A new type of business has opened in the East Mountains, offering something that its owners say has been lacking in the area. Michael Valoppi and his wife, Victoria, own Blue Feather Healing and Growth Center, a business specializing in holistic energy care.
“Holistic energy care is energy healing and supporting the person in their own self-healing, and there’s lots of modalities to do that,” Valoppi said.”We work with people through their physical, their mental, their energetic and spiritual bodies and work on making sure all those are aligned. And so a lot of the work that we do in our healing room is all around those different modalities, but we don’t tell anyone we can heal them. We assist them on their path of self-healing. We even have on the bottom of our website a little disclaimer stating that.”
According to Valoppi, their building on NM 344 used to be the old library in Edgewood and was utilized as a church at one time. Today it contains a different type of healing space. For those curious about the new business that now calls Edgewood home, perhaps they can start by visiting their pyramid.
“Anybody who comes in and needs to just take a break can go sit under the pyramid and ring the moon chime and center and balance themselves,” Valoppi said. “It’s an energy amplifier. It brings up energy from Mother Earth and amplifies the energy that the people get from while they’re meditating.”
Valoppi said in the six months they have been open, their popularity has been growing exponentially. During that time, their Facebook account has gone from about 105 followers when they started to over 600. Perhaps winning an award for Best New Business Idea recently has drummed up some business.
“A lot of people come in and they love the fact that we’re here and they don’t have to drive to Albuquerque for the products that we carry in the store and the classes and workshops and things we do,” Valoppi said.
Valoppi said they had to be careful with the verbiage they use when they describe precisely what Blue Feather Healing offers the community due to New Mexico’s strict regulations on how to list certain services, but he was happy to give The Independent a rundown of the types of services they provide.
“We do several modalities of energy healing, we do different readings, Victoria does tarot and astrology. She’s certified. We have 12 people who work with us from the area who do different energy work or different readings, massages, Reiki, sound baths, yoga. We have three different yoga instructors that do three different types of yoga and we have a woman in the area that does Pilates here twice a month,” Valoppi said.
Some of Blue Feather Healing’s most popular services involve sound, including the Rhythms of Unity Community Drum Circles. When she got her master’s in psychology, Victoria’s thesis was on “drumming up self-determination and resilience in adolescence.” In addition to drum circles, they offer sound baths.
“The sound bath is basically immersing a group or an individual in sound frequencies that work with balancing the body, rebalancing their energy core,” Valoppi said. “I will use a gong or a singing bowl, play the native flute, play a drum and rattles and different things that work with their body energies and immerse them in sound frequencies so their body can release any tension or discordant energies that they’re holding, and come out of it feeling washed.”
Valoppi said they check to see if participants have medical issues with sound, including frequency problems, or whether they have metal in their bodies. He says the 13 people who attended the latest sound bath session didn’t want to leave.
Blue Feather Healing has a store with items for sale, such as crystals, tarot decks, incense, cards, clothing, art jewelry from local artists and a book section in the corner of their store.
“35 years or so ago, I read the book “Illusions” by Richard Bach, and that book completely shifted my perception of interacting with the world,” Valoppi said. “A little piece in it was about a blue feather. And on the cover of the book there’s a blue feather, and so that always stuck with me. I always wanted to give regard to what started me down my path.”
Fittingly, Blue Feather Healing carries Bach’s book.
Blue Feather offers a variety of workshops, such as jewelry making workshops, crystal working classes and short classes on different topics related to self-discovery. Michael said some of the workshop topics range from “feelings and emotions” to “living in the now time.” The Valoppi’s offer guided meditation classes for attendees ages six and older and lead men’s and women’s group sessions. Michael leads a group called “Sacred Integrity and Divine Masculinity” and Victoria leads a woman’s circle called “She” which stands for “Support, Heal and Empower.”
Valoppi said he was raised in a half-Catholic, half-Jewish home in a time before the internet and he read about and studied all the different religions. Blue Feather Healing’s philosophy is not based on any particular religion but upon “being the best version of yourself.” Despite their non-denominational stance on religion, he says when they first opened, they received some pretty hard pushback from religious groups.
“What we’re actually doing falls in line with a lot of biblical teachings,” he said. “We’re dealing with it with a different vocabulary.”
Valoppi said he and Victoria’s main goal is to build a community where people can come together and be supported.
“With all the chaos and everything going on in the world, we wanted to create a place where people can show up and be seen for who they are,” Valoppi said. “Shame dies in safe places.”