Melody Litton wants to give Federal Way residents the opportunity to experience alternate types of healing and therapy.

“A lot of people are seeking healing,” she said. “They want to feel better. They want to feel good, and they go to traditional Western medicine or traditional counseling. There’s often limitations as to how much they can talk about or what they can work on. Whereas if you come into a setting that’s designed to talk about your spirit that is designed to talk about your connection to something greater then you, it is just a different type of medicine and one that is really powerful and healing.”

Litton, a heart-centered hypnotherapist, is one of five providers at South Sound Healing and Wellness, which opened in Federal Way last year.

Other providers at the practice are hypnotherapist Joe Class, licensed mental health counselors Laura Wallace and Christian Alexander and dance movement therapist Allie Bulliman.

“We each have slightly a different flavor, a slightly different way we go about it, but the goal is to really bring that healing, that wellness, that inner-peace, just being totally grounded with who you are and how you are, the space you take up in the world and how you relate to others,” Litton said.

South Sound Healing and Wellness, 34094 Ninth Ave. S., A-11, offers several free community events every month to allow people to get a taste of alternative healing methods.

At 4 p.m. on the first Sunday of the month Litton hosts a Kirtan chanting meditation group.

“It is a way for people to come together and balance their energy through music and through song,” she said. “It is just another way to connect with your inner wisdom, your inner light. It is just a way to bring greater balance into your life.”

Litton also leads a Reiki Share at 7 p.m. the second Tuesday of the month.

“Essentially we come together with the intention of lifting one another into a greater energy of love and healing,” Litton said. “Reiki is a form of energy healing that is recognized around the world. It is often used in various medical centers and nursing homes because there is a lot of evidence that it helps. There’s not a lot of scientific understanding as to why it helps, but essentially a Reiki practitioner is tuned to a higher vibration of love or healing.”

Each Thursday at 7 p.m., Class offers guided meditation.

“It is a way for people to come in and receive connection and a healthy healing environment,” Litton said. “He really varies his methods of mediation. He may do a silent meditation, musical, drumming or more of an internal guided healing.”

While there is no charge for the community events, donations or love offerings are welcome.

“Everyone is welcome at our community events,” Litton said. “They can come in and get a feel for who we are and how we are and get a sense of whether this is a place they want to be. There is enough variety with Reiki and meditation and the chanting and other groups we are doing, that there is something for everyone.”

South Sound Healing and Wellness also offers a fee-based group for veterans suffering from post traumatic stress disorder.

“Group work is really powerful because people come together and realize they are not alone in their pain, that they are not the only ones experiencing trauma and the flashbacks and the intense anxiety,” Litton said. “To be in a room with other people who understand you is very powerful, and then to be guided in not only traditional methods but to also bring in some of the more spiritual nature of things can be very helpful.”

Seeking alternate healing

Litton said she has always been aware of spiritual connections, but it wasn’t until 12 years ago when she adopted a 13-year-old girl who was struggling with mental illness that she began to explore alternative therapies.

Nothing was helping Litton’s daughter, who was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, or multiple personality disorder.

“One day I just threw up my arms at the heavens and said, ‘OK, you are giving me these kids and you are going to show me what to do,’” Litton said. “That is when just one thing after another just started popping up about our spirit and our energy and more alternative healing methods. That was the beginning of me learning about our energetic self and our spiritual self. I played a little bit with some of the techniques with my daughter and started seeing amazing shifts.”

Litton’s daughter no longer has the multiple personality disorder diagnoses.

Six years ago, when Litton moved to Washington state, she attended training for heart-center hypnotherapy.

“I just fell in love with it and realized it was a way to bring everything else I had been working on together in a way that I could really make a difference in my life and in the lives of those people I was working with,” she said.

During her two years of training, Litton wrote a book about heart-center hypnotherapy.

“I left that training thinking that is the coolest thing I have ever done, and the next thought was how am I going to share with people what that is like, because it is so outside the normal realm of understanding of things we talk about,” she said.

Litton said she has seen numerous clients shift physically and emotionally in “beautiful positive ways” since joining.

“It is just such an evidence that our body knows how to heal if we can just learn how to get out of the way, if we can just learn how to get the yucky energy out of the way and the false beliefs out of the way,” she said. “There is so much healing available, returning people to an understanding of who they are. I just get so many clients who come in and say ‘I have just forgotten who I am’ or ‘I don’t know who I am.’”

For more information or a complete schedule of community events, visit healingforlifewa.com/community-events/.

South Sound Healing and Wellness, 34004 Ninth Ave. S., A-11, offers a free monthly Reiki Share group, which is a form of energy healing. Heidi Sanders, the Mirror