EPISODE 042: My Work As A Soul Midwife with Felicity Warner

Soul Midwife, Felicity Warner, has had the privilege of sitting with many hundreds of people at the end of their lifetime. As a result, she has founded not just an organisation but a movement – The Soul Midwives Movement and her pioneering work over the last 25 years has brought a new dimension to holistic and spiritual palliative care. She has won two major national awards for her services to the dying and is the author of four acclaimed books.

Not only that, Felicity is also a Myrrhophore, “Mistress Of The Oils” – one of only a handful of people alive today, who hold knowledge of this four thousand year old sacred tradition – a tradition which uses the oils to soothe soul wounds and the light-body, to spiritually guide those passing to the other side.

This Week’s Episode

EPISODE 42 RESOURCES

Felicity Warner Facebook 

Felicity Warner Website

Felicity Warner Books on Amazon

About Psychic Matters Podcasts

Ann Théato, CSNUt, Psychic, Medium and Spiritual Tutor, investigates psychic development, mediumship techniques, and paranormal science, so that you can come to understand your own innate psychic ability and expand your knowledge, whilst learning to develop a curious mind.

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PM 042

Soul Midwife, Felicity Warner, has had the privilege of sitting with many hundreds of people at the end of their lifetime.  As a result, she has founded not just an organisation but a movement – The Soul Midwives Movement and her pioneering work over the last 25 years has brought a new dimension to holistic and spiritual palliative care.  She has won two major national awards for her services to the dying and is the author of four acclaimed books. 

You’ll Learn

• What a Soul Midwife does for the dying
• How to bring love and dignity to the dying
• Why we can still sense threshold energy several days after death
• What are the stages of dying?
• Why sacred oils have different frequencies
• How sacred oils magnify the light body
• Why we may have lost our confidence around dying people
• What the difference is between a spirit and a soul
• What a Myrrhophore is and how she works
  
  

TRANSCRIPT

Hello everybody! My name is Ann Théato and welcome to the Psychic Matters Podcast – episode number 42. 

This is what is coming up.

TRAILER

But just before we begin…hot news!

I just heard last night that Psychic Matters has made the final slate in the People’s Choice Podcast Awards!

Yes, if we go on to win, I shall sweep around my apartment in my house coat to that choon! HUGE THANKS to you, the listeners and podcast fans for voting – I so appreciate you taking time to do that and look what we have achieved together – the final slate!  whoo hoo!

But what does it mean to reach the final slate, I hear you ask?  It means that Psychic Matters, along with 9 other equally brilliant podcasts have reached the final TEN in the category of Religion & Spirituality.  What happens next is that the Podcast Awards Committee will invite journalists, podcast thought leaders, legacy podcasters, sponsors and individuals to independently review and vote to determine a winner in each category.  There is a Podcast Awards Ceremony on Thursday, Sept 30th @ 9 pm Eastern Standard Time streamed live on PodcastAwards.com as part of International Podcast Day.

Because we have reached the final slate, I now have to create and submit a 90 second acceptance video on the premise that we have won!  So, if anyone has any great ideas on what I should say – do email me – [email protected].

Meanwhile, it’s back to this week’s episode! 

My phenomenal guest this week has had the privilege of sitting with many hundreds of people at the end of their lifetime.  As a result, she has founded not just an organisation but a movement – The Soul Midwives Movement – teaching us how to bring love and dignity to the dying and their families.  Her pioneering work over the last 25 years has brought a new dimension to holistic and spiritual palliative care both here in the UK and in many countries abroad.  This lady is a respected lecturer, teacher and author of four acclaimed books, and she has won two major national awards for her services to the dying.  Not only that, she is also a Myrrhophore, “Mistress Of The Oils” – one of only a handful of people alive today, who hold knowledge of this four thousand year old sacred tradition – a tradition which uses the oils to soothe soul wounds and the light-body, to spiritually guide those passing to the other side.  I am absolutely delighted that she has been able to find time in her schedule to come and talk to us today about the incredible work that she does – Felicity Warner, welcome to Psychic Matters!

Felicity

Oh, Ann, it’s my honour to be with you and Ann, what a wonderful warm welcome you’ve     just given me and and, and such a write up! I do hope I live up to this.  It’s a joy to be speaking with you, it really is, so thank you very much for inviting me.

Ann

It’s such a pleasure, it’s great to have you here Felicity.  So, I know that your story began when you are around the age of 14 with your beloved grandmother’s death.  Are you able to tell us a little bit about that?

Felicity

Yes, absolutely.  It was, it was really the beginning of, of this journey, Ann, really working with people at end of life and trying to make that as good as possibly can be.  I was brought up by my grandmother from the age of 6.  My parents divorced and I went to live with her in Cornwall and I had a wonderful childhood, very Enid Blyton, picnics on the beach, and lots of swimming and ginger cake and ginger beer, all the rest of it.  She was wonderful and we were very, very close.  Now, she enjoyed life.  She was a big, wonderful, curvaceous lady.  She ate lots, and she drank lots, and she smoked a lot, and she developed lung cancer, and she was diagnosed with that when I was about 13, but like so many people she buried her head in the sand like an ostrich, and I think she thought, if I don’t think about this, it may go away or it may never happen, and I suppose she was very concerned by the fact that she was bringing me up and caring for me.  So that was another reason she, she had been told it was terminal, and so we just carried on as normal, with me increasingly doing more to help her, and with her decreasing in what was she was able to do.  And we, we did that brilliantly for a long time.  There was hardly any kind of change in our lives, but towards the end, she did become really, really poorly, and she was taken into hospital, and I didn’t see her at all for six weeks.  That was a big thing for me, because I was with her every day of my life, so not to see her for six weeks was huge, but the night she was dying, my father came and picked me up and took me to the hospital where she was, and I will never forget that night, because when I went in to see her, she was in the most horrible hospital room, with a, I remember now this strip light at the top of the bed, you know, across the bed, with this glaring light on her face, and it was harsh, and it smelt of disinfectant, and she was in a bed, it was a metal bed with all the sides pulled up like a cot, but the worst thing was, I looked at her and she’d shrunk.  She looked like a little monkey, from being this big, lovely, lovely woman, to this tiny little monkey, that was breathing in this very, very distressing way, and she was more or less unconscious, and all I felt I could do, was sort of put my hand through the bars in the bed, and I touched her foot, because I was a little bit frightened as well, because it was all so sort of scary, and she looked at me, just for a minute as if to say, oh I’m so sorry it’s come to this.  And it was just heart breaking.   That was such a poignant moment.  I wasn’t allowed to stay very long and then I was driven home again, and the neighbours who I was living with, you know, made me a hot glass of milk and put me in the bath, and so tried to get me ready for bed.  When I was in the bath, the weirdest thing happened, because I was crying my eyes out, thinking, what will be of my life now this, you know, I’m, I don’t know what’s going to happen, and I was crying and crying, thinking I know she’s dying, and then suddenly I had the strangest sensation. I stopped crying and I had a feeling that something amazing had just happened, and I even felt quite kind of joyful and I couldn’t understand it at all, I didn’t know what that was about.  I thought I’m going to be fine, I’m gonna be absolutely fine, but I had no reason for knowing that at all.  Anyway, the very next day, my father came to see me and he said he that Granny had died, and it had been at exactly that time I worked out, that I’d had that feeling.  Now I didn’t tell anyone about that feeling for years, but I now know, from having sat and supported so many families, that often when we’re very close to somebody at point of death, we can almost psychically connect with them, and share that moment of release, that they feel as they are leaving their bodies and dying.  And I feel now looking back, that was her last gift to me, because in experiencing that, in a way it took away my fear of death, and it gave me something very profound and very secure, as a sort of rock to anchor all the work I do on now.  But as I say, it took me a long time to be able to share that story, because like so many other people who have probably experienced that, there’s almost a guilt in explaining that you felt actually quite ecstatic almost, at a moment of death, so it was a very interesting thing to have experienced so early on.  And the other thing that I took from my grandmother’s death, was this overwhelming sensation of, oh my goodness, why is she in this dreadful room with the strip lights, and the iron bed and, and it was horrible, and I thought, even at the age of 14, one day when I’m a grown up, I’m gonna do something about this, and make sure that people die beautifully, and really loved because we’d had such a lovely home, which was so comfortable, and the cats were always with us, you know, it, it seemed such a sharp contrast.  So, really, she, she was the beginning of all of this, in her own special way.

Ann

What a wonderful lady and that’s such a beautiful story, told so beautifully, and I’m sure that everybody can really relate to that, you know, the pain of losing somebody, and then all of the things that you described, like the passing environment, and things that can seem so harsh and difficult.   You said there at one point, at point of death, we can psychically connect to someone.  Can you speak a little more about that?

Felicity

Yes, it’s always terribly difficult.  We don’t have good language when it comes to talking about these sort of psychic esoteric phenomena that happen around death, and as I’ll speak later on more about this, the whole death journey and, and, and the death process is full of extraordinary mysteries and, and things that happen.  I’ve certainly noticed with other people when I have sat with them, that around point of death, there is often a real shift of energy that happens, and sometimes the families sitting with them can feel it, and they tune into it as well, but sadly, a lot of people sitting at the bedside, are so immersed in their own emotion and grief about what’s happening, that they almost block the ability to be able to make that psychic link, with the loved one.  So, in a way, being a Soul Midwife, we’re a little bit privileged, because they haven’t got that real connection with a dying person, but we can sense that energetic shift going on.  So, I call that energy, just around point of death, I call it threshold energy and it’s very intense, and it can last anything from a few seconds to actually a few days, and sometimes you can walk into the room where someone has died,

still feel that afterglow of that energetic shift, so it’s very, very interesting, so a lot of my work these days, is actually understanding and interpreting the energetic and esoteric and psychic aspects of what’s actually going on within the dying process. So, its ongoing work really, Ann.

Ann

Gosh, it’s so fascinating, it absolutely fascinates me that you can feel that several days later -that it’s still there within the energy of the space in which the person has passed away.

Felicity

Yes, it is.  And actually there is  an interesting, I mean, it it’s been recorded a lot of times, by so many people, this energetic shift and spoken about, but certainly I always think back about George Harrison, you know, one of The Beatles.  He did a lot of work in his life preparing for death.  He did a lot of Transcendental Meditation, he did a lot of thinking around death and apparently when he died, and he went into death very consciously according to his, his wife and people close to him, and apparently when he died, his wife is reported to have said that the room seemed to fill with, with moviemaking lights, you know, there was an intensity of light and energy that filled the space, and so it certainly does, and that can take a little while to taper off again. It is it’s widely recorded, and actually, if you know where to look yeah.

Ann

That’s amazing and I think what you’re saying is absolutely right, that when you’re a relative of the person passing away, you’re so in shock and or can be so in shock, that you can’t psychically tune in, so therefore we do need someone like a Soul Midwife.  So, you had this experience with your grandmother, and then how did the soul midwifery, the soul midwife work begin to come from there?

Felicity

Yes, well it took a long time obviously.  I was only 14, just 14 when she died. I had always been interested in, in medicine and healing. I come from a family of healers, and I had hoped to actually, to study medicine, but as a result of her dying, my education completely went bonkers, and I went to live abroad, I went to live in Copenhagen, where I really lived a very free-range life.  I didn’t really go to school anymore, so that, that meant medicine was out the window, but my other love is writing, and I love talking to people, I love people’s stories.  So I became a journalist and I became a health journalist, and it was wonderful, because I was able to write about complementary medicine, which was a great passion of mine, but also lots of clinical things as well, and you know, operations. I used to go and watch operations and things like that and I became very interested in writing about palliative care, really bringing in the sort of the ideas and the thoughts that I’d had around my grandmother again.  So I got very interested in Hospice work, and seeing how, Hospice work was a clever kind of in between place of, of not sort of being like a hospital but bringing in very gentle and loving sort of philosophies in caring for the dying, and at that time, and we’re talking, gosh, you know, it’s a long time, 30 years ago, plus, I began working with six women who had breast cancer, and they all knew that they had had a terminal diagnosis, so they knew they were dying, and they were all young, they all had children.  And my work at that stage was to talk to them about how that felt, how it felt to be young, how it felt to be young and dying, how they were coping with that, how are the people around them were coping with that, and I did that work for a number of years, with six of them, and got to know them very, very, very well and was with three of them at the end of life.  And I began suggesting sort of complementary medicine ideas, to help them, you know, breathing techniques, creative visualisations to relax them, working with certain essential oils as well, working with music, you know.  There were all sorts of things that I, I sort of instinctively was saying, oh you know, I’m sorry you can’t sleep, I’m sorry you have pain at the moment, have you thought of xy and Z? And I suddenly found that I was becoming less the journalist and more the therapist.  And so eventually I realised that had to be my work, I did want to just be writing about it any more, I wanted to actually have a therapeutic relationship with people who are dying.  Of course there is no role for somebody who wasn’t medically trained to work with the dying, so in a way, I had to go and invent one, so I went to work.  I went to volunteer at a local Hospice where they did know me, so that was a great advantage, and I sat there with hundreds of people who were at the end of life, as a companion.  Sometimes feeding them, because many of these people couldn’t feed themselves anymore, and I started seeing things about death and dying I would never have guessed before, not only the practical things like how people are when they’re very ill, but also, you know, going back to these mysterious things that happen, you know, like walking into a room where someone is very close to death, and they’re having a conversation with someone in the room, who you can’t see, but they are having an absolutely lucid conversation about XY&Z.  We call these sort of death-bed visions now, there are so many stories around these extraordinary happenings, and again I thought I need to know more about this.  So, in a way I did well, I did a lot of fieldwork and research to understand what was happening and that was the beginning of soul midwives.  Although for a long time, it was just me, you know, I was that sort of lone woman who was saying, hang on a minute, this is really interesting, we need to know more about this, and not only that, we need to connect up a lot of dots, because I could see the clinical work was amazing, of course, you know all the drugs being used, and symptom control, but people also need a lot of love and kindness and support in other ways.  So that it was, it became work about joining and becoming a bridge in a way, between the clinical work, and the holistic world and spiritual world, as well.

Ann

Wow, it just, it continues to fascinate me, I could just sit here listening and listening and listening.  Talk to me then Felicity, about the, the stages of death and the stages of dying, I think people would be interested in that.

Felicity

Yes, that’s something that has really come out of this work, and we have a, a therapeutic and diagnostic model now, when we’re working with dying people, which helps us when we can see where they’re at, which part of the journey, then we will know how best to help them, and this is all using holistic therapies. I got the idea from this, from other medical systems, mainly eastern ones, so I looked at traditional Chinese medicine, and Tibetan medicine and Ayurvedic medicine, which all had an incredible, and very precise sort of map of the dying process, that we don’t have in western medicine, and the difference was that they were looking at a dying person, not only in terms of their, the disease or the illness that are dying from, which, which would be the medical view, they’re actually looking at the whole person. So, who that person is, how they respond to things, what sort of core energetic type they are.  What, what sort of, you know, food they like to eat, or things they like to do, all that would be factored in, because that would actually affect the way that they would die.  So I absorbed myself in a lot of this knowledge, and then drew up a model, which really looked at seeing who we are when we are well, in terms of energy, and looking at elements.  So, we look at earth and water and fire and air and when, you know, we consist of that within our bodies energetically, but when we’re dying, those elements leave, they ebb away and they leave for the last time and this was the basis of this model.  So, for instance, the earth element is the first one to leave the body, and earth gives us our vitality and our strength and our feet on the ground.  It keeps us earthed.  When that element starts to leave, and that can take anything up to 10 years if we’re looking at old age, when it starts to leave, we start having little subtle things that show us, like we start stumbling and falling, you know, many old people have falls, they’re not earthed any more, the earth element is leaving the body.  They get tired, they’re not, they’re not as up for doing all the things they used to be doing, so that’s earth.  The next stage is water, and that’s to do with, with a deep sort of subconscious with the psyche.  It’s a time where people start talking about their earlier lives, their childhood, bringing up all those memories, and that can last a couple of years, you know, people bringing stuff up, wanting to look at family pictures, and tell you who people were.  The next element, the fire element, comes much closer towards actual death, and it’s, and it’s a period when people are agitated, they are very anxious. They may be seeing visions in, at the beds, you know, while they’re in bed, they’re plucking at the bed, clothes, it’s called terminal agitation, actually in medicine, but we recognise it as this burning of of all the stuff we don’t need to take with us anymore.  So psychically it’s about getting rid of all the dross in our life and it’s really important to do that before we die, because we don’t want to take it with us.  So this releases a lot of all of that.  And then the last stage is air and, you know, we come in on a breath, we’re born, we breathe, and then, when we’re dying, we take that last breath, and so the air stage is all about breath, and the body completely sort of closing down, but spiritually, as that is happening, as the body is becoming less and less strong and able, our inner self begins to sometimes blossom, so we get people who suddenly, are our understanding the meaning of life, are they’re suddenly seeing things with a different perspective.  So, I’ve put that terribly simply, you could actually do a three-year degree course on that, but that is it in a nutshell.

Ann

Yeah goodness, gosh that’s so amazing that you’ve observed all of these different changes overtime.

Felicity

Yeah, it’s been very interesting.  It’s taken a long time but the, the joy is it works, this model and also I teach it to nurses and doctors, you know, and at the beginning, I can offer to think they might be thinking, I wonder what this is about, but by the time I’ve got halfway through, you know, these green lights are just coming on, and they’re saying, oh yes, I, we, we see that all the time, we really understand that, so that’s quite a joy as well, to be able to sort of get that sort of, you know, confirmation, that they are also seeing that sort of thing but there’s this deeper understanding about it, which we’re able to share.

Ann

Yes, it’s interesting, what about, you talked about the Chinese and Tibetan way of looking at the mind, body, spirit, as it were during the dying process, but we don’t have that here.  Is that something that used to happen last or is it just a difference between East and Western medicines?

Felicity

I think it’s a big difference between East and West but I do think that, you know, centuries ago, here in the West, we did know, we did know how to sit with the dying, and it was all done within the community, so you know, we, we’ve all heard about that, that sort of village wise woman, who would come and help deliver the babies, but she’d also sit with the dying and she would just know what to do.  She’d watch for the signs, and she’d know to sort of hold a hand, or maybe sing or, or maybe sort of swaddle the dying person in a blanket, so I think, you know, as long as man has been on the planet, we have known what to do, but I think the sad thing is, that in the last 60 or 80 years or so, more people die away from home in hospitals, and so we’ve kind of lost our connection with it, and I think we’ve also lost our confidence.  So we are a little bit scared now, specially if we see someone with machines all around them, you know, we’re scared we’re going to undo something by mistake, or, or, or do the wrong thing ,so I think we, we probably do understand these deeper things, but they’ve become covered up, or masked a bit.

Ann

So, if somebody employed the services of a Soul Midwife, what would that entail, Felicity?

Felicity

Oh well, so there are now, oh gosh, nearly 1,000 Soul Midwives in the UK, and also abroad which is so, I mean that is such a joy, and they’re doing, wow they’re doing amazing work with families and loved ones and people who have no families to help them.  And so, we always say the best scenario is if people contact us early on, so if they have just had a diagnosis and they can start working with us, we can do so much more for them.  We can get to know them very, very well and build up confidence and trust.  We can be advocates to them and let them know what their choices are and what things are available.  We can help them focus on what is important to them, in terms of achieving a good death, because we’ve all got a different idea about what a good death will be.  So, if we can have that conversation with them and get something written down, a bit like a birth plan, but an end-of-life wish plan, that is a very helpful thing and puts people’s mind at rest. You know, if they can do some thinking with someone who can help them with that, and not rush them, and just support them and encourage them, that can take a lot of the burden off someone who is very poorly and then once that has been done, they can go off and do a few things that they really want to do and will still enjoy doing.  So then as they go through the dying process, then we are able to do more therapeutic work, calming, soothing, helping teach their families things that they can be doing as well to support the person, and then finally perhaps vigiling in the final hours if that is required.  So, people find soul midwives to help them by sort of word of mouth, some GP’s are referring patients to soul midwives, it is growing, more people are hearing about it, so that is really good, so the word is getting out there a lot more.

Ann

Gosh it must be so satisfying for you knowing that there is 1,000 already and so many more to come, that is amazing work Felicity.  If you are not able to get hold of a Soul Midwife for any reason, how can people best support their own dying relatives or friends?

Felicity

Yes, that is a really good question Ann.  There are so many things that we can do at the bedside.  I think one of the biggest things to really bear in mind, is to take our own agenda out of what we are offering. You know, this is about the dying person, and it is not about our needs, it is about their needs, so it is about really listening to what they are saying, and also really listening to what they are not saying as well.  It is about giving your time, giving your absolutely love and focus.  It is about asking really, how best you can be helping them.  For some people, the fact that their cat may not be being looked after, may be their number one worry, they might not be worrying that they are dying but the fact that their cat might not be being fed might be huge.  So, to do something very practical to say, we’ll set up a rota of people to come and feed your cat, could be one of the best things you can do, or it could be that they just want to tell you things in the past that are worrying them, that they want to get off their chest.  Now, these are all things that soul midwives do all the time. For families it can be hard because you know that person so well, and you have so many connections and dynamics that it can help to have a neutral stranger like a soul midwife who can be doing some of that for you.  But I think that the number one piece of advice I would give when I am just helping anybody who is going in to see someone who is dying, is to slow down everything you do.  And it’s so simple that, but instead of bustling and being your, you know, normal kind of busy self, and opening the doors and banging, I would say, just really bring your energy down, and slow yourself right down, speak slowly, speak calmly, move slowly, do all of that, when you walk into the room where there’s a dying person, because dying people are so sensitive to everything, that anything jarring can create a tension in them, so that would be my number one piece of advice.

Ann

That’s really great advice, thanks for sharing that Felicity, and if somebody is listening to this and think, do you know what, I really feel called to be a Soul Midwife or find out about what it entails, how do they do that?

Felicity

Well, Ann, that for me these days, I think teaching and being able to pass on this, is my life’s work, even more now than it was, is sitting with dying people.  I love to work and teach people how to do this, so I run a school which is based in Dorset, it is called the Soul Midwives School and I teach all aspects of end of life care.  Mini courses, longer trainings to become Soul Midwives, whatever, but it’s all on Zoom at the moment because of Covid, but it works very well, so people can come and learn how to be Soul Midwives with us, and it’s, it’s, you see everyone can be a soul midwife, and a lot of people are already soul midwives at heart, but they will just need some training and guidance into how to do that safely, safely for them, but also safely for our dying people, who are very vulnerable, so you, you do need to have that sort of structure in place.  And then we look after everybody who has trained to be a soul midwife as well, coz that’s really important.  The work is challenging, and so you need to be really looked after while you’re doing the work, so that’s another sort of aspect of, of our teaching community in a way.

Ann

And what is great about it all, I know it’s awful, coz we can’t go anywhere because of COVID across the world, but your teaching is able to reach people in turn countries, so anybody listening to this can learn with you via Zoom can they not?

Felicity

Oh, that has been one of the unexpected blessings of COVID, because to start with, my heart stopped.  I thought, how on earth am I going to be able to carry on with my teaching? And then of course Zoom appeared. It was always there, but I’d never heard of it before, and now I’m able to have students all over the world, so I have students in the States and Canada and Australia and New Zealand and bless them, that often up all night joining us on a teaching, and they’ve got their pyjamas on and they’re drinking cocoa as we’re waking up having our coffee.  It’s, it’s the most amazing sensation, having students all over the world. Were all joining in like a big family, so it works really well.

Ann

That’s fantastic.  Felicity, tell us about your work as a Myrrhophore.

Felicity

Yeah, well I mentioned earlier, that I went to live in Copenhagen as a teenager, and I was very lucky there.  And my mother was she, gave me a very free reign, and I met some very interesting people, and one friend who was an opera singer said to me one day, I’m taking you to visit somebody very unusual, as she’d like to meet you, and I know you’ll like meeting her.  So, I was taken to, aged 15, to meet this amazing woman, called Luce De Gras and she was, she was quite old by the time I met her.  She had long, platinum grey, white sort of hair, red glasses, and she was very intense and she had this beautiful apartment, and she had all these bottles on shelves, little tiny bottles, and I went to tea with her and she was quite guarded, quite cautious but after tea she said to me, pick some bottles off my shelf, you know, have a little go, bring them to me, and we will sniff them.  So, I really didn’t know what we were doing, but I got these bottles, and took the lids off, and … wow this is amazing, what is it?  And then, you know, feelings of, you sort of, trudging through the forest in the snow, one of these bottles took me way off to another place, another lifetime really, and she just watched me.  She watched, watched and saw what affect these oils were having on me, and it turned out that she was a myrrophore, so that is a woman who works with myrrh or a mistress of the oils, and she belongs and was the lineage holder, of a very ancient way of working with sacred oils, based in, sort of temple practice, and healing and sort of ritual practice, but for doing very deep healing of spirit and soul. And over a period of about three years, she taught me how to work with these sacred oils.  So amongst them are oils like rose, and sandalwood, oils, that we know quite well, but also some quite unusual ones, that you’ve probably never heard of and I, I really entered an apprenticeship with her, and it was quite gruelling.  She was very tough.  She wasn’t particularly smiley, or friendly even.  What she did was, she, she had to test me, to check that I could faithfully work with the frequencies that the oils have, because they all have frequencies.  Some of them are very high, and some are very low, and in order to work effectively, and safely, you have to be able to hold frequency, and energy, so part of my training was just in doing that. Then I left Copenhagen eventually, and she died many years ago now.  So, I’ve carried on with the learning, and with tradition, and I’m now teaching some people how to work with these oils and the results have been extraordinary, especially using these oils in working with the dying.  There’s a great connection between soul midwifery and being a myrrhophore, they work incredibly well together, but you can work with sacred oils for any aspect of life really, so it isn’t just for the dying,

Ann

And you talk about the oils having high frequency or low frequency, and I read in your beautiful book, that everybody simply must buy, the Sacred Oils book, I read there, we’ll speak about that in a minute, but I read in that book, that high frequency oils like frankincense, myrrh, cedar, magnify the light body, and are able to raise or lower a person’s vibration.  How does that work?

Felicity

Well, it’s, it all sounds a bit Star Trek, but actually it’s all born out in, in sort of quantum physics.  It’s amazing how these energetic worlds are becoming understand, by understood by modern science.  So every, every oil has its own specific energy signature, or frequency and so some are high, and they tend to resonate with spirit, and others are very low frequency oil, and they tend to resonate with the soul.  I’ll just explain the difference in my parlance between spirit and soul.  So spirit will be to do with who we are in this body, in this lifetime.  So, it’s who you are, what you love doing, what, what you know, the essence of who you’ve been, to do with identity in this lifetime, and that evaporates and goes off at time of death really, and doesn’t last that long, usually, but soul is the eternal aspect of who we are, so it goes on and on and on, its infinite and eternal. So, so these frequencies, they, they resonate and match with the frequency of the person we’re working with, so I’ll give a very simple explanation… if I’m working with somebody who is suffering from extreme grief, they are so grief stricken that they can hardly, their life is blocked, they are so, so locked into this.  That blockage will send out a frequency from their body. Now, I will work with a Violet oil, which has the same frequency as the frequency that they are releasing from their body, so that the two frequencies will match like this, and the violet oil, how it works, it will then re balance and realign, so in doing that, it’s released the sort of the blockage that’s happening with the person who’s got the grief.  Does that sort of, does that begin to make sense?

Ann

Yeah, that makes perfect sense.  That’s such a good explanation as well.  It makes it very easy to visualise, and see how that works, so thank you for going through that and explaining it.  I’m thinking about us as psychic mediums, you know, we are taught to simply move our conscious mind to one side, and that we don’t need any tool to work with the spirit world, which is absolutely true, we don’t. the spirit world are right there all the time.  But I’m just wondering, if working with a high frequency oil in terms of deep meditation or trance in order to connect with spirit, would enhance in some way, so I wondered what your thoughts were around that?

Felicity

Oh, absolutely.  So, these sacred oils, when we work with them, and we have to work with them in a in a certain sort of, with certain steps.  We can’t just sort of open the bottle and go, wow, we have to go to certain stages, in order to access the frequencies that they have, and the deeper the work we want to do, the higher, the more work we have to do with the oil beforehand. So, it will only give us on a need to know basis really. And then we have to work at going to a higher level at working with each oil, but the oils certainly can act as portals to higher consciousness, and can be such valuable tools if we want to be doing any sort of higher consciousness energy work, and so I would use, supposing I want to be able to access information, let’s just say the akashic record, something like that, I may well work with an oil such as Elemi, and I will meditate with it, and it will enable me to, to, to magnify my light body enough to be able to access places that I’m not normally able to access.

Ann

I’m going straight out to buy some.

Felicity

Do, it’s a wonderful oil, you will love it, Ann!

Ann

I’m so excited about it.  How then Felicity, do sacred oils that you’ve just spoken about, differ from an aromatherapy oil, say for instance?

Felicity

Ah well, in many cases they are the same oil that’s used for aromatherapy, as used in the myrrophore lineage. Aromatherapy is a much, much more modern way of working with oils, and often it, you know, it depends on, on, on the smell, and that, and part of its therapeutic use is to do with the smell, not always.  With, with the way we use the oils, the smell is often a red herring, it’s really about working with the vibrational aspect of the oil, rather than the smell, and also in modern aromatherapy, will be using it probably in massage or, or in a burner in the room or whatever.  All our sacred oils are used with ourselves, the myrrhophore becoming the vessel, healing vessel, for them, transmitting the energy of the oil, so it’s about subtle transference of energy rather than massage or anything like that.

Ann

Beautiful, and of course you’ve written this incredible book, tell us about the book you’ve written about these sacred oils?

Felicity

Oh, that’s so kind of you to, to say that.  Well, I had to write this book, it was shouting at me. I, I really didn’t want to for a long time, because it’s been such a, I want to say private, that’s not the right word, it’s been such a sacred part of my inner work, that I really didn’t feel I wanted to write about it, cause that almost felt commercial, and that felt like a dishonouring of something very sacred to me, but it kept on coming up, write this down, write this down.  Sacred oils are really important, for now, and when I started writing the book about three years ago, as I said, I felt a little bit uneasy, but this intense message that kept coming was, this is important for this time, and I, in the end I just had to go with it. Looking back now, it was all about approaching this incredible time that we’ve had, this challenging time, that covid has brought, and about transition, about how we are all in such a major time of transition. And looking back, the oils knew exactly, you know, what, what we were coming up, coming up to, and so now it all makes sense, whereas at the time, as I say, I wasn’t really quite sure, so I, so I’ve got, I’ve got the book here, so I, I just wrote it, and it and wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote and then it all came out, but there was so much more that I could say, and I really want to do the next book, because there are another 20 oils as well, that are really sort of important for us to be working with at the moment, and in the next few years, so I feel a sense of urgency about that really.

Ann

And your book is called Sacred Oils –  that’s, that’s the title of it, isn’t it, Sacred Oils – Working With 20 Precious Oils To Heal Spirit And Soul by Felicity Warner.  And people can pick that up from where, Felicity?

Felicity

Anywhere.  Bookshops, Amazon, the library, it is quite widely available.

Ann

And tell us about your other books as well, because I’ve got them all of course, because I just am such a huge fan of your work, although I did give your book A Safe Journey Home to a friend, whose friend was dying, and they found it very useful.  So, you’ve written A Safe Journey Home, tell us about that, and then you’ve written The Soul Midwives Handbook, so can you say little about those?

Felicity

Yes so I’ve got, yes A Safe Journey Home, I wrote that, really early on in my days, just sort of developing soul midwifery and it was very much I wanted a book that people could sit with at the bedside, and it would be simply written, and they could just read it, and then see what they could be doing themselves.  So it’s a sort of companion for anybody who’s sitting with someone who’s dying, and so that was that one, and then the next one, which is The Soul Midwives Handbook and that it’s, it’s a mixture really, of more stories about the bedside, but a real sort of handbook about, you know, this is what you can do when that’s happening, and it’s more of a sort of textbook almost, but a very readable textbook, you know, it’s not a sort of heavy duty one, it’s got a lot of spiritual advice in it, and it’s got a lot of, just sort of very practical day to day advice, it’s got oils in it, it’s got the dying process in it, it is about listening with the heart, seeing with the hands, it’s about healing and energy techniques, so there’s an awful lot in that one, and it’s, it’s rather nice, cos I do get letters sometimes from doctors and nurses who use it in their work and I love that because obviously they are out there doing, you know the hard core medical stuff, but they’re also looking at this and saying, oh, I tried such and such and that works very, very well so that’s lovely to know it’s it’s in those hands as well.

Ann

Yeah, I mean how lovely, and what an accolade when doctors and nurses start to contact you about using your work and using that book as a tool to help other people, I mean what more could you want really from…

Felicity

Yeah, I know, it’s, it’s always a joy when, when that happens.

Ann

So, I have one sort of final question for you Felicity. I was wondering if it’s possible to go back in time to be a soul midwife.  I know, a lot of listeners know as well, that I lost my brother in and you know this, in February this year, and because of COVID regulations, I wasn’t allowed to go in and see him in the last two weeks his life, but I did get the call and I was very blessed to be able to stay with him for his last three hours with us here, which was an honour and beautiful, but I know that there are lots of people who didn’t even have that with their loved ones when they’ve passed over, they didn’t have any time at all, and I’m just wondering if there’s some sort of healing we can do by going back in time.  Can you speak a little about that?

Felicity

Oh goodness me, this touches my heart hugely, Ann, because I lost my own father 18 months ago and you know, despite all the work that I do and have done, I wasn’t able to be with him.  His last 12 hours were in hospital and nobody was allowed to be with him, and I really had to use all my, my absent healing skills, to support him through that journey and also to honour him afterwards, because I didn’t know for a period of hours actually, really what had happened to him, I didn’t know where his body was resting, various things, so, yes, one of the this question is coming up quite a lot, and it’s really important, I think, that we as the mourners, we’re still grieving, that we have something that we can be doing.  So, a couple of suggestions: one is that we, we set up a very simple altar of some kind in a corner of our room.  It doesn’t need to be anything huge, perhaps a candle, perhaps a beautiful crystal, perhaps, you know, something from outside, a feather, or a beautiful rose, set up an altar, and then just do some gentle breathing, let the big wide world disappear for a few minutes, and literally connect with your loved one, speak to them.  You may have a photograph of them there as well, and just have that conversation with them, you know, along the lines of, I, you know, I wasn’t able to be with you, or, or we only had that tiny short time together, but please know, you know, how loved you are, how you’re surrounded with light, how we are never truly parted, you know, you can say whatever it is that’s meaningful to you, but to actually have kind of had the intention of honouring and having that conversation with them, I think can be really, really helpful, and actually work I do quite a lot of, is with people who lost loved ones years ago, many, many, many years ago, and they won’t, and its troubled them ever since that they were never able to be, so again, you could create a small altar or space, and set up a conversation with them, and just bring closure and healing to that, to that death, so that it’s been closed in the sort of circle, and with love, and I think a lot of people find that very, very comforting.

Ann

I think that’s a beautiful idea to actually do now, what you couldn’t do then, and honour that person in that way, I think that’s beautiful, thank you Felicity I’m  sure that would be very helpful to a lot of people. So I don’t want to stop talking to you, but you shared so much with us, you know, thank you so much, I please let us know, everybody is listening how they can get hold of you if they want to learn more about the work you do.

Felicity

OK Ann, so I have a website its, www.soulmidwives.co.uk, I absolutely love hearing from people so you know, don’t hold back, do you get in touch, and yeah, it’s just great to meet everybody, and you know, anyone who’s interested in death and dying, it’s lovely to have that connection with them, so do get in touch it would be lovely.

Ann

Thank you so much Felicity, I love talking to you I’m so appreciative, as are the listeners I’m sure, of you sharing your fantastic knowledge and congratulations for everything that you’ve done for so many other people in this lifetime that you’ve led, it is just incredible work.

Felicity

Well, I’ve been blessed and I’m very honoured, but thank you so much Ann, and thank you for inviting me to be on your show, it’s lovely to be chatting to you it really is.

Ann

Felicity Warner everybody – please do go to her website and take a look at the courses she is offering and the work she is doing in the world – I’m studying with her myself, I have started down the road of becoming a Soul Midwife and definitely do go and buy her books – so far she has written four of them – each one is brilliant and I know that there are more books that she has planned, so do keep an eye out for those.

If you’d like to get the links & show notes, including a complete transcription plus details of where to find Felicity Warner on social media, head over to www.anntheato.com and you can pick those up there.

While you are there, take a look at some of the courses I have coming up – there is a fantastic course I am teaching online very soon actually in just a week – Perceiving Landscape & Places In Your Mediumship – so do consider – go to the website have a look at the details for that one, that is going to be really, really exciting if you are into mediumship.  If you are not into mediumship and you want to try out something like past life regression, I have got a past life regression month that I am teaching, or facilitating really, at The Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Centre online, so come along and experience one of those, because it just  might just change your life.  They are really exciting, and over four weeks we will be journeying to both a past life and a future life – we will be meeting your guides and guardians in a life between lives journey; we will be journeying to the spirit world so that you can spend time once again with friends, family, and those we have loved, talking to them, holding them, asking for their guidance.  It really is going to be a powerful month – and it’s only £40 for all four sessions – or you can book just one individual one, it is up to you – so do book for that at ….https://www.arthurconandoylecentre.com.

And on Saturday November 6^th – you can come to my GYPSY MAGIC one day workshop and learn the art of scrying – we will be using a crystal ball to do that.  And I am also teaching

How To Develop & Use Psychometry– online with the College of Psychic Studies – that is a one day workshop taking place on Saturday November 27^th, so if you are interested in that, do come along and, I’m telling you there are so many courses coming up, I am also teaching a fantastic course called Elemental Divination alongside Spirit Messenger, Tyrone Cusack, that is coming up on 23 & 24 October, it is back by popular demand, because people really enjoyed it last time.  We are working with  the four elements, fire, earth, air & water to pick up information psychically from our recipient – so do come and join us for that –  and you can book any or all of those courses – just go visit my website and all the details are on there www.anntheato.com.  For my courses you can book directly on my website and for College of Psychic Studies and The Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Centre – you can book directly on their websites. 

For now, I’m eternally grateful to you, as ever, for your incredible support for this podcast and for your fabulous listening ears.

Until next time, my name is Ann Théato, and thank you for listening to Psychic Matters!