Selph Movement Director and practitioner, Amy G, shares her experience in Samvahan Vidya and how you can benefit from this ancient healing practice. Through sharing her learnings, she celebrates her late teacher Michael Trembath who passed away in March 2021.
Amy has been fortunate to study Samvahan under Michael Trembath, and explore her own healing journey with him for the past 15 years. Michael was the living master and steward of the Samvahan tradition, as passed on in India from his teacher, Gandhi’s doctor, and renowned healer, Dr. Ram K. Bhosle. Amy travelled to India with Michael on a pilgrimage through sacred sites of healing; learning about vibrations, the quality we need to heal, and the power of meditation.
Throughout a session, Amy pulls on many techniques to support healing. She shares breath, conscious awareness, sound, movement, yoga, and meditation techniques to empower her clients to work with the vibrations in your body beyond your session. Her teachings are practical, empathetic and, most of all, inspiring in how to live a life with more ease and grace.
Keep reading to immerse yourself in her story and the teachings of Samvahan.
Meeting Michael Trembath, Steward of Samvahan
There was a faint sound of Indian classical music playing in the background as Michael warmly greeted me at his door. As I entered his clinic room I was in awe of the lightness it pervaded. There were large crystals carefully placed, tibetan bowls and tuning forks, rich tapestry on the floor, and sacred images on the walls. Many orchids sat on the floor and up high on shelves that brought a silent scent of aliveness to the room. I instantly felt held, felt vulnerable, felt seen.
As I sat facing Michael, he was on a stool and I was on a comfy couch, he began to take my pulse. Pulse reading was something Michael studied in India, he spent many months with Ayurvedic practitioners learning theory and then feeling hundreds of pulses to recognise the different imbalances that show up in the blood and the beat of our heart.
Somedays I would burst out crying before he had time to touch my wrists, other days it was open sharing and deep belly laughter.
Michael was an empathetic practitioner. He gazed right into your soul, but never judged what he found; he was a master of vibration, deciphering the different frequencies of the body and offering movement to shift them towards healing.
After a brief chat about what I wanted to focus on for the session and what was happening in my body, I hopped up on the massage bed and laid down on the warm towels. The warmth of the soft cotton comforted me to relax, to let go, and to welcome healing. Each time I visited Michael it felt as though I welcomed back a part of me that I had forgotten about.
A Samvahan session is a deep conversation with your body; there is awareness, understanding and release, and it is a chance to rest in the present moment. Furthermore, there is a sense that you can feel at home in your body; beyond your past, beyond your doubt, beyond your pain. It is a celebration of all that you are; and what you are is a part of the Divine.
Divine ~ of or relating to a god, especially the Supreme Being
Linking the Physical and Energetic Through Samvahan
When I first started seeing Michael he would often get excited about something moving through my body, “Wow, that’s really good work. Did you feel that?!” I would look at him blankly unsure of how I was meant to feel in that moment. I could sense that something within me was shifting, but I didn’t think I was making it happen, I was happy to leave it up to him.
Each session I would ask more questions about energy, how it moves through the body, how to release it, why did something feel the way it did, could he fix this, what did he think of that. There was so much more going on than just hands on body work.
I visited Michael’s clinic for many years, peeling back the layers of pain, shining up the layers of love. He started teaching workshops and training courses in the technique of Samvahan and I instantly felt drawn to know more, feel more, sense more. With a background in Yoga and Meditation, I loved the embodiment of a Samvahan practice. Each time I was with Michael my senses were heightened, my awareness was clear, and my presence was amplified.
Michael was able to tangibly teach me how to work with the energy in my body and that started to show through in my physical yoga practice, in my thought process, in my ability to live in joy.
I was familiar with body movement, anatomy and breath through my yoga studies, but Samvahan began to enrich the link between physical and energetic. I was fortunate to travel to India and this adventure gave me a deep respect for the resonance energy has. You can tangibly feel the walls of ashrams vibrating with devotion, you can deeply feel the struggle of the disadvantaged, you can witness the beauty in every prayer, belief and trust of a higher power supporting the flow of life. One of the main things that resonated with me was that in India every individual feels a part of the Divine, as though every god, goddess, guru and deity represents a part of them. The power they pray to doesn’t feel separate, it feels like recognition of awakening to what you truely are.
Travelling to India with Michael had the biggest impact on my learning journey. I was one of only three Australians who joined the Indian pilgrimage with him and 20 others. It was weeks of learning from him in the land where he was graced with knowledge, meeting locals being in awe of him and his teaching and the lineage that Samvahan came from. We visited his teachers’ homes, clinics, ashrams and sacred sites. I saw where he lived, where he chanted and meditated, where he welcomed this practice deep into his bones so he could offer it to others. My meditations were deep, colourful and profound on the soil of India. Feelings were amplified, tears were shed, expectations were challenged, love was felt, the Divine was welcomed, and the quality of my awareness shifted beyond what I could have imagined.
Coming home from India I continued to teach yoga, but had a deeper understanding of moving the physical body to create vibrational change. Samvahan has been the catalyst for a happier, healthier, me. It has shaped how I teach yoga, how I show up day to day, how I say yes to love, and how I continue to heal. These main principles of Samvahan can be applied to the everyday; get grounded to get out of your head, play in joy and possibility, and welcome healing, welcome love, welcome the Divine.
A Samvahan practitioner must first and foremost have presence in their own state. The tone of the healer sets the rhythm of the session. Once the healer holds the frequency of balance, the client can be invited to heal.
Embodying Healing Through Samvahan
Over the years I have benefited from psychology, psychotherapy, emotional healing therapists, psychic readings, kinesiology, counselling, deep body release work, ancestral clearing, yoga, and meditation. Growing up my parents divorced when I was young, and I felt like I was always trying to find my place in the world. I was very independent as a child, and often felt isolated from my friends who didn’t seem to have family and financial problems.
There was a lot of pain deep down inside and I struggled to really love myself, I felt as though I would never be enough. Ultimately the many paths of therapy showed me that it was not my pain, or my past, and once I knew this I could change the narrative of how I felt towards things, I started to allow healing in my life.
Mum always encouraged me and my sisters to talk about our emotions and ask for help, and dad’s favourite line was, “clap your hands and be happy”. My parents gave me the gift of emotional awareness and that you can curate your emotional reality. We can choose to be happy or to be sad, and we can choose to heal.
Samvahan has deepened this awareness by empowering me to embody healing. It’s a greater awareness of how to recognise the pain, but stay in the light. Samvahan has enabled me to shift the state of pain in the body by letting go of resistance and welcoming movement.
Samvahan Vidya to me is the choice to heal. It is starting a conversation with the body where we acknowledge all that we feel, all that we hold, and all that has amplified the shadow over the light. No matter how bad we feel, there is always healing for us. Whether you are holding physical pain, mental pain or emotional pain, there is always harmony, there is always lightness, and there is always love to support healing.
Through intention, intuition and touch I am here to support your healing journey. Feel something different, welcome something new, and learn tools for life to celebrate your state.
‘Ground into the earth, create movement, and welcome possibility. This is the formula for healing.’ ~ Michael Trembat