Maayan Sabbag  amayzing story,

In 2008, the then-27-year-old Sabbag completed her studies in Chinese Medicine at the Reidman-Kinneret College and traveled to southwest China for an internship at a hospital in Chengdu in the Sichuan province.

After completing the course, she and a friend decided to visit a nature reserve 90 minutes away. When they arrived, they entered a restaurant and had just ordered some food when an 8.0-magnitude earthquake hit. It devastated Wenchuan County, killing some 70,000 people, and was felt as far as Beijing, 1,600 kilometers away.

“The roof of the restaurant fell on us, it pinned me under the rubble, smashed my jaw into a hundred pieces and I could barely swallow,” remembers the bubbly and eloquent Sabbag. “I was bleeding like crazy, but I couldn’t shout. It took a few hours for them to pull me out. I thought I was awake the whole time but I realized I was unconscious for some of it. Time was just missing.”

Even though she was told she shouldn’t move, Sabbag felt she had to get to a hospital. She and her friend trudged slowly to a nearby clinic, and just as they arrived, they experienced an aftershock and the clinic collapsed.

“It was destroyed before my eyes, my hopes were shredded,” recalls Sabbag. “They built a tent city and we slept there. Then it started raining. I was at my lowest point, no food or water for almost three days. I felt like I was dying. As my body was getting heavier, my soul was getting lighter.

“I heard a voice, and it was somebody asking me questions… things like ‘What is the thing you most regret not having done in your lifetime?’ The voice then said, ‘I want to save you but you will need to rescue yourself. Get up and start walking.’ In a second, I went from zero energy to 100% – it was like an electric jolt. 

“I wrote a note to my friend that I’m going to rescue myself, and the voice told me exactly what to do. ‘When the sun rises, the rain will stop, the doctors will tell you that you can’t walk to the nearest hospital, but I’ll be with you. Don’t listen to anybody else, just my voice.’ 

“The voice didn’t mention that the hospital was a 12-hour walk away, but it happened exactly like that. The doctors tried to stop us, saying that I would die on the way. Should I listen to them – flesh and blood – or the voice in my head?

“We started walking and we met a Chinese man, who after seeing the shape I was in, said, ‘I will help you.’ He put my arm around his and we walked like that for 12 hours. Many times I said I couldn’t continue and they should go on without me. But we managed to get to the hospital. They didn’t understand why I was still alive. I had lost five kilo in three days.

“They brought me in for surgery that lasted eight hours, after still not having eaten for days. They pumped me with medication, and at one point I remember them saying they were losing me. I heard voices, seemed like from far away, saying, ‘Come back, come back.’ It was so weird. I was between the clouds in a big empty space but very beautiful and full of love and serenity. I remember thinking, ‘This is home.’

“Then the same voice from before came to me and asked if I wanted to go back to my body or continue through the clouds. I said that I wasn’t finished, I’m studying medicine, and there are things I still want to do – I want to be a mother. I couldn’t imagine leaving the world without being a mother.

“The voice said that I could go back down to my body, but I was so far up, I had no energy left. A horse came to me and I got on and it galloped until I woke up. I couldn’t stop thinking about it and what had happened to me. But nobody took me seriously.

“That was why I embarked on this quest over the past 10 years. I had an overwhelming need to understand it. At the beginning I thought I was the victim of a tragic story. But it was really an amazingly inspirational and empowering story. It took me 10 years to go from traumatized victim to empowered person.”

Today Sabbag practices Chinese medicine, but also uses consciousness therapy to help people connect with their spirit world.

“I used to be afraid of death. Today I feel like all humans are my family and that I know everyone, that I can connect to people and feel and heal them… almost like a superpower.”

She also became a mother.

“I got pregnant two months after the earthquake, during my recovery and rehab [she had already been engaged when she was in China]. My body was so shattered and weak. I have three children now, and I feel like my oldest son is a miracle.”

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