Meet Kelbi McCumber Morris...
Kelbi is an incredibly gifted and multifaceted healing arts practitioner, and she will be offering her some of her wisdom and rich presence as a facilitator of our first workshop.
I had the pleasure of sitting down with Kelbi to talk more about her work and the journey that has brought her to it. Our conversation illuminated how she embodies and fully lives into the magic and art of healing through herbalism and other holistic modalities, which comes through in her facilitation. Read on to get a taste of Kelbi’s wisdom, passion, authenticity, and generous heart, and we hope you’ll consider joining us for her workshop (register here).
Note: This interview has been edited for length and flow. We had such a juicy conversation, there just might have to be a part two to this blog post.
Her business is called Lumenous Healing.
Elizabeth: So Kelbi, it seems to me like you do so many different things. You include so many different modalities in your work. What do you call yourself these days?
Kelbi: It’s tricky, isn’t it? It’s really tricky. Because, you know, if I just told you about one aspect of my business, that would be easy. I could call myself a grower, and could tell you about growing herbs and making products with those herbs. But it’s so hard because it seems like everyday, I change it. I change what I’m focusing on, and I don’t always know, like, how much to share about each of the things that I do. I feel like that changes based on my audience; like, what they’re open to, asking for, interested in, or knowledgeable about already. So, yeah…it’s super tricky…I’m a grower. I’m a product maker. I’m an energy healer. I’m a community builder. Like, all these things, you know? And to put it into a name is, like, impossible.
And I don’t even really like to call myself a healer, although I am certainly in the healing arts. And I don’t call myself a shaman, but I certainly perform shamanic practices, and I consider myself a student of life and shamanism. So I am in those realms, but my vision of a shaman is someone quite different, you know? Someone really immersed in their community in a way that I am not yet.
And then there are labels that other people give me sometimes. And I don’t really know how to feel about that…
So I guess I’m just me.
And I have just learned that all of these practices have really helped me in ways that I can’t deny. And I want to share them with other people because I didn’t know about them until I already really needed them. I didn’t know they would work for me until I got brave enough to try them. I wish I had someone around to tell me about these things at some point earlier in my life so that I would have had them when I needed them, and throughout my healing process, instead of, like…really, I got those things after I really needed them, when I was not really functioning in life and then I had to play catch-up.
So my idea is to put these things out into the world in ways that people can get the idea that there are other ways, and just to start thinking about themselves and their life in ways that are a little bit more open-minded. And their belief systems can garner other options for them. And that’s big for me, because I just didn’t know. I felt really stuck in my path. I didn’t feel like I had a lot of options, and it would have been really nice if someone else had said, “there’s this or that”, even if I thought it was weird. It would have been nice to know there was something else since everything I was doing was failing me.
Elizabeth: You’ve alluded to your own healing process, which led you to these practices, or modalities, you now have and share. Will you share a little more about when and how this all started for you?
Kelbi: It was, I think, around ‘98. I started getting GERD really badly and severe foot pain. The doctors wanted to put me on all kinds of medicines and things like that. And it was basically like, so you’re going to be on these things for the rest of your life. Here you are. Kind of like just a maintenance thing. Life, forever.
And I was, like, twenty-something at the time. So I’m thinking, for possibly 80 years, I could be on these meds that are really not even good for my body. And they weren’t even helping me that much in the moment even when I tried. So I felt like this just couldn’t be my reality; this couldn’t be the answer for my whole life. But it kind of just felt like the doctors were like, “here’s a band-aid. We’re gonna smack it on. Stop complaining. Just move on”.
So that’s what brought me to these practices. I just knew this isn’t gonna be how I live my life, and I wondered what else can I do that will actually make me feel better and sustainably, like, for a long, long time. Taking pharmaceutical drugs felt so wrong and different, and energy work was the first thing that didn’t cost me anything and that I had control of because I was doing self-healing.
And so that brought me to the start of embodiment and empowerment, which is now my business motto– fully embodied, fiercely empowered. Because when we are those things, we are able to function. I didn’t have that before. So when I started getting little bits of it, it was just like…and I think now, like, I’m pretty sure I got really, really sick because I didn’t know myself. I didn’t know my gifts. I didn’t have this relationship with my body.
You know, when you’re in pain constantly, it takes you away. You aren’t–you don’t want to be–in your body when it hurts all the time. And I still go through that. There are still days when I feel like that, and there are days when I’m like, that’s right, we’re good. We like being here. We can do this.
But I’m so trained from 15+ years to not be in my body because it wasn’t a safe place to be. I was so dissociated. And you know, that eventually brought me to herbalism, too. But I didn’t really get into herbalism until I had my daughter. Then, I was like, I don’t want to put all these cough syrups and all this other stuff into my baby the same way I didn’t want to put into myself with the GERD. And I had friends who would make elderberry syrups and things for me. Then, one of my friends who did that moved and she was like, I think it’s gonna be time to make it yourself. And at that point, I still wasn’t very healthy, but she taught me how, and I realized, oh wow! I can make this, and now I have medicine for three months. And, oh! This time I made too much, so here! Now, you have some too. So that started my herbal journey of trusting herbal medicines, and trusting my body in that way.
But energy work is really what started a whole new conversation with my body.
Elizabeth: And did you seek that out? How did you finally learn about that?
It came to me. It found me.
Previously, I was a photographer, and I was working with a colleague on a project working with healthcare providers. We would be interviewing and taking photos of all these doctors and medical providers, and in between we would talk about all these other ways of healing. She had cancer at the time, and she was seeing a Reiki practitioner, which was giving her some relief. And I was just like, what’s that? So she introduced me to the woman she was working with, and I started training with her in ‘98. Then, in ‘99, I got my Reiki mastership with her.
So, yeah. It’s so nice to have that conversation with your body that Reiki brings, I think.
Elizabeth: Is Reiki your primary offering, then?
Kelbi: I still grow herbs and make products. I like to make herbal products that feel easy, more accessible. Most people have bath salts, or cooking salts. Lots of people use room spray. So my goal has been to make herbal products that put herbs in people’s houses in a way that maybe they don’t even know or realize that they are practicing herbalism but will be enough to help them see how it works for them. And maybe they’ll remember where they got the product. “Oh, that’s right. I got that from that girl. And she just did all that with plants from her yard”.
Someone came by to buy bitters from me this weekend, and I was like, “let’s go outside, and I’ll show you what you can make your own bitters with… Here’s this and this and this, things that grow like weeds. And when you go home, they’re going to be in your yard too, and you can stick them in some vinegar and go!”. And she was like, “oh my gosh!”.
I’m like, that’s the way. I think we just get these little bits, and we’re supposed to share them. Like, that’s not mine. Someone else shared that with me. And shamanism isn’t mine. Reiki isn’t mine. None of this is mine… I couldn’t even say what I am before, but that’s what I am. I am a vessel. I’m just this vessel for all these things to come through, and to, hopefully, channel and share. That’s my dream–to just be a pure conscious vessel for myself and others, that we can find the bits that work for us.
My work is shifting a lot right now, too. I’m really enjoying seeing more clients. I think that is really where I am supposed to be spending my time and energy right now, and that’s where my groups come in, too. All that is really lighting me up.
I think I'm supposed to be doing more things like that. I just think I'm supposed to be in community and getting people to share themselves a little bit more and sharing myself a little bit more.
So there is coming to groups, accessing group work for either the grief, which we have another one coming up already because it was so well received. Really excited for that group. I felt the best after that group. I felt really different. To hold that kind of space felt super sacred. And I also have the Full Moon circles, and an Earth & Energy healing group, as well.
This year started with a lot of individual appointments, and a lot of those turned out to be soul retrievals. And it felt so powerful. And I was like, this is what people should be doing. F*** resolutions. We need to do soul retrieval. Like, let’s start our year off with a reclaiming of all of ourselves, finding ourselves, and stepping into our own power. And all of those people who started with that ritual have come back with so many profound shifts in the start of their year this year.
And that’s just one way individual work can show up. I don't know how to explain one on one work because it's so different every time. It just depends on where you're at and what you've got going on and what I've got going on. But, generally, you're gonna come in, and you're gonna sit down and we're gonna do some sort of nervous system work, and you're gonna tell your story. Some people don't, but most people sit down and tell a story. And then, they'll get on the table, and any number of things will happen. I don't have, like, a Reiki path that I take down the body anymore.
I just sort of follow spirit, which I also have to be really mindful of when we start the session to make sure they don't have a time that they need to be out because I don't follow the clock even though you sign up for an hour and a half. You're generally here for two hours. So if you need to believe, like, I have to make sure I set us a timer, because I follow spirit, and spirit's gonna tell us what to do. So it'll be a variety of things. Sometimes it's totally quiet and silent the whole entire time, and we're just moving energy around.
And sometimes I talk the entire time, and it's just channeled messages where your guides are, like, blowing me up. And it's like I've constantly got something to say to you, and it's all the time or sometimes it's just a random here's a message for your solar plexus that came in. Sometimes I don't say any of that. I have a little, like, erasable notepad that I will write it on and then talk about it afterwards.
And then I always end with drumming on the body because it's so primal. And the drum does this beautiful thing. Like, anything that we intended, the drum settles it in and reinforces it. And anything that we were kind of flushing out that,like, we kinda got loose, it just helps, like…yeah. That's right.I was on the way out. I don't need to hold on here. And it just feels so good.
So often clients come in and they don't know their frequency, what speaks to them. And to find a little moment where they are like, oh, I'm in my body, and this is the thing that feels good–that can be so empowering. And then when we’re done, we’ll usually sit and kind of both download whatever they experienced, whatever I experienced. .
I love being that kind of channel. That's my job. I'm just here to meet y'all where you're at. Help however that is. And I kinda love that.
I used to get really scared and nervous before sessions because you don't know what to expect. So how do you prepare? But now I really like that because it takes the the pressure off because I don't have to prepare because how would I? You're just preparing the vessel.
It's so weird to be in that new perspective. Like, I never thought I would see it that way. I was so nervous before. I could never see a way of being, like, in the flow of that. And I'm like, oh, it's juicy to not know, and it's so great. I don't have to prepare. I just get to deal with whatever comes. And it's different every time.
Elizabeth: Cool. Well, then it might be hard to answer my last question, but I feel like it's a workshop, so it's a slightly different format. There's, like, a little bit of preparation and kind of structure that we're offering. So what would you hope that people take away from your workshop?
Kelbi: I hope that they realize that they can have a relationship and conversation with themselves and with plants that they might not have had before.
And that can be so many different things, and it could go in so many different ways for each of them. But we're gonna do a journey with a plant, even if it's just dried tulsi. I'm gonna take them through each energy body with the plant. So sensing, what does it feel like to my mental body?
What does it feel like to my spiritual body? What does it feel like to my emotional body and my physical body? And then what's that conversation like? I think a lot of people have never sat down and just, like, sensed into a plan in these ways.
A lot of people have never sat down and sensed into themselves. So that's always my hope is that they're gonna, like, have a moment where they realize, oh, I can do that different. I never did it that way. I could do that different. And I can see myself and plants in a new light.
And then they also get to walk away with something that hopefully helps them continue. They’ll walk away with their own hydrosol, which is a flower essence. And it is so sweet and gentle, so they could use it all the time, and they could have, you know, that little conversation again and the the scent and the, like, visceral sprinkle to, like, tactilely bring them back to the memory of the journey that we'll have. Just, like, bringing your body back to that place of, like, oh, yeah. I accessed that thing in myself that I didn't know I could or that I forget how to or haven't before. Yeah.
So, hopefully, they'll have that to be like, that's right. I did that that day. I am capable. I can do that again when I want to.
And Tulsi is such a great plant to do it with. That's the panacea that she is. Whatever you're dealing with, she's just the best thing to bring on board.
So a lot of people don't think about plants helping them with emotion. That's something else that I would like for people to experience, with everything happening right now. I want people to know that plants can help them in that way. I think that is really powerful.
And to have fun! Like, making stuff is fun. Seeing a new technique is fun. And, like, demystifying something that feels, maybe, inaccessible is fun. Knowing how to play around in your own kitchen and make your own plant medicine is fun.
Like, I want people to feel like, yeah. I can do that. And now I know it works because I tried it.
Same thing with energy work. If I had had 10 people around me in 1999 that knew Reiki also, holy sh**. I bet I woulda come out of my stuff way faster, and I woulda been in this position way faster.
Just mentally and, like, emotionally. You know? So I'm just trying to create an army where we're all on each other's sides, and we all can lean on each other no matter where we're at.
Because I didn't know about that. Not in the way I needed it either. You know? And I think my path has been what it is that so that I can share that with other people who are struggling.
Elizabeth: Yeah. Maybe that's part of why sharing these powerful practices is such a passion of yours. And I really believe you share this work so well because you live it. You embody it. I am so grateful for all that you do, and we are so excited to be collaborating you for one of your many incredible offerings.
To learn more about Kelbi’s groups and other ways to work her, visit her website.
To sign up for our collaborative workshop, the Heart of Tulsi, visit our website. Our workshop is on May 18th from 10-12 and will be an in-person experience at Heart Space Holistic in Atlanta, GA.