I am interested in transformation. In my work I go to the place where there is trauma and help a soul move out of that place and into the light.
When she was six years old, Dagny's father took her outside to dig up potato plants. The plants started talking to her. Terrified, she ran indoors and hid. She was too frightened to try to explain to her family what had happened. Throughout her childhood these odd occurrences continued. Whenever the telephone rang in Dagny's household of six, her parents and four sisters, Dagny knew immediately who was calling, whom they were calling for, and what the call would be about. She spent the next few decades of her life burying this eerie sense of knowing. All she wanted was to be “normal.”
That was until her husband, Peter, died at the age of 54, leaving her a young widow at age 53. They had two sons, ages 17 and 15.
“When my husband died,” Dagny said, “I did not want to stop talking with him. We'd been married 21 years and he was my soul mate.”
Peter and Dagny first met in 1971, when Dagny was working on Hurricane Island with the first group of young women admitted into the Outward Bound program. It was her mission to empower young women. It was an exciting time when possibilities were just beginning to open up for women. After the program ended, Dagny was hired to teach at a private school not far from where Peter worked. They met up for a date. When Dagny saw Peter interacting with his two children from his first marriage, she knew immediately that she wanted to marry him. Six months later they were married.
“I was teaching at a private school. Peter would come and spend the weekend. The Headmaster told me it didn't look right for his car to be standing in the parking lot overnight. So, we got married.”
Their marriage was happy and lasted twenty-one years. Dagny taught high school German and raised their children. Then, unexpectedly, Peter died. At the time, Dagny and her family were living in South Londonderry, Vermont. Her grief was so profound that her friends sent her to see the kinesiologist, Miriam Wolf. It was her first experience with a spiritual healer. During their session, Miriam told Dagny that she could see a bathroom in her house, which turned out to be her son’s bathroom. She told Dagny that she had to go into the bathroom, step into the shower stall, find a place exactly five feet from the floor, and cleanse it by using three verbs: forgive, transform, receive. She was told to go to this spot over the next three days, three times a day, and to repeat the three verbs. Dagny did not understand why, but she followed Miriam's instructions.
Soon afterwards, her son came home from college to have a tonsillectomy. During his recovery they talked. What came out was astounding. Dagny's son confessed that in the year after his father died, he would go into the the shower, turn on the water, and sob out his grief. He was five feet tall at the time. In the course of their conversation, he used three verbs: forgive, transform, receive. After that conversation, both mother and son reconciled with their grief. That was when Dagny knew that she wanted to heal others.
“After he died, I said, 'Wherever you are Peter, I will stay connected.' I allowed that. He opened up that process. I began to see him and we began to talk. He told me that he had to get out of the way, so that I could pursue my path as a spiritual healer and medical intuitive. And that is what I have done.”
Dagny has been a widow for 20 years. She was never interested in remarrying. She is dedicated to her work of healing others through her spiritual practice.
“Peter and I confer on everything,” Dagny says.
She feels his presence beside her always. When her two-year old granddaughter first saw a photo of Peter in Dagny's bedroom, she said: “I see Peter with you all the time, Bammy!”
Dagny is guided by Edgar Cayce and Dr. Oswaldo Cruz, who works with John of God in Brazil.
I first met Dagny in August 2015. I had just returned to Maine after teaching for two years in Hong Kong. I was afflicted with psoriasis. Both of my arms, from the palms to the elbows, were covered in a persistent skin rash, which had dragged on for over a year, and which had become infected. My arms were open wounds. Not only did the rash itch, but it was painful. A dermatologist had prescribed a steroid cream and told me that this was a condition I would need to learn to live with. It could subside, but never really go away. A friend suggested I go see Dagny for healing on the soul level. I was skeptical, but I was in such misery that I would try anything.
When I arrived at her house in Woolwich, Dagny had a conversation with me about my life, what concerns I had, what I wished for, and read my energy to get a sense of who I was and what was troubling me in my life. Then we went upstairs into her bedroom and she had me lie down on her bed. I was astonished by her sense of trust, and how generous she was with sharing her personal space. We turned on the voice memo on my iPhone so that I could later listen to a recording of everything spoken under hypnosis. Dagny hypnotized me and I reached a state of semi-consciousness. In that state, I worked out an anxiety I had carried into this lifetime from another lifetime. The experience was clear and vivid, and made absolute sense. Dagny called upon my “higher self,” which is actually the subconscious mind that resides deep inside all of us, and which has the records of everything that has happened to us over the course of our many lifetimes. My higher self began to speak. She spoke about me in the third person. Her voice was deeper and richer than my usual speaking voice. She used terminology and vocabulary that I did not know, and which I had to look up later. It was an astounding experience.
Later, when I listened to the voice memo on my phone and transcribed what I'd said, I again noted that my voice sounded more confident that I usually spoke. My higher self chided me on my transgressions, made suggestions on how to change my life, and warned me of political and terrorist events that have since come to pass. I spoke with a wisdom I am hardly capable of in my waking life. When I typed up a transcript of the session, I came across passages such as this one: What's on the other side of the wall. The right foot goes in the foothold. The left knee against the wall. Grab onto the top. Pull over the wall. Sit down on top of the wall. Take at a look at the wider world. And jump. Lots of fields and pastures below and a big river. You won't get hurt. You'll fly over it. You'll land where you need to land. Stop worrying so much. Let it go. Listen to the flow. Tap into the flow. The flow will take you where you need to be. Stop using your brain to try to figure it all out. That's not how life is lived. Life is lived like a river flows. You trust that it will pick you up on the current and drop you off where you need to be. No challenge given you is more than you can handle. You can handle it, just stop being such a baby about it. Stop making a show.
My session with Dagny lasted almost three hours, and yet it felt as though I'd only been under hypnosis a few minutes. What was also remarkable, was that my higher self delivered messages to Dagny, which were highly personal and detailed, and pertained to her life choices, her family, and her work. I spoke to her about issues that I could not have possibly known. As I've gotten to know Dagny better, I continue to be astonished by the accuracy and detail of the things I said to Dagny that day, things I could not possibly have known about her.
The next day my rash began to subside. The following day it was completely gone. It has not resurfaced since, and as of this writing, a year has gone by since that session. I learned that day that the underlying cause of my psoriasis was a persistent anxiety I had brought with me into this life from a previous life. I'd been anxious all my life. Even as a toddler and young child I was so anxious I would not go and play with other children, preferring to sit next to my mother on a park bench. Since Dagny's session, my anxiety has subsided, even though I have had to deal with some serious difficulties during that time.
In the past few years, Dagny has had a number of people come to see her who under hypnosis discover that they died in concentration camps during the Holocaust. She believes that she attracts these people and that she heals them in a special way.
“I am interested in transformation,” Dagny says. “In my work I go to the place where there is trauma, and I help a soul move out of that place and into the light.”
The link between Dagny and the Holocaust is significant. Dagny spent her working life teaching German in high schools. For many years she organized educational trips in which she took students to visit concentration camps in Germany.
“I took my students to Dachau, but only after I'd prepared them well for the experience,” Dagny said, “but it was only about 15 years ago that I discovered my link with the Holocaust.”
Dagny was visiting a concentration camp in Madjanek, Poland, together with a friend. They were standing before a display that contained hundreds of pairs of shoes that Holocaust victims had worn on their feet as they entered the concentration camp, but which they'd had to relinquish. She was reaching out to touch a pair of baby shoes, when suddenly she projectile vomited and lost consciousness and collapsed to the ground. Years later, through hypnosis and spiritual work, Dagny learned that she had been a child during the Holocaust, and that she had died in that very concentration camp. She reincarnated into her present life shortly afterwards. She wonders if this is the reason why she was drawn to the German language. She'd spent her life trying to understand German culture and find the beauty in it. Now more and more of the people who find her and come to her for healing, learn under hypnosis that they had died in the Holocaust.
“Transformation is possible. We can open up to what has put the lid on something,” Dagny says. She has recently become interested in transgender issues. Dagny wishes to help people move into a new and better place emotionally and spiritually.
“The people who come to me are the ones who need to find me.”
Dagny St. John
This essay, along with others, is available in THE WAY LIFE SHOULD BE by Laima Vince.