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There are times when you should just say no to a suggestion. For example, when your friend who is a shaman suggests he buries you alive for ‘healing’.
I was depressed and angry all the time at where my life was going – no boyfriend, stressful job at which I felt underappreciated, and lots of health problems from being overweight – so I asked my friend, Ross Heaven, if he could do me a shamanic healing. I expected a bit of incense, some drumming and a nice, relaxing lie-down. Instead he suggested I dig my own grave and lie down in it overnight in Sussex woodland. He promised that it would be completely transformative. All I could think of was that it would be like the movie Kill Bill, in which Uma Thurman’s character is buried alive.
I agreed to it since I was so desperate and it sounded intriguing. I called up the Sussex council for the area I wanted to be buried in and asked for permission to do it. I could hear someone spluttering over their coffee, but when I mentioned ‘shamanic healing’, the permission was given since they have Brighton nearby and primal screaming or whatever the latest healing craze is was on their radar.
The only stipulation was that the woodland ranger would have to talk Ross through a health and safety assessment and tell him where he could and couldn’t bury me. Apparently the talk went well, although the ranger did warn him about badgers. They’re nocturnal and they can get a little irritated if you get in the way of their food source – worms and grubs.
I had to fast the day of the burial as part of the ritual. We got to the woodland at around noon and Ross told me to lie down on the ground so he could take a spade and dig down an outline around my body. When I stood up, despite being a big girl, my outline looked small and fragile. I was then expected to dig my own grave while Ross sat on a nearby tree stump reading a book. It was an extremely annoying and painful experience. Whenever you see in movies, the villain digging a shallow grave, dumping a body and driving off within an hour or so, know that this is all lies. It takes ages and ages and ages to dig a grave.
In that soil especially, which was flinty and hard, it took me about seven hours to just dig a fairly shallow four feet down. It would normally be deeper, but my calloused hands, moaning and whingeing eventually got too much for Ross and he agreed to let me stop.
Finally, as it turned to twilight, I lay down in the hole I’d painfully dug inside a sleeping bag. Ross put plywood planks across the top to support the weight of the soil. Then a tarpaulin over it, leaving a small space at the top so I could breathe, and covering it with earth. I was now buried alive.
I could see soil all around me as slivers of dim light still came down into the grave and I could feel the soil on top of me like a heavy blanket. Eventually it became night proper and the dim light coming from the hole at the top turned to an inky black. I could hear Ross occasionally singing and drumming nearby.
My thoughts turned to fears such as wondering if some of the dog walkers who we’d met earlier in the day while I was digging the grave were psychotic serial killers. What if one of them came back, killed Ross and filled in my grave so I was actually buried alive with no air? I had conveniently dug my own grave for such a killer!
I also worried way too much about being mauled to death by a badger. I had disrupted a lot of their food source – worms – while digging the grave so perhaps they would think it an intrusion? Whenever these thoughts got too much, I heard Ross singing and drumming and it comforted and reassured me.
Then, at what I found out later was 2am, my nose got really itchy and I tried to move my arm up to my face to scratch it. That’s when I felt the true weight of the soil on top of me. I was pinned down and would not have been able to get out of there by myself, even if I tried! I decided enough was enough and I asked to come out. Ross removed the soil and helped me out, but my ordeal wasn’t over – I had to visualise my obstacles and fears being swept into the grave and then I had to fill it back in. That also took ages and by now I was exhausted from the fasting and the digging.
In the small hours, I got back home and sobbed in the bathtub. It felt like I was letting go of so many things that worried me, a sort of intense detox. The next day I resigned from my job and went freelance. I started dating again with a more positive outlook and I started watching what I ate. It may have been the strangest healing ever, but it definitely worked for me.
