Maria Kalmi is an intuitive coach and energy healer. She has great courage to live a life that she wants to live. Her job is not a common one, she is a photographer and does empowering photo shoots. I sat down with her and asked her to tell us more.
What is your job?
I use photographing as a healing tool. My goal is to help people heal themselves with my work. I had wondered why someone who has been in therapy for a long time still has not recovered and needs healing. Problems and traumas are hard to overcome. Camera is a reflection and has no mercy. I thought about it and came to this analysis about why these sessions work and truly help people. So here it is, inside our human bodies we have all the memories in our cell memory. When taking a picture, the camera activates the cell memory and brings the pain to a concrete level. It helps to work with the painful memory inside out, as the picture has the pain inside it.
I’m still not a therapist, I just show people like a mirror what is inside of them. The picture changes the cell memory into a new picture. The camera and the picture work as healing tools by showing all the mess you carry inside of you. That’s why not all pictures are pretty. Neither do they have to be. If you see deep inside, you realize that there’s no need for healing in our soul as it is. It is perfect.
Successful picture will change the pain into wholeness, heal it.
When I do this work, I need to be with the person but not go with or into the person’s emotions. I’m the caring and loving adult who has the courage to meet but not to dive into the emotions that the person is having in the shoot. I’m like a loving shoulder you can cry on.
These days the problem with therapists is that they just make you talk about the memory you have about all the pain and the experiences. There’s no discussion about the forgiveness, the lessons we need to learn from our past mistakes, victim mindset which means that you think you have no control over your life, all you do is ask “why me?” And complain about everything. Why did I have to come here, what is there to learn in this life and why did I need to experience this? Ask these questions to find the real answers. We need to make the healing process more real and look at our life in more profound level. We need to include the spiritual level. What is our soul and its reality?
If you accept everything in you and your past, what is there left to heal? Not a thing!
You make people dress up in different characters in photoshoots, why is that?
The characters are a way to distract our mind. It helps to have more clarity when you are looking at the picture of yourself. You see yourself from a unique perspective. When you look at yourself from a distance, it’s easier to see what is the real you.
What is the best thing you have done in your life?
The fact that I listened to my intuitive voice. My body was telling me that there were no options, I had to quit my job, divorce and start a new life. I thank myself for the courage to change my life and myself.
What does it mean to love ourselves?
You accept yourself as you are. You see all sides of you, the good and the bad. There’s no such thing as perfect. Sometimes people have created a false picture of themselves and believe in that. You need to be honest with yourself. See the real reflection in the mirror. The key to balance is to accept yourself as you are.
What is owning your power?
At first, I believed it was the ability to say no. Now I see it in a more profound way. It’s doing the things you resonate with, things you feel good and excited about. Even if there’s something you had to do, you do it out of responsibility, not with victim mindset. You WANT to do it, you don’t HAVE to do it. The emphasis is on the wanting, not thinking about how it’s always you who must do it. You accept the situation as it is. You will find this inner power, do the searching from love and acceptance. From fear it may become too self-centered. For example, you don’t answer yes because you are afraid of someone using you.
What is the greatest lesson you have learnt?
Human life is a circle. What you send out, will come to you sooner or later. That is the way to work with the things that are hard for you and need attention. Think about your thoughts, is there any time when you have realized that you got what you had just thought about? That’s how it works. You send out a thought, you say something, you act some way, and it all comes back to you.
What do you want to say to all young women out there?
Don’t lose yourself to this crazy materialistic, objectifying culture. Your own womanhood is sacred, there’s no way you could find it in a sale from all those stores. Respect yourself. To all of you who have trouble with yourself, look at yourself in a different and new way. See what is inside you, your inner beauty will shine through you and will make you radiate from the outside. That’s what makes you truly beautiful.
Photos by Maria Kalmi Photography