Is healing our birthright?

James Oschman, PhD, writes in his book Energy Healing: The Scientific Basis that he believes that we (humans) are programmed to perform and receive energy healing.

He could be right. Here is the evidence:

- You go to a Reiki course, get "attuned" and learn the Reiki hand positions, and you are able to heal.

- You take Quantum Touch, learn to breathe funny and to "sandwich the pain", and you are able to heal.

- You go to a Matrix Energetics weekend, learn to "two-point" and to "drop down, place intent, and observe", and you are able to heal.

- You go to a Domancic workshop, you learn to wave your hands in prescribed ways and follow protocols, and you are able to heal.

- You take Bill Bengston's weekend workshop on the Bengston method, learn "image cycling" and how to look for "hot spots", and you are able to heal.

The common denominator here seems to be that no matter what you do, what method you learn, you walk away able to help others heal, at least to some degree. That's interesting.

Now I will concede that not everyone learns, though most people seem to be able to. I will also concede that some methods work for some people and conditions better than others. But at the same time, isn't it strange that you can learn healing in so many ways?

When you are young and you don't yet know how to whistle, you already possess the muscles that enable you to do it and with then the latent ability. Then someone comes along and teaches you how to pucker your lips, and out comes a whistle. There could have been whole societies out there that had no clue that they could whistle until someone figured it out and taught all the others. So maybe what happens when you go to an energy healing course is that someone teaches you how to pucker your brain in ways that you never have before, but could have if you had known.

Perhaps you can do it for yourself.

Here is an experiment. If you read this post, and you have never taken any healing courses before, the next time someone you know has a tummy ache or a minor accident (obviously one that does not require stitches, or a hospital visit, or result in extensive blood loss, or involve bones sticking out through the skin) just try to heal them as if it were the most natural thing in the world. You will know that you've had an effect if the bleeding stops, the pain lessens, or the swelling goes down.

1) Start with Oschman's premise that you can.

2) Approach the exercise with open-minded curiosity (and it helps if your "patient" does too).

3) Put your hands around the affected area (without touching if there is an open wound).

4) Get out of your own way by not wondering whether you are doing it correctly. Just let it be.

5) Ask the question "what needs to happen here?" and just stay in a state of open-ended expectation that something interesting could happen in response.

6) Don't keep checking whether anything happened. Just wait in open-ended expectation until something obviously does happen, or until you or your "patient" get bored with waiting, whichever comes first.

If nothing happens, take a healing course. Or not, if this is not your cup of tea. If something does, let me know. And of course by then your curiosity may be whetted enough that you will go on to take a healing course anyway, just to see if you can learn to whistle better.