About 2 months ago we were asked to treat a young girl who had developed a lung abscess and scoliosis. The abscess was highly resistant to antibiotics. For five and a half weeks the girl suffered from exhaustion, fever and night sweats. The night sweats were caused by an astronomically high white blood cell count (over 30 times normal) that was due to the infection. We were told about her on a Thursday, and began treatment right away. On Friday, her fever broke, and did not go back up again. Over the weekend the night sweats stopped. By Monday her white blood cell count had dropped by two-thirds, she was taken off antibiotics and her doctor said that if she felt up to it she could go back to school. Two weeks later everything was normal and only the scoliosis remained. Her parents were told that she would have to wear a back brace for the remainder of her teen years. We kept treating her. Three weeks later the scoliosis was gone too! Her doctor said she had had a spontaneous remission.
Children and young teens are very receptive to bioenergy healing.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Looking for a paradigm change in treating cancer
The history of the development of penicillin, the miracle drug that made infection control possible, is eerily similar to the development of energy medicine, with the difference that energy medicine is still in the uncertain early stages.
Myth has it that penicillin was discovered by accident, and voila, we suddenly had a miracle drug. But the true story is far more complex. There were many dead ends, near misses, even patient deaths, before penicillin became penicillin. There is an entertaining lecture, well worth reading, by an unknown author on the history of the discovery of penicillin available on the internet. It seems to have been a lecture in a botany class at the University of Hawaii (link).
It begins with the story of a man called Morton Paterson, a retired philosophy professor, who as a child suffered from a bone infection acquired through a cut on his knee. Here is the story in his own words:
A few years later, Mortie Paterson's osteomyelitis returned. But by then, penicillin was widely available. With antibiotic treatment the infection disappeared in a few days and never came back.
The story caught my eye because little Mortie's suffering through months of excruciating treatments is very similar to the suffering that cancer patients have to undergo today with chemotherapy and radiation. When the paradigm changed, and penicillin became freely available, the suffering caused by infections became a thing of the past. I hope to see a similar paradigm change with cancer in my lifetime.
Myth has it that penicillin was discovered by accident, and voila, we suddenly had a miracle drug. But the true story is far more complex. There were many dead ends, near misses, even patient deaths, before penicillin became penicillin. There is an entertaining lecture, well worth reading, by an unknown author on the history of the discovery of penicillin available on the internet. It seems to have been a lecture in a botany class at the University of Hawaii (link).
It begins with the story of a man called Morton Paterson, a retired philosophy professor, who as a child suffered from a bone infection acquired through a cut on his knee. Here is the story in his own words:
The cut had become infected, and I had blood poison[ing]. For a few days I guess I was "out of it", in a coma, and hung in the balance between life and death. I was diagnosed as having osteomyelitis, which means "bone infection". Apparently what happens with osteomyelitis is that the infected blood seeks out a part of the body which is already weak for some reason. In my case that happened to be the socket in my left hip.
[T]hey knew they had to operate fast to stop the infection before it traveled to a vital organ. That led to three months in hospital. The surgeon was Dr. Mowat, and I remember him as a very kind and soft-spoken man. He had to scrape out the infected bone, but then leave the large incision open so the nurses could pack it every day with fresh gauze. Later I was told that the reason for not closing up the incision was that oxygen (fresh air) was needed to clear up the infection. Without oxygen the infection would stay in the bone, and be a continuing threat.
I've never been so scared in all my life. I didn't know why my hip was so sore and not getting better, and could tell that Dr. Mowat and my parents were pretty worried. As the nurses peeled away the old packing and re-packed my hip with fresh gauze they tried their best to cheer me up and not let on they were worried. I remember them saying, "Now be a brave little soldier, Mortie!"
Surgery had to be performed a few more times to clean out bone chips in the incision. All I can remember about those extra surgeries was being wheeled out of my room, down the corridor, and into a large bright "operating room". Suddenly a doctor (I later learned he or she is called the anesthetist) behind me would cover my face with a cloth and tell me start counting. Then the doctor would a couple of drops of ether onto the cloth. I would get to about 3 before falling asleep.
Looking back to that operating room experience these sixty-three years later I still remember my panic, crying out when the cloth went over my face. Ether had the most sickening smell I ever smelled, and I guess the scariest part was not knowing when they'd cart me down the corridor again and have that awful cloth suddenly draped over my face. Another thing about ether was that I'd be so sick when I came to back in my room. The smell seemed to linger forever, and I kept bringing up. The nurses would give me a pill to help me sleep, so eventually I'd doze off.
When the infection was finally contained (by mid-summer), less and less packing was put into the incision till the day finally came that I could go home on little crutches that I still have.
A few years later, Mortie Paterson's osteomyelitis returned. But by then, penicillin was widely available. With antibiotic treatment the infection disappeared in a few days and never came back.
The story caught my eye because little Mortie's suffering through months of excruciating treatments is very similar to the suffering that cancer patients have to undergo today with chemotherapy and radiation. When the paradigm changed, and penicillin became freely available, the suffering caused by infections became a thing of the past. I hope to see a similar paradigm change with cancer in my lifetime.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Eureka -- "Going to the source" works
I had an indication yesterday that the technique described in my post "Advanced 'healership'" does work.
I was treating a friend who had just come back from a trip by plane which had left her ear uncomfortably blocked. As I treated her we were chatting back and forth, and I wasn't paying much attention to what I was doing. Periodically I asked her how her ear was doing. She would report that she could breathe better through the nostril that had been blocked, but the ear was just about the same. At some point during the treatment I noticed that I was doing the healing on auto-pilot, with no formulated intent. So I "went to the source" and articulated the intent that she receive the healing that she needed for her ear. Within seconds she said "it's better now".
Okay, so it's not cancer, but it was still a good illustration of the effectiveness of the technique.
I was treating a friend who had just come back from a trip by plane which had left her ear uncomfortably blocked. As I treated her we were chatting back and forth, and I wasn't paying much attention to what I was doing. Periodically I asked her how her ear was doing. She would report that she could breathe better through the nostril that had been blocked, but the ear was just about the same. At some point during the treatment I noticed that I was doing the healing on auto-pilot, with no formulated intent. So I "went to the source" and articulated the intent that she receive the healing that she needed for her ear. Within seconds she said "it's better now".
Okay, so it's not cancer, but it was still a good illustration of the effectiveness of the technique.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
A description of Bill Bengston's mouse experiments
This comes from the EEG Info newsletter. The author, whose name is not posted, is summarizing a presentation made by Bill at an ISSSEEM conference:
[I]t is timely to discuss the following experimental results, which were presented by William Bengston. His research topic was the issue of whether energy healing could be taught. The healing technique was the laying-on of hands. So Bengston taught a number of initially non-believing students in the techniques that he wanted used, which were to take an hour a day for a month. The technique was to be used on mice that had been injected with lethal doses of mammary adenocarcinoma. This dose is well-known to be 100% fatal, and in fact no mouse ever survived longer than 27 days under the challenge of such an injection.
The mice indeed developed the tumors, as expected, but then the tumors took a surprising course. They blackened and ulcerated, and then were resorbed. The mice went on to live a full lifespan. In fact, subsequent trials with the lethal elixir did not even elicit tumor formation. Lifetime immunity to this kind of cancer seemed to have been conferred. The experimental mice survived the challenge at the rate of 88% out of some 33 mice involved in a number of separate trials. The trials were run in different universities, by different groups of students. Looking just at these data, one would be tempted to conclude that first of all there is merit to the “laying on of hands;” secondly, that the skill can be taught; and finally, that even belief in the so-called “treatment” is not required. But this is not the end of the story.
It turns out that the controls did just about as well, responding at a 70% rate despite not having had the benefit of the laying on of hands. There were replications with another strain of tumor that is equally fatal, with similar results. But now Bengston was running into a curious snag. When he approached the same groups of researchers about doing replications, he was rebuffed. After all, the first time they agreed to do the experiment it was a matter of proving that Bengston was nuts. They were perfectly happy to cooperate in doing that. On the other hand, if they agreed to do a second similar experiment, it would just prove that they were nuts! Thus the enterprise of science protects itself from deviance.
Bengston reluctantly concluded that his carefully done experiment did not answer the question about whether healing techniques could be taught to the naive, since there was no significant treatment interaction, but it left him with the dilemma of explaining the results obtained with the controls. He is postulating that a kind of herd immunity was acquired by the group of mice that had once shared a common bond, a kind of resonant bond. It’s not like the data can be readily explained away. All of the mice did grow the tumors, after all, at least in the first administration. And the tumors are known to be 100% fatal. So there is clearly a need for an explanation. Finally, there was the fact that the experiment had in fact been done “triple-blind.” On their own initiative the students had established yet a third control group, unbeknownst to Bengston, so if Bengston was somehow intervening with the controls surreptitiously, this third group would be unaffected. They were healed as well! This is doubly ironic, since the students were the real experimental animals here rather than the mice. So we actually had a case of the experimental animals running a blinded, controlled experiment on the experimenter. That may be a first. Other experiments were ongoing in the same universities in which groups of mice were continuing to succumb to the tumor-kindling procedure as expected. Something was causing these particular groups of mice to respond differently from all the others. And they have done so now in six [now ten] independent trials.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Advanced "healership"
The founders of great methods, like great chefs, often have difficulty translating what they do into a simple recipe. It is easy enough to distill the basics, but how do you account for the pinch of this and the smidgeon of that that get added in the process of preparation that in the end make the dish work?
I suspect the "cycling" technique is just the meat and potatoes of what Bill Bengston does to make his healings work and that there are many other subtler things for which there is no room in the workshop -- or in the simple instructions given to Bill's skeptical trainees. It is also entirely possible that there are some things Bill does in the course of his treatments of which he is not even aware, as there is much in energy healing that is subconscious and intuitive. (To take an analogy from psychoanalysis, Freud practiced his art far differently from the iron-clad instructions he gave his followers, from which modern psychoanalysis was born. If you read the memoirs of the people he treated, you would be shocked how un-Freudian Freud himself could be. To take another example from marriage and baking, my mother-in-law gave me the recipe for her son's favourite dessert, and it never, ever, ever came out the same as she used to make it.)
This is a long preamble to telling you about a technique we learned from Bill and what happened to it in the application. The technique is called "touching the source" and the description for it is quite simple: you "touch" the client, you "touch" the source, and then you allow the client to subtract from the source what he or she needs for healing.
Simple, right? But what the heck does it mean and how do you apply it?
Reiki folks at this point might scoff and say that this exactly what Reiki is meant to do, expressed in different words. In Reiki the practitioner is meant to be a conduit between the client and Reiki source energy.
Then we have the description of the Matrix Energetics technique called "two-pointing" described on the Matrix discussion board. The explanation went something like this: imagine you are in a two-room building. You are in one room with the client. In the other room you have God or the Zero Point Field (the source of all possibilities). Between the two rooms there is a door. Your job as healer is to open the door.
Voila: touch the client, touch the source, allow the client to take from the source what he or she needs.
So I was sitting there treating someone, thinking to myself "okay, I'm supposed to open the door. How do I open the door?" And as I sat and pondered, the door somehow opened and something very interesting happened. The client had been in a car accident and was experiencing considerable pain. After I "opened the door", there was a sudden tighness around his torso, then something left with what I experienced as a "woosh!" That night he slept normally for the first time since the car accident, and the next day he reported feeling "absolutely normal".
Then I thought further. Maybe this is not quite what Bill does. Maybe there is more to it. What this technique describes is something fairly passive, and from what I've seen what Bill does is not passive. That might be what makes him more effective than your average energy healer: that he goes the extra mile. For him it does not seem to be a question of allowing the client to take what he needs; it's a question of giving to the client way more than what he would take if left to his own devices. After all, the client possibly became ill in the first place because his body did not know how to ask for enough of what it needed. This is not something Bill taught our group, but my extrapolation from what I've seen him to do.
But who then decides how much more "more" needs to be? Not me! I, the treater, am not in any position to make that decision. But if I cannot, and the client is not able to, who can? Simple: let the source (God, the Zero Point Field) or the client's so-called "higher self" decide. So essentially what is needed is a simple change of focus from the client to the source energy; a simple change of intent from "let the client take what he or she needs" to "please give the client what it takes for him or her to heal". We tried this in our practice group, and the change was noticeable.
We'll now have to see what kind of difference this makes in bringing on actual, documented healings. I'll keep you posted.
I suspect the "cycling" technique is just the meat and potatoes of what Bill Bengston does to make his healings work and that there are many other subtler things for which there is no room in the workshop -- or in the simple instructions given to Bill's skeptical trainees. It is also entirely possible that there are some things Bill does in the course of his treatments of which he is not even aware, as there is much in energy healing that is subconscious and intuitive. (To take an analogy from psychoanalysis, Freud practiced his art far differently from the iron-clad instructions he gave his followers, from which modern psychoanalysis was born. If you read the memoirs of the people he treated, you would be shocked how un-Freudian Freud himself could be. To take another example from marriage and baking, my mother-in-law gave me the recipe for her son's favourite dessert, and it never, ever, ever came out the same as she used to make it.)
This is a long preamble to telling you about a technique we learned from Bill and what happened to it in the application. The technique is called "touching the source" and the description for it is quite simple: you "touch" the client, you "touch" the source, and then you allow the client to subtract from the source what he or she needs for healing.
Simple, right? But what the heck does it mean and how do you apply it?
Reiki folks at this point might scoff and say that this exactly what Reiki is meant to do, expressed in different words. In Reiki the practitioner is meant to be a conduit between the client and Reiki source energy.
Then we have the description of the Matrix Energetics technique called "two-pointing" described on the Matrix discussion board. The explanation went something like this: imagine you are in a two-room building. You are in one room with the client. In the other room you have God or the Zero Point Field (the source of all possibilities). Between the two rooms there is a door. Your job as healer is to open the door.
Voila: touch the client, touch the source, allow the client to take from the source what he or she needs.
So I was sitting there treating someone, thinking to myself "okay, I'm supposed to open the door. How do I open the door?" And as I sat and pondered, the door somehow opened and something very interesting happened. The client had been in a car accident and was experiencing considerable pain. After I "opened the door", there was a sudden tighness around his torso, then something left with what I experienced as a "woosh!" That night he slept normally for the first time since the car accident, and the next day he reported feeling "absolutely normal".
Then I thought further. Maybe this is not quite what Bill does. Maybe there is more to it. What this technique describes is something fairly passive, and from what I've seen what Bill does is not passive. That might be what makes him more effective than your average energy healer: that he goes the extra mile. For him it does not seem to be a question of allowing the client to take what he needs; it's a question of giving to the client way more than what he would take if left to his own devices. After all, the client possibly became ill in the first place because his body did not know how to ask for enough of what it needed. This is not something Bill taught our group, but my extrapolation from what I've seen him to do.
But who then decides how much more "more" needs to be? Not me! I, the treater, am not in any position to make that decision. But if I cannot, and the client is not able to, who can? Simple: let the source (God, the Zero Point Field) or the client's so-called "higher self" decide. So essentially what is needed is a simple change of focus from the client to the source energy; a simple change of intent from "let the client take what he or she needs" to "please give the client what it takes for him or her to heal". We tried this in our practice group, and the change was noticeable.
We'll now have to see what kind of difference this makes in bringing on actual, documented healings. I'll keep you posted.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Energy Healing 101 - A free online "introductory course" - Part 2 -- Healing Others
This is offered for your information only and is in no way intended to replace the advice and services of a qualified physician. Please read the previous post (part 1) before proceeding with any of the practice in part 2. Please treat the information you read here as any set of instructions you would read in a book. Use it with full awareness that you are responsible for your own health and your own level of comfort in applying what you read. This particular post refers to generic energy healing, not energy healing specific to cancer. It is not a description of the Bengston method.
Having done the exercises in part 1, you may now be sensitized to feeling energy coming from your hands. One purpose to the exercises was to make you aware of this energy, which in fact is always there and available to be called upon. As I said before, we Westerners tend to "live" in our heads, and particularly in our analytical left brains. We are unable to feel the energy because we are insensitive to it; and because we don't feel it, we do not believe that it exists. The energy exercises allow the awareness to move from our head into our body and therefore increase our sensitivity.
There are two places in particular where the awareness needs to reside to allow us to do healing. One is what the Chinese call the dan tien (and the Japanese call hara): the area just below your belly button. This is one of the main storage areas for chi. It is also the place where the martial artist's spirit shout comes from, greatly increasing his or her power. It is here that you store up life energy doing the Qi Gong exercise that is called "standing like a tree". To maintain awareness of the dan tien or hara, it is important to practice breathing into the area on a fairly regular basis.
The second place the awareness needs to reside for effectiveness in healing is the heart. That probably needs little explanation. After all, most of us intuitively know that all healing is love.
An experiment
I hope you will now join me in an experiment. On the right side of this blog you will find the photo of a hand. It is an unremarkable, un-Photoshopped image, but it has been set up so one might feel energy coming through it. My inspiration for doing this came from a Dutch website that a few years ago posted a "Reiki hand" and invited people to test if they could feel anything coming from it. Another website in Vancouver posted a photo of the founder of Reiki, Dr. Mikao Usui, and claimed that you would receive Reiki if you looked at the image. I found energy coming from both images. I asked a couple of people, one a healer, the other a "regular guy" who is also a skeptic, to tell me if they felt anything coming from this image and they both told me that they did. So now it's your turn, if you choose to check it out.
Hold one hand over the image, then the other, each for just a few seconds. Run each hand over the screen to feel if there is any difference between the areas where the image of the hand is, and where it isn't. You can call up a larger image by clicking on it. You could also try closing your eyes and just sitting in front of it, and seeing if you feel anything different. Your feedback is welcome whether you feel anything or not.
Now comes the weird part. In the best of all possible worlds as it exists in my imagination, this hand is a portal for you to receive the kind of attunement that would happen if you attended an actual energy healing course. If you wish to try this out, hold each hand, one at a time, over the image for a longer period than 30 seconds. You may feel how long you need to do this. It may help if you set the intention that you wish to become a healer.
Putting it all together
This is how you do energy healing:
1) Begin by setting up a positive flow of energy. By positive flow I mean that you feel the energy coming in through your feet, your brow or your crown, and then feel it coming out of your palms. Use the energy sensitizing exercises described in part 1 if you need to.
2) Set up your intent. State in your mind that you wish to be a clear healing channel for the benefit of the person you are treating. If you are religious, and wish to do "laying on of hands" in a Christian context, this would be a good time to pray and to ask for the love of Jesus to come through you.
3) Establish a connection with the person you are treating by placing your hands on them (on the shoulders if they are sitting or on the solar plexus if they are lying down). Ask again for the energy to flow through you to them. Remind yourself that the source from which the energy flows knows what kind of healing is needed -- or, if you are not comfortable with the idea of energy that knows what needs to be done, just trust in the "healee's" body intelligence.
4) Keep the positive energy flow going by using your intent or your breath. One way of doing this is to remind yourself that you are drawing the energy through your brow/hara/feet on the in-breath, and sending it out through your palm on the out-breath.
5) This is very important: get out of the way! You are not doing anything. You are just a channel facilitating a flow of healing energy to a person who needs it. The energy doesn't come from you; it comes through you. As a side benefit you too will receive a healing at the same time.
6) You could intend to link up with all the healers in the world. This is a variation on the idea of the Buddhist "sangha". When Buddhists meditate, they ask the "sangha", Buddhist meditators everywhere, to join in and help them. Similarly, you could ask all the healers in the world to help you.
One way to fail is to let the left brain get into the act. The left brain will begin to ask questions such as "am I doing this right?" and "what on earth am I doing here?". Or it will make statements such as "this is absurd", "this could not possibly work" and/or "this doesn't make any sense", etc.
Another way to fail is to want it too much to happen. The ego can get involved just as easily as the left brain. The ego will say "I am doing this". You are not doing anything. You are just hanging out. The ego can also get involved in very sneaky ways, e.g., by trying to direct the energy.
So how do we get the left brain and the ego out of the equation? One way is through focusing on breathing. There is a whole energy healing method based on this, Richard Gordon's Quantum Touch. If you want to learn more about doing this, read his book of the same name. Richard's breathing exercises also teach you how to strengthen the energy flow.
Another way is to keep the brain busy with other tasks. Bill Bengston's method excels at this. A description of how he keeps the brain busy can be found in his "Methods" paper in the spring 2007 issue of The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine [and now his books Chasing the Cure and The Energy Cure]. Bill's method of keeping the brain busy also helps strengthen the energy flow.
In our practice groups we have tried several methods in addition to Bill's. One was meditative breathing. If you are an active meditator, this may work for you. Another is to instruct your brain to make up spontaneous images of happy and beautiful things. My brain can generate quite a collage of people laughing, dancing, and interacting in gorgeous natural surroundings. I see mothers and babies, colourful swirling dancers, oceans, mountains, and trees. Sometimes I see colourful, symmetrical geometric designs spreading from a single point into infinity. Bill's method has advantages over this, and I recommend taking one of his workshops to learn it. By the way, the Domancic folk also recommend entertaining your brain with beautiful images, to which they also add rock music. Their general idea is to be happy while you work at healing: they suggest that both the healee and the practitioner "go to the beach" in their minds during the treatment.
We have found that asking "what needs to happen here?", then remaining open for an answer that may or may not come, takes the healing to a higher level. You need patience, trust, and stillness to do this.
The best attitude for both healer and "healee" to have is a kind of open-minded, non-judgmental curiosity that expects nothing and welcomes everything.
Where to put your hands
Different modalities have different ways of going about this. Reiki has set hand positions, which you will find described and illustrated in most Reiki books. Reiki hand positions essentially follow the chakras. You work down the front and then up the back, placing your hand on each chakra for about 3 minutes.
Quantum Touch begins with generic hand positions and then goes on to "sandwiching" the area that needs to be treated. You will find this described in Richard Gordon's book.
Bill also has a few generic hand positions, such as shoulders and the solar plexus, and then instructs his students to put their hands where they are guided to.
If after "taking" this course you find your hands moving independently of your will, e.g. making spirals, or waving over the body, or making other movements of their own, then congratulations, that means we've been eminently successful, and you have now entered the Twilight Zone.
One caution about hand positions: be respectful of people's comfort zones about being touched. Always ask before you do it. And it obviously doesn't need to be said that there are certain places you should never place your hands, unless the person you are treating is your partner, and you have their permission to do it.
Feedback and caveats
The person you are treating may feel warmth, heat, coolness, electricity, magnetism, or nothing. It's helpful to have feedback, especially if you are new at this. Don't get discouraged if the person you are treating feels nothing at first. Focus on your end of things (positive flow, breathing, getting out of the way) and something may happen.
I would suggest starting with small things like cuts, scrapes, sprains, sore backs, and minor sports injuries. Pets are also great candidates, whatever their ailment. I personally have never been very successful with colds and headaches, although if I wake up in the middle of the night with a burning throat, which usually indicates the onset of a cold, I can usually prevent the cold by putting my hands on my throat for a while and letting the energy run. I have, however, been very successful with injuries. Individual talents can vary.
You can work effectively with people who are skeptical about the concept of healing energy, but I would not recommend treating people who are out to prove to you that it cannot possibly work. Their attitude will simply block the flow of energy and discourage you.
If at any point either you or the person you are treating become uncomfortable with the treatment, stop immediately. Energy healing cannot do harm, but people's levels of comfort about doing or receiving it vary, and must be respected.
After doing a treatment, always wash your hands in cold water and intend to cut the energetic connection between yourself and the person you've been treating. This will prevent you from picking up their symptoms.
Please do not ever diagnose, or prevent a person from seeing a doctor or from carrying out the doctor's instructions.
Follow up
To become better at this, you need to practice, practice, practice. Keep doing the qi gong exercises described in part 1 and refining your energy flow. Practice getting out the way (it's the hardest thing to learn). The more you can get out of the way after setting the intention to become a clear channel, the more effective you will be.
If this "introductory course" has whetted your appetite to learn more, find a course in energy healing near you. If you live in southern Ontario, and you are curious about what we are doing, feel free to contact me. You can also contact me, wherever you live, if you have any questions or feedback.
Having done the exercises in part 1, you may now be sensitized to feeling energy coming from your hands. One purpose to the exercises was to make you aware of this energy, which in fact is always there and available to be called upon. As I said before, we Westerners tend to "live" in our heads, and particularly in our analytical left brains. We are unable to feel the energy because we are insensitive to it; and because we don't feel it, we do not believe that it exists. The energy exercises allow the awareness to move from our head into our body and therefore increase our sensitivity.
There are two places in particular where the awareness needs to reside to allow us to do healing. One is what the Chinese call the dan tien (and the Japanese call hara): the area just below your belly button. This is one of the main storage areas for chi. It is also the place where the martial artist's spirit shout comes from, greatly increasing his or her power. It is here that you store up life energy doing the Qi Gong exercise that is called "standing like a tree". To maintain awareness of the dan tien or hara, it is important to practice breathing into the area on a fairly regular basis.
The second place the awareness needs to reside for effectiveness in healing is the heart. That probably needs little explanation. After all, most of us intuitively know that all healing is love.
An experiment
I hope you will now join me in an experiment. On the right side of this blog you will find the photo of a hand. It is an unremarkable, un-Photoshopped image, but it has been set up so one might feel energy coming through it. My inspiration for doing this came from a Dutch website that a few years ago posted a "Reiki hand" and invited people to test if they could feel anything coming from it. Another website in Vancouver posted a photo of the founder of Reiki, Dr. Mikao Usui, and claimed that you would receive Reiki if you looked at the image. I found energy coming from both images. I asked a couple of people, one a healer, the other a "regular guy" who is also a skeptic, to tell me if they felt anything coming from this image and they both told me that they did. So now it's your turn, if you choose to check it out.
Hold one hand over the image, then the other, each for just a few seconds. Run each hand over the screen to feel if there is any difference between the areas where the image of the hand is, and where it isn't. You can call up a larger image by clicking on it. You could also try closing your eyes and just sitting in front of it, and seeing if you feel anything different. Your feedback is welcome whether you feel anything or not.
Now comes the weird part. In the best of all possible worlds as it exists in my imagination, this hand is a portal for you to receive the kind of attunement that would happen if you attended an actual energy healing course. If you wish to try this out, hold each hand, one at a time, over the image for a longer period than 30 seconds. You may feel how long you need to do this. It may help if you set the intention that you wish to become a healer.
Putting it all together
This is how you do energy healing:
1) Begin by setting up a positive flow of energy. By positive flow I mean that you feel the energy coming in through your feet, your brow or your crown, and then feel it coming out of your palms. Use the energy sensitizing exercises described in part 1 if you need to.
2) Set up your intent. State in your mind that you wish to be a clear healing channel for the benefit of the person you are treating. If you are religious, and wish to do "laying on of hands" in a Christian context, this would be a good time to pray and to ask for the love of Jesus to come through you.
3) Establish a connection with the person you are treating by placing your hands on them (on the shoulders if they are sitting or on the solar plexus if they are lying down). Ask again for the energy to flow through you to them. Remind yourself that the source from which the energy flows knows what kind of healing is needed -- or, if you are not comfortable with the idea of energy that knows what needs to be done, just trust in the "healee's" body intelligence.
4) Keep the positive energy flow going by using your intent or your breath. One way of doing this is to remind yourself that you are drawing the energy through your brow/hara/feet on the in-breath, and sending it out through your palm on the out-breath.
5) This is very important: get out of the way! You are not doing anything. You are just a channel facilitating a flow of healing energy to a person who needs it. The energy doesn't come from you; it comes through you. As a side benefit you too will receive a healing at the same time.
6) You could intend to link up with all the healers in the world. This is a variation on the idea of the Buddhist "sangha". When Buddhists meditate, they ask the "sangha", Buddhist meditators everywhere, to join in and help them. Similarly, you could ask all the healers in the world to help you.
One way to fail is to let the left brain get into the act. The left brain will begin to ask questions such as "am I doing this right?" and "what on earth am I doing here?". Or it will make statements such as "this is absurd", "this could not possibly work" and/or "this doesn't make any sense", etc.
Another way to fail is to want it too much to happen. The ego can get involved just as easily as the left brain. The ego will say "I am doing this". You are not doing anything. You are just hanging out. The ego can also get involved in very sneaky ways, e.g., by trying to direct the energy.
So how do we get the left brain and the ego out of the equation? One way is through focusing on breathing. There is a whole energy healing method based on this, Richard Gordon's Quantum Touch. If you want to learn more about doing this, read his book of the same name. Richard's breathing exercises also teach you how to strengthen the energy flow.
Another way is to keep the brain busy with other tasks. Bill Bengston's method excels at this. A description of how he keeps the brain busy can be found in his "Methods" paper in the spring 2007 issue of The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine [and now his books Chasing the Cure and The Energy Cure]. Bill's method of keeping the brain busy also helps strengthen the energy flow.
In our practice groups we have tried several methods in addition to Bill's. One was meditative breathing. If you are an active meditator, this may work for you. Another is to instruct your brain to make up spontaneous images of happy and beautiful things. My brain can generate quite a collage of people laughing, dancing, and interacting in gorgeous natural surroundings. I see mothers and babies, colourful swirling dancers, oceans, mountains, and trees. Sometimes I see colourful, symmetrical geometric designs spreading from a single point into infinity. Bill's method has advantages over this, and I recommend taking one of his workshops to learn it. By the way, the Domancic folk also recommend entertaining your brain with beautiful images, to which they also add rock music. Their general idea is to be happy while you work at healing: they suggest that both the healee and the practitioner "go to the beach" in their minds during the treatment.
We have found that asking "what needs to happen here?", then remaining open for an answer that may or may not come, takes the healing to a higher level. You need patience, trust, and stillness to do this.
The best attitude for both healer and "healee" to have is a kind of open-minded, non-judgmental curiosity that expects nothing and welcomes everything.
Where to put your hands
Different modalities have different ways of going about this. Reiki has set hand positions, which you will find described and illustrated in most Reiki books. Reiki hand positions essentially follow the chakras. You work down the front and then up the back, placing your hand on each chakra for about 3 minutes.
Quantum Touch begins with generic hand positions and then goes on to "sandwiching" the area that needs to be treated. You will find this described in Richard Gordon's book.
Bill also has a few generic hand positions, such as shoulders and the solar plexus, and then instructs his students to put their hands where they are guided to.
If after "taking" this course you find your hands moving independently of your will, e.g. making spirals, or waving over the body, or making other movements of their own, then congratulations, that means we've been eminently successful, and you have now entered the Twilight Zone.
One caution about hand positions: be respectful of people's comfort zones about being touched. Always ask before you do it. And it obviously doesn't need to be said that there are certain places you should never place your hands, unless the person you are treating is your partner, and you have their permission to do it.
Feedback and caveats
The person you are treating may feel warmth, heat, coolness, electricity, magnetism, or nothing. It's helpful to have feedback, especially if you are new at this. Don't get discouraged if the person you are treating feels nothing at first. Focus on your end of things (positive flow, breathing, getting out of the way) and something may happen.
I would suggest starting with small things like cuts, scrapes, sprains, sore backs, and minor sports injuries. Pets are also great candidates, whatever their ailment. I personally have never been very successful with colds and headaches, although if I wake up in the middle of the night with a burning throat, which usually indicates the onset of a cold, I can usually prevent the cold by putting my hands on my throat for a while and letting the energy run. I have, however, been very successful with injuries. Individual talents can vary.
You can work effectively with people who are skeptical about the concept of healing energy, but I would not recommend treating people who are out to prove to you that it cannot possibly work. Their attitude will simply block the flow of energy and discourage you.
If at any point either you or the person you are treating become uncomfortable with the treatment, stop immediately. Energy healing cannot do harm, but people's levels of comfort about doing or receiving it vary, and must be respected.
After doing a treatment, always wash your hands in cold water and intend to cut the energetic connection between yourself and the person you've been treating. This will prevent you from picking up their symptoms.
Please do not ever diagnose, or prevent a person from seeing a doctor or from carrying out the doctor's instructions.
Follow up
To become better at this, you need to practice, practice, practice. Keep doing the qi gong exercises described in part 1 and refining your energy flow. Practice getting out the way (it's the hardest thing to learn). The more you can get out of the way after setting the intention to become a clear channel, the more effective you will be.
If this "introductory course" has whetted your appetite to learn more, find a course in energy healing near you. If you live in southern Ontario, and you are curious about what we are doing, feel free to contact me. You can also contact me, wherever you live, if you have any questions or feedback.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Energy Healing 101 - A free online "introductory course" - Part 1 - Healing Self
This is being offered for your information only, and it is not in any way intended to replace the services and advice of a qualified physician. This section focuses on basics and "healing self". For healing others, see Part 2.
Introduction
Energy healing is actually quite easy to learn. Most courses begin with a history of the technique being taught, followed by preparation to receive the "teaching", instruction in the technique, one or several "attunements" (which the participants may or may not be told about), instruction on how to apply the method, and finally ethical considerations on using the method, which chiefly boil down to "thou shalt not advise the client not to seek orthodox medical care" and "make no claims of being able to heal anything".
This techique has no history, as it does not rely on any single school of teaching. But I will give some basic "science" that should make all this much easier to learn.
Biologist James Oschman discovered the existence of "energy healing" after he hurt his back through years of bending over microscopes and an energy healer fixed it. Oschman then asked himself "what is this, how does it work, and why haven't I heard about it?" and went on to devote his time as a scientist to studying the phenomenon.
In his book Energy Healing: The Scientific Basis Oschman proposes that we, humans, arrived on this planet as a species hardwired to be able to perform and receive energy healing. I am no scientist, and I may be hopelessly mangling his argument, but from what I understand Oschman suggests that energy healers first concentrate the earth's extremely low frequency (ELF) electromagnetic fluctuations (called the Schuman Resonance), possibly through their pineal gland, and then emit this energy out through their hands. The energy has been measured, and has been shown to be more powerful than expected. (link to Oschman chapter)
Oschman's hypothesis seems to be confirmed by some of Bill Bengston's mouse experiments, in which geomagnetic probes set around the cages of sick mice he was healing showed that the earth's geomagnetic micropulsations, which normally show up as a random pattern of spikes, became a visibly organized series of waves (referred to as "negative entropy") at the times the mice were receiving healing.
What you need to take away from the above is that a lot of people, including some scientists with impressive academic credentials, believe that being able to heal through bioenergy is an innate human ability. So essentially you are not so much learning something new here as having something awakened in you that is already there.
I have noticed that children readily feel the energy (and react to it with joy and a sense of discovery) but that adults tend to be less able to feel it. In fact a young man I watched growing up from the time he was a child still felt it at the age of 9 or 10, but lost the ability by the time he hit puberty. My sense of it is that we Westerners tend to live in our heads, except when we are pursuing pleasure, and even within our heads we tend to favour our left brains. The ability to sense bioenergy is in the domain of the body and the right brain, so no wonder most of us are not aware of it.
Preparation
I propose to begin with some sensitizing and energizing exercises that come from Qi Gong, a Chinese form of healing that is the great-grand-daddy of most energy healing modalities. In China of old, as in China today, longevity was much prized. The ancient Daoists, to whom we owe the beginnings of Chinese medicine, worked out numerous exercises designed to heal the body and to prevent disease. They believed that human beings did not only take in nourishment through food and water, but also from the earth and from the sky, as trees do. In fact the most basic Qi Gong exercise you can learn and practice is called "Standing like a tree". (link: see second video).
The first exercise
Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart, with your spine straight and all your joints slightly bent. As you breathe in, circle your arms up, and as you breathe out slowly bring your hands towards your crown as if your were pulling down the air you gathered up above you and then gently lower your hands in front of you as if you were washing your front with the air. Next open your arms wide at chest level as you reach out and slowly gather the air in front of you and bring it into your heart; and again lower your hands and wash your torso with the air you gathered. Next bend down, open your arms wide, and scoop up the air from around your feet, bringing your hands towards your lower abdomen. Finally, rest your hands on your lower abdomen and concentrate on breathing into your belly for a few breaths. Your intention as you do this exercise is to gather in the life energy (chi or qi) from all around you, above, in front, and below.
Repeat this a few times.
A somewhat more complex version of this exercise can be viewed on the Guo Lin Chi Gong website (the sixth video from the top, entitled "Three Part Gathering").
The second exercise
Stand in the same posture: legs shoulder-width apart, spine straight, joints slightly bent. This time hold your arms at belly button level, as if you were holding a child's ball in front of your abdomen. The fingers and wrists, like all other joints, should be soft. Now imagine that you are growing deep roots into the earth. To use another metaphor, imagine that the earth is a giant battery charger, and you've just plugged yourself into it. You are going deep enough to get past all the pollution to the primal earth. As you breathe in, bring earth energy up through your roots, up your legs, up your spine, up to the top of your head, and as you breathe out, let the energy roll down your front to gather into your hands. Again, breathe in, bring the energy up to the top of your head, and as you breathe out, let it roll down and gather in your hands.
After a few breaths you may begin to feel something in your hands -- warmth, or buzzing, or magnetism, or electricity. That is chi or qi (ki in Japanese), or life energy.
Lift this energy up (or if you don't feel it, lift up the imaginary ball you are holding), over your stomach, your chest, and your neck; wash your face with it, wash your eyes, massage the top of your head; then push the energy in through your crown, and, breathing out, slowly lower you hands. The general idea is to feel the energy filling you up as you breathe out and lower your hands. You could visualize it as a white or golden energy, and you could visualize the stale energy that it is pushing out through your feet as gray or brown.
Repeat this a few times.
If you still don't feel energy coming from your hands, then clap your hands together vigorously, and rub your palms against each other. Do it three times. Now hold your hands 6 to 8 inches apart and see what you feel. If you feel an energy ball, you can now use it to energize any part of your body that is unwell or injured.
These are great exercises to do even if you do not intend on learning how to do energy healing. The Chinese believe that most illness is caused by stuck energy. Keep the energy moving, and you'll improve your chances of keeping illness at bay.
I will now post this, as there is sufficient information to begin. Please read Part Two to find out you how can take this ability to sense energy and apply it to healing others.
Introduction
Energy healing is actually quite easy to learn. Most courses begin with a history of the technique being taught, followed by preparation to receive the "teaching", instruction in the technique, one or several "attunements" (which the participants may or may not be told about), instruction on how to apply the method, and finally ethical considerations on using the method, which chiefly boil down to "thou shalt not advise the client not to seek orthodox medical care" and "make no claims of being able to heal anything".
This techique has no history, as it does not rely on any single school of teaching. But I will give some basic "science" that should make all this much easier to learn.
Biologist James Oschman discovered the existence of "energy healing" after he hurt his back through years of bending over microscopes and an energy healer fixed it. Oschman then asked himself "what is this, how does it work, and why haven't I heard about it?" and went on to devote his time as a scientist to studying the phenomenon.
In his book Energy Healing: The Scientific Basis Oschman proposes that we, humans, arrived on this planet as a species hardwired to be able to perform and receive energy healing. I am no scientist, and I may be hopelessly mangling his argument, but from what I understand Oschman suggests that energy healers first concentrate the earth's extremely low frequency (ELF) electromagnetic fluctuations (called the Schuman Resonance), possibly through their pineal gland, and then emit this energy out through their hands. The energy has been measured, and has been shown to be more powerful than expected. (link to Oschman chapter)
Oschman's hypothesis seems to be confirmed by some of Bill Bengston's mouse experiments, in which geomagnetic probes set around the cages of sick mice he was healing showed that the earth's geomagnetic micropulsations, which normally show up as a random pattern of spikes, became a visibly organized series of waves (referred to as "negative entropy") at the times the mice were receiving healing.
What you need to take away from the above is that a lot of people, including some scientists with impressive academic credentials, believe that being able to heal through bioenergy is an innate human ability. So essentially you are not so much learning something new here as having something awakened in you that is already there.
I have noticed that children readily feel the energy (and react to it with joy and a sense of discovery) but that adults tend to be less able to feel it. In fact a young man I watched growing up from the time he was a child still felt it at the age of 9 or 10, but lost the ability by the time he hit puberty. My sense of it is that we Westerners tend to live in our heads, except when we are pursuing pleasure, and even within our heads we tend to favour our left brains. The ability to sense bioenergy is in the domain of the body and the right brain, so no wonder most of us are not aware of it.
Preparation
I propose to begin with some sensitizing and energizing exercises that come from Qi Gong, a Chinese form of healing that is the great-grand-daddy of most energy healing modalities. In China of old, as in China today, longevity was much prized. The ancient Daoists, to whom we owe the beginnings of Chinese medicine, worked out numerous exercises designed to heal the body and to prevent disease. They believed that human beings did not only take in nourishment through food and water, but also from the earth and from the sky, as trees do. In fact the most basic Qi Gong exercise you can learn and practice is called "Standing like a tree". (link: see second video).
The first exercise
Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart, with your spine straight and all your joints slightly bent. As you breathe in, circle your arms up, and as you breathe out slowly bring your hands towards your crown as if your were pulling down the air you gathered up above you and then gently lower your hands in front of you as if you were washing your front with the air. Next open your arms wide at chest level as you reach out and slowly gather the air in front of you and bring it into your heart; and again lower your hands and wash your torso with the air you gathered. Next bend down, open your arms wide, and scoop up the air from around your feet, bringing your hands towards your lower abdomen. Finally, rest your hands on your lower abdomen and concentrate on breathing into your belly for a few breaths. Your intention as you do this exercise is to gather in the life energy (chi or qi) from all around you, above, in front, and below.
Repeat this a few times.
A somewhat more complex version of this exercise can be viewed on the Guo Lin Chi Gong website (the sixth video from the top, entitled "Three Part Gathering").
The second exercise
Stand in the same posture: legs shoulder-width apart, spine straight, joints slightly bent. This time hold your arms at belly button level, as if you were holding a child's ball in front of your abdomen. The fingers and wrists, like all other joints, should be soft. Now imagine that you are growing deep roots into the earth. To use another metaphor, imagine that the earth is a giant battery charger, and you've just plugged yourself into it. You are going deep enough to get past all the pollution to the primal earth. As you breathe in, bring earth energy up through your roots, up your legs, up your spine, up to the top of your head, and as you breathe out, let the energy roll down your front to gather into your hands. Again, breathe in, bring the energy up to the top of your head, and as you breathe out, let it roll down and gather in your hands.
After a few breaths you may begin to feel something in your hands -- warmth, or buzzing, or magnetism, or electricity. That is chi or qi (ki in Japanese), or life energy.
Lift this energy up (or if you don't feel it, lift up the imaginary ball you are holding), over your stomach, your chest, and your neck; wash your face with it, wash your eyes, massage the top of your head; then push the energy in through your crown, and, breathing out, slowly lower you hands. The general idea is to feel the energy filling you up as you breathe out and lower your hands. You could visualize it as a white or golden energy, and you could visualize the stale energy that it is pushing out through your feet as gray or brown.
Repeat this a few times.
If you still don't feel energy coming from your hands, then clap your hands together vigorously, and rub your palms against each other. Do it three times. Now hold your hands 6 to 8 inches apart and see what you feel. If you feel an energy ball, you can now use it to energize any part of your body that is unwell or injured.
These are great exercises to do even if you do not intend on learning how to do energy healing. The Chinese believe that most illness is caused by stuck energy. Keep the energy moving, and you'll improve your chances of keeping illness at bay.
I will now post this, as there is sufficient information to begin. Please read Part Two to find out you how can take this ability to sense energy and apply it to healing others.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
