As an energy healer for seven years now, I’ve consistently wondered what, exactly, helps us heal? What, exactly, causes the miraculous, spontaneous recoveries? What, exactly, speeds the process of healing?
I’ve read and at times believed that our mental state does not matter, and, certainly, the body does have its own wisdom that surpasses rational control. Bill Bengston, an impressive healer and researcher whom I’ve written about previously, described an interesting experiment he conducted a couple of years ago now (April 2014 lecture at the Rhine Research Center) which sheds some light on the body’s innate healing wisdom and automatic connection to others. He placed healers in an MRI and scanned their brains while they were in their intentional “healing state”, sending healing energy to a distant recipient. This brain state was significantly and consistently different from the healers’ normal brain state. He then conducted the experiment which involved placing envelopes in the healers hands. In some of the envelopes, he placed some kind of tangible representation of a hurt or sick animal (hair from a sick horse’s mane, for example), in the others, nothing that had to do with any sick or injured creature. The MRI tested healers had no idea what was in the envelopes, they just held them in their hands as their brains were scanned. What he found was astonishing but also completely sensible: when healers unknowingly held a representation from a sick or injured animal, their brains (and, ostensibly, their bodies) went into the “healing state”, sending healing energy at a distance. When they held the benign envelopes, their brain states did not alter.
Bengston theorized, in his 2014 talk at the Rhine Research Center, that the healee draws healing energy from the healer. The healer is not “sending” energy so much as the healee is “pulling” it to them. This, if you think about it, is a given energetic law. We are all part of a greater being (the planet, in the simplest understanding). So, if one of us is dis-eased or ill, the healing energy would naturally flow from others, from nature, from any living systems to that one — because the one is an important part of the overall system. You’ve experienced this, I am sure, from an acquaintance’s handshake, a friend’s or lover’s hug, or even a kind smile from a stranger when you were experiencing a down day. We energetically balance each other regularly and, often, unknowingly.
In his book, The Power of Intention, Wayne Dyer furthers this idea by positing that creating a life in which you live at your highest vibrational state allows you to be the greatest force of healing for others (and for the planet). He states, simply, “Bring higher/spiritual energy to the presence of lower/diseased energy, and it not only nullifies the lower energy, but converts it to healthy spiritual energy.” It is your responsibility to yourself and others, he says, to live at the highest vibrational essence possible in order to be the greatest positive living force you can be. Additionally, one must do everything possible to heal oneself, to recognize your resistance (in terms of negative beliefs and feelings of unworthiness) to healing, to eradicate that resistance, and thus, to heal.
I have found that truths come to me at certain times during my life – everything I pick up to read, the discussions in which I’m involved, etc., all seem to point to the same truth. My most recent truth comes from these authors and lecturers: Bill Bengston, Neville, Wayne Dyer, Jessie Bowen, Harry Carpenter, Derek Rydall, W. Timothy Gallwey, and many, many others. Each of their books touches on this basic principle : if you want something in life, confidently visualize yourself with your wish fulfilled. If you are injured or sick, visualize yourself in the future, healed and whole, living joyfully as you would be without the impediment. If your knee hurts, do not focus on the hurt, train your mind to visualize yourself running, cutting, and jumping in a pain-free joyful state. If you have tennis elbow, do not focus on the hurt, vividly imagine yourself swinging the racquet painlessly, effortlessly, solidly — forehands, backhands, serves, any and all parts of the game. See it carefully, thoroughly, and well, and couple this vision with your intention to heal, then let it all go and move on about your day. Visualize your “wish fulfilled” as Neville frequently says, and then detach from the need or desire. Sports instructor Harry Carpenter, in his book Tennis in the Zone, comments that this visualization is most effective when done in the alpha state, the state you’re in just before sleeping or upon waking, a state we can easily reach through contemplation or meditation. Connecting to the visualization in the alpha state allows one to bypass the conscious mind (singularly focused, full of ego resistance) and directly connect with the unconscious (infinite in potential, free from resistance). He, George Mumford, and Timothy Gallwey, in their writing about tennis and other sports, instruct that the more we can allow our unconscious mind to take over, the more we will be able to perform in “the zone.” The zone is a state of relaxed concentration, a state of ease. Do not logically think through the sequence of a specific shot, allow your unconscious mind to direct your body.
Applying the athletic “zone” state to healing, the more a healer can allow her/his unconscious mind to take over, the more he/she will be in the zone, the most effective healing state (akin to those healers in the MRI study, who did not even know their healing energy was needed). Bill Bengston, for example, teaches his students of healing a method called cycling, an intense, fast-paced, repetitive visualization process that basically blows away the conscious mind and allows the unconscious to take over (and succeed where the conscious mind would have been blocked).
And so, the answer to my initial question: what, exactly, helps us heal? As a healer, one must attempt to remove all egoic/conscious mind identifications (pride, fear, skepticism, etc.) and allow one’s unconscious, infinitely connected self to do its work. As a healee, one must attempt to remove all egoic/conscious mind identifications (fear, mistrust, guilt, shame, purposelessness, etc.) and allow one’s unconscious, infinitely connected self to take over and rebalance the body. Use your conscious mind to imagine and visualize your highest state of being, your healed, joyful body living as you wish, and then send that image to your unconscious, trusting that your infinitely powerful and always connected unconscious will bring the wish that you desire. You cannot will it from an egoic perspective, you must ask, precisely in this way, and then allow it to happen.
Of course, this sort of alpha state visualization will draw to you things other than healing if you choose to apply it to other areas of your life – perhaps the relationship of your dreams, the house you have always longed for, the career that is most fulfilling to you. You need only choose, visualize the end result of your desire while in the alpha state, and then detach and allow.
Our emotional, intellectual, and physical bodies are complex, stubborn in their habits, and intertwined, so this technique is not as simple as it would be for a child, for example. However, anyone can do it. Peacefully and meditatively visualize, seeing the end result you wish to become. Detach from the outcome. Allow the unconscious to connect and do its work.
Try it.
Good luck!
Referenced Works:
Bengston, Bill. Lecture. Rhine Research Center. April, 2014.
Carpenter, Harry. Tennis in the Zone. HC Publishing, 2014.
Dyer, Wayne. The Power of Intention. New York City: Hay House, 2013.
Gallwey, W. Timothy. The Inner Game of Tennis. NY: Random House, 2008.
Mumford, George. The Mindful Athlete. Berkeley: Parallax Press, 2015.
Rydall, Derek. Emergence. New York: Atria Books, 2015
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