By Amely Greeven
The home that brims with tension or sleep disturbance; the room that elicits an odd but hard-to-name kind of discomfort; the attractive house that has lingered, inexplicably unsold, on the market. These are the kinds of cases that feng shui master, medicine woman, and master “space-clearer” Melinda Joy Miller takes on to remove obstacles and restore the health of an environment at the level of the unseen.
Miller is the secret weapon of interior designers and real estate agents who hit hurdles that elude their most rational problem-solving efforts. Her daughter, designer Kim Colwell, calls on her frequently when a client’s home has “an intensity or sensation to it that doesn’t feel good, or if clients are avoiding an area of it, and I need an accurate reason why.” Miller, who is as spirited and loving as her middle name suggests, uses her many decades of experience in intuitive and metaphysical energy work to scan the space for invisible interferences and toxicity, which in her book can include disturbing frequencies from underground physical features (geology, stagnant water, chemicals) and EMFs (electromagnetic fields); accumulated mental and emotional stress and trauma, and—yes—entities, aka earthbound spirits or ghosts, residing in a space.
Similar to a Reiki master and energy healer attending to the body, she gradually—over a several-weeks process that is typically done remotely—clears the negative interferences, and, using the energy of the Earth, fills the space with “love, joy and harmony, so that people and animals feel comfort and ease.” (Advising that it’s nothing to be get worried about, Miller says that if necessary, she helps entities to “move on” to more appropriate celestial realms.) The results of the spatial detox can be subtle or profound—angst or discord can lessen, headaches or fatigue can lift, plants can thrive, children can feel calmer and more focused. And as this writer experienced after a family cottage eluded a buyer for years, a space-clearing can create an ineffable resonance that—finally!—helps to call its new owner in.
Space-clearing may sound out-there, but think of it as the subtlest layer in a trio of interventions to create a healthy home. Interior design uses physical change to achieve functionality and beauty; feng shui uses both physical changes and energetic tweaks to create balance and (as Miller describes it) a psychologically supported sense of self; and shamanic space-clearing works purely at the invisible level based on the understanding that, as Miller explains, “everything is energy, and all energy can be transformed.”
As with any kind of subtle healing, you don’t necessarily have to believe in it to experience it. Colwell admits that many of her clients are “nonbelievers, but when I suggest we investigate and correct the energy, they always say yes—and sometimes the most uneasy space in their home becomes their favorite and most restorative!” More peace and harmony, a heightened ambiance that welcomes guests and visitors, or a sense of flow where there was heaviness before—the transformation may be hard to fathom, but few of us would turn these detox benefits down.
Melinda Joy Miller can be reached through shambhallainstitute.com