Mod+ 252. BERNADETTE DORAN ON ENERGY HEALING

Mainstream medicine is not capable of curing all diseases and not all patients respond in the same way to a given mainstream medical treatment. Energy healing has the same limitations but for some reason people have higher expectations of energy healing and hold it to a higher standard than mainstream medicine.

I agree 100%. Anyone can learn to do energy healing free of charge: http://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/spiritual_healing

You are extrapolating from an experimental model of disease used in Bengston's research: a certain lineage of cancer cells injected into a strain of genetically identical mice. In real life human cancers, each cancer is different and each person is different. It is not realistic to expect the same results in humans as they get in the lab testing on mice.

Spiritual healing is available free (or for what you put in the collection basket) at most Spiritualist churches during their services and during healing classes.

I agree 100%. When I was taught spiritual healing at a Spiritualist church, I was told that spiritual healing is not a substitute for mainstream medical treatments and anyone who is ill should be advised to see a doctor. There are responsible practitioners of energy healing who don't extort money from their customers and who encourage their customers to obtain mainstream medical care. However it is hard for the general public to find reliable information on the subject because reliable information is drowned in the ocean of misinformation that exists on the subject.

Someone sent me an email about this post. I won't say who because it was a private email, but I prefer keep the discussion here on the forum where many more people will see what I write. Furthermore, this thread is Mod+ and it is inappropriate to try to circumvent that by communicating by e-mail rather than posting here. If you don't know what Mod+ means read the guidelines for the forums.

My points were not about the efficacy of healing. You can agree with everything I wrote and still believe energy healing is ineffective. I wrote that reply because I disagreed with some of what was written in the post I was replying to and I wanted to add my views to the public record.

I don't believe you have to be psychic to do healing. I think it is something that is natural to all living things. Also in the link I gave, the claims for healing are much more modest and realistic than the strawman claims in the post I was replying to.

If you asked a medical doctor if his treatment would work, he could tell you from his own experience how effective it was, but if you wanted proof he would point you to the medical literature. The link I gave lists some of the literature that shows energy healing works. If that is not sufficient, you can read the link I gave, learn to do healing, set up a controlled double blind experiment and publish the results in a peer-reviewed journal.
 
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I have one criticism of the podcast. It put a lot of emphasis on the successes of energy healing but did not discuss its limitations. It is necessary to discuss the successes because people don't know that this type of healing really works. But by not discussing the limitations naive listeners jump to the wrong conclusion that advocates of energy healing claim that it works on all diseases in every person. This belief is obviously false. If it were true a few people could empty all the hospitals in any given city and people would live forever. So naive listeners may recognize that energy healing is not a panacea but then make another mistake and assume it is all bunk. Advocates of energy healing need to take responsibility for how it is perceived when they talk about it, they need to set realistic expectations in listeners by discussing the limitations of energy healing as well as its successes.
 
Furthermore, this thread is Mod+ and it is inappropriate to try to circumvent that by communicating by e-mail rather than posting here. If you don't know what Mod+ means read the guidelines for the forums..

I don't really agree with that. If someone wants to have a skeptical discussion with someone else, that is surely between the two parties!

I only see moderation as a mechanism to produce constructive discourse - not as a form of censorship.

David
 
I don't believe you have to be psychic to do healing. I think it is something that is natural to all living things. Also in the link I gave, the claims for healing are much more modest and realistic than the strawman claims in the post I was replying to.

Many people have a misunderstanding about what it is like to be psychic. Some people experience many types of psychic phenomenon but do not have conscious control over it. They may experience occasional precognitive dreams, synchronicities, hunches, etc but don't have the ability to use psychic abilities at will. Even some people who are sensitive to spirit communications rely on the spirits to impress them with information. How can they prove to another person that they experience psychic perceptions?

I have described my experiences taking classes in mediumship here

Adventures of a student medium:
http://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/psi_experience

and here:

What it is like to communicate with spirits:
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2012/10/what-is-it-like-to-communicate-with.html

Some people believe it, some people don't. I have a lot of interesting things to do every day. Developing proof to satisfy pseudo-skeptics who continually move the goal post every time their demands are met is not something I have time for. But there is plenty of evidence published by qualified investigators for those who are interested enough to do some reading.

Peer Reviewed Journal Articles on Psi
http://www.deanradin.com/evidence/evidence.htm

Proof of ESP
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2013/04/proof-of-esp-1889-1997.html

Evidence for the afterlife (has lots of links to additional sources of information)
http://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/summary_of_evidence
 
After working through the CD set I went ahead and took Bill's workshop because I was unclear on a few points (surprisingly few - the CDs are thorough) and I also wanted more information about his research. I paid more for two nights in the rather seedy hotel where the workshop was held than I did for the workshop itself. (BTW, I have published the clarifying information that I learned in the workshop - you can check my review of Bill's book or CD set on Amazon under sundog for that information. If you still have questions after working through the CD course and reading that clarifying information, contact me.)...

Have you had occasion to use the protocol, John? If so, can you share your experiences with us?
 
Have you had occasion to use the protocol, John? If so, can you share your experiences with us?
@john.sundog Yes I would love to hear about that too.

In particular I am curious about the "image cycling" method which I find bizarre to some extent. I am familiar with how Bengston teaches this technique in his courses and it's quite complex, if you will. You have to write down the 20+ items, making sure that they are not too generic, you have to make images but also create other sensations (sounds, smells ...) to make them as real as possible etc... etc... Then you have to practice them at high speed until it becomes second nature and you can spin them in your head while watching the telly or even driving.

I wonder... why not simply meditating? :D

If the ultimate purpose of this exercise is to stay out of the way of the healing with your conscious mind, why not using good old meditation practices? At the end of the day whether you keep your attention on your breath, or on each part of your body (à la vipassana) or on a sequence of images... isn't it basically the same?

I apologize in advance if it's a silly question :) Maybe it is, but I've found the process quite convoluted and the whole visualization part kind of reminds me of the "law of attraction" type of material, which I am pretty allergic to :D
 
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If the ultimate purpose of this exercise is to stay out of the way of the healing with your conscious mind, why not using good old meditation practices? At the end of the day whether you keep your attention on your breath, or on each part of your body (à la vipassana) or on a sequence of images... isn't it basically the same?

Right. When I was taught healing, they told us that all that is necessary for healing to occur is the intention of the healer. The point of any healing technique is to help you maintain your intention. There are different techniques and the best technique is the one that helps you maintain your intention best. The technique is not what causes healing, it is the healer's intention that causes healing.

Intention is the important factor in many different forms of psychic phenomenon. For example, in remote viewing, the viewer doesn't need to know anything about the location he is trying to view. Also, mediums are capable of proxy sittings where they don't know who they are reading. In fact knowledge in these cases is counter productive because it can trigger inferences, memories, associations from the mind of the psychic that will interfere with perception of psychic impressions. Psi is independent of the complexity of the task. It just works. You don't have to wield it in complicated ways like an artist uses a paint brush or a mechanic operates machine tools.

As I said earlier:
Image cycling is probably unnecessary and is just "superstition". Bengston has not done controlled experiments to study which parts of his healing technique produce an effect. There are many other energy healing techniques, discovered serendipitously as Bengston discovered his technique, and none of them use image cycling.
 
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In particular I am curious about the "image cycling" method which I find bizarre to some extent. I am familiar with how Bengston teaches this technique in his courses and it's quite complex, if you will. You have to write down the 20+ items, making sure that they are not too generic...

I remember reading the book and trying that out, but had a hard time with it. Not saying it doesn't work, mind. It's possible that a state of mind is induced that is different from that of standard meditation.
 
Visualization has been correlated with theta brain waves and theta brain waves have been correlated with psychic receptiveness.

There are many types of meditation that use visualization. I was taught to heal by visualizing white light coming down from above and flowing through me into the sitter - as a way of maintaining intention. After practicing that way, after a time I just began to do it by feel. I think other healers will find the same thing happens to them so ultimately the technique you use to learn healing is "disposable" you use it until you don't need it any more.

Image cycling is probably as effective as any other technique once you learn it, but it is hard to learn and represents an unnecessary hurdle for student healers to overcome. It may result in some students not becoming healers and for that reason I don't think it is a good technique.

Ultimately the potential skill of the healer is innate in the healer and there is not much a technique can do to change that. Natural born healers know what to do by feel. The way for an average person to become a better healer is to practice healing.

What has not been discussed in this thread so far is what is happening at the spiritual level during healing. In order to really understand healing you have to understand it from the perspective of a spirit. I am afraid that it is going to be a long time before scientists start considering this.
 
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I remember reading the book and trying that out, but had a hard time with it. Not saying it doesn't work, mind. It's possible that a state of mind is induced that is different from that of standard meditation.
Yes, you may be right. I haven't tried it but it seems a pretty demanding exercise, especially when he asks to spin the images very fast, like 5 or more per second which seems almost impossible. Of course the point of the practice is to make it become second nature, like playing scales on an instrument.

I wonder if Dr.Bengston has ever tested himself or some his student with an EEG while practicing the "image cycling" exercise. Would be interesting to compare with regular meditative practice.
 
I believe that if one had found such a method of cure, capable of curing cancer (!), without side effects (!!) and that could be done at distance (!!!), one would do all it could to transmit this method to as much people as possible FOR FREE,

Do you spend all your spare time time now helping other people for free? Because you have never done this type of healing you might think it is easy. If you try it you will find that takes time and effort. There might be a few people who would spend all their time giving away free healing services, but in reality, most people would rapidly become burned out and cynical if they tried it. It's human nature. If you aren't the type of person who is already volunteering all your spare time helping people, it is unlikely that developing energy healing abilities would change you.

I think it's also peculiar that while most people demand wages for their work at their place of employment, they think that if they could find a more valuable use of their time, such as saving lives through healing, they would give it away for free. It is a noble ideal but not many people can live up to it. Most of the people who advocate it are advocating it for others while they don't walk the walk themselves.
 
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Have you had occasion to use the protocol, John? If so, can you share your experiences with us?

I never intended to become a healer, didn't have any reason to think I could, and attended the workshop in search of information; still, I practiced the cycling technique intensively after the workshop, drilling myself while hiking with my dog mostly, trying to get my cycling speed up, just to see where it would lead. I've never been able to memorize very well - I mostly remember things by association and by reasoning things out from first principles, not by rote. Thus, I was amazed to get to the point where I could recall the 25 items on my list effortlessly and rapidly, faster than I could subvocalize the keywords. Today, even if I lay off for a month I can zip through the list flawlessly, first try. I don't know how many hours I put into it but it wasn't much, say, 50 to 100, mostly while hiking or lying in bed waiting to fall asleep.

Full disclosure: although I worked up a visual image of each item on my list, and meditated on each image, I can't flip through the actual visual images at high speed. Frankly, that sounds like a rare ability, although I may be wrong. Since Bengston didn't select his volunteers based on any particular abilities, I figure my experience is likely common including among his volunteers, who all successfully healed animals (though a few failed on their first try). I'm hoping that the important thing is that you meditate on your images in the beginning and occasionally thereafter and become intimately familiar with them, and that you intend for it all to work.

Bill had explained that when you get to that rapid cycling rate described above, you are just beginning, and he likened it to a snail's pace. You must then continue to accelerate from a fraction of a second per item, for example, to a fraction of a second to go through the entire list, and then accelerate some more. Unfortunately, that's all he said in the CD set and I couldn't make any sense out of it. At the workshop I asked him to elaborate, stating that what he was describing seemed humanly impossible so something else must be going on. He agreed and said that as you continue to accelerate you reach a point where you no longer see the images even as a blur. Rather, you develop a 'physical sensation' which may not be the same for everybody. Reaching that point requires a leap of faith but I seemed to succeed as far as I could tell; for me the sensation is like a pressure behind the eyes.

Now, I recognize that this is all a lot of nonsense; the pressure sensation may be psychosomatic, for example, and you obviously can't really be actually cycling any more at that high rate, or so it seems to me. One way of looking at it is that your 'higher self' or whatever we want to call it (Bill refers to it generically as the universe) is well aware of what you're trying to do. It knows you've studied the material, worked up your list, practiced diligently, formed a fleeting intention to heal, and gone through this process that has been used successfully by others before you, all to the best of your ability. At that point, it's out of your hands, so to speak. You just let it go and hope the magic happens. This is one way Bengston's method differs from others of which I'm aware - you don't maintain a conscious intention, just form it briefly and let it go and do something else; from time to time you remember you're trying to heal. Generally, I just meditate and try to ignore the healing while being aware on some level I'm still doing it, if that makes any sense.

The patient I've spent the most time on to date has been my wife's horse who is rather old and creaky (probably about my age in horse years). To cut to the chase, overall the horse exhibited a confusing series of improvements and setbacks, all confounded by the fact that my wife was still working him every day, and also riding on steep trails which can complicate things. In the end I had learned nothing concrete, really, and the horse is still old and creaky.

I've offered to try to help a few friends - there may be legal issues according to Bill so I've stuck with people I know well and trust for now - but they generally murmur something noncommittal then change the subject; I certainly don't push. A friend who has been battling lymphoma for thirty years was enthusiastic, but she's still 'getting around to' sending me a snip of her hair to focus on (that one would be an ultra-long shot anyway because Bill only succeeded once in curing a person who had been treated with radiation and chemo).

Finally, there was one rather startling experience I can't figure out what to do with. In the workshop, we broke up in pairs to practice on each other near the end of the second day. The two young women sitting at my table, who hadn't exchanged a dozen words up to this point, suddenly became the best of friends and paired off (it was amusing to watch), leaving me with the other creepy older guy at the table, who turned out to be an oncologist.

When he practiced on me for ten minutes I felt unusual warmth from his hands, which were placed on either side of my neck at shoulder level - nothing dramatic but odd. Then, after we had switched and I had practiced on him for ten minutes he turned to me and said something like, 'while that was going on I was quite concerned - I felt certain that my skin was blistering from the heat coming from your hands.' He then turned to the two women and told them they should have chosen me as their partner and described the sensation again. I was flummoxed, and said something like, 'that's probably your own self-healing ability,' or, I thought to myself, your imagination. I had felt some seemingly unusual warmth in my hands, but again nothing dramatic. I didn't know what to make of it at the time and I still don't.
 
I've offered to try to help a few friends - there may be legal issues according to Bill

One reason Spiritualism was founded as a religion was to provide protection under the first amendment for healers and mediums. In the early days a number of healers and mediums were brought to trial on various charges. Healers still have to be careful not to make claims about what healing can accomplish. It is also illegal to make a diagnosis unless you have a medical license.
 
Now, I recognize that this is all a lot of nonsense; the pressure sensation may be psychosomatic, for example, and you obviously can't really be actually cycling any more at that high rate, or so it seems to me. One way of looking at it is that your 'higher self' or whatever we want to call it (Bill refers to it generically as the universe) is well aware of what you're trying to do. It knows you've studied the material, worked up your list, practiced diligently, formed a fleeting intention to heal, and gone through this process that has been used successfully by others before you, all to the best of your ability. At that point, it's out of your hands, so to speak. You just let it go and hope the magic happens. This is one way Bengston's method differs from others of which I'm aware - you don't maintain a conscious intention, just form it briefly and let it go and do something else; from time to time you remember you're trying to heal. Generally, I just meditate and try to ignore the healing while being aware on some level I'm still doing it, if that makes any sense.

It makes perfect sense to me. What you are describing as "from time to time you remember you're trying to heal" and "I just meditate and try to ignore the healing while being aware on some level I'm still doing it," I describe as the "intention is what causes healing not the technique". I would say you are maintaining intention by "remembering you are trying to heal" and "being aware you're still doing it"

As you say "you just let go and hope the magic happens" I would say it is not the technique that causes healing.

When you start a healing session, how many times do you go through image cycling? Or is the meditation you do the same as the image cycling?
 
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@john.sundog Yes I would love to hear about that too.

In particular I am curious about the "image cycling" method which I find bizarre to some extent. I am familiar with how Bengston teaches this technique in his courses and it's quite complex, if you will. You have to write down the 20+ items, making sure that they are not too generic, you have to make images but also create other sensations (sounds, smells ...) to make them as real as possible etc... etc... Then you have to practice them at high speed until it becomes second nature and you can spin them in your head while watching the telly or even driving....

I apologize in advance if it's a silly question :) Maybe it is, but I've found the process quite convoluted and the whole visualization part kind of reminds me of the "law of attraction" type of material, which I am pretty allergic to :D

I don't think any question about this silly phenomenon is silly, Bucky! :eek:

Other than what I wrote just above, the other key for me to cracking the cycling confusion had to do with what the items on the list really are supposed to be, and I questioned Bill about that for several minutes for clarification. You're supposed to list 20+ things that you want, for yourself, for purely selfish reasons, and be specific (he says the record now is about 98). For example, you don't list things like world peace because that's too general and not specifically for you, and you don't list money but rather the specific things that you want to buy with money.

Many people with pent-up demand for material items could easily come up with 25 material items they really really want, but there are few possessions I really want beyond what I have (I have lots of junk that just clutters up my life and wastes my time). I might think, it would be nice to have some particular item, but I don't really want anything very badly. I only have one material item on my list.

However, there are other things you might want badly besides goodies. Let me give an example that illustrates a couple of points. One of the keywords on my list is binaural. When I got my current dog he was six months old, and I soon realized that, though he can hear well, he can't tell where sound is coming from. The vet says his inner ear region is fine, so it's probably neurological, something he was born with. The dog doesn't realize he has a hearing problem so he doesn't yearn to be cured. But for my own personal reasons, I'd love for my dog to be able to hear out of both ears. It's a bit painful watching him flounder around trying to spot me when I call, tearing off in the wrong direction - it hurts me. I'd like that pain to go away, for me, so that is a suitable thing for the list.

Items on your list can also point to your own aches, pains, and limitations that you'd like to be done with. However, you don't list the aches and pains, you list the benefits you will receive. For example, skiing might denote getting your knees healed. In the case of my dog, the image of him turning towards me denotes getting his hearing fixed - the benefit for me is that he will be able to turn towards me when I call.

The second point is, why choose binaural as the keyword rather than ear or hearing or dog or whatever? Visually the image would be the same, my dog turning to face me, whatever the keyword. This is part of a mnemonic trick I came up with to help memorize the list, because I'm not good at memorizing. I tried to choose a list of keywords that started with just a few initial letters, so my list currently begins with 'barefoot, binaural, bounty, beauty' (beauty stands for the phrase 'I walk in beauty' from the Navajo spiritual tradition, something I aspire to). The list then goes on to four words starting with 'c'. I wasn't able to keep it all that orderly, but much of it is.
 
@john.sundog
I wonder... why not simply meditating? :D

If the ultimate purpose of this exercise is to stay out of the way of the healing with your conscious mind, why not using good old meditation practices? At the end of the day whether you keep your attention on your breath, or on each part of your body (à la vipassana) or on a sequence of images... isn't it basically the same?

In recent years, Bill has been experimenting with cycling while meditating, and has found it to be quite powerful. As I said earlier, I generally meditate while trying to heal.

Why not get rid of the cycling and just meditate? That would be fine if you found it to work just as well for you. However, the key, vitally important point, which has a tendency to slip away due to cognitive dissonance, is that Bill and his volunteers have a 90+% aggregate cure rate in laboratory experiments and, anecdotally, an excellent cure rate in humans.

Since you've given me an opening, Bucky, I'd like to put it like this (while begging your pardon) because it's so important and it keeps getting dismissed like it's nothing:

In controlled experiments with invariably fatal forms of cancer in lab animals, a 90+% cure rate has been achieved using the Bengston cycling method - complete cures - of terminal cancer - without a single relapse - with no evident side effects - in collaboration with different labs over many years - at five different universities - with different sets of co-investigators - and with many different 'volunteers' applying the treatment - volunteers selected for their skeptical outlook - with the results published in peer reviewed scientific journals. Anecdotally, many humans have been similarly healed by various practitioners trained in the method, both professionals and amateurs.

If any other healing method has achieved a track record approaching that, it is a carefully guarded secret. This is the ne plus ultra, the one to beat, the one to which others should be compared. It's not one among many, but rather one standing high above many, until proven otherwise.

End of rant (temporarily).:eek::)
 
In recent years, Bill has been experimenting with cycling while meditating, and has found it to be quite powerful. As I said earlier, I generally meditate while trying to heal.

Why not get rid of the cycling and just meditate? That would be fine if you found it to work just as well for you. However, the key, vitally important point, which has a tendency to slip away due to cognitive dissonance, is that Bill and his volunteers have a 90+% aggregate cure rate in laboratory experiments and, anecdotally, an excellent cure rate in humans.
compared. It's not one among many, but rather one standing high above many, until proven otherwise.

End of rant (temporarily).:eek::)

Do you need to get the book or attend a seminar to obtain the full explanation of the image cycling technique? Or is there a full explanation online somewhere?

Thanks.
 
I would say it is not the technique that causes healing.

I entirely agree. But undeniably, different techniques have different success rates so the technique is not irrelevant. Some day, the technique may be irrelevant (as it may already be for a few master healers).

When you start a healing session, how many times do you go through image cycling? Or is the meditation you do the same as the image cycling?

I go through the cycle for about a minute, gradually accelerating, then make the 'leap of faith' to not consciously cycling, such that the physical sensation begins; I sometimes think of a huge jet lifting off the runway at that point. The reason I prefer to meditate rather than read a book or carry on a conversation is that I lack confidence in my ability to multitask that way.

Speaking of confidence, I hasten to emphasize that I don't have a proven successful record so take what I say for what it's worth. I think it's mostly a faithful image of Bill's views at the time of the workshop.
 
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