “successful in the world,” but this was a life that was taking its hidden toll.

I was unexpectedly bought out of my cherished job; this was the catalyst which prompted me to go back to those forgotten childhood visions as well as what I had learnt while teaching language and communication. At a deeper level, I was thrown into coming to terms with the guilt, anger and feelings of inner homelessness I could no longer shake off or bury.

I believe that for many people there is one special therapy or modality or person that is the pivot for that change in life which is crying to be born. For me, Rebirthing (Source Breathing) with Lena Kristina Tuulse and her team from Wäxthuset was the turning-point, the beginning of the return to Who I Really Am.  There were many week-long experiences of challenging transformation, surrounded by unconditional, but demanding, Love. I complemented the breathing by learning massage and Hatha yoga, delving thirstily into esoteric books and allowing myself to start to shed the outward trappings of the church-authorized me (all the while challenging, in my private life, everything I’d ever learned!) My quest to find the miracles of Jesus in modern life led me to Reiki healing; in fact, Reiki found me (my massage teacher IngaLill Kjellqvist was a Reiki Master.) My initial quest to (re-)learn healing for myself soon became the conviction that I was to teach others.

I studied and practised to became a Reiki Master, later travelling to the USA to be trained and attuned as a Karuna Reiki© Master by Laurelle Shanti Gaia of the International Center for Reiki Training. Laurelle's healing quest resonated deeply with my own; we had both started our healing journey by "deciding" to know how to heal like Jesus! 

At this time, I also started to learn and practice Tantra, and other transformational paths using what, in the west, is now called sacred sexuality. As a result of these studies and the practical work involved, the healing energies through my body were suddenly flowing as never before. I met and learned from Sandy Levey-Lundén, and, for a time, assisted on her courses. My work with Sandy brought me into intimate contact with the principles and practical applications of ACIM (A Course in Miracles). Though ACIM has never felt completely right for me, it showed me the guiding principle of all real transformation - that the path to any change is not external, it is inside us; by taking absolute responsibility for everything in our own lives, miracles start occuring.  

When I got back to Sweden I taught Reiki, gave attunements and healing sessions, played music and started to honour my inner visions. I studied Acupressure and Traditional Chinese Medicine at KroppsHarmoni TerapeutSkolan, learnt Ishayas’ Ascension (www.ishaya.org) and for a while, followed the path of Shamanism with a Peruvian shaman. I had also started to “channel” and eventually this lead me into giving up my new musical job and allowing the deeper changes that were to come to me.

It was then I started to sense that I was on the way to that "home" which had been evading me. There was so much more waiting to be born into Life. However, despite all the reading, all the healing and all the new circle of transformational friends, I had not yet understood that it is the journey that is the meaning of life - I had thought I was "about to arrive."

A intense period of fallow followed – nearly a year in England gave way to a time in SW Ireland. It was in SW Ireland I had been shown that a worship and healing centre was to be built. Sometimes I trusted, sometimes I despaired – but the autodidact in me was re-discovering my hidden shaman and "starchild" selves. Reading Barbara Hand Clow , the Marciniaks and Zecharia Sichin gave me new insights into human origins; I realised my childhood visions were more than just dreams. I found myself opening up to divine "magick" and understanding that it is in the sacred healing of inner human feelings of disempowerment that our paths are transformed into ones towards peace and joy. Two Q'ero shamans came to Ireland (!) and gave me an initiation; this fulfilled a vision I'd been given 3 years earlier! 

I have always had a longing for beauty in a modern world that I see has so much ugliness. 

Now the longing to live by beauty had become a passionate yearning, a yearning for depth in the face of cultural "dumbing-down," for community space to re-discover healing and wholeness, away from noise, for church worship that re-connects us in body as well as spirit, and for an art and music that reflect both "the higher beauty and order of things" as well as the energy of the joys of the ecstatic life.

It is often said that we teach what we need to learn.

I have understood that my Soul Purpose here on Earth is to learn, live and teach Boundless, Sensual, Ecstatic, Physical Life. Not in a space devoid of Connection, but of necessity, as a walk-with-the-Divine in everything; to feel, experience, and live God; to breathe the life of the Creator Spirit upon Earth.

The means are many. Those that involve my own healing mission act through Deep Touching and Life-transformation workshops, through Healing Attunements, through opening to our starchild selves (Daoist and other sacred Sexuality Practice are wonderful ways to do this,) through space-clearing/Earth energy-work and powerful shamanic practices (as instruments of God,) through the Breath, through working with Abundance and ability-to-receive issues, through liberated Artistic Play and through Joyful Life Celebration. There are many more.

I still play and write music, though now in a more relaxed way. I play the organ for services, give chamber concerts, accompany and help singers/instrumentalists through spaces of tension and loss of voice/technique.  I lead workshops, do personal healing sessions and help bring balance to houses/buildings and places of Earth trauma. An important focus of my Life now, is living the vision of the worship and healing centre, Christal Temple. The Celtic healing connection is deep within. I am excited to see how it will manifest on the Earth."

John Overton October 2007