IJHC (The International Journal of Healing and Caring)

Toronto: Lori Wilson Education Corporation, 2005. 408 pp. US$27.00/ Can$32.00.

Lori Wilson, a trained social worker and pioneer in the world of service through teaching and training in the field of intuition, channeling and past life regression, has now provided a wonderful source of information on the subject of medical intuition in her new book De-mystifying Medical Intuition. This book is directed at newcomers to the field as well as expert practitioners. For more than two decades the author has been true to her personal mission to de-mystify, educate, and inspire, and here she has her goals set to make the field of medical intuition accessible to as broad an audience as possible by sharing her own gift of listening, caring and attending. Throughout the book, Wilson also challenges many traditional views and concepts and invites her readers to engage in personal soul-searching to find their own opinion and stand on each topic.

The twelve clearly laid-out chapters can be broken down into three distinct sections. In the first five chapters, Wilson provides background information on her own professional growth and goals, explains her personal approach to attending to the body, supplies historical information on the development of medical intuition, discusses briefly the psychology of the body, and most importantly, addresses the role that fear plays in our lives, both as clients and as practitioners. Under the heading "Would Your Life Change if You Could Simply Know All Things," she discusses the implications of the energetic ethics of 'knowing all things,' her catch-phrase for using intuition as a simple set of skills. She engages the reader in a discussion on fear, which in her opinion "keeps intuition in the hands of the few" (p. 84). In order to frame her discussion, she relates how her own Spirit Guide, Grandmother, views fear - namely as a fearful child whom we simply need to embrace. Wilson reaches the following conclusion:

There is no doubt that fear is powerful. As long as we continue to give it power, it will always feel alone and incompetent. If we fight it, fear will simply grow within us and around us. Fear loves and needs company. Just because we consider Grandmother's wonderful, clear philosophy on fear, does not mean it will simply disappear from our world. It will take a great deal of time, strength and maturity for us to master handling fear in our world. (p. 87)

Why may such discourse be required in the exploration of medical intuition? Wilson's understanding of the role of fear brings her to suggest a necessary shift of paradigms, one in which the sense of protection, a fear-based concept, is replaced by practicality in which trust and ethical responsibilities are highlighted. Wilson refers to this process as the creation of a "new frame of reference." (p. 95). This is a critical section in the book, and therefore the author would have done well to supplement this particular topic with a few sources, both substantiating and contradictory.

The second section of the book concerns itself with the five distinct styles of medical intuition that Wilson has defined. She considers them the five most common styles and includes a description of each one in the name of education and service to the vast and varied field of medical intuition at large. These five styles are 1) The Psychic Reading; 2) Channeled from Guides; 3) Healer's Hits; 4) Map-based Knowing; and the 5) Attending Model, which is the art of the Total Body Intuition style of intuition that Wilson developed herself and has been teaching since 1999. The Attending Model is based on the following four basic principles: look, observe, source, and serve. It is described as "the least directly therapeutic style of the five" (p. 186).

Students ... are very strongly coached to refrain from doing therapeutic energy work, offering health recommendations, or even entering into a therapeutic type of relationship by dialoguing with the body during the scan. We just stand behind our imaginary one-way mirror/glass and report objectively. The reason behind limiting the therapeutic interaction between practitioner and clients is that our sole purpose in providing a medical intuition scan is to provide an accurate portrait of what is so in the client's body. (Ibid.)

Wilson provides a description of each style with a sample reading and the client's response to the reading. Following is a chapter that explores the so-called 'choice points,' which describe from where the practitioner gets the information and how this practitioner proceeds when the information is unclear. A further discussion clarifies the commonalities and differences of each style. Even though the author presents as objective a view as possible, the preference for her own style becomes obvious, which requires the practitioner to "continuously maintain a strict position that observes, attends, and describes rather than jumping to conclusions about what is being seen, sense, or perceived within a client's body." (p. 208). One of the main advantages of this style is seen in the practitioners' ability to "likely uncover more unique factors influencing their clients' health including some of the more subtle, or out of character roots that interface with health challenges." (p. 209).

The last part of the book concerns itself with the practical applications of medical intuition from both a client's as well as a practitioner's perspective. Two thoughtful and thought-provoking chapters provide the author's greatest contributions, in this reviewer's opinion, "sourcing' and "energetic ethics.'

"Sourcing' is a term she coined herself, which means "determining who is talking and sharing the wisdom coming from the body during a scan or intuitive reading. Wilson provides many examples of possible sources of information. But why would we need to know and why do we care as long as we get the information? Because, in her opinion and experience, "unless you are clear from the where the information is actually coming, I believe that the information itself can be very misleading or be given inappropriate weight or credence." (p. 276). Such precision will in turn allow medical intuition to become more valuable as a supplementary resource for the healthcare practitioner.

The chapter on "Energetic Ethics' provides a framework for ethical considerations of intuition. This deserves much further study and attention in the field of medical intuition and must be included in any discussion on intuitive knowing and practice. In her engaging discussion on the topic, Wilson provides suggestions to intuitives on how to take care of themselves, deal healthily and ethically with intuitive information they are receiving, and how to conduct themselves in various demanding situations. In particular, when asked to perform a scan, she admonishes strongly: "Do not do a medical intuition scan unless you have the intended person's express consent. This can be awkward or even confusing for the person asking for your help. They may think you don't care. The reality is that you care deeply." (p. 358). In other words, it is best to be very careful, especially in light of requests concerning loved ones, to assure that boundaries of confidentiality are not crossed. Once again, she challenges the more conventional way of thinking regarding permission to work with a person. According to her, the concept of obtaining permission from the higher self is outdated: "Ethically, "Your higher self told my higher self' just doesn't wash anymore," (p. 338) a practice that proved to be rather common in the exploratory stages in the eighties and early nineties. Rather than just dismissing the past, the author continues to explain that these kinds of violation of boundaries occurred because

...it was simply the only way we had to make sense of knowing things, without focus or permission, at the time. It was a popular catch-all phrase to help make sense of how and why we were getting intuitive information popping into our awareness. In reality, intuitive information will always pop in. It always has, and likely, it always will. Just because it pops in, however, does not mean we need to run across the room and announce this wisdom to others or assume their higher self has chosen us to report it as part of our intuitive destiny... Does this mean we cannot access the information without someone's conscious consent? Absolutely not. You can access whatever information you want, about anyone, intuitively, with or without their consent. This is precisely why we need to formalize the process of consent while using our intuitive skills with others. It's not because we cannot get information without their permission, it is because we can. (p. 338-9).

Lori Wilson leaves her readers with suggestions for simple ethical boundaries and applications, which require lots of practice. She briefly recapitulates the four main goals she had set for her book: 1) Define the field; 2) De-mystify; 3) Encourage discernment; and 4) Inspire professionalism. Her final words on "honouring the historical values of mystery and fear" (p. 396) again gently provoke the reader to shed old frames of reference and build new ones.

Overall, Wilson has succeeded in reaching her goals, in particular by remaining transparent and simple in her descriptions of concepts and approaches. Apart from Wilson's unique perspective and effort to categorize the various styles of medical intuition, her most valuable contribution to the field of Energy Medicine and Intuition must be seen in the expansive and thought-provoking chapter on Energetic Ethics. De-mystifying Medical Intuition can indeed serve as a solid introduction into Medical Intuition to both practitioners and clients.

De-mystifying Medical Intuition

by Lori Wilson