Outstanding Healers of Our Time
The vast majority of physicians go into medicine because of their compassion and altruistic desire to help patients. Most of them are healers in the true sense of the word. Yet they often wind up far from their goal, according to the American Journal of Medicine, which observed, “The current time-consuming training process often takes bright, creative young adults with a love for helping people, and turns them into cold, distant persons who have lost many of their original ideals regarding the practice of medicine…producing a physician with qualities 180 degrees opposite those it states it believes in.”1 Best selling author and physician Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D., writes, “Year after year, in medical schools across the country, the first-year class enters filled with a sense of privilege and excitement about becoming doctors. Four years later, this excitement has given way to cynicism and numbness. By graduation, students seem to have learned what they have come to do but forgotten why they have come.”2 Many genuine healers, like Ostad, don’t even try, and instead choose the path of an independent healer. Here, free from the constraints of a disease-centered paradigm, they are able to do great good. “They simply ‘know’ they must become healers, and they will do almost anything to fulfill their calling.… Hearkening to a deep and primal drive…” says Larry Dossey.3 Below, we look at some of these people, and their extraordinary healing abilities.
Harry Edwards, Foremost English Healer
Harry Edwards was perhaps the best-known sacred healer in England in the twentieth century, and former president of the UKs National Federation of Spiritual Healers. Due to his efforts to make faith healing an integral part of the medical repertoire, faith healers may have a formal position assisting with treatment in doctors’ offices in England. He was undeterred by great hostility shown to his work by the British medical profession, and by the Church of England; those two bodies would not “admit that any other agency could achieve successful healings.”4
He believed that anyone with a great passion and desire to help others could develop the ability to heal. Edwards said that the qualifications of a good healer include generosity, a willingness to give of self, compassion, and sympathy for those in need. He felt that individuals who want payment for their healing are too selfish and, therefore, not as likely to be outstanding healers.
After WWII, his healing practice came to national prominence, and by the mid-1970s, Edwards was receiving up to 9,000 letters a week from patients requesting absent healing. Though a gifted healer, Edwards believed that most people would have to return to him for treatment a number of times. A single healing experience rarely cured people of their disorders. He also encouraged patients to help themselves. In treating chronic arthritic conditions, for instance, Edwards recommended home massage and specific limbering exercises, in addition to multiple laying-on-of-hands sessions. He felt that a patient’s mind has to be influenced in the direction of healing. Edwards believed that mental distress is caused by emotional and sexual problems, failure to attain one’s ideals, and the desire of the inner self to express in a way that one’s existing way of life might not permit. His assessment of his work was that 80 percent of his patients improved from his treatments and belief system; 30 percent were cured, and 10 percent were cured instantly.5 He died in 1976, and his work is carried on today by the Harry Edwards Spiritual Healing Sanctuary at www.HarryEdwards.org.uk.
Olga Worrall: The Most Studied Healer of All Time
Olga and Ambrose Worrall conducted healing services at the Mount Washington United Methodist Church for almost thirty-five years. Olga continued the services on Thursdays after Ambrose’s death. Norm was able to obtain the medical records of nine patients who had been miraculously cured by Olga of a variety of illnesses. Many attendees were repeat visitors; some wrote her grateful letters, for instance:
“During the service I felt heat moving throughout my body. My dizziness disappeared completely, and I have remained free of it now in the months since the healing service.”
“My arthritis pain which had been virtually incapacitating for the last year has been almost totally absent since last Thursday morning. Praise God.”
Dr. Elmer Green and his wife Alyce, psychology researchers from the Menninger Foundation, tested Olga Worrall. Their findings were most startling. They connected her to various pieces of electrical monitoring equipment, including an EEG, EKG, and skin galvanometer. She was placed in a room that had a vacant room on either side of it. Two more rooms along the hallway on the opposite sides of the vacant rooms were used. One was for recording the measurements during the study, the central control room. The other one, four rooms away, on the other side of the second vacant room, held the patient, wired in a similar way to Olga.
Olga could not see the patients she was treating, nor had she been introduced to them or informed about their problems. Her voice was recorded in the central control room, as were the devices monitoring both her and the patient. In four out of the twelve patients, there were striking simultaneous EEG changes associated with the exact moment during which Olga “sent” healing. When working with one patient, she stated, “I believe this patient smokes, as it feels as if I’m moving through molasses to get my energy to him.” She was right; the patient was a smoker.6
Notable Contemporary Healers
Today there are many healers in the US who achieve remarkable results. This is not a complete list, but it includes several with whom we have had experience.
Rev. Ron Roth, a former Catholic priest, radiates joy in his work and lectures. Ron has many letters from patients who considered themselves healed. Norm obtained three proofs of miraculous healing from among this group. More case histories are reported in the book, Healing Spirits by Judith Joslow-Rodewald and Patricia West-Barker. Ron Roth emphasizes that psychological issues and spiritual wounds must be healed, in addition to physical ailments. He heads up Celebrating Life Ministries, where he works with many other people, including those of different faiths. He is the author of many books and a number of CDs and DVDs. His web site is www.RonRoth.com.
Michael Tamura is a spiritual teacher and healer. Over the course of more than three decades, he has assisted many in healing. He has written a book entitled You Are the Answer; his web site is www.MichaelTamura.com. He and his wife Rafaelle practice in Mount Shasta, California, and travel widely.
The work of Sister Justice Smith, a professor at Rosary Hill College in Buffalo, New York, has been of great importance. She found that Mr. Esterbane, a healer studied extensively in the late 1960s and early 1970s by Dr. Bernard Grad, in Canada, could (as did Olga Worrall) “heal” trypsin, an enzyme that breaks down protein when the trypsin had been extremely damaged mechanically. Dr. Grad also demonstrated remarkable healing by Mr. Esterbane of controlled-size skin wounds on rats.8
Mietek Wirkus, formerly of Poland and now living in Maryland near Washington D.C., has an outstanding reputation as a healer. Norm was able to obtain proof of his ability to heal individuals with severe hearing loss. Six patients showed impressive improvement in their audiograms after treatment with him. He prefers to work in tandem with physicians. Before emigrating from Poland, he worked primarily in Polish medical centers as a licensed bioenergy healer. He has been tested by Dr. Elmer Green of the Menninger Clinic; healing pulses sent by him have been measured at an astonishing eight volts. Wirkus has treated many prominent Washington residents, including members of congress.
Mietek Wirkus also participated in a controlled case study that used an EEG to measure the brain functions of a bioenergy practitioner and client during a healing experience, and also at a distance. The experimenters found that as areas of the practitioner’s brain changed frequency, so did those of the subject, though the subject’s frequencies were more variable than those of the practitioner. The practitioner’s brain waves were more stable during distant healing, and less stable during present healing; they may have been affected by those of the client.9 His web site is www.MietekWirkus.com.
Deena Spear is one of the more remarkable modern soul healers. A former neurobiologist, she coauthored several papers documenting the negative effects of pesticides on the environment. When she realized that laboratory chemicals were having an adverse effect on her own health, she began studying violin-making and acoustics. After two decades as a violin-maker, she discovered that she could change the sound and vibration of instruments mentally—without any tools. As she and her husband Robert Spear became well known in their craft, many of the professional musicians who played their instruments found they didn’t have to travel to have their instruments adjusted; Deena discovered she could perform acoustical adjustments long distance. Dramatic changes in the power, quality, and playability of the musical instruments served as validation to both Deena and professional musicians (including world-renowned cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, who bought a Spear cello) that she genuinely was able to telepathically enhance musical instrument sound. She found that she could apply the same skills with humans and animals to assist in their healing process. To Deena, whether a person’s problems are physical or emotional, it’s all a felt sound vibration.
She wrote Ears of the Angels, which humorously chronicles her journey from Cornell University-trained biologist, to professional violin maker, to professional healer. The book includes testimonials and histories of various healings, sometimes written by the clients themselves.10
For example, one of the first transplant cases she worked with showed a dramatic and lifesaving drop in the creatinine (a metabolic waste product) levels in the patient’s blood after her long distance healing. Because of life-threatening infections, the patient’s doctors had been forced to drastically reduce the amount of immunosuppressant drugs administered. The patient had received a kidney transplant seven years before, and had been taking immunosuppressants ever since, in order to stop her body from rejecting the transplanted kidney. Without her usual dose, the doctors expected the kidney to die and the level of blood waste products in her blood to soar.
After the healing, just the opposite occurred. The patient’s physicians, who were not told about the healing, were quite puzzled by the turn of events. The kidney functioned better than ever, and her blood was cleaner—all at far lower dosages of immunosuppressant drugs than had been needed in the previous seven years.
Deena is also developing tools to help people shift consciousness. One involves a combination of music and language. EEG tests show that her recordings balance the right and left hemispheres of the brain. Christiane Northrup, M.D., writes this of Deena: “One of her students, Margaret Wells, M.D., specializes in occupational medicine, treating those who are injured on the job. Dr. Wells has been working most recently at workman’s compensation clinics and has been using the healing skills she learned from Deena with tremendous success…
“During one week, six patients came to the emergency room at Dr. Wells’ clinic with metal filings or other foreign bodies in their eyes. When metal filings enter the eye, they can leave a rust ring, which needs to be removed by scraping or drilling it out bit by bit.… Before attending Deena’s workshops, Dr. Wells typically referred patients with this type of condition to an ophthalmologist. Since studying with Deena, she will tune her patient… Dr. Wells used vibrational healing to treat five of the six cases. She referred the sixth patient to an eye surgeon after sensing that he would not be receptive to the tuning. For the five men she treated, Dr. Wells reported that, ‘The metal shards were removed easily. An exam the day after the procedures showed no visible abrasion or injury in the eyes of any of the five cases.’ This is astounding because it generally takes several attempts to remove all the rust. And typically antibiotic drops are used through the night (often every hour), yet none of the people who received the tuning needed the eye drops or experienced any pain.
“Deena was quoted in an article for Body & Soul magazine saying, ‘Almost everything in conventional medicine could be made better if energy healing were involved. The medicine of the future lies in understanding how we create health and illness—from thoughts and beliefs, which create the energy fields that create our bodies.’ I couldn’t agree more. And I also believe that in a century or two, people will look back at the kind of medicine practiced in our time and wonder why there was so little understanding—and use—of vibrational healing techniques.”11 Deena’s web site is www.SingingWoods.org.
Barbara Rasor, Ph.D., describes herself as an “emotional intuitive.” She is good at getting to the root causes of a person’s symptoms. A former MRI technician, she became a hypnotherapist, only to discover that she was intuitively picking up her clients’ emotions and medical information. She began to develop her abilities, and research the science behind her perceptions. Barbara sees clients and also teaches at Holos University. Her web site is www.EmotionalIntuitive.com.
Cay Randall-May, Ph.D., does intuitive physical and energy body readings, followed by prayer, hands-on healing, or distant healing. She obtained a doctorate in Entomology from the University of California, Berkeley, before seeking ordination. Her postdoctoral research focused on the developmental interactions of nerve and muscle in arthropods, research that was equally valuable in understanding other animals and humans. She has taught at many institutions besides Berkeley; offering courses in anatomy and physiology, general biology, and scientific illustration.
As well as publishing dozens of scientific papers, articles, and essays, she has a book entitled Pray Together Now: How to Find or Form a Prayer Group, documenting her experiences with more than ninety prayer groups.12 The groups were drawn from different faiths, as well as several Christian denominations. It lists many prayer resources and Internet sites.
The way she developed a belief in the healing power of prayer is interesting. She recounts these stories: “My family encouraged me, as a child, to say ‘grace’ before meals and prayers before I went to sleep. That’s why it was natural for me, at about age twelve, to pray for my pet cat when he developed sores between the toes of his feet. The sores kept him from climbing the tree in my backyard where he and I spent lots of time together. As soon as I noticed he was in pain, I asked in my bedtime prayer for him to be restored to good health so he could play in the tree again. It didn’t occur to me that such a request was far-fetched or unreasonable. The day after I prayed for him, he effortlessly scrambled up the tree. I looked closely at his paws and the sores were gone—overnight.
“Many years later, after I had gone through the University of California and obtained my graduate degrees in Entomology, I became ill and had to have surgery. The doctor warned me not to travel right away, but I was anxious to drive to my postdoctoral research position at Case Western Reserve University, in Cleveland, Ohio. Along the way I hemorrhaged—and found myself in hospital facing repeated surgery. This time I turned to prayer out of desperation. I imagined that I was focusing the healing energy of the universe into my body through prayer. After what seemed like hours of intense, solitary prayer, my inner mind was suddenly filled with the image of a huge hand wrapped around my midsection. At the same time I felt enormous heat fill my whole body. The internal bleeding stopped immediately. I was discharged, and resumed my car trip to Ohio without further incident.”
During her sessions she holds a patient in a field of unconditional love. In her words, “I strive to reach a level of loving connection with the universal healing source and also with the individual requesting healing. It seems to me that the healing does not originate from within me, but passes through me like water through a pipeline.” Her web site is www.PrayNow.net.
John Sewell is a remarkable spiritual healer who lives near Atlanta, Georgia. He has had great success with migraine headaches, PMS, and cancer. He believes that the more spiritual patients are initially, the faster they respond. He also believes that cancer is usually an effect; when he treats patients, he “asks the body” what caused it. “The body always wants to be well,” he notices.
He lays people on a massage table, where he moves his hands over them; he can visually perceive energy drains. He then does muscle testing to confirm his observations. John believes that releasing trauma requires conscious awareness; otherwise his treatments are, “just a nice massage.” So he endeavors to bring buried psychological traumas back to conscious memory. “Ninety-eight percent of ailments are emotionally based,” he says. He needs to have patients present in person to read the emotions underlying the pain.
He also asks patients—via muscle testing—if they are ready to heal; he finds it often takes two or three sessions before enough trust is established to bring people to this point. If the trauma is just in a muscle, he finds it can release in two to 20 minutes.
Cancer tumors take longer; he finds that many dissolve in around four days. He has also discovered that if a patient has had a long course of chemotherapy, it is usually impossible to bring them back to health. He believes that spiritual healers need to work on patients before they have conventional cancer treatments, which he believes compromises their immune system, often beyond the point of no return. His experience is that cancer is usually caused by the person’s attitude.
He has noticed that the body can clear up to three major emotional traumas in a session, at maximum. Then a week or more of rest and integration is required before tackling others. He has worked at spiritual healing hospitals in cities in Brazil, as well as spending two years with medicine men in the Amazon jungle. He noticed plenty of fakery in their methods, yet their patients got well anyway. He saw one medicine man use a goat’s intestine in a supposed “psychic surgery.” When he challenged the man, the shaman reminded John that the woman had recovered from her illness immediately afterward! The medicine man said, “Some people travel for two weeks to see me. Believing they will be healed, they start getting better on the way. When I touch them, it simply confirms the healing.” There were hundreds of people in this village, all of them healthy—without the benefit of drugs other than native herbs, or surgery, other than the medicine man’s theater.
John Sewell also muscle tests his clients for prescribed medications; he finds that while cholesterol-lowering drugs are often indicated, antidepressants are usually not. He also muscle tests them to determine if the supplements they are taking are desired by their bodies. He prefers to know nothing whatever about his clients. Sometimes, he says, “they walk in here with a thick file of medical records.” He tells the person to set the file down, and get on the table; reassuring them that, “we’ll compare notes later and see how good I am.”
He does distant healing too, but he prefers to have patients present in person. He has found that distant healing addresses only the pain, and not the underlying emotions. When he does distant healing, he lies on his own table, and asks the patient to lie down at the same time. Again, he prefers no information other than the patient’s address. He can tell their age and weight, hair color, and exactly where in their bodies the pain resides.
His gift began as a survival skill during a rough childhood. “I’ve always been able to stop bleeding, even as a little boy,” he says. “When I was twelve years old, I was boating with some other kids my age. There were no adults around. My sister’s ten-year-old friend fell while skiing, and the ski hit her in the thigh. She was thrashing around in pain, and we hauled her into the boat, crying and writhing. I stuck my fingers into the injured area. I felt a ‘cloak’ come over me, like a warm, light trance. The girl stopped crying and thrashing. Then I jumped in the water and yelled ‘My turn!’ I did it because I hadn’t had a turn to ski yet! Later my sister said to me, ‘Something got into you today, that’s how you fixed her.’”
His survival skills got him through the Vietnam war; he afterwards decided that he would develop his healing gift with the intention of helping others. He chooses to keep himself in excellent shape in order to stay clear enough to do his work. He does not use alcohol, caffeine, sugar or salt. He also drinks lots of pure water and gets plenty of exercise. He avoids electromagnetic fields; he finds himself unable to work in hospitals, because of the high ambient levels of radiation, though he says, “nursing homes are okay.”13
Unique though he may be, there are many aspects of John Sewell’s practice and background that illuminate typical aspects of soul medicine. One of these is a childhood awareness of a healing gift. Another is a very strong intention to be of service. A third is a lifestyle that supports the maximization of his powers. A fourth is a focus on the underlying cause, and the perception of disease as a symptom. In the next chapter we will examine these and other characteristics of a master healer.
Donna Eden has done a great service to the field through her work, and through her best selling book Energy Medicine,14 one of the most user-friendly and practical guides available in the field. She has mastered many different techniques of energy healing. She uses them with clients, and presents each of them clearly in her book. She is also exquisitely attuned to whether and where a person is ready for healing, yet she does not hesitate to prompt people in the direction of taking responsibility for their own wellness. Donna’s passionate care for her clients and students shines through everything she does.15
She tells the following story, which illuminates several aspects of her approach, about one of her first patients: “A woman with ovarian cancer came for a session with the hope that I could help relax her body and prepare it for a surgery that was scheduled in five days. She had been told to ‘get her affairs in order’ as her immune system was so weak that her chances of surviving the surgery were limited. Metastasis was also suspected.
“From looking at her energy, I was certain the cancer had not metastasized. While her energy was dim and collapsed close to her body, the only place that looked like cancer to me was in her left ovary. In addition, the texture and vibration and appearance of the energy coming up through her ovary was responsive to my work with her. I could see and feel it shift, and by the end of the session, the pain that had been with her for weeks was gone.
“I told her that her body was so responsive to what I had done that I wondered about her plan to have surgery. I was concerned that her immune system was indeed too weak, and I was confident that by working with her energy, not only would her immune system be strengthened, the tumor’s growth could be reversed. While I made my statements with the strong disclaimers required to avoid immediate arrest for practicing medicine without a license, she responded to the implication that she cancel the surgery with horror. I suggested she at least delay the operation for two weeks. She scheduled a session with me for the next day and said she would discuss the surgery with her husband.
“That evening I received a call from her husband. He was outraged and threatening. He called me a ‘quack.’ He said I was putting his wife’s life in jeopardy by giving her false hope, and he told me I would never have another chance to confuse her like this. He made it clear that she would not be coming back. When I began to respond, he hung up. I called back a short while later. She answered. Talking in hushed tones, she was clearly uncomfortable speaking with me. I said, ‘Okay, don’t postpone the surgery, but please keep your appointment tomorrow. You don’t have to pay. You have nothing to lose. I believe in what I am saying. In fact, I want you to bring your husband in with you. Find a way!’ She did not believe he would come in, but the next day, they both arrived for the appointment.
“I had her lie down on the massage table. My hope was to find a way to give this traditional and skeptical man, so poignantly fierce in his protection of his wife, an experience of healing energy that his senses could not deny. I could see a dark, dense energy at the site of his wife’s left ovary, and it felt like my hand was moving through a muddy swamp. I asked the husband to place his hand a few inches above the area and begin to circle it, using a motion that tends to draw energy out of the body. To his great surprise, not only could he immediately feel that he was moving against something, within two minutes his hand was pulsing with pain. To his utter amazement, his wife reported that her pain diminished as his increased.
“By the end of the session she was again pain-free, felt better, and looked better. I had also been able to show them both, through the use of ‘energy testing,’ that we had been able to direct healing energies from her immune system to the area of her cancer. I taught him a set of procedures to use with her every day. They decided to temporarily postpone the surgery and ask for further medical tests prior to rescheduling it. After about ten days of these daily treatments from him and three more sessions with me, she went through the additional testing. The tumor was gone.” Donna Eden and David Feinstein have a strong commitment to teaching others these methods, and they supplied the following story about the success of one of their students. With his permission, the patient’s real name is used:
“Tim Garton, a world champion swimmer, was diagnosed in 1989 with Stage Two Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. He was forty-nine years old. He had a tumor the size of football in his abdomen. It was treated with surgery, followed by four chemotherapy treatments over twelve weeks, with subsequent abdominal radiation for eight weeks. Despite initial concern that the cancer appeared to be terminal, the treatment was successful, and by 1990, Tim was told that he was in remission. He was also told that he would never again compete at a national or international level. However, in 1992, Tim Garton returned to competitive swimming, and won the one hundred meter freestyle world championship.
“In early July of 1999, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. A prostatectomy in late July revealed that the cancer had expanded beyond the borders of his prostate and could not all be surgically removed. Once again, he received weekly radiation treatment in the area of his abdomen. After eight weeks of treatment, the cancer had cleared.
“In 2001, the lymphoma returned, this time in his neck. It was removed surgically. Tim again received radiation, though this time it left severe burns on his neck. The following year, a growth on the other side of his neck, moving over his trachea, was diagnosed as a fast-growing lymphoma that required emergency surgery.
“He was told that the lymphoma was widespread. A bone marrow and stem cell transplant, called an autogolus, was done at this time, but it was not successful. There was also concern that the tumors would metastasize to his stomach. His doctors determined at this point that they could do nothing more for him. He was told that highly experimental medical treatments, for which there was little optimism, were the only alternative. He was given an injection of monoclonal antibodies (Retuxin), which had been minimally approved for recurrent low-grade lymphoma. Retuxin is designed to flag the cancer sites and potentially help stimulate the immune system to know where to focus.
“At this point Tim enlisted the services of Kim Wedman, an energy medicine practitioner trained by Donna Eden. Tim and his wife went to the Bahamas for three weeks, and they brought Kim with them for the first week. Kim provided daily sessions lasting an hour and a half. These sessions included a basic energy balancing routine, “meridian tracing,” a “chakra clearing,” work with the “electrical,” “neurolymphatic,” and “neurovascular” points, a correction for energies that are designed to cross over from one side of the body to the other but are not, and a daily assessment of his other basic energy systems, followed by corrections for any that were out of balance. While Tim was not willing to follow Kim’s advice to curb his substantial alcohol consumption, or modify his meat-and-potatoes diet, he did introduce fresh vegetable juices into his regimen, plus a herbal tea (Flor-Essence) that is believed to have medicinal properties.
“Kim also taught Tim and his wife a twenty-minute, twice-daily energy medicine protocol, which they followed diligently, both during the week she was there, and for the subsequent two weeks. The protocol included a basic energy balancing routine, and specific interventions for the energy pathways that govern the immune system and that feed energy to the stomach, kidneys, and bladder.
“Upon returning to his home in Denver, in order to determine how quickly the cancers might be spreading, Tim scheduled a follow-up assessment with the oncologist who had told him, “There is nothing more that we can do for you.” To everyone’s thrill and surprise, Tim was cancer-free. He has remained so during the four years between that assessment and the time of this writing. He has been checked with a PT scan each year, with no cancer detected. Was it the energy treatments or the single Retuxin shot that caused the cancer to go into remission over those three weeks? No one knows. Tim still receives Retuxin injections every two months, but he also continues to work with Kim Wedman on occasion for tune-ups.”
One of the more unusual healers that I (Norm Shealy) had an opportunity to meet and evaluate briefly is Reverend Bill Brown, originally a Presbyterian minister who became an “etheric surgeon.” In the mid-1970s, I visited Brown in Georgia and observed his healing. He also treated my own neck problem.
Brown went into a very deep trance. Without actually touching my body, he went through motions as if injecting anesthesia, as well as various surgical maneuvers. His hands turned deep, almost beet red—and were extremely warm. Unfortunately I had no thermistors with me to measure the temperatures, which may have been well above his body temperature. Although Brown verbally reported many cures, I was never able to obtain medical records attesting to his ability to heal.
Several years ago I met Richard Gordon, who developed a technique that he calls Quantum Touch. The principles of Quantum Touch as outlined by Gordon are:
When Richard Gordon visited us, he taught four people on our staff his technique, which consists of centering one’s mind, detaching from all concerned, entering essentially a quiet meditative state, and beginning to feel one’s own internal energy, chi, qi, or prana, moving from the legs up and out through the hands or fingers. Once one has this internal sensory process going, then the Quantum Touch therapist applies his or her hands near or around the areas where patients have difficulties. It may be to any part of the body from the top of the head to the tips of the toes. We also had Richard Gordon apply his Quantum Touch principles without touching the patient’s body, and in three out of three situations he was clearly capable of altering the EEG during his sending of energy to the patient.
I have been fortunate to study and work with several remarkably talented intuitive diagnosticians, particularly Dr. Robert Leichtman and Dr. Caroline Myss. For more than a decade Caroline and I have been teaching a course in intuition. Increasingly, I receive requests for validation from people who claim to be medically intuitive; a few have great talent. Society is moving toward programs to train and authenticate those individuals who truly have medical intuitive capabilities; part of the purpose of this book is to spur such training and authentication.
I (Dawson Church) have had many provocative experiences with healers. Overcoming my skepticism has been a challenge for me, because while every “healer” seems to have plenty of dramatic anecdotes, there are rarely medically objective proofs of the patient’s recovery; hence the focus on verifiable medical records in this book.
One exception is Peter Selby. Peter is a former physical therapist. Peter, and his wife Anne, travel widely, teaching and offering healing sessions. What makes their work unique is that changes to a client’s body can be precisely measured immediately after a session, and Peter and Anne do just this.
Peter has a massage table set up in the front of the room during his demonstrations. When a person steps forward for healing, he measures the degree of rotation of various joints in their bodies. For instance, he might have the person raise their arms, and see how far back each arm rotates. He might have them sit on the table and look to the left, and measure how far their head rotates to the left, for instance, about 45 degrees. He usually picks a joint that is particularly constrained.
He and Anne then stand about ten feet from the client, and appear to go into a light trance while they work on connecting the person up to their soul source, and removing blockages to the free flow of energy.
After treatment is complete, they then measure the rotation of the same joints, to see if there is a difference. I watched them work on about twenty people, and there was always significantly greater mobility after the treatment. One woman had been in an auto accident many years before, and could only turn her head about 15 degrees to the right, and about 30 degrees to the left. She was most skeptical, and expressed little hope that she could be helped by them; after all, she said, “The injury is so old, and my body’s used to it!” After treatment, she could turn her head about 45 degrees to both right and left, to her amazement.
I lay on the table and they measured the degree of rotation of my hip joints—a portion of my anatomy to which I had never before given a moment’s thought. I raised my right leg, bent my knee, placed my right foot on my left knee, and rotated my right femur as far as possible. It rotated out to about 60 degrees. Well and good.
Then I reversed positions, and tested my left leg. It could only rotate about 30 degrees. I was dismayed that I did not have more flexibility—and that I did not even realize I did not have such flexibility. Then Peter and Anne stepped back about ten feet, and did a twenty minute treatment, focusing on my rigid left side, after which I climbed back on the table. My right leg could now rotate out 90 degrees, a significant improvement. But my left leg simply dropped to all the way to the table. “Good,” observed Peter, “That one’s horizontal too now.”
“Wait,” I responded, “I can feel that this is not the limit of travel. It can go further.” I scooted till my left leg was hanging over the side of the table. It dropped still further, coming to rest at about 110 degrees. Two years later, both legs still have the same degree of rotation; the healing was permanent.
While the Selby’s use joint rotation to test the effectiveness of their treatments, and while I would not hesitate to recommend treatment by them of anyone who has joint problems, their focus is not on producing more flexible bodies. It is instead on resolving the core emotional and spiritual wounds that are keeping the body locked up. They work directly on those issues, not on the joints themselves. Joint testing is simply a graphic demonstration that the client’s energy has shifted. Details of the Selby’s methods, and their contact information, can be found on their web site, www.YouAngelYou.com.
Psychic Surgeons
“Psychic surgery” is done primarily in the Philippines and Brazil. In September 1976, I (Norm Shealy) was a participant in a team (with Elmer Green of the Menninger Clinic, another physician, and a film crew) that visited seven psychic surgeons in the Philippines who perform surgery without tools other than their minds and hands. Six of the healers produced what appeared to be blood on the surface of the skin of their patients during the psychic surgery. I was able to take those blood samples from twenty-two of the patients by swabbing with cotton. All the samples proved later to be human blood.
I saw three specific types of psychic surgeons. Two individuals went into deep trances. Their eyes rolled up into their heads and fluttered as they worked. More commonly the healer did not seem to go into a trance and could carry on a perfectly normal conversation with us during the healing process.
One of these psychic surgeons, Tony Santiago, treated a male patient whose bladder cancer was significant enough to be seen through his thin skin. As Santiago placed his hands on the patient’s abdomen, liquid blood and blood clots about the size of small popcorn popped out and splattered all over the room. I was able to collect a number of these clots, and they indeed were human blood. However, the size of the tumor did not change visibly.
There were two cameras focused on Santiago and three scientific observers watching. It was quite clear there was no sleight of hand. Santiago’s pulse escalated to about 135 beats per second at the height of his healing.
Tony Agpaou, at that time the best-known healer in the Philippines, said to me, “You know, Norman, we only do these materializations because they give the patients faith in our ability.” With that, he moved his hands about a foot apart and held them over the abdomen of a woman who did not speak English. As I looked down, it seemed as if her abdomen were opening, revealing the peritoneum, a shiny transparent membrane inside the abdomen that covers the organs. I could even see what looked like omentum, a fatty layer, through the peritoneum. I got down on my knees. The image I was seeing was at least a centimeter above her abdomen, not even touching it. Without moving his hands, Agpaou said, “And, just as we can materialize, we can dematerialize.” The image then disappeared.
On a number of occasions over the course of an entire day, Agpaou materialized not only liquid blood but sometimes blood clots and at times bits of white tissue that looked like fascia, which is the substance between tissue planes within the body. He had on a short-sleeved shirt that could not hide anything. I followed him around, even going into the bathroom with him. I was allowed to look under the top of the table and in drawers in the room where he worked. He probably “produced” three pints of blood from various patients treated during that day.
One of the most interesting healers in the Philippines, known as Padre Tierte, worked in a small sanctuary where we witnessed him removing blood. He also removed some foul-smelling material, more than a pint in volume, from a woman’s back. Smelling like the worst kind of rotting marsh, it is hard to believe something like that could have been hidden in the room. The aroma was so strong that I almost vomited when it appeared.
A fascinating event occurred when another psychic surgeon, named Jun Labou, worked on Alan Neuman, the producer of the television program that was being recorded during our trip. Labou told Neuman that he had mucus on his heart. Working primarily on Neuman’s neck, Labou placed his hands deep between the trachea and the sternocleidomastoid muscle. Out poured at least several ounces of pure pus. He massaged the skin over the upper chest and more pus came out of Neuman, then at the end a few drops of blood. It looked very much as if an abscess had been opened by a surgeon’s knife. I obtained samples of this, and it proved to be pus with many white blood cells present. I do not know any way in which pus can be stored and produced on call, with a few drops of blood then appearing, as happens when an abscess under pressure is opened. It is difficult to be certain that any healing took place as there was no medical evaluation earlier.
A year after our visit to the Philippines, Jun Labou was brought to our clinic (at that time in LaCrosse, Wisconsin), where he performed psychic surgical procedures on seventeen patients. Again, blood appeared. I was able to obtain samples of blood from two of the patients, as well as the blood that Labou removed. Also, I obtained a sample of Labou’s blood. A forensic pathologist in Berkeley, California, who examined the samples, assured me that in each case the blood was that particular patient’s blood type and not Jun Labou’s blood.
During these procedures, I never personally saw a patient’s skin actually open. It was always as if the blood were welling up, as if it were coming through the skin. Some Brazilian and Philippine films of psychic surgery do show possible openings of the skin; however, no scar or evidence of the procedure is visible on the patient’s skin at the conclusion of the procedure.
Here is the story of a most unusual shaman, Daniel, who works physically and spiritually to accomplish remarkable healing experience, as told by a friend who has given us permission to share her story.
A Healing Journey: Tulum, December, 2005
The Beginning: I picked up the phone when it rang and heard a familiar voice on the other end, “We’re planning a trip in December to Tulum in the Yucatan, to work with Daniel, the Mayan Shaman. I thought of your foot. Would you like to go with us?” I started to give her my standard answer, “I don’t do Shamans,” but the words would not come out of my mouth. Instead from within came a clear command, “Go!” It was so strong that I found myself immediately agreeing to go.
The Background: At the end of December, 2004, I had undergone serious re-construction of my left foot. The tendon that holds the ankle upright and provides an arch to the foot was basically gone. The surgeon was highly skilled and the surgery went well. By all accounts it was a “perfect” job. I ended up with a triple bone fusion in the foot and two large screws in the ankle. However, a year later I was still experiencing considerable pain in that foot, and also in my right hip (I assume due to compensations made for the foot pain). I continued to participate in a number of therapies: chiropractic, massage, Rolfing, visualization and exercise. This kept me mobile—but the foot still felt as if it didn’t belong to me. Putting weight on it was very painful. I went down stairs sideways, and I needed the constant support of a shoe.
The Journey: Most of those who call themselves “Shamans” work within the prescribed cultural patterns of their own traditional beliefs. A person coming from “outside” that tradition or belief may or may not resonate with the experience. The ability to traverse multiple levels of reality is part of this tradition. How those levels of reality are experienced and described depends, in large part, on one’s cultural traditions. I had no idea how a Mayan shaman would approach his work, but somehow I had a deep inner knowing that whatever happened was the next step for me at this point in time.
The Place: Tulum is on the Caribbean shore near Cancun, Mexico, with white sands and aqua sea. The cabanas where we stayed were comfortable, but modest. There was no electricity in the cabanas, so it was candlelight (or flashlight) after dark. This created a very restful atmosphere and a re-establishment of natural rhythms (We generally went to bed at dark and woke up at dawn). The sea breezes and the sound of ocean waves graced our cabana.
The Work: I experienced five one-hour sessions with Daniel. These sessions are not easy to describe since so much was happening on so many levels. On the purely physical level, Daniel’s approach might be described as the most intense Rolfing and deep tissue work I have ever experienced. It soon became clear that he had no intention of backing off until every part of my foot that was still meant to move, moved. He worked over my right hip in the same way. He did intense work on my spinal alignment. In addition, he offered energy work and heart-felt prayers. There were times when I felt that if the deep tissue work went any deeper I would simply let out a bloodcurdling scream. At the same time I sensed his uncanny ability to “see inside” and really know the territory in which he was working. So, I did my best to “breathe through it”.
He noticed on the first day that, when I lay on my stomach, I dropped my left foot off the side of the table (I could not flex it enough to lay it flat on its face). So that’s where he started. By the end of the session my foot was lying very flat, face down, totally relaxed. He was delighted. I couldn’t believe I had lived through it. I noticed his personal energy felt similar to that of other genuine healers with whom I have worked and that he occasionally had me take three breaths.
On each of the days there was a change in my body for the better. He worked the whole body but concentrated on the left foot and right hip. On the third day, I awakened with my two feet cradled together. My left foot felt like a part of me for the first time since the surgery! I awakened laughing, after a wonderful dream.
After my last session with this sincere and humble healer, I surprised myself by bursting into tears when I tried to say goodbye. He gave me a warm hug and said, in Spanish, “Don’t be sad. I am your brother and you are my sister and there can never be any distance between us.”
A Month Later: What Daniel was able to accomplish has remained: tremendously more flexibility in my foot, and no pain in my hip. If I am on my foot working for seven or eight hours, it becomes a bit painful in the upper center. My gait feels natural now, and my foot feels like my foot. That is the greatest change. Somehow, increasing the flexibility in all the joints and ligaments that still move took a lot of pressure off the front joint.
Daniel told our group that, a number of years previously, he was in a near-fatal accident. He suffered broken bones, many torn ligaments, and other injuries. During his recovery, he had a near-death experience. He describes it this way: “I found myself in the stars with my Master. I pleaded to be able to stay in the stars with him, but he told me I had to return to do special work. He showed me the healing I would do through his Spirit. When I became conscious, I refused to be taken to a hospital. I was taken home and healed through guidance from my Master’s Spirit. I was told exactly what to do to heal the broken ribs and other injuries. After that, I began my work with other people. I do not know what name you would give the one who is my Master. To me he is Jesus Christ.” Daniel works outside of any religious rationale or cultural story. As with all true healers, he simply allows Spirit to work through him.
Daniel’s own Mayan culture doesn’t understand what he does, though the surrounding Mayans come to him for healing. During a special ceremony with our group, he said that this was the first time since his experience en las estrellas (in the stars) with his Master that he had actually been able to share his story fully and honestly with a group of people. He told us, with gratitude, “Now I no longer feel like an orphan.” The story of his life demonstrates our potential for healing, transformation, and transcendence through the power of love.
The Importance of Attitude
Rod Campbell, a healer from New Zealand, has worked on a number of patients at our clinic on several occasions. He says, “The people who have permanent recoveries, even after being told there was nothing medical science could do for them, are the people who have a complete change of attitude. After being told they have a very short time to live, they then see and appreciate the little things they never had time to see before.”16
Although Edgar Cayce was not a healer in the usual sense, he did almost 10,000 trance readings related to health and illness. Scores of books have been written about his work. Cayce emphasizes that all healing ultimately is spiritual, involving atonement with God or a divine force, assisted by the patient’s attitude, by physicians of various persuasions, or by prayer or sacred healers. His most frequent spiritual message was:
Some other observations from his readings also give us clues about what’s happening in the course of soul medicine:
On the web site of the American Board of Scientific Medical Intuition, you can find a list of those who have passed the national board certification exam as Counseling Intuitives: www.absmi.com.
Verifiable Medical Documentation
One of Ostad Parvarandeh’s great contributions to the study of soul medicine is that so many of his cures were supported by medical documentation. In addition to the case history summaries we have already provided, medical records confirm that Ostad also healed patients with:
Divine energy travels instantly through time and space and can be directed by such talented individuals, whatever their faith and beliefs might be. James Oschman reports on studies of healers from many different traditions, including a Christian faith healer, a Hawaiian kahuna, ESP readers, and seers: “In 1969, Robert C. Beck began a decade of research on the brain wave activity of ‘healers’ from a wide variety of subcultures… [recording] their electrical brain waves with an EEG. All the healers produced similar brain wave patterns when they were in the ‘altered state’ and performed a ‘healing’… [they] produced nearly identical EEG signatures…”22 It appears that master healers everywhere are able to gain access to a level of soul consciousness that opens the doors to healing. Pioneering psychiatrist Stanislav Grof recently wrote, “It is hard to imagine that Western academic science will continue indefinitely to censor all the extraordinary evidence that has in the past been accumulated…as well as to ignore the influx of new data.” As the trickle of data becomes a flood, science is beginning to map the processes at work when master healers work their apparent magic.