Healing arts
Last updated 11:35, Tuesday, 06 May 2008
You don’t meet many businesswomen like Sarah German. Making money just isn’t an important part of her agenda. Sarah and her partner Mark Davis run their shop The Really Big Mandala in Carlisle’s Fisher Street as “an offering to the people of the city”.
“We hope not to lose money but we both have other jobs and don’t rely on the shop for our income. The important thing to us is introducing our customer to culturally authentic products,’’ says Sarah.
The Really Big Mandala is the culmination of a spiritual journey that Sarah began 15 years ago after a dramatic car crash which left her with head injuries and partial paralysis.
Driving in Derbyshire on a drizzly night, Sarah skidded on a bend which was peppered with limestone dust – the road surface was as slippery as if it had been coated in black ice.
Sarah’s car plunged down a cliff, somersaulting before landing on its roof.
“I thought the car was going to explode as I had just filled it with fuel. The door were jammed shut but somehow I managed to crawl out of a window into a ditch where I just wanted to go into a deep sleep. Instead, I leapt to my feet and ran screaming onto the road where I managed to flag down the next car,’’ says Sarah who was then just 23.
Sarah suffered severe spinal and head injuries. She had difficulty with her speech and with concentration; her right hand was paralysed and she had head, back and neck problems.
Doctors pumped her with medication and pain killers but the injuries were psychological as well as physical. Whenever she closed her eyes, she entered her own private world of terror. It became hard to sleep; Sarah reckons she spent four years never snatching more than a couple of hours at a time.
“I felt as if my body was overloaded with toxins. I was taking anti-inflammatory pills, anti-depressants and muscle relaxants and I wondered if all these medicines were actually contributing to my problems,’’ says Sarah,
She began to try every alternative therapy she could think of. Reflexology and osteopathy had the most noticeable effect but nothing proved to be a magical remedy until, seven years after the accident, a physiotherapist introduced her to the eastern exercise skill Taiji. At that point Sarah still couldn’t walk further than 150 yards, her right hand was still paralysed and her neck and back pain was constant.
“I was 30 when I started doing Taiji and I now feel that my 20s just passed in a blur of pain. I stopped all medication. It was really difficult to begin with as my whole body ached after every session but I persisted and slowly I began to get better. Feeling began to return to my right arm and hand and my spine improved.
“I daren’t ever stop doing it as if I have a few weeks off, my old problems start to return,’’ says Sarah.
Her fantastic experience of the benefits of Taiji led Sarah to explore other eastern practices and philosophies. She learned how to use self-hypnosis to deal with pain and she became interested in Buddhism. When Sarah came to Carlisle, she met Mark who is a qualified Taiji teacher. The couple have a five-year-old son, Jack.
Sarah trained with Dan Russell who runs classes at Atlas Works in Nelson Street. Her interest in Tibetan Buddhism deepened when she met Lama Khemsar Rinpoche, the founder of the Tibetan Yungdrung Bön Study Centre. She is now also a student of Patrick Kelly who has written books on Taiji.
Sarah’s teachers encouraged her to open The Really Big Mandala in order to offer people authentic and healing products.
Among other things, the shop sells organic, chemical-free body products, gemstones and crystals, organic vegan chocolate, spiritual books, scarves, bags, Tibetan incense, medicinal products from the Dalai Lama’s institute, CDs, therapeutic massage oils, Peruvian jewellery, teas, cards and thankas (Tibetan wall hangings hand-painted by monks).
The shop is decorated in the colours of the eastern five elements of energies – yellow for earth, red for fire, green for air, white for space and blue for water. Sarah says: “In a way, our work was complete when we opened the shop which we see as an offering to the people of Carlisle. I would be happy if it continued for a very long time but if it doesn’t, that’s fine by us. I know it is an odd attitude for someone with a business.’’
