Words From The Dark Healer – Episode 1 – Unexpected Spirituality

Audio of the Vlog

Transcript of the Vlog

So, welcome to a new series of vlogs titled ‘Words from the Dark Healer‘. That’s me, Ben Barnett. So, the Dark Healer is a handle that I’ve used for a number of years now. I don’t use it as often in other areas, but I decided it needed a resurrection. I thought it was a great opportunity to use that title.

This particular vlog is all about the unexpected experiences of spirituality and holistics in different areas of life.

What I want to share about, some of you may already know, but many of you won’t, that I had a 10-year career, I suppose, as a footballer, semi-professionally and professionally, briefly, in the middle, following up on having played university football at the highest levels, who I played for Great Britain students while I was doing my degree at King’s College.

Now, I had two extraordinary experiences that have very definitely shaped the way that I work with elite athletes and also how I experienced myself and my own spirituality. Let me show the first one.

The first one, I was on my home debut playing for Dagenham and Redbridge. And we were already winning the game, I believe, I think it was 2-1. So it wasn’t an urgent situation, but I found myself getting control of the football on the halfway line, looking up and then suddenly finding everything around me going quiet and still. And I saw the goalkeeper was off his line and I realised that I could score from there.

And what was amazing about it was that I had no… none of the questions or doubts in my mind like would I look like an idiot if I missed it? What would happen if it went in? Like would it be a great thing or not?

I just heard my intuition say “this will work” and I hit my shot and it went in and even then I was just in this place of peace and completeness – like of course it went in.

From that moment on I’ve been fascinated with what I call being ‘in the zone’ – as a mental and emotional and physical state and how I could help people get into that space.

In fact I’ve found that you can do it with meditation with guided visualisation and with massage and so I’ve developed some of my techniques around that.

Now fast forward a number of years I’ve had my football career which was very brief at Barnet and if I’m honest I felt like I underachieved I didn’t really do what my potential justice. I found myself working in a high-end holistic centre in Belgravia. Trying to make my way back home , i found myself going the wrong way and saying, I need to get a taxi.

I saw a taxi a quarter of a mile down the road, coming from Knightsbridge, going in the direction I wanted to go in, flagged it down, got in the taxi, got into a conversation with the taxi driver, who said to me, oh, what kind of massage do you do when I brought up the subject? I said, oh, I do various different types. And he said, do you do sports massage? I said, yeah, I do that occasionally. And that’s because I used to play sports, used to be a footballer.

And he said, who did you play for?

I said, Barnett Football Club. And when I said that, he adjusted the mirror so he could see me.

And he said, what’s your name?

And I said, oh, my name’s Ben Barnett. Not a bit ironic in any way.

And he took this deep breath and he said, my name’s Terry Bullivant.

And the hairs on the back of my neck immediately stood up. He was the assistant manager at Barnett when I played there. Must have been 15 years after I had met him. So there’s a 15 year gap between me being at Barnett and me getting into his taxi.

Now, as far as I was concerned, my professional football career was very forgettable. I didn’t really think anybody would remember me. And he said, I’m going to tell you something. Three months ago, I was sitting at a table at a dinner with Gary Phillips and Ray Clements, and we were talking about you.

Now, Gary Phillips was the manager who signed me and Ray Clements was the one who released me, let me go, effectively. And the mere fact that they were talking about me all that time afterwards meant that what I thought was a complete flop of a career must have made an impact on someone in some way, even if they were just talking.

the fact that I was better than my career suggested. I got out of that taxi feeling completely different about who I was, feeling like I didn’t need to be embarrassed to talk about the fact that I had achieved something that many young boys and girls would see as the epitome of achievement, becoming professional in their chosen sport.

A lot of shame and embarrassment fell away from me in that moment. And that was one of the ways that my holistic and spiritual experience and my connection with the universe, you could say, actually allowed me to change something about my relationship with the past.

If you have any stories like this, please do share them with me at joinus@thealchemyofbeing.me