I just finished listening to another interview with Dr. Bengston on MyTalk 107.1.
It was very amusing to hear Dr. Bengston describing healing as a boring thing to do and the least favourite part of his experiments. Having known Dr. Bengston since 2007, I can tell you that he is a very bright man whose mind is always going a hundred miles a minute trying to figure out one thing or another, usually something related to his experiments.
Of course he would find healing boring.
But to those of us who do healing as a vocation, who are most of the time "people people" (unlike Dr. Bengston, who jokingly claims to prefer rodents), healing is anything but. There is now a blog post on the web in which someone states that they would not be learning Bill's method because he says it's boring. I would like to reassure that person that it is neither more nor less boring than any other modality out there (with the exception of Matrix Energetics, which is designed to be fun but does not call itself a healing modality), and it feels just as good to do as Reiki or QT or TT.
The interview ends with a giggly compliment from the hosts to Dr. Bengston for being "fascinating in a really weird way". That was amusing too.
I thought that generally it was a frivolous interview, unlike the one with Tami Simon, which had greater depth. But I note that no one seems to be asking the truly important questions: how teachable has Bill's method proven to be for curing human cancers? Among the 200+ people who have learned the method in workshops in the past three years, how many, as far as Bill knows, have gone on to remit documented cancers in people? As interesting as Bill's experiments are, ultimately whether people get cured is the only question that truly matters.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Monday, October 4, 2010
Are healing groups the way of the future?
In my previous post I commented on how much I enjoyed leading and participating in a healing practice group. The group had purpose, heart, and cohesion, and many of the wonderful women who were a part of it I am now honoured to call friends.
The feeling in the group when we were doing healing together was warm, meditative, and deeply satisfying. We positioned our chairs in a circle, and the person who was to receive the healing sat in the middle. When we were doing a distance healing, we placed the photograph of the intended recipient in the centre, sometimes by itself, and sometimes in the hands of the person who had requested the healing.
As the group consisted mostly of healers rather than "healees", the people who sat in the middle largely experienced enhanced well-being. But I recall two remarkable successes from our distance healing efforts, one in the group, and one in a group healing in a workshop. Both were of children. One is described here, in a post entitled Love, bioenergy, and miracles. The other was a little boy who had burned himself rather badly and was expected to be in hospital for weeks and weeks until his burn healed sufficiently for it to be safe for him to go home: he was released the day after we treated him because overnight his wound had unexpectedly scabbed over.
In her futuristic novel Oryx and Crake, author Margaret Atwood describes the genetically engineered people of the future, the Crakers, healing each other in just such a circle through the group purring at the afflicted individual. The purring was Atwoodian whimsy, but the healing was not. In Atwood's fictional dystopia the Crakers are genetically designed for group healing; but in James Oschman's Energy Healing: The Scientific Basis the genetic design is not fictional: he believes we are all designed to perform and receive such healing. We are just not aware of it yet.
Many energy healing modalities use healing groups. Zdenko Domancic, for instance, has an energy healing clinic in Slovenia that has been in operation for over 25 years. The clinic is a big open space where a multitude of clients sit and wait their turn while several therapists treat people. A treatment may last maybe 20 minutes, but clients are encouraged to stay in the energy as long as they can. It is recognized that the group setting amplifies the energy and that the people who wait are benefiting just by being present.
How are healing groups different from prayer groups?
I am going to go out on a limb here and suggest that healing groups are different from prayer groups, and more effective. I have a friend who is very sensitive to energy and cannot abide being prayed for. She described to me how a group once prayed for her and she could "hear" every single person and wished some of them wouldn't. She felt that while many of the people were really praying for her, others were inserting themselves into the prayer by trying to do good because they felt that they should.
A prayer through its very structure requires an "I". When I pray, "I" am beseeching God to do something. As the "beseecher" that makes me very much part of the equation. But the removal of the "I" from the equation is a crucial part of effective energy healing. The more effectively a healer is absent from the healing, the more effective the healing is.
So in my opinion a healing group engaged in a homogeneous healing practice such as the Bengston method or the Domancic method is likely to be more effective than a prayer group. With the removal of the "I" the group becomes cohesive and egoless.
How does group healing work?
Bill Bengston may have stumbled on the mechanism for group healing in his mouse experiments. When he found that not only the treatment groups but also the control groups of mice in his experiments recovered to full life-span cures from fatal injections of cancer, he set about trying to discover what might have happened. He hypothesized that the groups somehow became bonded, and that treatment then given to one group also applied to the other; he then showed in an experiment that this did indeed happen and published a paper about it entitled "Resonance, Type 2 Errors and Placebo Effects". He named the phenomenon "resonant bonding" and hypothesized that it not only affected the mice but also their healers.
I believe that the warm, meditative, harmonious feeling of oneness that we achieved in the practice group was in fact "resonant bonding". It had a distinct energy buzz and felt quite wonderful.
Distance group healing
I am going to go out even further on that limb and say that all the members of a healing group don't even need to be in the same room for the effect to occur. On several occasions we did group distance healings where members of the group sat in the comfort of their own living rooms and joined the group energetically at a mutually agreed upon time. The feeling of "resonant bonding" occurred each time, and I have felt it strengthen as more and more of the group came "online". We used this kind of group healing several times in the case of the girl described in Love, bioenergy and miracles.
Anecdotally I can tell you that when the method used is not homogeneous, but each person is asked to do their own thing, such as Reiki, or prayer, or shamanic work, the feeling of warmth and unity does not seem to occur and the healing is less effective. Homogeneity in the method used seems to create its own "resonant bond".
Groups and morphic fields: going one step further
Richard Bartlett, the creator of Matrix Energetics, says that he is reluctant to treat cancer, because taking it on means going up against the morphic field of cancer, which includes all the fear, doom and gloom, hopelessness, and expectation of pain and suffering associated with that disease, as well as the accumulated longterm failure of the medical establishment to find an effective treatment to eradicate it.
Morphic fields were the brainchild of Rupert Sheldrake, a Cambridge biologist and author, who believed that these fields were templates for all biologic forms and determined their development. Bartlett extends the meaning of morphic fields to also embrace beliefs and ideas. In this regard morphic fields can be related to C. G. Jung's archetypes.
Groups engaging in a homogeneous activity such as practicing a particular healing modality (or adopting a particular belief or political idea) can create their own morphic fields. The larger the group is that adopts a certain modality or idea, the stronger that field becomes. Healing groups engaging in resonant bonding can create a morphic field which will then make it easier for other healing groups to form. The more of us there are, the more of us there will be, and even more importantly, the more effective we will become.
The feeling in the group when we were doing healing together was warm, meditative, and deeply satisfying. We positioned our chairs in a circle, and the person who was to receive the healing sat in the middle. When we were doing a distance healing, we placed the photograph of the intended recipient in the centre, sometimes by itself, and sometimes in the hands of the person who had requested the healing.
As the group consisted mostly of healers rather than "healees", the people who sat in the middle largely experienced enhanced well-being. But I recall two remarkable successes from our distance healing efforts, one in the group, and one in a group healing in a workshop. Both were of children. One is described here, in a post entitled Love, bioenergy, and miracles. The other was a little boy who had burned himself rather badly and was expected to be in hospital for weeks and weeks until his burn healed sufficiently for it to be safe for him to go home: he was released the day after we treated him because overnight his wound had unexpectedly scabbed over.
In her futuristic novel Oryx and Crake, author Margaret Atwood describes the genetically engineered people of the future, the Crakers, healing each other in just such a circle through the group purring at the afflicted individual. The purring was Atwoodian whimsy, but the healing was not. In Atwood's fictional dystopia the Crakers are genetically designed for group healing; but in James Oschman's Energy Healing: The Scientific Basis the genetic design is not fictional: he believes we are all designed to perform and receive such healing. We are just not aware of it yet.
Many energy healing modalities use healing groups. Zdenko Domancic, for instance, has an energy healing clinic in Slovenia that has been in operation for over 25 years. The clinic is a big open space where a multitude of clients sit and wait their turn while several therapists treat people. A treatment may last maybe 20 minutes, but clients are encouraged to stay in the energy as long as they can. It is recognized that the group setting amplifies the energy and that the people who wait are benefiting just by being present.
How are healing groups different from prayer groups?
I am going to go out on a limb here and suggest that healing groups are different from prayer groups, and more effective. I have a friend who is very sensitive to energy and cannot abide being prayed for. She described to me how a group once prayed for her and she could "hear" every single person and wished some of them wouldn't. She felt that while many of the people were really praying for her, others were inserting themselves into the prayer by trying to do good because they felt that they should.
A prayer through its very structure requires an "I". When I pray, "I" am beseeching God to do something. As the "beseecher" that makes me very much part of the equation. But the removal of the "I" from the equation is a crucial part of effective energy healing. The more effectively a healer is absent from the healing, the more effective the healing is.
So in my opinion a healing group engaged in a homogeneous healing practice such as the Bengston method or the Domancic method is likely to be more effective than a prayer group. With the removal of the "I" the group becomes cohesive and egoless.
How does group healing work?
Bill Bengston may have stumbled on the mechanism for group healing in his mouse experiments. When he found that not only the treatment groups but also the control groups of mice in his experiments recovered to full life-span cures from fatal injections of cancer, he set about trying to discover what might have happened. He hypothesized that the groups somehow became bonded, and that treatment then given to one group also applied to the other; he then showed in an experiment that this did indeed happen and published a paper about it entitled "Resonance, Type 2 Errors and Placebo Effects". He named the phenomenon "resonant bonding" and hypothesized that it not only affected the mice but also their healers.
I believe that the warm, meditative, harmonious feeling of oneness that we achieved in the practice group was in fact "resonant bonding". It had a distinct energy buzz and felt quite wonderful.
Distance group healing
I am going to go out even further on that limb and say that all the members of a healing group don't even need to be in the same room for the effect to occur. On several occasions we did group distance healings where members of the group sat in the comfort of their own living rooms and joined the group energetically at a mutually agreed upon time. The feeling of "resonant bonding" occurred each time, and I have felt it strengthen as more and more of the group came "online". We used this kind of group healing several times in the case of the girl described in Love, bioenergy and miracles.
Anecdotally I can tell you that when the method used is not homogeneous, but each person is asked to do their own thing, such as Reiki, or prayer, or shamanic work, the feeling of warmth and unity does not seem to occur and the healing is less effective. Homogeneity in the method used seems to create its own "resonant bond".
Groups and morphic fields: going one step further
Richard Bartlett, the creator of Matrix Energetics, says that he is reluctant to treat cancer, because taking it on means going up against the morphic field of cancer, which includes all the fear, doom and gloom, hopelessness, and expectation of pain and suffering associated with that disease, as well as the accumulated longterm failure of the medical establishment to find an effective treatment to eradicate it.
Morphic fields were the brainchild of Rupert Sheldrake, a Cambridge biologist and author, who believed that these fields were templates for all biologic forms and determined their development. Bartlett extends the meaning of morphic fields to also embrace beliefs and ideas. In this regard morphic fields can be related to C. G. Jung's archetypes.
Groups engaging in a homogeneous activity such as practicing a particular healing modality (or adopting a particular belief or political idea) can create their own morphic fields. The larger the group is that adopts a certain modality or idea, the stronger that field becomes. Healing groups engaging in resonant bonding can create a morphic field which will then make it easier for other healing groups to form. The more of us there are, the more of us there will be, and even more importantly, the more effective we will become.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Tami Simon interview with Bill Bengston
Here is a link to Tami Simon's interview with Bill on Sounds True. She asks many thoughtful questions, some of which seem to echo ones I raised in earlier postings in this blog.
I would like to add some more questions and comments:
For instance, I am curious to know if when Dr. Bengston is being tested he can generate measurable changes in his brain through the cycling technique alone or if the changes are always in response to need? If I understand correctly, REGs and geomagnetic probes don't seem to respond to cycling unless there is a cage of sick mice nearby. I guess the question is whether it's the cycling technique itself that generates the changes that are visible on the MRI or the healing response?
I am also curious to know if Dr. Bengston has ever tested anyone he taught to see if they can generate similar changes.
I would like to comment that in my experience with Bill my own healing ability increased noticeably through direct contact with him well before I learned cycling, and I recall being able to pass on this increase in ability to at least one other person through similar contact. Bill has also told me that the people he worked on were temporarily also able to do healings, although it wasn't clear how long the effect lasted and why it wore off. Since he apprenticed with Bennett Mayrick for a long time, years even, I wonder how much his on-going exposure to Mayrick's ability and the fact that they did many healings together affected Bill's own learning curve.
At the end of the June SSE lecture "Healing and the Mainstream" (part 5 on Youtube) someone asks Bill a question about "reiki vs fakey" -- i.e., an experiment using real and sham reiki healers. In response Bill cites an experiment of his own, in which volunteers who were not taught the cycling technique could also heal the mice just by mimicking his movements. He then went on to say something else, but was cut off, and I would be curious to know what that something else was, because it began with "and then" and Bill looked quite excited about it.
Re: the mechanism of distance healing that Bill and his physicist friends have been pondering and tossing around ideas about, has anyone tossed around any ideas about folding space and time? There seems to be a concept in Buddhism and maybe even Hinduism about every point in the universe being linked to every other point that I've heard has found an echo in quantum physics; it would be interesting to know if that has some relevance. Of course I don't have the physics or the math to parse any of this out, just a general gut feeling.
Re: Bill's suggestion that people form healing groups, I would like to add that organizing, running, and participating in the Toronto group that was the offshoot of the workshops we held here was one of the most pleasurable activities I ever engaged in. The group had heart, purpose and cohesion and we all learned a great deal together.
Congratulations on an interesting interview. I recommend reading the transcript as well, for clearer understanding of some of the more complicated elements of the discussion.
I would like to add some more questions and comments:
For instance, I am curious to know if when Dr. Bengston is being tested he can generate measurable changes in his brain through the cycling technique alone or if the changes are always in response to need? If I understand correctly, REGs and geomagnetic probes don't seem to respond to cycling unless there is a cage of sick mice nearby. I guess the question is whether it's the cycling technique itself that generates the changes that are visible on the MRI or the healing response?
I am also curious to know if Dr. Bengston has ever tested anyone he taught to see if they can generate similar changes.
I would like to comment that in my experience with Bill my own healing ability increased noticeably through direct contact with him well before I learned cycling, and I recall being able to pass on this increase in ability to at least one other person through similar contact. Bill has also told me that the people he worked on were temporarily also able to do healings, although it wasn't clear how long the effect lasted and why it wore off. Since he apprenticed with Bennett Mayrick for a long time, years even, I wonder how much his on-going exposure to Mayrick's ability and the fact that they did many healings together affected Bill's own learning curve.
At the end of the June SSE lecture "Healing and the Mainstream" (part 5 on Youtube) someone asks Bill a question about "reiki vs fakey" -- i.e., an experiment using real and sham reiki healers. In response Bill cites an experiment of his own, in which volunteers who were not taught the cycling technique could also heal the mice just by mimicking his movements. He then went on to say something else, but was cut off, and I would be curious to know what that something else was, because it began with "and then" and Bill looked quite excited about it.
Re: the mechanism of distance healing that Bill and his physicist friends have been pondering and tossing around ideas about, has anyone tossed around any ideas about folding space and time? There seems to be a concept in Buddhism and maybe even Hinduism about every point in the universe being linked to every other point that I've heard has found an echo in quantum physics; it would be interesting to know if that has some relevance. Of course I don't have the physics or the math to parse any of this out, just a general gut feeling.
Re: Bill's suggestion that people form healing groups, I would like to add that organizing, running, and participating in the Toronto group that was the offshoot of the workshops we held here was one of the most pleasurable activities I ever engaged in. The group had heart, purpose and cohesion and we all learned a great deal together.
Congratulations on an interesting interview. I recommend reading the transcript as well, for clearer understanding of some of the more complicated elements of the discussion.
Monday, September 27, 2010
A small note of frustration
This is a comment on energy healing in general, on the great divide between "them" and "us" -- "them" being the folks who believe that "us" who do energy healing are totally out to lunch.
The day before yesterday I met a woman who had dislocated her thumb back in February after falling. The thumb was in a splint, and would continue to be in a splint until it would be operated on. After the operation she would continue to wear the splint and would undergo painful physio.
I treated the thumb on the spot for about five minutes and told her to come and see me on a strictly "as a favour" basis. I was mostly curious to see how much good I could do. By way of encouragement I told her of some past experiences I had had treating injuries with some very positive outcomes.
The treatment and our conversation were witnessed by another person who had also fallen, and dislocated her elbow, with subsequent surgery and a six-month nightmare of therapy and pain. This person insisted that surgery and pain were the only way to go.
The person with the injured thumb never came to see me. So the message here is "I would rather have my right hand immobilized and then operated on and undergo six months of pain and physio than give you a few hours of my time to see whether you can help it heal on its own. I am so attached to my belief system that all that exists is this 3-D reality that we can see and smell and taste that I would rather suffer pain and inconvenience than see it challenged."
I think energy healers of all stripes will resonate with this, having probably had the same sort of experience many, many times. I find it quite frustrating. And I am sure someone will now comment that I couldn't have helped this woman anyway, since treatment is a two-way street and we don't really heal anyone, just help them heal themselves.
The day before yesterday I met a woman who had dislocated her thumb back in February after falling. The thumb was in a splint, and would continue to be in a splint until it would be operated on. After the operation she would continue to wear the splint and would undergo painful physio.
I treated the thumb on the spot for about five minutes and told her to come and see me on a strictly "as a favour" basis. I was mostly curious to see how much good I could do. By way of encouragement I told her of some past experiences I had had treating injuries with some very positive outcomes.
The treatment and our conversation were witnessed by another person who had also fallen, and dislocated her elbow, with subsequent surgery and a six-month nightmare of therapy and pain. This person insisted that surgery and pain were the only way to go.
The person with the injured thumb never came to see me. So the message here is "I would rather have my right hand immobilized and then operated on and undergo six months of pain and physio than give you a few hours of my time to see whether you can help it heal on its own. I am so attached to my belief system that all that exists is this 3-D reality that we can see and smell and taste that I would rather suffer pain and inconvenience than see it challenged."
I think energy healers of all stripes will resonate with this, having probably had the same sort of experience many, many times. I find it quite frustrating. And I am sure someone will now comment that I couldn't have helped this woman anyway, since treatment is a two-way street and we don't really heal anyone, just help them heal themselves.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
On healing and sociological experiments
There are two pieces of information out there about the Bengston method that require some discussion. One is that Bill has been successfully treating animals and that he is just now beginning to apply the method to people. The other is that he is conducting a "sociological experiment" to see if people can be taught to duplicate the success of the "sceptical volunteers" who were able to heal cancerous mice in his laboratory experiments.
To clarify, the healings are said to have begun many years ago, in real time, in the real world, with real people, and then they were followed up in the lab by animal experiments.
As to the "sociological experiment" Bill is said to be conducting to see if the people he teaches can duplicate the successes of his "sceptical volunteers", it needs to be said that the experiment is now three years old. I kept loose tabs on the Toronto portion which lasted a year and a half, but then there were other workshops (in Long Island, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Oregon, California, and possibly other places) on which I have no information.
It seems to me that for something to be called an "experiment" someone needs to be tabulating the results, particularly if it is being conducted by someone described as a trained scientist. Now that three years and two months have passed since the first Toronto workshop, I would love to ask Bill how the experiment has progressed since then and about his views on the results.
To clarify, the healings are said to have begun many years ago, in real time, in the real world, with real people, and then they were followed up in the lab by animal experiments.
As to the "sociological experiment" Bill is said to be conducting to see if the people he teaches can duplicate the successes of his "sceptical volunteers", it needs to be said that the experiment is now three years old. I kept loose tabs on the Toronto portion which lasted a year and a half, but then there were other workshops (in Long Island, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Oregon, California, and possibly other places) on which I have no information.
It seems to me that for something to be called an "experiment" someone needs to be tabulating the results, particularly if it is being conducted by someone described as a trained scientist. Now that three years and two months have passed since the first Toronto workshop, I would love to ask Bill how the experiment has progressed since then and about his views on the results.
Friday, August 20, 2010
To treat or not to treat ...
One of the questions I received over the weekend was whether I screen patients, and if I do, then how? The simple answer is that by and large I don't. I assume that if someone turns up on my doorstep, there is a reason. I will try to treat the person at least once. If it doesn't appear to have had much of an effect, I will ask what the treatment did for them and whether they think it would be worthwhile to come again. I leave it up to them to decide.
I find that most of the people I treat feel better right away and that even the ones who don't see an immediate change improve once they've had a chance to sleep on it. The very few who don't feel the treatment at all, and report no change even the day after, generally decide not to come back. So you could say that in effect patients "self-select", and that no screening process is needed.
I will admit to a selfish preference for treating conditions that can show quick improvement, such as knee, shoulder and back injuries. The patient gets speedy relief and I get the reward of immediate gratification and of knowing that what I do works. Treating longterm conditions such as fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome or arthritis can be difficult and frustrating in comparison.
And cancer is on a page all by itself. Cancer treatment takes a long time and a good deal of commitment. Cancer patients who try alternative treatments tend to "shop around" and not to stick to any one method. So in addition to allopathic treatments, they will be receiving intravenous vitamin C, ozone, acupuncture, Chinese herbs, naturopathic cleansing agents, colonics, radionics, homeopathy, etc., along with energy healing, and how in God's name do we know whether all or any of these things are compatible? There could be the energy equivalent of negative drug interactions going on, with one method counteracting the benefits of another (Bill Bengston in particular does not recommend using his method while the patient is receiving chemotherapy or radiation). But understandably cancer patients are so frightened and so motivated to try to rid themself of their illness that they will try anything, and they believe that more is better. I believe it's not, and the combination of treatments makes it hard to know what, if anything, is working. Are frustration and the general sense that one does not know how much one is contributing in this cocktail of treatments good reasons to screen these patients out? Again, I believe that being honest with the patient and leaving it up to them to decide is a good way to go.
I remember reading somewhere that doctors have been known to cull patients whom they find difficult to treat from their practices. I would have thought that doctors of all people had a moral obligation to treat everyone. It's an interesting question to mull over whether this is true, and whether the same yardstick should also be applied to energy healers.
I find that most of the people I treat feel better right away and that even the ones who don't see an immediate change improve once they've had a chance to sleep on it. The very few who don't feel the treatment at all, and report no change even the day after, generally decide not to come back. So you could say that in effect patients "self-select", and that no screening process is needed.
I will admit to a selfish preference for treating conditions that can show quick improvement, such as knee, shoulder and back injuries. The patient gets speedy relief and I get the reward of immediate gratification and of knowing that what I do works. Treating longterm conditions such as fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome or arthritis can be difficult and frustrating in comparison.
And cancer is on a page all by itself. Cancer treatment takes a long time and a good deal of commitment. Cancer patients who try alternative treatments tend to "shop around" and not to stick to any one method. So in addition to allopathic treatments, they will be receiving intravenous vitamin C, ozone, acupuncture, Chinese herbs, naturopathic cleansing agents, colonics, radionics, homeopathy, etc., along with energy healing, and how in God's name do we know whether all or any of these things are compatible? There could be the energy equivalent of negative drug interactions going on, with one method counteracting the benefits of another (Bill Bengston in particular does not recommend using his method while the patient is receiving chemotherapy or radiation). But understandably cancer patients are so frightened and so motivated to try to rid themself of their illness that they will try anything, and they believe that more is better. I believe it's not, and the combination of treatments makes it hard to know what, if anything, is working. Are frustration and the general sense that one does not know how much one is contributing in this cocktail of treatments good reasons to screen these patients out? Again, I believe that being honest with the patient and leaving it up to them to decide is a good way to go.
I remember reading somewhere that doctors have been known to cull patients whom they find difficult to treat from their practices. I would have thought that doctors of all people had a moral obligation to treat everyone. It's an interesting question to mull over whether this is true, and whether the same yardstick should also be applied to energy healers.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Hello and welcome, Energy Healers!
In the past few days I've received a number of e-mails from energy healers far and wide. Hello and welcome! It has long been my dream to turn this blog into more of a discussion forum, so I hope you will continue to pepper me with questions, which I can then respond to in the blog, and maybe attract some comments. There is a lot of knowledge and experience out there, which we really should share.
I will in the next few days address the questions I've already received. In the meantime, feel free to send me more.
I will in the next few days address the questions I've already received. In the meantime, feel free to send me more.
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