Energy Healing: Tip of the Iceberg?

Energy Healing: Tip of the Iceberg?

Jumpstarting Healing

If we were standard health practitioners, we would want to know four things:

  1. What are we treating?
  2. How should we treat it?
  3. How long will it take?
  4. How long will the heaing last?

As a deep healing practitioner, I start and stop with Step 2. I never get to Steps 1, 3, or 4. How can I help you? I ask the body. Then I do what the body tells me– with no preconceived notions about what we are working on, how long it will take, or how long it will last.

This is because the body and soul need only a jumpstart to heal. They will continue their work far after the client has left the treatment session.

The body and soul only need a jumpstart to heal. They will continue their work far after the client has left the treatment session.

What Are We Treating?

First, what are we treating? We are actually treating a vacuum, in that we are reviving the soul’s right to free choice and independent healing.

We are reviving the soul’s right to free choice and independent healing.

We are not treating the body but rather the body’s absence of support from its friends–and its results. This may be due to an unfriendly environment or something blocking the body’s ability to receive the healing already available.

If the body had had support from its friends, it would have already healed.

How Long Will It Take?

Second, how long will it take?

Some things are already known. A standard Craniosacral Therapy treatment can continue for two days after the client leaves. Example:

“Even after you finished, I felt toxins pouring out of my body.”

But how long after those two days will healing continue to unfold? And what levels of healing will have been reached when the healing runs its course?

Most healing is immediate and felt on the massage table or shortly afterward in its physical, emotional, or spiritual form. However, sometimes a deep healing gradually evolves from a physical release to an emotional or spiritual one and is appreciated only months later:

“In the past four months, I have reached a positive spiritual and emotional state that I have never been in before–such a blessing during my husband’s deployment [overseas]. It’s helped me get through it with strength and happiness. I attribute a lot of this switch in me to the experience I had with Craniosacral. I didn’t realize until recently how much of a transformation had actually occurred. Is this really a possible outcome of opening up energy pathways in my body? I can’t figure out any other reason. I really feel that Hashem [God] sent you as a little shaliach [messenger] to bring me to a place that I was meant to be in during this stage in my life. Thank you!”     Mother of Three Young Children

How Long Will the Healing Last?

Sometimes healing is permanent. One client’s ADD did not return after her single Craniosacral Energy Healing session, and another client’s osteoporosis disappeared permanently after one Guided Healing session.

However, sometimes healing remains incomplete to remind us that the basic healing hasn’t been completed.

I had a client who couldn’t raise his arm in front of him. One session of Craniosacral Energy Healing fixed the arm and he was able to sleep. But only for 3 days. This is because he did not fix the attitude that his body was trying to call his attention to in the first place, to whit–he needed to be planning to teach courses in England.  A second client had decades-long back pain that disappeared after a single session of Craniosacral Energy Healing. It returned later in order to have its source eradicated by a single Family Constellation. Since the Constellation, she has had no more back pain.

Like Craniosacral Energy Healing, Family Constellations create ongoing healing in ever-deepening realms. A Family Constellation needs 6 weeks to solidify its healing from the heart out. You don’t talk about the meanings in your Family Constellation for 40 days. (40 days is one and a half moon cycles, according to Teacher Vlado Ilic.)  In talking and intellectualizing about–mentally analyzing–your Constellation’s meaning, you will dissipate the energy of the heart’s healing as you bring it into the heartless realm of mind and words. The heart has seen a new and more truthful reality, and it, as well as other phases of your life and soul, needs these 40 days to strengthen and to adjust.

Likewise, we don’t do any homeopathy or any other treatment of the issue dealt with in the Constellation for 40 days, since these remedies might change the course of the healing that you began with the Family Constellation.

 

 

Energy Healing: Is It Kosher?

Energy Healing: Is It Kosher?

You may be asked whether the healing you do is kosher. Here are questions that I have asked rebbeim (rabbis) that may help:

Asking Questions of Neshamas Who Have Passed Away

Q: May we contact and ask questions of the dead?

Background: A young woman had come to me for sinus issues. She had been particularly connected to a grandmother who had recently passed. As we progressed in our Guided Healing session, I noticed someone who appeared to be the client’s mother’s mother hovering around the ceiling in the northwest corner of the room. She appeared to want to help, so I asked Granny questions directly and relayed her responses. I was getting remarkable answers when the young lady suddenly said, “We need to be careful about ‘contacting the dead.'”

It was clear that Granny wanted–I would say, was anxious–to tell us things but she didn’t volunteer them. We had to address her and ask her each question. It was our initiating the various parts of this back-and-forth conversation with Granny (who was already present in the room) that bothered the young lady as a halachic question.

A: Rabbi Daniel Kohn, Rav of Bat Ayin

Rav Daniel said it was fine–that the Lubavitcher rebbe used to go to his father’s grave to ask questions. If our asking her questions was how Granny wanted to communicate with us, it was entirely fine to do it her way.

The issur (prohibition) about “contacting the dead” is specifically about the yedoni–which involves rattling certain bones to raise the dead.

Are Family Constellations Kosher?

Q: Are Family Constellations kosher? After all, it seems like contacting the dead.

A: Rabbi Daniel Kohn, Rav of Bat Ayin

Yes, it is fine. [Rav Daniel explained that he has personally experienced a Family Constellation-like mode in which you act as a representative for someone else, and when you are done, you just return to your normal self.]

Q: But maybe it is avoda zara?

A: How can it be avoda zara? You are not bowing down to anything.

 

Jewish Family Constellations: Kol Yisrael Areivim Zeh l’Zeh

Jewish Family Constellations: Kol Yisrael Areivim Zeh l’Zeh

In the non-Jewish world, Family Constellations are beautifully linear. You stand in an orderly lineup of one generation behind the another. You don’t speak unless told what to say. You wait for the facilitator to tell you what to do next. And if the facilitator says you feel something and you disagree, you do NOT argue. Very Yekkishe (Yiddish for German-orderliness)–everyone in his “platz” (place).

This is as it should be, as Bert Hellinger and my other Family Constellations teachers have largely been German. Even when Hellinger facilitates Family Constellations in Israel for Holocaust survivors (Rachel Weeping for her Children), everyone seems to obediently follow the script.

Linear vs Exploded View

Trouble is, when a Jew facilitates Family Constellations for Jews, the fake orderliness blows apart. And no one prepares you….

Trouble is, when a Jew facilitates Family Constellations for Jews, the fake orderliness blows apart. And no one prepares you….

Take my first time student-facilitating a Family Constellation for “Leah”–my class’s only other Jew. Here’s Leah’s Father– stooped and crumpled on the floor, loosely surrounded by a mess of family members. Across the room, Leah’s Mother and all her line are livid about something and strewn about in a disheveled mass. Leah’s screaming that I should not work on the mother’s side of the family, but the father’s side. There’s no calm anywhere and no obvious direction to turn. I look up helplessly at my teacher.

“I don’t know where to go with this,” I admit.

“Sit down,” she replies. It was the only merciful thing to do. She takes over and later invites me to sit by her in front of the class.  “Any questions?” she asks me.

“Yes,” I said. Everyone in my Seattle Family Constellations class knew I was going back to Israel, so I was frank. “For those of us who are going to do a lot of Jewish Family Constellations, are they different from normal–I mean non-Jewish–Constellations?”

“Yes,” she said. “Every Family Constellation I have facilitated for “Leah” has taken 2 1/2 hours [a “normal” Family Constellation takes half that time]. In an Irish Family Constellation,” she continued, “The father would just leave. In the Jewish Family Constellations, they don’t leave each other. They just get entangled.”

In the Jewish Family Constellations, they don’t leave each other. They just get entangled.

Kol Yisrael Areivim

That was the key. That’s why things are SO complicated in Jewish Family Constellations. Kol Yisrael areivim zeh l’zeh. Each Jew is responsible for each other.

Now you may argue that you know of a Jewish family in which the father left the family. But Family Constellations show an entirely different picture of a Jewish family’s norm.

Connecting Independently to the Spiritual World

Family Constellations highlight another difference between Jews and the “normal” world: we connect independently to the spiritual world. (I include, as Jews, conversion students who are not yet Jewish.) You see, in my Seattle class, we were taught to stand close to the rep who needs to say something, and we will feel what needs to be said.  We then tell the representative what to say.

When I tell this to my Jewish Family Constellation participants here in Israel, they get indignant. Here are excerpts from a letter I wrote to my teacher, in which I am curious how Jewish Family Constellations differ from “normal” constellations and what this tells us about ourselves as Jews:

Wind-Up Toy

First, I hardly have to do any facilitating. I don’t even open with a warm-up exercise to open their hearts, like your ringing your crystal bowl.  I just say something like, “Let’s see what’s in X’s heart. X, how do you feel now? and How would you like to feel by the end of this constellation?” and let things roll. Everybody in the Family Constellation automatically knows exactly what to do–even if it is their first time seeing a Constellation. They know what to speak–and, amazingly, they come up with the same statements that we have learned from you–on their own! If I suggest a statement that doesn’t resonate with their situation, they will express their disagreement LOUD and CLEAR. And then they come up with a deadly accurate statement that I could never have come up with. When I tell them I was taught that the facilitator had to come up with the “statements,” they look at me like I’m crazy and ask loudly, “Why?!” They already know exactly what to say and don’t want someone interfering with their abilities to reveal the truth.
All I have to do is set up the constellation like some wind-up toy and sit back and watch. Of course sometimes I add people or suggest a break-through somewhere. But when I do, I tell people why I am doing it as if we are all learning general principles (which we are).
And so my facilitating Jewish constellations is a little more relaxed than facilitating in Learning Circle.  Even when, like a few weeks ago, I had to facilitate a constellation not only in Hebrew/English but also French! Things just seem to take their course to a very powerful, moving, and loving place.

Relating to Grandparents & Great-Grandparents

A second difference is the Jewish Client’s strong connection to relatives further back. I recently facilitated a Family Constellation for the Whole Health Forum outside Jerusalem. We did a beautifully linear constellation. Each representative going back 4 generations, plus the Homeland, had all made peace with each other in turn, including the Client’s representative.  All looked well when I invited the Client to take her place in the Constellation. We had 10 minutes left. I was starting to feel relaxed because the conference had only given me an hour and 15 minutes to work and, as you know, this is half the time we really need, and it really looked like we were going to make the deadline!
Suddenly the Client became hostile. She would not even LOOK at her Mom’s rep, with whom her rep had already made peace. Something went unexpectedly wrong. But what?
I thought quickly–something is out of alignment. “Do you have anything to tell your grandmother?” I asked the Client. Boy, did she! She could not deal with her Mom until she had stepped back a generation and given her grandmother a piece of her mind!  We even had to let her communicate with her great-grandmother for a moment. Fortunately, things were worked out and, with about 3 minutes left in the session, the Client completed a beautiful constellation with her Mom’s rep.

Cousins Three-Times Removed

A third difference is how far from the direct family line we Jews are emotionally connected. Last week I facilitated my own constellation. The Family Constellation showed that I was influenced by relatives in a “side” line whom I never knew about: my great-grandmother’s siblings who had apparently lost children in the Holocaust. Not only was I unaware that my great-grandmother had siblings, but I didn’t know we had lost relatives in the Holocaust. The word Holocaust was never mentioned in my home growing up and as far as I knew, we were an intact family: both my mother’s parents were US-born; both my father’s parents grew up in the US; and all their siblings were in the US. I had never suspected anything among my great-grandparents’ forgotten siblings.
When you debriefed my facilitating X’s constellation last fall, I began to understand how all Jews are responsible for each other. I am only now, through facilitating constellations here in Israel, able to see some of the extent of this responsibility.
What happens when a Family Constellation turns “entangled” into “loving and responsive”? Just a few minutes after our post-constellation ice cream party, I became aware of people standing behind me for the first time. Not just anyone, but a large and continuously supportive family. This took me by surprise because I had done 6 constellations already and although I have felt more grateful after the first constellation, the others had not affected me in any positive way.  Maybe they brought up more anger and feelings of being misunderstood–but that’s about all.
Now before last week’s constellation, whenever I would think of my family, I would want to grab an emotional crash helmet. In my family of birth, I never knew when I was going to be attacked for being who I am. I never knew when most of my family would make up some narrative about me instead of seeing the precious gold I was mining in this lifetime of connection. Once I felt the strength and power of the amazing family and ancestors that now back me, I realized how marginalized my family had always seemed to me. Sort of like a washed out sidewalk-chalk-portrait after a rain….and it was all I could do to try to get them to help me sometimes, only to watch their backs as they ran away from anything I needed them for. Now, power, power, power is all I feel from them!
I am curious about who these perished people were. Yes, we had dealt with some of those who perished in the pogroms in a constellation with you this past fall–but there were more people who had experienced pogroms and of course the Holocaust who made their presence known last week. I am willing to love them also and call them my own–now that I know they exist somewhere. I don’t feel lost looking for someone I don’t know anymore!
What is open now is more willingness to heal in any direction possible.  I hope to delve deeper into what it means to be a healed person and, more importantly for the Jewish people, what it means to be a healed Jew.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hijackings: Does the Body Have a Mind of Its Own?

Hijackings: Does the Body Have a Mind of Its Own?

“Take turns feeling your partner’s craniosacral rhythm!” called Teacher brightly.

It was Day 1, Craniosacral Therapy I. And we were terrified.

“You are all looking at me in disbelief,” she continued. “But you really will feel the rhythm. And if you don’t,” she advised, “Just INVITE the craniosacral rhythm into your hands and say ‘PLEEEEASE, I’m new at this! Please make the craniosacral rhythm REALLY BIG so I can notice it!'”

To Teacher’s credit, we did all feel the craniosacral rhythm. Tuning in, the rhythm felt as large as a giant jump rope game in which a kid at each end raises the rope up and down in a huge sine-wave.

And once you can feel the craniosacral rhythm, you can diagnose. Body parts with a strong, clear rhythm are fine. Parts with no rhythm are blocked and need help. We learned the 10 Step Protocol to release blocks. But something extra was also at work….

“When you test the sphenoid bone,” added Teacher, “REQUEST the sphenoid to lower itself to its full range.”  We did.

“When you listen to the body,” Teacher explained, “the body says, ‘FINALLY! Someone’s FINALLY listening to me!’ and it starts to self-correct and heal on its own….” We practiced feeling the body self-correct.

But I had a huge question.  “Invite” the craniosacral rhythm into your hands? “Ask” it to be REALLY BIG? “Request” the sphenoid to lower itself? Watch the body “self-correct on its own”?…. My hand shot up.

“What’s the difference between this and energy healing?” I asked.  Teacher didn’t answer me (although she didn’t kick me out of class either). But I noticed that what cured my clients was not how well I had memorized the cranial bones, soft tissues, other anatomy, nor the 10 Step Protocol. What cured my patients was that I LISTENED.  I followed their self-correcting with my hands–and where there was resistance or lack of instruction, I asked the body or neshama (soul) what it wanted.

Soon a strange Hijacking Protocol replaced the 10 Step Protocol. “On your way here,” I tell clients, “Your body made a laundry list of what it REALLY wants to work on–and in what order. It did this because it knows I listen.

“Now if I were a chiropractor, and you came to me with some vertebra out of place, I might correct the vertebra and send you home. But maybe the correction would hold only a day or two because your spine was responding to a hidden foot imbalance linked to a muscle strain in your lower back, which caused pressure on your head–which I didn’t correct. Even if I knew exactly what to correct, I might not know in which order to correct it. So I let your body tell me!

“We will begin the standard 10 Step Protocol but at some point your body will show me where it really wants my hands and what it really wants to work on. I call this ‘hijacking.'”

Hijacking may feel like the body is magnetically drawing your hands to a certain place. Or it will illuminate, or draw your attention to, a problem-area. Or you may feel your hands being asked to air-massage a certain blockage or push on some acupuncture point.

And the opposite is true. Teacher told us that when done at a certain location, you may feel the body “push” your hand away. Or I may sense that the urgent request for my hands has evaporated. And so I ask the body for its next instructions.

However the body chooses to communicate, the body wants this: not only someone to listen to it (“finally”); the body wants a friend to walk its walk. Together. Sometimes clients’ bodies tell me to just sit quietly by their side, maybe give a light touch here or there, and to wave stuck energy to the correct places or to their release sites, and wait. And wait. Sometimes I have spent 45 minutes sitting quietly by a body as it self-corrects. I am often asked not to touch the body at all, because the self-correction is moving so fast that my touch would slow it down. This technique effects remarkable cures in just one or two sessions.

In order to hear the body, I ask the client not to tell me anything. “If I can’t tell YOU what is wrong, I am not doing my job!” I say. The stories on my Craniosacral page unfolded with no client input.

We work in the dark much of the time, trusting the Unseen. Often the healing’s depth will be recognized only weeks or months later (see Energy Healing: Tip of the Iceberg?). And most of my clients I will not see again, because when we listen and get to the problem’s root the first or second visit, there is no need for a third or fourth visit.

Is Craniosacral Therapy a physical healing or an energetic healing? I say both. The body knows when to emphasize the physical or energetic side for each stage of its healing. All we do is listen.

 

 

 

Masks, Angels, & Homeopathy

Masks, Angels, & Homeopathy

When we first bought Lizzie–a beautiful chocolate brown Alpine goat–she was so skittish that you couldn’t get near her. She would run away and jump onto something high or hide behind the hayfeeder.

That is, until she met Eera, our homeopathic veterinarian. You see, in our section of Israel, many goats get abscesses. Lizzie did too. My landlady, from whom I had bought Lizzie, said airily, “Just wave your hand and the energy will break up the abscess.”  I did what I could, being an energy healer, but nothing worked. For 9 months, the abscess got bigger and bigger. Finally, a vet visited for another reason, saw Lizzie, and said the abscess was very dangerous. Eera said simply, “I know what to do for the abscess.”

“How much do you charge for lancing an abscess?” I asked.

“Let’s first see the abscess,” she replied quietly.

“No, I don’t want to begin until I know your price,” I said. I didn’t want to have any misunderstanding about why I was hiring her.

She refused to tell me her price for lancing. “Let’s just see,” she said, leaving me and entering the pen. I lingered behind to lock the gate after us.

A moment later, she returned to me, triumphant.  “Ein tzorech–there’s no need!” she said.

“There’s no need for what?” I asked.

“There’s no need to lance the abscess. It’s opened on its own.”  Sure enough, the abscess was open and draining.

“What? Did you do anything to her?” I asked, in disbelief. There had not been time to catch Lizzie, much less treat the abscess, in the short time it had taken to latch the gate.

“No, it opened on its own,” she replied.

“Eera, that abscess hasn’t healed in 9 months. In fact, it has only gotten worse and worse. You mean to tell me that all you did was walk into the pen and the abscess opened on its own?”

Tamid kacha–it’s always like that.”

Tamid kacha?” I asked. I was confused.

“Yes.”

I began to understand why Eera did not have a set price for lancing abscesses. It was because she never had to.

“Eera,” I begged her. “How does that work?”

Lo yadat sheh al kateif kol rofeh yosheiv mal’ach?” she asked. Didn’t you know that on the shoulder of every doctor sits an angel?

I was stunned. But that was only the beginning. Eera gave Lizzie a constitutional remedy to strengthen her immune system. It didn’t, in the end, totally prevent more abscesses, but it did fix something else….

After a few days, Lizzie was no longer nervous Nellie. She was totally relaxed, sensuous, always approaching me with her face tilted up at an angle so I could give her a facial massage. She then took a full-body massage–up to 40 minutes long–every day. She had turned into a pussy cat.

Eera came for a follow-up a few days later.  “Eera,” I said, “Something has happened to Lizzie. She’s not crazy anymore.”

“Yes,” she replied. “I came to see her a few days ago, and I looked around and couldn’t find Lizzie!” she joked.

“But Eera, what happened?”

“That old behavior–that was just a mask,” she explained. “The remedy lifted the mask and now we can see who she was all along.”

Clarity: How Do You Know Something Is True?

Clarity: How Do You Know Something Is True?

Q: How do you know if your information is accurate? A: We healers need a dizzying amount of data for our clients: Which food, supplement, herb, homeopathic remedy, brand? Which form (magnesium citrate v magnesium orotate)? Organic or regular? Dosage and frequency? And the wild cards, like preparation history! I once considered buying a particular organic bread but it tested as a no-go. Delving deeper into the energy of the loaf, I discovered that the baker’s fit of anger that day was still reverberating in the bread. The shopkeeper threw out the loaf. What about non-oral fixes? One client wakes up at 4a every morning with the same allergic reaction. How do we narrow down which rug or curtain to remove? Another client has constant back pain. How can we tell if she needs a good float in the Dead Sea, a Family Constellation, a Craniosacral session, or to move forward on an advanced degree, new business, or artwork? Here’s how we begin.

Muscle Testing

Through the 1990s, we would muscle test (“applied kinesiology”) on foods or remedies. The client would hold the item in question in one hand and the practitioner would push down on the straightened other arm to see if the body felt stronger or weaker. Some practitioners used a pendulum instead. Now muscle testing is easy. As we get closer to Mashiach, we can test on far more than just foods or supplements. We don’t need the item or even the client in the room. We can use our whole body or a minor flick of our hands as an instant pendulum to “surrogate test” what will bring good health for someone over the phone or on a different continent. We can also peer into a scene to read the energy surrounding the problem and pinpoint a solution when we need a more complete or embracing answer than just yes or no. But I never do any of this without first getting clear.

Getting Clear: Kavanot (Intentions)

I begin the day by stating kavanot (intentions that clear) from Chana Luk’s Ohr HaEmuna textbook. Some are Hebrew affirmations and some are Hebrew prayers and tehilim (psalms). I know which ones apply to me because my teacher, Efrat Dahan, surrogate tested for me. Sometimes, I need to add or omit clearings (fine-tuned by another healer). And I do not do healing work–even surrogate testing–before davening shacharit (morning prayers).

Interferences

Sometimes, while working on an issue by yourself or with another healer, all your answers will start not making sense! Whoever is clearer should test on where the interference is coming from and what to do about it. Standard physical cleansings may be smudging (burning) sage in the house or lighting candles. If necessary, get advice or more information from a third healer who may be clearer. Once, I was blocked for 6 weeks and nothing worked to clear the blocks! Really annoying!

Getting Confirmation

Efrat Dahan also taught me to pick up the phone in the middle of a difficult session and ask a healing friend, “What do you get on this client?” Or you can text or email a healing friend for confirmation on info you received. Eventually, life will confirm the truth–it’s just a matter of faith (and nerves) until that confirmation appears.

Channeling

Eventually you will start to hear, visualize, or know unsolicited information that will help yourself or your client. Our helpers in Shamayim (Heavens) are only too excited to finally have someone who wants to listen and help, and so they will open the floodgates and throw to you as much information as you can absorb. It is really good to have a written record of what you hear, since the topics may be more far-ranging and detailed than you had thought possible or can even remember later. I favor using Google Chat (Hangouts) or some other written communication for sessions–when the communication is over you can review any important information or find new opportunities for knowledge expansion in your next session. Truly, you can do some of this by yourself. I noticed this when doing Morning Pages (created by Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way).  Since I always seem to need answers, I would just write out my questions and listen for answers. Writing the answers, I would ask more questions. And so on. After a while I went into email mode. I just write myself an email, put in the subject line “Healing,” and start asking questions and writing answers. Whenever I get stuck, I just call, write, or text another healing friend to fill in the missing words. Sometimes when I don’t get answers, the problem is that I asked the wrong question. If this happens to you, just write, “What should I ask instead?” and you may be surprised to find yourself hearing answers that put you right back on track again. Being of a suspicious nature, I usually muscle test on any information that comes through channeling to double check.  The channeling has never shown to be wrong.  I will give you examples of the progression from simple muscle testing to major channeling in future case studies. Just know that you can “close the circle” by muscle testing on the channeling or asking a healing friend what they get.

Grounding

I did some extra one-on-one training after Craniosacral I. Sitting behind the patient, I began to check for craniosacral rhythm in the head. “Ground yourself,” warned my coach, Nancy Westphal. “Clients can often tell when you’re ungrounded.” That was really scary. I had assumed I could sneak by, ungrounded, without being detected. I did a standard self-grounding: Imagine a line goes from your lower back into the center of the earth. That grounds you! “Good,” said Nancy. I was amazed that, from across the room, she could tell when I was grounded and when I wasn’t. Grounding is another help for clarity. I have not found that grounding gives more accurate answers during muscle testing. The answers simply don’t come if I’m not grounded.

Goat Milk

If you live in Israel but were not born here, you may need to drink a cup of goat milk every now and then for clarity. Taking care of goats is very grounding and you may need to take care of them too!

Clarity for You!

What do YOU do for clarity? I’d love to hear!