Portraits in Essence

Everyone is happier and more relaxed after a healing session. When we are happy and more relaxed we take better pictures. When we feel great there’s a special glow to us. That glow is true essence.

What we physically look like to others and ourselves are reflections of how we live our lives, what choices we make with our bodies, and how we feel. I’m not talking about hair color, eye color or facial features, I’m talking about the glow you have when people say, "Hey, you look great!" to you and you say the same thing to yourself when you look in the mirror, and I’m talking about the dimness that is evident when you are tired or depressed or "out of it" and you look at yourself in the mirror and say "I look old" or "I look ugly" and people ask you if you’re feeling o.k.

Having a portrait in our essence is a very healing way to reflect on ourselves and consider what we love and what we are willing to change. Being photographed in our full potential gives us a marker for what we want to convey to ourselves and to others. Often we get caught thinking about what we don’t want, so we create more of it. When we concentrate on what we do want we create more of that. That’s the "Law of Attraction."

I have been a photographer since 1986. In 1992 I had a severe accident that rendered me unable to work in my field. I couldn’t even hold a camera for almost a year. I began teaching and taught photography for over 10 years at Moore College of Art and Drexel University. I also taught workshops and lectured on photography during that time. Sometimes I still teach photography, though not as formerly or as often and only on request.

I eventually began to try just about any healing modality that my husband or I discovered including strict diets and internal cleansing. Along the way I learned some of the modalities and began to practice them on family and friends.

I concentrated on my personal work as a photographic artist and left the commercial world until I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1998.

In time I began to notice that what I had learned and continued to learn and experience was coming through in my photography work. People started to say that they had a lot of fun being photographed which surprised them, or that they had been in a really bad mood before they showed up, or they had been really tense and that the session had completely relaxed them. Eventually I heard from a client that it felt more like a healing then a photography session. Then something clicked.

I had been doing energy work on my clients without their knowledge. In fact I had been intending the healing by seeing everyone who walked through my door as whole and healed and had seen them radiating love and had been radiating love to them. People showed up and I loved them unconditionally who ever they were and they felt that. I just talked with them and photographed and they glowed and they loved the pictures.

Honestly, it’s not really me doing the healing, I just intend it and it happens through me or around me and everyone who I facilitate a healing for has something for me too. That’s the way it works I think. Like the Sufi saying, "What you seek is seeking you." All the Master Teachers I’ve studied with say "You think you decided to come here. The truth is you were brought here by something bigger then yourself that you unknowingly surrendered to." I began to say to myself "You think you booked a photography session, and there’s another reason why this person is showing up at your studio. They just signed up for healing, and you signed up to be here for them."

I decided to give more conscious attention to what was happening and offer "A Portrait in Essence".

When I do the photography and the healing spontaneously happens it’s a distilled version of the healings’ full potential. When we open the session by spending time on the intention to heal, intention equals attention and we are in alignment with and honoring what is happening. The session is more powerful in every way. Clients like the photographs even more and they feel even more peace, joy and love when they leave.

$408.00 includes a healing session, 40+ images for you to view online and an 8x10 black and white or color print.

Please visit www.marygaetjens.com to see more of my portrait work.

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