A Hero’s Journey of Healing

| By Kristine Madera |

Kevin Peer is a sacred storyteller, but not in the warm and fuzzy, Kumbaya sort of way. As a documentary filmmaker for National Geographic and the National Parks Service, Kevin’s films portrayed the archetypal forces of life and death and the human quest for beauty, art, spirit, and wisdom in a way that inspired people to embrace the whole of life experience, even the unpleasant and challenging experiences that can be difficult to understand. He calls this “Sacred Cinema” and says, “storytelling can be a great gift to help us, to guide and delight and inspire us, and to me that is sacred.”

Long before coming to Western North Carolina, Kevin founded The Institute for Sacred Cinema, which was dedicated to the inspired and skillful use of film and video to encourage humankind’s capacity for intelligent, compassionate, and creative engagement with each other and with Earth. His films have explored subjects ranging from the mystery of the Stradivarius violin to the spiritual power of Navajo sand painting, and from the refined mind training of Zen archery, to the nuclear testing program in the Bikini Atoll, and have sent him across the globe from the wilderness of Alaska to the Wodaabe tribe of Niger, West Africa.

He has taught filmmaking as a kind of spiritual practice, as a path of deep presence and engagement that strives to honor the archetypal forces that animate life. It is a path that recognizes the dual experience of the storyteller, that of conscious participant and open witness, mindful and intentional of the story the filmmaker wants to tell. In what many might consider a tragic turn, after decades of making films, Kevin found himself on a 14-year odyssey of confusing and debilitating health challenges that eluded diagnosis, but that plagued his life with symptoms including moodiness, hypoglycemia, vertigo, brain-fog, and bouts of depression. After many years of misdiagnoses by doctors, he began sleuthing his symptoms on the Internet and discovered that he had a dangerously advanced case of Lyme disease. With that discovery he turned the insight from his days as a filmmaker and storyteller to his own emerging life story of healing, a process that over several years evolved into what he now calls The Hero’s Journey of Healing.

As with all hero journeys, the call to this new path seemed intrusive and unwelcome. But simultaneously, a part of him was relieved to start slowing down and focusing on the needs of his body, which he had pushed to the limits again and again over the previous decades of working long hours and filming in harsh conditions. His journey started with herbal protocols, then oral and IV antibiotics, and eventually bio-identical hormones, yet after some encouraging health gains, his progress stalled. He then tried more unconventional treatments, including ozonated artificial blood plasma transfusions, rain forest plants and herbs, various vitamins and biotoxin binding agents, colloidal silver, and Rife electromagnetic technology. Again he made meaningful gains, but again his progress stalled. Further testing revealed that he had three other tick-related illnesses in addition to the Lyme, and a dangerous condition known as Central Sleep Apnea. His life at times felt like a walk from suffering to suffering, with no end in sight.

As his journey went on, however, Kevin realized that he felt best when he recognized that he was the ultimate authority in his own healing journey. A huge turning point came when he made the resolution to no longer be the victim of the many difficult conditions that beset him. He became an avid researcher of treatment modalities for his various symptoms, scouring the Internet and the published works of “Lyme Literate MD’s” and other sufferers of tick-borne diseases who had found successful treatment regimens. He became an advocate for his own path to wellness in which medical providers were partners in the journey rather than unquestioned authorities. He sometimes found that he knew much more about his conditions than his medical providers did, and those who were willing to learn from their patient remained his providers and a productive and enjoyable alliance ensued. Others who were attached to the traditional imbalance of power that placed physician over patient, he chose to stop working with – which felt very self-honoring and empowering.

Although Kevin had valued the spiritual dimension of his life since his late teens, the effects of his many ailments had in recent years severely numbed his previously ready access to his inner world. One desperate and dramatic night however, he called forth his inner allies, his ancestors, his spiritual teachers and archetypes as he railed against the perpetual dark night of the soul feeling that had been taking over his life – and had a breakthrough. From then on, no matter how sick he felt, Kevin discovered that he could go within and muster a fierce determination to heal his life, and that even in the midst of illness there was abundant and compassionate inner guidance available, if he opened to it. The guidance told him that it was time to return to a focus on his inner life – the realm of mind and soul and spirit.

Kevin became a Reiki Master and decided to shift his career from filmmaking to assisting people with healing their inner lives. He thought about going to graduate school to be a therapist, but after evaluating the most effective approaches to inner change he decided to become certified in the highly versatile and effective modalities of clinical hypnotherapy and Depth Hypnosis.

Each new level of engagement with his inner life brought a new level of wellness to his body, mind, and spirit. He became aware of how certain habits of mind and other inner world influences may have contributed to his being susceptible to Lyme and other tick-borne diseases, autoimmune conditions, hormone imbalances, and more. He studied the role of emotions, inner story, and spiritual influences on genetic expression and physical health through reading the works of psychobiologists, neurologists, integrative psychiatrists, spiritual teachers, indigenous elders, hypnotherapists, and others. Kevin also explored the role of physical health on mood, cognition, and a person’s self-perception and worldview.

The more he embraced his own experience as a Hero’s Journey of Healing, the more he saw his path of healing as an inner quest of wholeness. He saw that it was possible to view illness as an invitation to a path of knowledge, of self-compassion, of caring for others, and of discovering and repairing what is broken in body, mind, and soul. He realized that the healing journey could be a path of life-affirming changes to one’s outer life in order to come into alignment with one’s inner truth and knowing, and thus an integration of inner and outer wholeness and wellness.

He observed how this healing process worked with clients who suffered from physical ailments, and was amazed to find that frequently the symptoms were inextricably linked to mental, emotional, and spiritual factors in their lives. Deeply gratified to witness how often his client’s ailments resolved themselves as inner life changes progressed, he developed an integrated mind-body-spirit protocol to help people accelerate their healing from chronic illness – especially Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses.

Now based out of Marshall, NC, Kevin helps his clients navigate their own Hero’s Journey of Healing through his practice as a Mind-Body Life-Coach. He combines the timeless power of storytelling and mythology, the latest findings of neuroscience, epigenetics, psychobiology and psychoneuroimmunology, and the clinically verified techniques of hypnosis and guided imagery to help his clients embrace and accelerate their unique healing journey on the physical, mental, and spiritual levels.

Find out more about Kevin Peer and Mind-Body Life-Coaching at InnerAlliance.net.

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Kristine Madera is a bestselling author, speaker & wisdom teacher based in Asheville. She teaches spiritual people how to fully express their authentic spiritual truth through their bodies so that they can powerfully create in and impact the material world. Find out more at SpiritualJourneyoftheBody.com.