Integrated Energy Therapy® — as its founder Stevan J. Thayer explains — is a next generation, hands-on-power energy therapy system that gets the “issues out of your tissues” for good. IET, developed by Thayer at the Center of Being in Woodstock, NY, uses the violet angelic energy ray to work directly with an individual’s 12-strand Spiritual DNA.

IET gently releases limiting energy patterns of your past, empowering and balancing your life in the present, and helps you to reach for the stars as you evolve into your future. Thayer says that the term “Integrated” was chosen to convey the healing vision of “integrating the pain of the past, into the power of the present, to bring about the joy of the future.”

Since it was first taught in New York in 1994, IET now is being taught worldwide by more than 3,250 master instructors. More than 36,000 people have taken certified classes in IET.

Bonny Kraus — a Usui Reiki Master, a Spiritual Counselor and a Channel of the Angels — is a master instructor of IET who teaches in Arizona, Minnesota and Wisconsin. She was inducted in the IET Hall of Fame in January 2011. Bonny returns to the Upper Midwest from June to September to offer IET training. She recently took the time to share information on this energy therapy system with The Edge.

Bonny Kraus

Bonny, briefly explain why Integrated Energy Therapy was created? For whom is it intended and what conditions or situations does it help heal?
Bonny Kraus: Integrated Energy Therapy was created by Stevan Thayer in the late 1980s. He is the founder of The Center of Being, Inc., which is dedicated to the support of IET education. Angel Ariel is the overseer of IET.

In the beginning stages of IET, Stevan discovered some of the IET integration points through repeat healing experiences, which came about when he touched certain acupressure points on the bodies of his clients. He later began channeling Angel Ariel, who brought in the remainder of the integration points, the cellular memory areas, the energies of the imprints and the attuning process. Angel Ariel also channeled the Advanced Level IET through Stevan, which includes many techniques for discovering and enacting your soul’s mission, as well as the Master-Instructor Level IET, which includes techniques to optimize the 12-Strand DNA.

IET was created to help those clients and students drawn to complementary alternative therapy modalities for the purpose of releasing the energy of suppressed trauma stored within all layers and levels of the four bodies — physical, emotional, mental and spiritual — which includes karmic, genetic and past life. IET uses the violet angelic energy ray, as brought through the nine Healing Angels of the Energy Field to transmute these suppressed energies and release them through what in IET is called the Heartlink.

I feel that Integrated Energy Therapy is most effective at transmuting negative emotions and thought constructs from our cellular memory, which are contained within the physical body as well as the mental/emotional body. This modality is most effective at getting the “issues out of the tissues” permanently.

IET has been described as “Healing with the Energy of Angels®.” What angels are involved and what role do they serve during the healing process?
BK: There are nine healing angels of the energy field: Raphael, Gabriel, Celestina, Faith, Cassiel, Daniel, Sarah, Michael and Ariel. Each angel provides a gift of healing that works with a different area of the cellular memory map, along with the nine integration points. For example, Raphael is associated with the first IET Cellular Memory area, which is the crown chakra. This is where we release guilt and imprint innocence. This effective transfer of energy is created through the Heartlink, which is established between the practitioner’s heart and the heart of Angel Raphael.

As we proceed through all nine cellular memory areas, we work with these healing angels to release guilt, distrust, shame, threat, shoulds, heartache and betrayal, anger, resentment, stress and disempowerment, and lastly fear. In it’s place, we put an empowerment imprint. Each of the nine angels specializes in a release and imprint of energies.

I like to describe this exchange of energies as “letting go of that which we are not and reclaiming the truth of who we really are” — our pure divine childlike innocence and our unconditional love nature.

What do those who receive IET healing experience? Briefly describe a typical healing session.
BK: An IET healing session begins with the client lying on his or her back on a massage table, fully clothed. The practitioner moves around the body to systematically work with the nine IET cellular memory areas, and the client remains stationary.

I inform my clients before a session that there is nothing they need do other than relax, let go and allow the angels to do all the work. I also remind the client that the soul is in charge and that they do not need to remember, relive or feel anything during an IET session to benefit from it. It is best for a client to merely surrender and trust in the process. It is while we are in the parasympathetic state that the body most effectively heals itself. All that is required to get into this state is to shut down the mind and our doingness nature and relax into our inner beingness. In this state the body heals itself.

I also let my clients know that there will be light touch throughout the session and that he or she may experience some emotions, visions, memories, colors or sensations. During my session I offer words of encouragement to assist maximum release, which is facilitated through the sound of my voice and the trigger words which are spoken during a session.

I find every session to be unique. Remember that what is released in a session is released permanently and transmuted through the angels. No negative energy is released into the atmosphere to be picked up by another, as it is all transmuted by the angels into the truth of who we really are.

Please share an experience, without naming names, of how IET has made a positive difference in someone’s life.
BK: One powerful example, which was shared with me by Stevan, was a man who was on disability leave from his work due to his severe depression. During IET sessions with this individual, it was found that he harbored a great deal of suppressed rage, of which he was completely unaware. During a series of IET sessions, layer after layer of his suppressed rage was released and replaced with an empowerment imprint of forgiveness. Gradually his depression began to lessen, and in time he was able to return to his work duties once again.

Why were you drawn to Integrated Energy Therapy personally?
BK: That story starts about 20 years ago, when I was a participant in a number of hands-on healing groups in the Twin Cities. At that time, I was also participating as a healer at the monthly Lake Harriet healing services. I just knew I had the abilities and the energies coming through my hands, and at the time believed that I did not need formal training.

After moving to Sedona in 2002, I began working with many gifted and well-trained healers in many different modalities. It seemed, however, that most of the friends I gravitated towards were IET practitioners. In the Fall 2006, I decided to attend a Basic Level Class here in Sedona. My intention was to test the waters, as well as to learn to heal myself.

At the time, my self-confidence and self-worth were suffering a bit and my physical health was not as stable as I would have liked it to be, so I ventured in and ended up staying for the second day which was the intermediate level. I returned two months later for the advanced level. I intuited that this would one day lead to helping clients, but I did not have an inkling that the angels had much more in mind for me until April 2008 when I began my IET teaching career in Avon, MN, at a friend’s retreat center. I had taken the Master Instructor course twice prior to that — the first time to receive my 6th pair Spiritual DNA attunement and the second time with the inner knowingness that the angels were calling me to teach.

What overall message would you share with the public about IET and the benefits it offers humanity?
BK: What I most love about IET are the connections to the angels, the 12 strand Spiritual DNA attunements at each level of study, and the simplicity — and yet, the incredible power and effectiveness — of this energy healing process.

Last year, I became one of the top 30 Master Instructors of IET. I share that with you now as a testimony to the power of following your heart’s desires, your inner knowingness and your passion — without the doubts and fears of the mind holding you back. The places you may find yourself — inwardly as well as outwardly– are certainly beyond your wildest dreams. I advise you not to stop dreaming, as it is all contained within you and it is all part of what makes your heart sing. My confidence, self-worth, self-esteem and intuitive abilities have expanded way beyond my wildest dreams after having stepped into this venture with no real expectations, merely an open mind and an open heart.

Contact Bonny Kraus at bonny1111@aol.com and view her web page at www.learniet.com/bonny_kraus.asp. Learn more about Integrated Energy Therapy at LearnIET.com.

“My parents always told me I was something else, but this was probably not what they had in mind.” – Dr. Eric Pearl

Dr. Eric Pearl walked away from one of the most successful chiropractic practices in Los Angeles when he and others started witnessing miraculous healings. Since that time, he has committed himself to imparting the light and information of the Reconnective Healing process through extensive lectures and seminars about “The Reconnection.” Dr. Pearl’s work is being studied throughout the world and his book, The Reconnection: Heal Others, Heal Yourself, has been translated in 30 languages. To date he has taught more than 40,000 Reconnective Healing Practitioners in more than 60 countries.

I recently interviewed Dr. Eric Pearl at the 8th annual Conscious Life Expo in Los Angeles.

Dr. Eric Pearl

For example, little Demitrios from Thessaloniki, Greece, had cerebral palsy and couldn’t walk or speak and was scheduled for surgery, and after one session with the healing he now walks, plays and runs. His father is a prominent M.D., and his mother a nurse practitioner. Both parents, along with his physical therapist, speech therapist and occupational therapist, attended the seminars to learn how to do it after they saw Demitrios’ healing.

The funny thing is that there’s a challenge for adults in learning this work, and the challenge for adults is the ego that they’ve developed over the years. They like to come into the seminars and say, “Well, I don’t need to take the first level.” Or, “I’m already advanced. I’ve studied this and I’m a master in that, and a grand master in the other,” and their egos interfere with them being able to access the purity of this work.

They wonder why some practitioners are able to bring it through so well. The practitioners who bring it through the best are the ones who very often don’t come from any background in healing, so they don’t have to unlearn anything. They don’t come in with the fears of taking on negative energy, or thinking they need to shake it off or spray themselves with alcohol or anything like that.

What does all of this have to do with teaching kids?
Dr. Pearl: We recently developed a program called Reconnective Kids! where we teach children how to do this healing. We have found children access healing fairly instantly. Whereas it takes a weekend to teach this to an adult, children can learn this within a couple of hours.

One of our first experiences that I loved in doing this was down with the Maori children in New Zealand. The Maori are the native indigenous people of New Zealand. They have their own special tracts of land for their communities that they received through their negotiations with the government. When we went down, they invited us to come to their land, which they call MARAE. While we were there, we noticed that their school systems were very much like the old-time school systems we used to have in the Western U.S., where it was just one big class with a large age range. The age range of the students was between 4 to 15 years old, and we could tell from the conversation that the children were interested in the healing work that we were doing.

I taught a main seminar there for the public, and on my last day I was supposed to fly on to the next country. Instead, I extended my stay until later and I went down with someone to teach the children how to do this work. You would be shocked to witness this. To see a 4- or 5-year-old child begin to allow themselves to feel the work in their hands and to work on someone from a distance, even an adult who’s lying down on a table – one of their teachers, one of their elders. As they learn to access this work, the adult bodies involuntarily go into jerking movements or repetitive patterns, and the child’s mouth opens so wide you can hardly see anything but two chocolate eyes and a couple of ears.

Why do you think it’s so easy for kids to learn this healing?
Dr. Pearl: Children learn this instantly because they don’t come in with fear. They don’t come in thinking that they need to protect themselves from something. They don’t come in thinking that they need a special necklace or amulet to make themselves more. They already allow themselves to be 100 percent without thinking they need something external added in.

Kids are not worried about shaking themselves off or zipping up their etheric bodies to protect themselves from being taken over, or any of the other things that are fear-based holdovers that are in many of our energy healing techniques taught today.

When a 4- or 5-year old child works with another person, and that person may have, for instance, had a stroke and lost the ability to use his arm, and suddenly he regains full use of his arm, the adults who witness this are all in shock. The child takes it as, “Oh well, one more part of my morning,” and they move right forward.

This is the way healing should be today. We reach for a glass from the cabinet to get a glass of orange juice and we go, (snaps fingers) “Well, what’s next in my morning?” We brush our teeth and go, (snaps fingers) “What’s next in my morning?” Someone needs a healing, (snaps fingers) we go, “What’s next in my morning?” And we just keep rolling, because this is a part of our human nature. Children are the ones who recognize this. The children are the teachers.

As someone who works with children, I see the simplicity and how naturally kids can tap into their little energetic selves, but you say these are frequencies of light and information. Where is it coming from?
Dr. Pearl: I can’t fully explain it; we don’t totally understand it. What we’ve had here before has been energy healing. What we have been learning are portions, fractions or subsets of the energy healing: Reiki, Qigong, abc, efg, xyz, alpha, beta, delta, gamma, quantum this, matrix that. It doesn’t matter what we call it.

Each time we access healing through a technique, we access a specific portion of the energy. This is why Reiki feels different than Qigong. They’re all different subsets. But what the researchers have discovered in this work of Reconnective healing is that somehow we seem to be able to skip the technique entirely, to completely transcend the technique. And then what we access is no longer a subset of energy, it is the entirety of energy.

But what’s more interesting is that the entirety of energy is only a subset of this new level of this healing. This healing is comprised – as explained to us through various studies – of energy, light and information. And they say it’s a level of healing we haven’t had here on the planet before. Now, of course, we have light on the planet. Of course, we have information. Of course, we have energy. But this form of healing has not ever been seen here before.

For instance, we know that energy gets weaker with distance if you start at an inch and you move a foot and you move a yard, energy measurably gets weaker. I’m not speaking about distance healing, I’m just talking about distance. This new level of healing gets stronger with distance; it functions differently than any form of light that we’ve seen here in research.

Somehow the information seems to inform not just the physical body, but the entire person’s essence of what their natural balance is. It seems to be communicated through light. Energy is a carrier in this, and what really happens is that the person’s body returns to its natural light vibration, its natural balance. Anything that’s out of balance with that pretty much has nothing to hold onto. We return to our natural vibration of light when we play with this.

Let’s say the 5-year-old child works with an adult. The child learns how to come in and bring his or her hands to a place where they start to feel certain sensations, which vary. Sometimes it’s pushing, sometimes it’s pulling, sometimes it’s cool or warm, or hot, dry, wet, cold, all at the same time, but it’s always fascinating and always feels good. It becomes a reminder to that child of their natural state of joy or bliss that they’re sharing a space, even though they’re not necessarily physically touching the person on the table that they’re working with.

This vibration, this sensation, somehow is in that other person’s field, and a reminder goes off inside of them also that says: “Hey I remember this. This is me vibrating as light. I think I’ll do it again.” And as they return to that light vibration, anything denser, anything heavier than light – which tends to include pretty much most of our healing challenges – seems to have nothing left to hold onto. If appropriate, which it generally is, that health challenge falls away and the person receives a healing.

Healing is really just this simple, and anything else is designed to sell us something. And how do people sell us something? By appealing to our egos. But the children are beyond that. Before they get ego involved, they’re already on to the next thing to catch their attention, because they stay in that childlike state of awe and present-moment awareness. Fill a room full of toys and the child runs to the first toy that catches his urge or attention until another one sparkles a certain way, and then they run over there, and they run over here, and that’s just the natural way that they approach the healing. No steps, no shoulds, no shouldn’ts, no protections. No “Am I doing it right?” or “Am I doing it wrong?” Just that childlike state of wonder, of awe, of observation and of next, (snaps fingers) “Who’s next?” (Snaps fingers) “Who can I help next?”

What does this mean to the healing community, now that we have children who can heal?
Dr. Pearl: Well, it doesn’t mean just now that we have children who can heal. Hopefully, it means are we willing to look past our own egos to recognize that we can also do this. It’s time for us to take a lesson from the kids and let go of our own egos. The children are showing us, but we have to step through our comfort zone and go into an uncomfortable area of letting go of the mask of who we’d like to present ourselves as and instead, just be that true essence that we are.

We are the essence of the children. How many of us stand in front of the mirror sometimes and ask, “I wonder what happened to my face? I don’t feel as old as I look.” That’s because we’re not, and we’re also not as old as we act. I don’t mean that necessarily in a way of judgment. How many of us have friends that are five or ten years younger than us, but on other levels seem to be a much older person then we are?

We get to choose to live our lives as the children we truly are inside. It’s not about, “Oh, I have a special child.” It’s more. It’s about I AM a special child. Thank, bless, kiss and love your child for showing you the child that you are inside again. Let’s bring our children to learn how to do Reconnective healing, to become one of this new generation of Reconnective Kids! And it’s time for us to become Reconnective healing adults, as well.

A lot of research is being done on how The Reconnection works. How is it being done?
Dr. Pearl: They are doing the best they can to try and figure out how to study it. That’s really the best way I can explain it. Dr. Gary Schwartz at the University of Arizona has been doing research on this. Dr. Konstantin Kortokov in St. Petersburg, Russia, just had us out there teaching a class of doctors how to do this work, learning on Olympic athletes.

We came, the doctors showed up to learn, and the Olympic athletes who were the models to be worked on made themselves present. Just four days before the presentation, one of the athletes broke his leg. There was far too much paperwork and far too little time to get that athlete replaced. He came in on crutches, with a cast, jumping on the good leg, holding the other one in the air because it hurt to even put any pressure on it. By the second afternoon, the crutches were down. They were never picked up again, and they could not even find the fracture in the leg any longer.

We could say how did that happen? Unfortunately, or fortunately, the only answer I can give you is that we don’t know, but there are multiple measurements that the researchers are doing to try to find out what it is. Some of them are doing it just out of curiosity. Some are doing it because they think or they’re hoping maybe they can reproduce this in a machine. You’ll never be able to reproduce this in a machine. There are machines out there called Chi machines, supposedly to produce chi and life force energy.

Let’s get real. It is our responsibility to tune in and produce and reproduce the healing force, the life force. It is our responsibility to begin the healing inside, human to human. A machine is not going to do that, because if a machine does it, there is no learning for anyone. No lesson for anyone involved.

We run around all the time saying, “Oh, I have to heal the Earth, I have to heal the flowers, I have to heal the trees.” No. The Earth, the flowers and the trees are a reflection of who we are. It’s not where the problem sits.

When you stand in front of the mirror in the morning and your hair is a mess and your makeup is on crooked, do you try to fix the way the mirror looks? Of course not! You fix yourself, and then your reflection is better. As we learn to heal ourselves, adult to adult, person to person, and now child to child, and child to adult, our own healing becomes reflected in a planet that is healthy. A planet that is green, not warming and melting. A planet that is at peace, not at war.

And maybe part of the lesson of the children is that we don’t need to know. We don’t need to know how it works. We just need to be in it. To experience it. That is our lesson. We don’t need to know how it works.

I know that there are other people out there who have to be wondering, how is this happening?
Dr. Pearl: It’s good that we have scientists looking at it. It’s not good that we have scientists looking at it for the reasons they think they’re looking at it.

To make it profitable?
Dr. Pearl: Or, to just come up with an answer. The gift of scientific research is just the fact that the healings are so real and documented. That science is willing to look into it is what allows other people, who would otherwise walk by it with blinders and not notice it, avail themselves of what is here with Reconnective healing.

For instance, I recently spoke and presented at the University of Oslo in Norway. I was there at the same time as President Barack Obama. It was such a big presentation and such a paradigm shift for a lot of people to imagine someone speaking on healing and the research behind it at the University of Oslo, that even though Barack Obama was there, Reconnective healing was on the front page of the Sunday national paper – a newspaper that’s in two-thirds of all the homes – because science and the mainstream world itself are waking up to the understanding that we are more than we have been, and it is our responsibility to step into that place of being more.

I understand that you got into Reconnective work though an experience you had, through spiritual guides, or what could be called entities.
Dr. Pearl: Maybe sort of, kind of.

Clarify that please.
Dr. Pearl: When these healings started happening, there were certainly a lot of those who I will call people, because they felt like people to me. You might call them guides or spirits or any number of terms you want to come up with. The healing started happening without me expecting it. My patients were coming in to see a chiropractor and I thought I was one. And yet, before I would even touch the patients starting on this one specific day, seven of them started telling me they were seeing and feeling people in the room with us.

Others smelled different kinds of flowers, essences and fragrances. They were feeling a hand on them touching them. Patients were getting up with joints that had been locked into a limited position from surgeries twenty years prior and suddenly having regained full range of motion. This presented itself. It just was. When no one was expecting it, there was no belief. There was no mind-over-matter or hypnosis.

I went home on a Friday thinking I was a chiropractor and I came back on a Monday and I was something else. My parents always told me I was something else, but this was probably not what they had in mind.

What happened in that weekend?
Dr. Pearl: Ahhh, that’s probably a much longer story that we’re going to have time for.

I brought up that question because I think for kids it’s very natural to sense things around them.
Dr. Pearl: Yes it is. There’s no stigma around it, so none of them are afraid to say what they’re feeling. Many of them notice the presence of feeling another hand resting on their hand as they do this work. Others don’t seem to report anything like that. Children are just little individual people. They’re just shorter. (laughs) They allow themselves to access the magical – the magical in the good sense of the word, not magic as in artificial with showmanship, but the genuine twinkle of the truth of magic.

What is your goal with Reconnective Kids?
Dr. Pearl: My goal with The Reconnection and Reconnective healing is that this becomes second nature for every human on the planet. Therefore, as the children learn to access this, the parents get to see that it’s not imagination. The children get to own it as they grow up and they don’t talk it out of their own children in the next generation. And then pretty soon, we won’t have to study or learn it.

We won’t be having this conversation, we’ll just be doing it.
Dr. Pearl: There’s a new level of healing and a new level of evolution for all of us here on the planet. And it simply becomes the choice for each and every one of us, whether we’re willing to step up into it, in essence, whether we’re willing to “come home.” It will be just like breathing. We just breathe.

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Our Energy Healing Community

An excerpt from The Encyclopedia of Energy Medicine (Fairview Press)

The field of Energy Medicine is loaded with specialized terminology such as energy medicine, holistic medicine, complementary medicine, alternative medicine, integrative medicine, and so on. How does it all fit together?

All of these terms and many more come under the umbrella of holistic medicine, which is a philosophy of caregiving that actively looks at the whole person. It forms a system of health care catering to a cooperative relationship between the physical, emotional, mental, social, psychological, environmental, lifestyle and spiritual aspects of health and well-being. Holistic medicine includes all modalities of diagnosis and treatment, such as drugs and surgery, as well as natural and non-invasive procedures. It also emphasizes the responsibility of individuals to educate themselves and the importance of their personal efforts to maintain good health.

One of those specialized terms that has grown in popularity with the advent of holistic medicine is “modality.” Where it once referred mostly to a therapeutic method or agent used (especially in physical therapy), the term now has become a buzzword that reaches across all forms of medicine. Any one of the many different complementary medicine therapies, from chiropractic to aromatherapy to Healing Touch, is called a modality. I have even heard the word applied to various traditional medicine treatments, such as antibiotics.

Energy medicine is generally understood as a subset of holistic medicine that consists of two branches. One branch focuses on the use of electrical equipment to assess or stimulate a part of the body. One of the better-known examples of this is the Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation machine, or TENS, that encourages the body to produce pain-relieving chemicals by sending electrical impulses to the brain through a corresponding area of pain. The other branch of energy medicine refers to the therapeutic use of a practitioner’s or healer’s hands to assess and balance the human energy field and enable healing and wholeness.

Energy medicine is a complementary body of work that integrates other forms of medicine. It is not intended to be a substitute for any other form of medicine, nor do energy medicine practitioners consider it an “alternative” medicine. To illustrate, I like to use the example of a person who has the unfortunate experience of breaking his leg. It is a nasty break in which the skin is torn and the bone has snapped in half. On its own, the body can heal the leg – perhaps not with full functionality restored, but in such a way that at least the person will recover from this serious injury. If a surgeon sets the bone, however, the leg will heal faster and the patient most likely will be able to walk again. If the surgeon also stitches up the wound, the leg will heal with less scarring. If the wound is sterilized, the leg will heal with less chance of infection. If the patient is given antibiotics, he will have a chance to heal without complications such as a staph infection.

Similarly, energy healers believe that if they balance the disturbed field surrounding the injury, the leg will heal faster with fewer complications and less pain.

I began this work when I was offered a scholarship to the healing school of my choice. At the time I had no knowledge of energy work, and the reams of uncultivated information on the Internet did not help very much. I had heard of the Barbara Brennan School, but even with a scholarship it was more than I could afford at the time. I looked at Reiki, but I needed something with more science behind it.

My college major was nuclear engineering, and physics has always been of interest to me. Looking back, I think my interest in nuclear physics was really a search for God. Coming from a family of engineers, I needed science in order to study energy healing. Fortunately, someone I knew had taken Healing Touch. She put me in contact with the Healing Touch office and, to my delight, a class was scheduled in my neighborhood a few weeks later. I took the class and it changed my life completely. I had a lifetime of experience working with reason and logic, and I learned how to pair that with my natural intuition. Three years later, I was certified as a practitioner and two years after that I was certified as an instructor in Healing Touch.

One of the most important steps a person can take in the study of energy medicine is to discover how his or her body and mind recognize the energy field and the fluctuations within the field. Once you know how you personally recognize differences and similarities in the energy field, you can develop that ability with lots of practice. One reason there are so many energy healing models is because the founders of each modality have built a structure around their unique ability to detect differences and similarities in the field. Inquire into those that appeal to you, and remember to take care of your own physical and spiritual health. If you do not take care of yourself, you cannot take care of others.

First of a two-part interview

Stephen Co’s miraculous ascension into the world as one of its foremost energy healers began with a loss of patience. His wife had fallen and broken her hip, and doctors told her it would be at least three months before she could put any weight on it. He and his wife were frustrated with the prognosis.

He told the doctor, “That’s way too long,” and he began looking for other options. By chance, someone mentioned Pranic Healing, but the engineer by trade – and Southern Baptist by faith – was hesitant.

“I took the class and I started working on her, and within two and a half weeks, she could walk,” Stephen Co said in a telephone interview with The Edge. “I was just baffled. She could walk. And then every time we went to the doctor, they said the bone was healing faster than they had ever seen before. They didn’t know why. I was not about to tell them about the healing, because they would think I was crazy.

“After about five weeks, I remember my wife ran across the room, and that was the end of me doubting. At that time, I was very skeptical, emotionally and mentally and spiritually. I was not open to it at all, but I followed the protocol, step by step.”

That was the beginning of Stephen Co’s transformation from engineer to energy healing teacher. His healing teacher, Grand Master Choa Kok Sui, the world’s foremost authority and founder of Pranic Healing®, inspired him to leave the Philippines, where had been living, and go to the United States to teach what he had learned. The rest is history. Stephen is now referred worldwide as Master Co, and he has spoken to thousands of people and has trained many in the art of Pranic Healing, including doctors, nurses and those who already practice other forms of integrative healing. He and Dr. Eric Robins wrote the book, Your Hands Can Heal You.

“What I want to get across is, if I can do this – having been emotionally, mentally and spiritually not open to it, open to just helping people – I think anybody can learn this.”

Master Co returns to the Twin Cities to teach classes on Pranic Healing on March 23 and 24, and a weekend intensive healing seminar on April 17-18.

He spoke with The Edge to explain that the so-called “miracles” of Pranic Healing are actually the result of subtle laws of energy, nature’s response to the conscious direction of our life force energy (chi or prana) in a form of healing that has evolved in the East for thousands of years. He says all human beings are born with the incredible power to consciously, purposefully direct their life force energy, and that he trains and empowers people to tap into their own latent ability.

Let’s start with the very foundation of what you do, and I think that’s the understanding that all life is energy.
Every particle of existence is made of energy, and this energy has different vibrations. In the Hindu tradition, it is called prana. The Chinese call it chi, and the Japanese call it ki. Different cultures have their own name for it, but essentially what I do is called Pranic healing. It was developed by my teacher, Grand Master Choa Kok Sui, into a very simple, but systematized healing modality that I can teach anyone in a very short time – how to harness this life force to heal themselves, their loved ones, and make their life better.

How does Pranic healing work?
First you have to understand that the energetic anatomy – which consists of the chakras (the energy centers) the meridians and the aura – are mediums for this prana to go into the physical body. When people are sick, different parts of this energy anatomy are blocked, the flow is not there and the physical organs are not getting the fresh energy they need for the body to repair itself. People can get this fresh energy from the food, from the air, from the ground.

When a person comes in for healing, the first thing we do is we scan to feel the different imbalances of energy. Then we begin cleansing. We spend about 50 to 75 percent of the healing session cleansing and removing blockages of energy. Most of the time, for back pain, headaches, something like an upset stomach, that cleansing alone gives the person so much relief that they think they are already improving, but that is just part of it.

After a thorough cleansing, the healer does deep breathing and meditation to bring energy into the system and project it to the client. We call this energizing. And then we stabilize the energy so it does not leak out. What people do not realize is that when you give energy to the client, the body can only absorb so much energy in a short amount of time. A lot of energy is waiting to go in. We tell people after a session not to shower for 12 to 24 hours to give that energy time to be absorbed. We also stabilize the energy using the color blue, and then we teach the client some forms of self-healing and meditation. We want to make sure each client goes home with certain skills to help speed up the healing.

In a very simplistic way, people can get a sense of what you do by looking at the body as just a vessel for energy, and that this energy is always moving in and out of the body, but sometimes that movement of energy becomes blocked.
Absolutely. This life force is not ours. It is in the universe. As you said, you are a vessel, or you are a machine, that pumps the energy in, pumps the energy out. As long as that energy is flowing freely, the body has good health.

What mechanism pumps the energy in and out of the body?
The mechanism behind it is the chakras, energy centers that act like spinning wheels. Just imagine they are propellers that spin in both directions. When they spin clockwise, looking at them from the front of the body, they are absorbing this prana, or life force energy. When they are spinning counter-clockwise, they are releasing this life force energy.

When you go to an acupuncturist, the way they pull the needle is based on this very simple principle. If they want to put energy into your body, they pull the needle clockwise. If they want to take the energy out – if you have too much energy or a blockage – they pull it counterclockwise, because all the acupuncture points are the locations of chakras. Chakras are distributed all over your body. Traditionally, it is known that there are seven major chakras, but actually there are 11 major chakras and hundreds of smaller ones.

My teacher noticed that every ailment actually has a unique set of energy centers that malfunction. A person who has asthma, compared to somebody who has menstrual cramps, will have a different set of chakras affected, because a different set of physical organs are affected. The reason anybody can learn this is because as long as you can follow a recipe, you can heal with Pranic Healing. By following the given steps for a given ailment, you give the body the ability to release the blockages, and you give the body the ability to absorb the life force it needs. The body now has fuel to repair itself.

Is Pranic healing ideal for some health conditions and not as effective for others? How does it work on chronic conditions?
I remember when Dr. Eric Robins, co-author of the book, Your Hands Can Heal You, told me that as a medical doctor, his definition of a chronic condition is when body is not healing itself. No matter how many drugs you use or how much surgery you do, you are just doing a bandage job, because the body is not repairing itself. Chronic cases respond very well to Pranic Healing, because after you remove the blockages and you give the body enough energy, the body can now go back to its restorative mode. For example, we notice asthma and respiratory illness respond very quickly. Something else that responds very well is back pain, because it is not always physical. Often it is due to anger and resentment. These negative emotions block the flow of life force energy. If you clean these blockages, most people will feel an instant relief. In general, all ailments are due to some form of energetic imbalance that has manifested, so we do our best.

How involved is the training to learn Pranic Healing?
It depends on how far you want to take it. For most people who want to work on back pain, headache and common ailments, those who want to learn how to work on people with anger and resentment, the first level class is enough. Then, for people who want to learn more, want to really get into it, there is an advanced class where you start using colors.

This involves matching the color – or the frequency – with what the body needs to repair itself. For example, if somebody has menstrual cramps or somebody has constipation, the body is lacking what is called orange prana, or orange energy, in the lower part of the body. In the first level class, we give this client white light. White light is like going to a general practitioner. The body will simply extract the orange energy from the white to do what it needs to. The body will get the energy it needs. Advanced classes are like going to a specialist. We know what color the body needs, so we give it to the body directly, and the healing time is usually cut in half.

We also offer more advanced class for those who want to go into phobias and addictions, in the pranic psychotherapy classes. Depending on how far you want to take it, the teachings are there.

For those people who are not able to come and see you, what can you recommend that they do each day to help balance and cleanse their energy field?
We encourage everyone to come to the introductory class, and we will show them, step by step, how to do this themselves. In addition to that, on our website [Yourhandscanhealyou.com] we also have a free, self-healing meditation CD in MP3 form that you can download. We call it the “One Finger Healing Technique” – press play, do the meditation. The meditation includes breathing exercises to purify the chakras. If you do it every day, or even three times a week, it helps you to remove anger, remove negativity, activate your heart and allow your crown chakra to bring down more spiritual energy. That alone keeps you strong and keeps you energetically clean.

And for those who cannot come to the class for whatever reason, they can read the book and join our e-mail list. We send out videos for group meditations. We do self-cleansing, guiding them through it step by step. In this day and age, with the information flowing as it is, nobody really has an excuse not to have access to any of these teachings.

What is the biggest message you want to share with the public?
Everybody has the ability to heal. All you have to do is to have the heart to help yourself and help other people.

Last of a two-part interview

Stephen Co is a internationally renowned lecturer, trainer and practitioner of Pranic Healing, who has taught the art of healing and human energy studies to thousands of students in the United States. His introductory lectures are thought-provoking, often compelling individuals who are not health practitioners to embark on learning Pranic Healing techniques to improve their lives. His students include hundreds of physicians, nurses, dentists, acupuncturists, chiropractors, social workers, psychologists and alternative health-care practitioners.

A senior disciple and personal student of Grandmaster Choa Kok Sui, the founder of Pranic Healing, Master Stephen Co and his wife, Daphne, started the first Pranic Healing center outside of the Philippines, the U.S. Pranic Healing Center/American Institute of Asian Studies, LLC, in Chino, CA, to promote and teach Pranic Healing in the United States.

He and Dr. Eric Robins wrote the book, Your Hands Can Heal You.

“What I want to get across is, if I can do this – having been emotionally, mentally and spiritually not open to it, open to just helping people – I think anybody can learn this,” Master Co said in an interview with The Edge. He returns to the Twin Cities to teach classes on Pranic Healing on March 23 and 24, and a weekend intensive healing seminar on April 17-18..

He spoke with The Edge to explain that the so-called “miracles” of Pranic Healing are actually the result of subtle laws of energy, nature’s response to the conscious direction of our life force energy (chi or prana) in a form of healing that has evolved in the East for thousands of years. He says all human beings are born with the incredible power to consciously, purposefully direct their life force energy, and that he trains and empowers people to tap into their own latent ability.

So Pranic Healing works with other forms of healing, like emotional or spiritual healing or other imbalances that are not directly related to physical ailments?
Absolutely. In fact, if a person really wants to experience the effect of healing energy, what we do in our demonstration classes is encourage you to feel the stress and whatever you come into the class with. Then we do about five minutes of self-cleaning, and most people feel that a lot of that negative emotion is gone. All we do in this case are simple sweeping movements. The interesting thing about negative emotions or an emotional problem, compared to a physical problem, is that the energy is still very subtle. It is not fully manifested.

It hasn’t anchored into the body yet.
Exactly. It is as if it is still in vapor form and has not yet turned into water or ice. It is still in a very simple form. Since we use energy, breathing, meditation and visualization, we are working on all energy, whether it is still in the aura or has become blocked in the body. In the case of emotional healing, it is easier to feel it and pull it out. That’s why people are amazed and say, “I walked in really stressed and angry, but when we did this technique on ourselves I just feel like I don’t feel it anymore. I know what it is, but it doesn’t have that emotional bite.”

Something else that responds very well to Pranic Healing is what are called spiritual emergencies. Some people experience a lot of emotional pain, and even physical pain, but when they go to see a doctor or a psychologist, they can’t find anything wrong, because the problem is not physical, and it is not really emotional. It is a block in the flow of Divine energy coming down into the chakras from above the body, and it is the block in the flow of kundalini energy going up into the body from the earth. Pranic healing techniques will pinpoint where the blockages are by doing a very deep and thorough cleansing. Most people within a few minutes will say, “Oh, I suddenly feel like something is moving.” The body is a self-repairing entity. As that flow increases, the body starts to get better.

What type of recognition is Pranic Healing receiving from the medical community?
As you know, more people statistically are turning to alternative medicine. When Dr. Robins did the research for our book, we found that there are a lot of medical doctors who are what you would call “closet healers.” They practice medicine, but on the side they also teach people how to use herbs, how to use breathing exercises, hypnosis and visualization. On our website, you can see a series of specials CBS News did when we taught Pranic Healing to medical doctors in Kaiser Permanente Hospital here in Southern California.

We have found doctors who are open to it, but they cannot outwardly practice Pranic Healing side-by-side with their medicine. What they do for patients who are open to it is suggest, “Oh, by the way, instead of just jogging, why don’t you do some breathing exercise, too,” and if patients are open to it, they will do healing right in the clinic, just some sweeping movements to remove the blocks.

Pranic Healing’s introduction into Western medicine is still in its infant stage right now.

Aren’t some of these ideas already a part of our culture?
Oh, definitely. A lot of old wives’ tales or home remedies actually are based on using energy. Even in the Catholic tradition, what you call holy water is essentially water and salt and the priest’s blessing on it. In Pranic Healing classes, we have buckets of salt and water, and when people do healing that’s what we throw the dirty energy to. People will say, “Hey, I do that in my Native American tradition” or “In my Jewish tradition, we do the ceremonial cleansing that you are teaching, a salt water bath,” and so on.

What are the greatest misconceptions people have about what you do?
Number one is that healing can only be done miraculously. A lot of people think healing is only done by God. Healing is essentially using natural laws that God has made available to us. All we have to do is learn these natural laws. When you produce an unexpected healing, for the common person it’s a miracle, but for you who understand it, it is not a miracle. It is an application of natural laws.

Another misconception is that you have to be born with a special skill to help people with healing. That is absolutely not true. Anybody can learn to heal, even somebody like me who was very skeptical and not open to it, by following simple, step-by-step instructions.

Please see Master Stephen Co’s website at Yourhandscanhealyou.com for articles, news, videos online and details of his events.

Trauma often isn’t over when it appears to be over. The event – violence, serious illness or injury to self or a loved one, vehicle crash, or something else – occurs in a discreet moment in time, with a beginning and an end. Yet, the aftershocks or fallout can continue for years, even for a lifetime.

The result can be problems such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for a person who directly endures the trauma, and secondary traumatic stress for their loved ones or caregivers who also suffer in their own way. Another result can be poor physical or mental health from the psychological stress of dealing with a world that no longer makes sense or feels safe. These, in turn, can lead to more trauma, such as the loss of a job or a marriage. Without treatment, the cycle can feed on itself and become endless.

Dr. Valerie Foster-Young, LMFT, endured her share of trauma as she raised a daughter, Heather, who was born with many birth defects as a result of her father’s exposure to Agent Orange during two tours in Vietnam. Heather suffered another kind of trauma, as she underwent more than a dozen surgeries to correct the defects.

The most troubling occurred when she was 4. After surgery for craniofacial reconstruction that successfully rebuilt missing parts of her jaw, she had an unexpected and terrible reaction, with intense swelling that required her to be intubated so she could breathe. Pneumonia followed. Her doctors, whom Foster-Young describes as caring, courageous practitioners, put her into an induced coma for a week to save her life. She spent a month in the hospital and was unable to eat solid food for six more weeks.

Many years later, Foster-Young can speak calmly about this event, but at the time, she was traumatized, as was Heather. With more surgeries looming in her little girl’s future, Foster-Young remained fearful, living under a cloud of dread about what the future held.

Disruptions at the energetic level
Whatever the specifics and however they manifest, trauma disrupts a life. Yet, the real disruption happens in the person’s energy field.

Remember that everything is energy. Our bodies, as solid as they appear to us, are energy that has taken physical form in our consciousness. Our thoughts and emotions also are comprised of energy, including those unconscious thoughts we “inherit,” which affect us without our knowledge. In turn, all of these seeming bits of energy are part of the vast energetic web of Everything There Is. No part is separate from another; manifestations such as the tree outside your window and the squirrel gathering nuts beneath it only appear to be separate due to limited human perception.

In its natural state, this energetic matrix exists in perfect harmony, whole and unbroken. But when trauma occurs, the energy that is the affected person falls out of balance, which can lead to a host of troubles that show up in physical, emotional and mental ways.

Typically, we deal only with the manifestations of those troubles. We have surgery, visit a counselor or take antidepressants or a homeopathic remedy. These treatments can be helpful. Or we drink too much or kick the dog, which are not so helpful. Unfortunately, all these actions only treat the symptoms and do not deal with the basic cause, which is the unbalanced energy underneath. Various techniques can work on this imbalance, such as EFT or other methods that work energetically. But there is only one that can deliver energetic balancing around the clock, no matter what, with no effort on the part of the person receiving it.

Many years ago, Stephen Lewis, now co-founder of the Energetic Matrix Church of Consciousness LLC (EMC2), discovered an interest in self-healing. He became an expert in homeopathy and acupuncture. But his abiding interest in quantum physics and many spiritual traditions led him into working with the energetic field, which some call Spirit. He saw how consciousness gives energy material form, and how we can affect that energy.

Out of his research came the AIM Program, a computer-based “spiritual technology” that delivers energetic frequencies to enable people to heal themselves and improve their Life Force (Lewis stresses that the AIM Program is a faith-based philosophy, not a medical program, and that neither he nor the AIM Program do the healing).

As the AIM program eliminates energetic imbalances over time, a person’s Life Force and consciousness increase, and the body uses its innate wisdom and resources to create well-being, not only on the physical level but also on the mental, emotional and spiritual planes.

“No one can heal you but you, and no one can say, ‘I’m going to heal you.’ Technically, it doesn’t work. While the world teaches us that everything is out of our control, in reality, we create it all,” says Lewis, echoing Ernest Holmes and other spiritual leaders through the ages. He believes we should be honored to join them as “messengers” and our own enlightened healers.

Healing your traumas
Foster-Young met Lewis when he was using an earlier form of energetic balancing. Heather was 9 then, and every time she faced another surgery, her mother asked Lewis to use the technique on her. All the surgeries went well. At age 14, Heather required a reconstruction of the invasive jaw surgery from a decade earlier, performed again by the same excellent team in the same hospital. The only difference was that she was using Lewis’s energetic balancing.

“She was out of intensive care in 10 hours, out of the hospital in three days, and eating solid food in three more days,” recalls Foster-Young. “That was proof for me. It was a miraculous response.” Heather has been “perfectly healthy” ever since.

Foster-Young, 52, is still on the AIM Program, and plans to never leave it. She has inspired other members of her family to join it.

“I’m going a million miles a minute all the time,” she explains. “I worked full-time, raised my kids, and was in a graduate program all at once. Now I work 60 hours a week. I don’t get sick, and by all rights I should. AIM continues to keep me at my optimum so I can perform at my optimum.”

When she first met Lewis, she secretly tested him. She wrote a list of her health problems, all minor, and Heather’s but didn’t show it to Lewis. Using his earlier technique, which, like the AIM Program tracked energetic frequencies, he discovered all of them. So, says Foster-Young, “I know that AIM knows me.”

Beyond health issues, she says, being on the AIM Program “increases my sense of well-being and calm.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m reckless – it doesn’t eliminate personal responsibility. But there’s a confidence you can go forward and pursue your dreams.”

For Lewis, the trio of healing, spirituality and consciousness cannot be separated, making the process of self-healing a spiritual one. Unlike a medical doctor who diagnoses and treats in hopes of curing – doing something to you, in other words – a healer instead teaches you to access your innate healing power. This makes healing an inside job conducted in the spiritual realm, resulting from a shift in consciousness that heals on the spiritual level and manifests on the physical level.