Al Ram­sawack

The clean, white sur­round­ings, the soft, sooth­ing mu­sic and all the re­lat­ed gad­gets to her pro­fes­sion­al prac­tice, cre­at­ed an am­bi­ence of peace­ful­ness. Hil­da Hosier was pi­o­neer in the field of body and beau­ty ther­a­pies since the 1970s. When she in­tro­duced the wide se­lec­tion of es­sen­tial oils to her prac­tice of aro­mather­a­py, it was viewed with sus­pi­cion and some awe by clients at her clin­ic on Far­rah Street, San Fer­nan­do, where it all be­gan. Some won­dered: "Is she a psy­chic? A seer­woman? A gyp­sy?" Hosier smiled and said, "Maybe I was way ahead of time in the field of ap­plied ki­ne­si­ol­o­gy and re­lat­ed nat­ur­al health ther­a­pies in this coun­try." She con­tin­ued: "I am not sur­prised that to­day there is an awak­en­ing and up­surge in nat­ur­al health ther­a­pies, not on­ly in Trinidad and To­ba­go but world­wide." Af­ter 26 years of prac­tis­ing in San Fer­nan­do, she moved north in­to Port-of-Spain. She said: "I still miss the South for the warmth and hos­pi­tal­i­ty of its peo­ple."

Hosier is Aus­tri­an-born, from the beau­ti­ful coun­try­side of the clas­si­cal movie The Sound Of Mu­sic, al­so the land of the great Aus­tri­an com­pos­er and mu­si­cian, Wolf­gang Mozart. It is no won­der that Hosier is such a fine la­dy with a pas­sion for na­ture-the birds, wild an­i­mals, the lush veg­e­ta­tion of our trop­i­cal coun­try. She points to the trees: "These are alive, they give us oxy­gen for our health, they ab­sorb the im­pu­ri­ty of car­bon diox­ide, they give en­er­gy to this land." She is peev­ed at the dam­ages done to our veg­e­ta­tion and wild life, es­pe­cial­ly with the dry sea­son fires. Hosier was qual­i­fied in Lon­don as a Nat­ur­al Health­care Prac­ti­tion­er in Ki­ne­si­ol­o­gy (mus­cle re­sponse ther­a­py). This in­volves an holis­tic and sci­en­tif­ic ap­proach to body ther­a­py, a de­tailed study of the skele­tal and mus­cu­lar struc­ture and func­tion in the hu­man body in­clud­ing the ner­vous and oth­er re­lat­ed sys­tems. The bal­anc­ing of the body, mind and spir­it goes to­geth­er in ef­fect­ing per­fect health. Hosier de­scribes it as, "a tri­an­gle with per­fect bal­ance among the body mind and spir­it."

She ex­plains: "The sys­tem of mus­cle test­ing in the prac­tice of Ki­ne­si­ol­o­gy can un­veil symp­toms of im­bal­ances in the body, which can cause headaches, joint pains, back ache, fa­tigue, lethar­gy, stress and oth­er ail­ments. Like blood flows through veins, ar­ter­ies and cap­il­lar­ies through­out the body, like­wise there are chan­nels through which, nat­ur­al en­er­gy flows." From the mus­cle test­ing ex­er­cise, she iden­ti­fies the ar­eas of block­age, af­ter which she de­ter­mines cor­rec­tive pro­ce­dure in restor­ing that nat­ur­al bal­ance. Of­ten, these block­ages have psy­cho­log­i­cal and trau­mat­ic roots dat­ing back, even from child­hood. These im­pu­ri­ties on the mind cre­ate the block­ages along the en­er­gy chan­nels, which Hosier calls 'bag­gage.' The bag­gage has to be opened to re­lease the psy­cho­log­i­cal, wor­ri­some con­tents in or­der to free the mind and there­by re­store the en­er­gy chan­nels to­ward the nat­ur­al flow of en­er­gy; the tri­an­gu­lar bal­ance of the body, mind and spir­it.

Cap­tion: Hil­da Hosier per­forms mus­cle test­ing on a client at ther Port-of-Spain of­fice.

Open­ing the bag­gage

One of her clients de­scribed a typ­i­cal ses­sion in Hosier's clin­ic: Af­ter the mus­cle test­ing ex­er­cise, Hosier be­gan a ses­sion of ther­a­peu­tic mas­sage, con­cen­trat­ing on acu­pres­sure points on her body while con­vers­ing with her in a gen­tle, com­fort­ing voice against sooth­ing, soft mu­sic. The client was tak­en back to events in her child­hood, in her teenage years and up to cur­rent time. Then the client's tears be­gan to flow; to flow un­con­trol­lably. The prac­ti­tion­er gen­tly rest­ed a wad of fa­cial tis­sue on the client's chest as she lay on the mas­sage bed. Silent­ly the prac­ti­tion­er walked out of the room, leav­ing the client to cry it out in pri­va­cy. The bag­gage was opened, the tox­ins re­leased and the en­er­gy chan­nels were cleared. The client de­scribed Hosier as, "an ex­cel­lent pro­fes­sion­al in her field."

There are many more who speak of her in glow­ing terms for treat­ments in­clud­ing fa­cials, acupunc­ture, skin tag re­moval, elec­trol­y­sis, aro­ma ther­a­py, re­flex­ol­o­gy, stress ther­a­py, vac­u­um suc­tion for lymph drainage and elec­tro acupunc­ture. In our con­ver­sion, she men­tioned the word Au­ra So­ma. She lead me to a shelf in her clin­ic where there were sev­er­al lit­tle cu­bic-shaped bot­tles con­tain­ing coloured bal­ance or equi­lib­ri­um oils. In each bot­tle there were two dif­fer­ent oils, each of a dif­fer­ent colour. It ap­pears mys­te­ri­ous, as the oils had not mixed but dis­tinct­ly sep­a­rate. For ex­am­ple, in one of the bot­tles the red oil oc­cu­pied the top lay­er and the green, the bot­tom lay­er. She ob­served my sur­prise and with a teas­ing smile she said: "These are Au­ra So­ma equi­lib­ri­um oils, which are used for the prac­tice in a soul search­ing jour­ney in­to your true self. The colours you choose are who you re­al­ly are."She in­vit­ed me to hold one of the bot­tles in my left hand and to shake it so that the oils may mix. Bub­bles were formed.

She ex­plained: "The time the oils take to set­tle back in­to their sep­a­rate colours, and the sizes, forms and be­hav­iour of the bub­bles can tell me your emo­tion­al sta­tus and oth­er char­ac­ter­is­tics, which may be in­di­ca­tion of your in­ner self." She ex­plained: "When I in­tro­duced this to clients in my south­ern clin­ic they mis­con­strued it to be a form of witch­craft." To­day, Au­ra So­ma is a form of soul ther­a­py; an ac­cred­it­ed sys­tem of colour heal­ing. Hosier was priv­i­leged in know­ing and hav­ing at­tend­ed a full course of study and prac­tice in Au­ra So­ma put on by the world-renowned Vicky Wall of Eng­land, who ex­per­i­ment­ed and re found, the in­tri­cate an­cient sci­ence of light and colour, and the emo­tion­al restora­tive and sup­port­ive ef­fects it has peo­ple. In the 1970s Vicky Wall wrote to Hosier, want­i­ng to come to Trinidad to in­tro­duce and pro­mote the sci­ence and ben­e­fits of Au­ra So­ma.

Hosier replied: "The time was not right for the peo­ple to then ac­cept the teach­ing. There was still too much su­per­sti­tion on their minds." Hosier was not sat­is­fied to dwell on one area of well­ness stud­ies as she al­ways main­tained an open mind and an all-em­brac­ing at­ti­tude to­ward ex­pand­ing her sphere. In that stride, she learnt of the fa­mous Don­na Eden, a com­pe­tent health­care prac­ti­tion­er, a promi­nent teacher of Acu­pres­sure and En­er­gy Med­i­cine. Hosier at­tend­ed one of Eden's Work­shops in en­er­gy med­i­cine. Eden's di­rec­tion and ap­proach has had a great in­flu­ence on Hosier. She iden­ti­fied fu­sion and over­laps of the var­i­ous dis­ci­plines, which she lat­er put in­to prac­tice and con­tin­ues ef­fec­tive­ly to this day. Hosier touched the lives of count­less clients across our coun­try, in­clud­ing To­ba­go. Her pi­o­neer­ing spir­it has brought a new di­men­sion to nat­ur­al heal­ing. Her good sense of hu­mour, her calm tem­pera­ment, peace­ful au­ra and nat­ur­al charm have con­tributed to her suc­cess as an ex­cel­lent, pro­fes­sion­al prac­ti­tion­er in her field.