Dec 2002 /Jan 2003

Don't Let The Lights Go Out
Rabbi Michael Lerner

Madison's Ghost on the Intoxicated Presidency … and its Corporate Support Group
Thom Hartman

The Global Justice Movement
Starhawk

Frozen Past and Dancing Present: Our Personal Response to Change
David la Chapelle

The Consequences of Denial
John Darling

Cashing in On Cool: How Corporations Exploit Kids and How We Can Stop It
Roar Ramesh Bjonnes

The Blue Gold Rush
Kayla M. Starr

Feng Shui: Smoke and Mirrors
Sugeet

Jin Shin Jyutsu: An Artless Art, Applied With Effortless Effort
Robert Nelson

Foods that Help Diabetics
Rebecca Wood

A Healing Principle for Helpers
Peter Moore, MFCC, CGP

Ayurveda Winter Support
Myrica Morningstar

Circumcision is a Human Rights Issue
Pamela Jorrick

The Movie Mystic
Stephen Simon

The Yearly Round
Richard Moeschl

Cosmic Calendar
Salina Rain

BACK TO TOP

A Healing Principle for Helpers

By Peter Moore, MFCC, CGP

“We wait and wait for the new millennium to come but discover that it is the same dawn; then we wait again, it is the same sun; so the new millennium is not going to change anything; we have to change within ourselves.” - the Dalai Lama

This column concerns a general principle which may be useful for healers and bodyworkers, as well as for others who although while not officially conducting a healing practice may have occasion to offer assistance to friends or family.

Put simply: when you engage in a healing session, every experience you have can be used to further the healing process.

For this to work right, there must be a healing context. I’ve seen friends—and I do this myself—offer all sorts of advice or help or facilitation without first getting the permission or agreement of the intended victim of the healing. That can lead to resentment or confusion; but there’s a simple solution: ask first, “Do you want help with this?” If you get a “yes” then there’s at least an initial invitation to begin a healing process, and with that going your combined intentions will move things along. One (now late) psychiatrist, who was very intent on explicit therapy contracts or agreements, Bob Goulding, nevertheless made a routine exception to this: if he saw someone having a hidden suicide issue he would confront them, agreement or no. He thought that it was as defensible as warning someone who didn’t see he was about to step on a rattler. You’ll have to make a determination as to whether to intervene with someone’s life when there is no initial agreement for healing—sometimes a tough decision.

Once a healing contract or agreement is made between the parties involved, the healer can now use this as a guide, as a source of strength to come back to. And why is this important? Because the one who is asking for help has had the courage to put themselves in a vulnerable position. It’s like a foster parenting situation, especially if, as is true in many types of healing, the client is lying down in relation to you. If you’re standing and the other’s horizontal, the one that’s horizontal is in a temporary regression, perhaps in infancy, while you remain in the adult role.

Now one thing I say about this situation is that the healer can assume that there may be a reason why the two of you have come together this way. The healer may have certain psychic wounds which make that healer particularly susceptible to certain vibrations which another healer might not be. What if guidance brought them together precisely because of this susceptibility?

The healer’s job is therefore to keep coming back or recommitting to his or her role as often as is necessary. This we could call grounding, and some ways to do this, besides on the level of commitment, is to keep checking in with your body, sensations, emotions, and thoughts or images, and to keep breathing. It is natural when two people come together for their vibrations profoundly to affect each other. This is the basis, for example, of women sometimes menstruating together if they’ve lived together for several months. The vibratory resonance provides the basis for empathy, but to get there we need to supply something more.

Going further with the comparison of the healing relationship with the parent-child relationship, it’s easy to imagine—and some of you have experienced this—a child’s behavior provoking strong feelings in the parent. It is especially the strong negative feelings which throw us off balance which we have to be mindful with. I have seen how easy it is for an adult to take a toddler’s behavior personally, and become pouty or retaliatory. It is at these times the adult must recommit to parenthood, so that these feelings can be appreciated and understood.

In fact, it is precisely through this mechanism that the child is seeking guidance. By giving the adult the feeling, the child is saying nonverbally, “Look, feel this! This is the feeling I can’t handle on my own! Now feed it back to me in a way I can handle.”

In a similar fashion, any internal state of the healer can be taken as some indication of what’s going on in the healee. This can range from strong and obvious feelings, such as fear, to ever more subtle cues and hints, which in time and with practice, the healer can use to deepen the healing process. As an example, if you find yourself daydreaming while giving a massage, ask yourself how the content of your thoughts might apply to your massagee.

Remember how I said that certain wounds will make a healer particularly sensitive in certain areas? The recommitment of the healer to his or her role will actually serve to bring about healing and enlightenment in the healer’s hurt places. Why would this be so? If, during a session, there is an outbreak of fear, the healer may get temporarily lost in her head (a hallmark of overwhelming fear). Eventually he or she will become aware of this, and at that precise moment a doorway opens which the healer can choose to go through. Instead of being identified with the fear, he or she now has a choice to observe the fear, wonder about it, and wonder what might need to be witnessed in order for healing to occur. Instead of being consumed by this fear, the witness state can be chosen.

At this point it is a moot question as to whose fear it is: the client’s or the healer’s. The ultimate reality is the unity of all things, and it makes no difference in the end. The healer invites healing and follows wherever that leads. It is the commitment and recommitment, the intending and reconfirming of the intention to heal which is so pivotal here. By providing the witness self, compassion, and a willingness to keep following the process, the healer provides the right climate for change in the desired direction. In so doing he reconfirms in his or herself that very state which is so necessary for self-healing, and, by analogy, maturity: the ability to soothe and parent ourselves well. The client experiences the effects of being in an amplified energy field where her own commitment to healing is augmented by the healer’s same intention. The parent-child analogy holds here too: the child’s commitment and need to grow is met, if things are going well, by the parent’s desire to help and witness.

I wish you well on your healing journey and in the compassion, commitment and service you offer to others.

Peter Moore graduated from Oxford University, and, since 1980, has pursued his interest in healing. Included with his study of a variety of modalities is certification and postgraduate training with Siegmar Gerken Ph.D., and John Pierrakos M.D., the founder of Core Energetics, an approach which attempts to unify the personality on the levels of body, feelings, mind, will, and spirit. Peter is a licensed marriage and family therapist who also offers consultation and training to healers and bodyworkers. Peter’s practice is located in Eureka, California, he can be reached at (707) 442-7228.