Spiritual healing is the channelling of healing energies through a healer to a patient and is based on the reality of a Divine, universal energy which exists in all things. It helps the patient to relax, and feelings of anxiety, pain and tension can subside. It enables their energy and self-esteem to improve and also their own self-healing capability to become effective and deal in the best possible way with the illness or injury. Patients generally find that healing is a pleasant, relaxing and gratifying experience. Sometime they feel hot or cold, or feel a slight tingling sensation. Pain can be dispersed or can diminish.There are basically two forms of spiritual healing in use in this country. These are: contact healing, where the healer places his/her hands either onto or near to a person, and absent, or distant, healing, where the patient is not present in person but the healer concentrates his/her mind on the person they wish to help.
The method of healing treatment conducted by the laying on of hands is combined with intercession by the healer to ‘Spirit’ on the patient’s behalf. The person to be healed usually sits in a chair, although they can lie down if necessary. No patient is asked to remove any clothing, except for maybe an overcoat or spectacles. The healer stands behind them and puts his/her hands on the patient’s shoulders to allow the energies to blend and then perhaps just above the affected part if there is an injury, or the head if the healing is more general in scope. Spiritual healing can work for anyone.
There are no side-effects to this therapy which is completely natural and is not offered as an alternative to orthodox medicine, but is complementary to it.
People who are under medical care should always continue with the treatment their doctor has prescribed.
Essentially, everything in the universe is made up of energy – it is a force which surrounds and permeates all living things. Spiritual healing is very much a holistic discipline, with the implicit belief that health is not simply a matter of being free of symptoms of disease, but of the harmony of the whole person at all levels – spiritual, emotional, physical and mental.
The healer plays his/her part in channelling energy and dynamic thought which, reaching the patient’s subconscious, can trigger the healing process. (The Greek word energeia, from which our work ‘energy’ is derived, was also the New Testament word for ‘spiritual’.)
Although a cure cannot be guaranteed, it is unusual for healing not to be helpful in some way. Sometimes one treatment is sufficient, but often several are needed, and the benefits emerge gradually. With some patients a successful outcome to healing is obvious, but for some, change takes place at a deeper and more subtle level and sometimes in an unexpected way. Healing often helps with the speed and extent of recovery from serious illness and major surgery and from the effects of treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation therapy.
Spiritual healing is not limited to humans. Wherever there is life there can be a transference of energy for healing.
Distant, or Absent, Healing
Spiritual healing starts with thought and, keeping in mind the concept that energy follows thought, distant or absent healing is set in motion by a mental request from the healer to Spirit, God, his/her Higher Self, for help, care and healing to be given to the patient. This takes the form of prayer, which is a thought process, and by the true use of the power of prayer, ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE.
The benefits of absent healing can be as great as those felt when the healer and patient are together. The best known healer, the late Harry Edwards, carried out the major part of his work using absent healing.
In absent healing a patient can be hundreds or even thousands of miles away and still experience the full benefits of healing. All that is required in order to help someone is to be able to associate with their energy, say through a photograph, or some little detail about them. Even to know only their name is enough. This form of healing can be requested by relatives or friends of the person requiring healing and that person may even be aware that healing is being sent to them. It could be helpful, of course, in a psychological way, if the patient is aware of the request, as their receptivity to the healing energy along with positive expectations, can make it possible for healing to take place. However, we do not believe this is essential and that would be entirely up to the person requesting the healing.
This form of healing can be used at any time, but some people like to set aside a regular time each morning or evening, possibly letting the patient know, to establish a link. However, it is thought that with a critically ill patient, frequent small doses of absent healing are most helpful.
Once absent healing has been requested, it then sets into motion a combination of natural laws by which help is given on all levels of the recipient’s being.
It is said that the mind is both a transmitting and receiving station and that your healing thoughts, strongly directed, will reach their target. Our consciousness is not within our bodies – our bodies are within our consciousness. It is the physical brain that limits the mind to the wavelength of earth. If it did not, we would be bombarded with all the realities, sounds and pictures that are normally, thankfully outside our range. Imagine what it would be like if we were aware of the innumerable television and radio programmes that crowd the atmosphere around us, whether or not our TVs or radios were switched on! However, by the effect of attunement and will, our minds can transcend and reach out beyond the physical brain, sending the energy of its healing thoughts over vast distances. The kinetic power of thought (moving objects without touching them) has been demonstrated again and again.
Therefore, be positive that absent healing does work!
When healing fails..
Although a patient may not appear to have benefitted from spiritual healing, this should not be taken to mean that it has failed. There could be several reasons for this.
As is often the case, a patient, or a patient’s relatives, will request spiritual healing as a last resort in a longstanding, deep-seated illness, for which medical treatment can do little or nothing. Although there may not be any apparent success and the patient dies, it is usually reported that the passing was peaceful and free of stress. It may alleviate the grief of the relatives if they are made aware that spiritual healing plays a part in the Divine plan to promote the spiritual progress of each soul, but that would be left to the discretion of the one requesting healing.
The History of Spiritual Healing
The practice of healing has been traced back more than fifteen thousand years, where evidence of it has been discovered in Neolithic cave paintings in the Pyrenees. But healing by direct contact or the laying on of hands appears to have been a universal human practice. It has never been confined to any one religious sect. It has been practised in India, China, ancient Israel, even before the time of Jesus.
References to spiritual healing are found in a number of pre-Christian sources, including the Old Testament. It flourished throughout the Middle Ages, inside and outside the orthodox church, and has been practised by shamans throughout the world to the present day. It is only in the West that the laying on of hands fell into disrepute. Because the healer’s power was invisible, suspicions of witchcraft were easily raised at the height of the witch hunt era in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Healing, or specifically the ‘laying on of hands’, used to be called the ‘King’s touch’ and it was known as that in medieval France and England. From the earliest days there was prevalent a belief that healing was divine, that it came from the gods or through their chosen channel – the king, the priest of the temple, or much later, through the ‘medicine man’.
Some Roman emperors supposedly had such a gift, including Hadrian, as did the Norwegian King Olaf. St Patrick is said to have healed the sick by the laying on of hands. It is reported that he healed the blind in Ireland by placing his hands on their eyes.
The early Greeks also believed they could heal a sick person by the laying on of hands. Hippocrates, who is often referred to as the Father of Medicine, tells us: “It is believed the heat which oozes out of the hand, on being applied to the sick, is highly salutary and assuaging….“
In ancient Egypt the laying on of hands was practised in earliest times by the temple priest. It was extensively practised in the temples of Isis, Osiris and Serapis. Egyptologists have found representations of direct healing on sarcophagi, jewellery and wall paintings.