The 110-minute treatment is an extension of the cultural celebration of the Gila River Indian Community at the Sheraton Wild Horse Pass Resort and Spa near Phoenix, where Stoneman offers Native American healing with the blessing of her tribal elders.
"In Native American philosophy, we don't have names for working on people," Stoneman said. "When there's an illness or they are not feeling well or there's things going on within an individual, they'll come and talk to me. That's where I decide where I'm supposed to go on the body.
"I begin by totally giving them their space and letting them express to me what they're feeling inside, how it's affecting their bodies," she added. "I would hope they would be very open. They usually are because why else would they come?
"When I'm with them, I can really feel, I can really sense and even sometimes see where they're holding the baggage inside of their bodies and how discomforted they are, the burdens of what's happening in their lives," she said.
Clients will not get a reaction out of Stoneman. She will be focused, consulting with spirits before undertaking a treatment based on ancient healing doctrines of her Pima tribe.
"The spirits and the creator are the ones who do the healing in the individual. I'm just the facilitator," she said.
"We believe that people, when they're not humble and they get out of harmony and they're not paying attention to their own self, that's when their body tries to get their attention," said Stoneman, who uses feathers, clays, water and herbs in her treatments and communicates the visions and spirits she sees. It isn't a "bag of tricks" but a gift she has been refining.
"I remember (at) times being able, especially with horses, to touch them and I could feel their energy. I could feel it in them and know where they were hurting. To me I thought that was natural," said Stoneman, 48, who began learning she had a gift in her 20s.
She began preparing for her life as a healer with the guidance of tribal elders. It's a process she still works on today, enhancing her knowledge by visiting other tribes and working with shamans in places as far away as Hawaii, Mexico, Bolivia and South Dakota.
Stoneman also took additional training in subjects such as energy anatomy, transformational psychology, physiology and polarity at formal institutions including the Southwest Insititute of Healing Arts in nearby Tempe and Argosy University.
She says the elders were open to the ideas she brought back and encouraged her to use them in her healing where she saw fit.
"It's like living in two different worlds," she said. "I know my people but I had to learn how to work with other ethnic groups," she said.
For more information on native treatments at Aji Spa, or cultural activities at Sheraton Wild Horse Pass, see wildhorsepassresort.com.
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