And now Richard Bartlett ...

What is going on?

Richard Bartlett is the fourth teacher of energy healing to have died in less than a year, following Zdenko Domancic, Zoran Hochstatter, and, most recently, Bill Bengston. Except for Zdenko, they were all my teachers. They were all charismatic, energetic (at least when I knew them), and in some ways larger than life.

Of all of them, the one closest to my heart was Richard. I went to several of his Matrix Energetics workshops, in Toronto, in Phoenix, in Fort Lauderdale. Richard back in the day was truly a force of nature -- a wild and crazy guy! He was a rock star manqué: he would come into the workshop on the first day, dancing to loud rock music, strumming an air guitar, wearing the loudest Hawaiian shirt you can imagine. Then he would sit on a massage table on the stage and condition the room, waving his fingers in a weird way, and suddenly everyone who was tuned in would begin to feel amazing. And I mean really amazing, light as air and full of joy. Then he would begin his stream of consciousness patter to "keep your left brain busy" so your right brain would be free to participate in the magic he would unleash.

At the Fort Lauderdale workshop, I spent about five minutes on the floor feeling like pure light. It was mind-blowing. I didn't want to reconstitute into a body. And the most amazing thing was that Richard didn't do that: my practice partner did. At another workshop we spent two days learning techniques and on the third day Richard said "you don't need any of that." What he next taught was the ME technique I use the most. You put one hand over the (t)issue you are working on, hold the other hand out to the universe, and say "what needs to happen here?," shifting your attention outward and getting out of the way. If you hit the sweet spot, crazy things can happen.

Recently I re-watched a Matrix Energetics promo DVD I had hanging around. Something that I never got before suddenly caught my attention. Richard, talking about his chiropractic training, explained that all techniques worked on someone the first time, less so the second time, and not at all the third time. "Your conditions are the Borg," he said. "They adapt." He said that he was not teaching a technique but creating a state of consciousness in which Matrix would work. That's why he conditioned the room, and that's why people were often not able to reproduce their experiences once they got home: they couldn't reproduce the state. What made it especially hard was that trying doesn't help -- in fact, trying makes it worse. It's all about letting go. Drop the pebble in the pond and watch the ripples.

BTW, Matrix Energetics peeps out there, did anybody anywhere ever get the "two point"?

Godspeed, Richard. You were crazy, wild, complicated, amazing. Earth will miss you. May your next life be one of peace and contentment.

Another obituary -- William (Bill) Bengston

Sadly, I have to write another obituary.

Bill Bengston has died.

He passed peacefully in his sleep on April 16th.

I was very sad hearing the news, in part because he never got to complete his life's work, which was developing an affordable, widely accessible, and side-effect-free cancer cure.

Bill and I taught healing workshops together in Toronto in 2007 and 2008. This blog was born out of that work. He then moved on to teach the workshops in the US, and I lost track of him. Every once in a while I checked in online to see his latest talk or find out about his latest experiment. The last one I saw was about "recording" the energy for broadcasting. He was ever curious and always exuded great enthusiasm.

The world will be a poorer and less interesting place without him in it.

Rest in peace, Bill.

Remembering Zoran Hochstatter

I recently learned of the passing of Zoran Hochstatter this past August.

Zoran was a cinematographer who was drawn into the world of energy healing when he made a documentary about the Slovenian healer Zdenko Domancic and became himself a practitioner and a teacher.

Back in the oughts I took three energy healing workshops with Zoran in Toronto and Sarasota. He was then a teacher of the Domancic Method, but later he branched out on his own with a method he called PureBioenergy. A good deal larger than life and a man of strong opinions, he inspired many to learn and practice energy healing. I had huge fun at his workshops and will always remember his ready laugh and his impressive mane of hair.

The world will be a poorer place without him.

Godspeed, Zoran!

Waxing metaphysical

A few weeks ago I had a eureka moment as I came to the realization that we are not just made of cells, but that our cells are made of atoms, and that each of those atoms is perfect -- every last one of them.

I shared this realization with my (Buddhist) meditation teacher, who then added that every atom is not only perfect, but also conscious, and possessing what she called "Buddha nature," which one might rephrase in non-Buddhist terms as "partaking of the divine perfection of the whole".

So if our atoms are perfect, where does our sickness come from? It seems that imperfection creeps in through less-than-perfect interaction between all these perfect parts. But where does the imperfection of the interactions come from? I thought my teacher might say "karma," but instead she said "conditioned beliefs." "Karma" in this context does not have punitive connotations, but simply means "cause and effect," as in "if you smoke cigarettes, you might get lung cancer." "Conditioned beliefs" in turn are the parameters of your life, the rules you absorbed, beginning the day you were born from the society you were born into, creating the self-chosen prison you live in beyond whose bars you cannot see.

A number of years ago I learned a healing system called "Russian Organ Regeneration," which held that sickness was a deviation from your perfect divine blueprint, and that healing was nothing more than a return to that original blueprint. The divinity that created the blueprint was not only outside you, but also inside you; you were the co-creator of your own blueprint. Your return to health returned a small piece of divine creation to its original perfection, and the task was to return as much of the whole to its original perfection as possible.

But if perfection already underlies the whole, then the task becomes to bring perfection to the relationship of the parts within the whole. Energy healers talk of "harmonizing," Buddhists of "removing obscurations." Dr. Bengston suggests that energy healers provide not energy but information, which teaches the body the interactions it needs to return to healthy functioning. The "Russian Organ Regeneration" folks go back to the time before the initial deviation and from there follow the path of divine perfection, the unfolding of the blueprint as you and God originally intended.

Whatever the case may be, it cannot hurt to embrace the timeless perfection that lives at the core of you. Every one of your atoms is functioning as it should. Every one of them has been around for billions of years. Every one of them is immortal. And beyond that is the something that animates them all, that gives life to their dance, that existed before you were born and will continue to exist after you die, and for the time being, however long that may be, makes you you.

That's worth meditating on.

I need to re-up a post that fills me with positivity and joy

This post is from 2011, and it is about Bill Bengston's teacher, Bennett Mayrick, quite possibly one of the most talented energy healers on the planet. The post describes one of Bennett's incredible healings.

Bill was with Bennett Mayrick for only a short time, at the beginning when Mayrick first discovered his considerable healing abilities. The two then had a falling out and went their separate ways, with Bill gravitating towards research, and Ben, as this post suggests, continuing to grow his talents as a healer. For instance, when Bill worked with Bennett, Bennett could not yet heal cancer in patients who had had chemotherapy or radiation; but twenty years later he apparently could. At the beginning he also practiced what Bill Bengston now teaches as "image cycling"; but twenty years on he seemed to be doing something quite different. I am saddened that he and Bill did not reconnect in his later years, when he had two more decades of experience to draw from, and so much more to teach! But even though he is now gone, he shows us what is possible, and what is possible is mind-blowing.

A recommendation

My apologies -- I haven't written in a while. Not because there is nothing happening in the world of cancer and energy healing, but because my attention has been diverted. I now work with active young seniors who do not need treatment for cancer but have more immediate, movement related problems, such as painful knees and frozen shoulders, which, unlike cancer, can be relatively quickly fixed. I get a great deal of satisfaction from seeing immediate or almost immediate results.

Treating cancer in contrast requires both healer and client to make a long term commitment. There can be immediately noticeable benefits in the form of greater energy, increased peace of mind, and decreased levels of pain. Often there are clinical changes too, which can show up in lab test results. But regular treatments have to continue for a long time, and that requires a special degree of dedication and stamina on the part of the healer, who is dealing not only with the physical but also with the emotional and spiritual needs of a client who is facing a life-threatening illness.

Among the many people I met on my energy healing training journey, the one who has impressed me the most is my friend and colleague Ellen. I first met her twelve years ago in one of William Bengston's early trainings, and we both participated in workshops taught by Zoran Hochstatter, who now teaches PureBioenergy and back then was an authorized instructor of the Domancic Method. Unlike many of our fellow students, Ellen has kept up both her training and her practice. As she has a background in psychotherapy and social work, clients find her manner uniquely helpful and reassuring. Her energy is strong and pure, and when we work together, the synergy feels wonderful.

So I am pleased to post a recommendation from one of her clients, who writes

I first visited Ellen the week before my last round of chemo. I was low on my blood counts and had been delayed a week – my therapist recommended Ellen to help boost those counts. What I didn’t bargain for is how much Ellen’s approach would also boost my spirit. Three-plus cancer-free years later, I continue to visit Ellen monthly to maintain my physical and mental well being. Along the way, she completely healed my “clicking” shoulder from a 20 year old nagging injury and resolved other maladies such as eye floaties/dryness. Importantly, I am healthier than I have ever been and able to approach my visits to the oncologist with confidence because of Ellen’s work. Ellen has enriched my life in ways far beyond physical healing and has taught me about the critical connection between mind and body.

If I ever found myself seriously in need of healing, Ellen would be my first choice, and I don't say that lightly. Her website, worth a visit, is https://healingtransformation.ca.

Post-script to "Bladder Stone Dissolved"

In my previous post I mentioned that M.'s bladder stone was dissolved through a combination of potassium citrate and energy healing treatments. This may lead people to ask whether in fact it was the potassium citrate alone that dissolved the stone. I found a 2009 PubMed paper about the use of potassium citrate for kidney stones that might help to answer this question.

Eight patients were enrolled in the study. Each had at least one kidney stone sized 15 mm or less. The study was divided into two 6-week periods. In the first 6-week period the subjects were told to drink 1500 ml of water a day. In the second 6-week period, they were given potassium citrate and potassium bicarbonate. These were the results:

During the first period of treatment stone burden remained unchanged in all patients. On the contrary after 6 weeks of potassium citrate/bicarbonate treatment, complete stone dissolution was found in three of the patients. In the other five cases a partial dissolution was observed and in two of them complete dissolution of the stone was achieved after prolongation of the treatment for 4 and 6 month[s] respectively.

M., in comparison, had a 25 mm stone, which dissolved in 21 days.