Joyce Goodrich, PhD           

        There is never an ending to the exploration of human potential and man's relationship to the cosmos...                                                                                                                      Lawrence LeShan

Lawrence LeShan's methods of healing are based on theories described in several of his books.(1)  In seminars over five days we teach up to 12 people to access the particular altered state of consciousness within which it is normal and natural for people to facilitate 'paranormal' abilities such as healing.

  The seminars consist of 20-25 meditations of various kinds, drawn from a wide range of traditions.  Taught within a modern educational approach, with sharing, discovery and individual attention, the work leads participants to be able to experience the altered state of consciousness and to utilise it for self-healing and helping others to be healed.  Attention is given  to cognitive and experiential material, from a multi-disciplinary point of view.

  The work is intensive - with morning, afternoon and evening sessions but is never insensitive to needs for rest and exercise on the part of participants.  At the conclusion of the five days, most participants are able to work with two forms of healing and will continue to improve and deepen their skills with ongoing practice.  Trainees are offered support in their future work if they request it.

  People who have studied various approaches to healing and researched the field have said they feel our approach is probably quite pure.  LeShan made a point of avoiding the many idiosyncratic explanatory systems.  He factored out the basic processes of healing.  Yet, once people have completed the training they are welcome to integrate the work into their particular disciplines as long as they do not do injustice to the basic processes.

  Letters written to us some weeks following the seminar experience bring responses such as:  "It touched my life deeply and is ongoing still, a sense of coming home."  Another reported, "This experience has explained so many things to me.  I feel I have some answers to life long questions."

  I was moved by Issue No. 4 of the Newsletter which featured healing unto death and healing for bereavement to share the following.

  'Bella' is a professional woman in her mid forties, trained and practising as a psychotherapist in one of the suburbs of New York City.  She is married and has a daughter.

  Bella attended one of the introductory seminars of the LeShan healing in the fall of 1991, just 21 months after the death of her other daughter at the age of 25 due to cancer of the brain.  She came to the seminar because of this and a 'desire and need for this additional emotional and intellectual challenge'.

  She had a very tight, controlling rein on herself.  Her mouth and face were taut and stressed.  Her movements were limited and not flowing or open.  As we began to work more intensively with the meditations which finally help us to access the unitive state of consciousness, sharing our experiences among ourselves in the group, she appeared to become more intense and in pain.  At one point she said, "I know I am at risk.  I haven't felt any desire to continue living.  My daughter was my best friend and I want to be with her."

  At her request she had been given a single room which happened to be directly across the hall from the seminar leader's room.  On the fourth night at the retreat centre, following three days of work with a variety of meditations, discussion and rest, she spent the entire night awake, crying - releasing some of her agony.  The next morning she was physically and emotionally stressed, yet quite and very controlled.  The group had begun to use what it had learned for healing the on the previous day, various members working on each other.  She was asked in the afternoon if she was ready to allow us to work with her.  Though she had refused earlier, this time she agreed.

  The group worked with the meditations to experience and deepen the unitive state of consciousness for about half an hour, as she sat quietly in her chair with eyes closed.  They were not specifying any particular changes for her.  (There is no focus on specific healing changes or transfer of energies involved).  They were simply establishing an experience of oneness with All and including another in it with openness to the caring which is a part of this state of consciousness.

  When she opened her eyes her facial features had markedly softened in every respect.  It was a dramatic

change which everyone noticed.  She explained that she had been reliving her daughter's death while we had been working.  The severe restraint and tightness were gone from her voice and from her words.  She began to interact with people in the group in an open, natural, warm manner for the first time - a change which lasted throughout the seminar.  The frozen, tight anguish had been replaced by a readiness to relate, not without sadness and pain but with an ability to function more fully and naturally despite the grief.

  Judging from a brief questionnaire presented about eight weeks later, some of the change has been retained.  She appears to be continuing her progress and wants to continue with this approach at a future time.

  'Greta', a woman in her sixties, came to an advanced seminar later in the same month.  Her daughter had died of cancer at the age of 32, just two months earlier.  Greta had been working with the Type I LeShan approach to healing for a number of years and had integrated it into her life.  Although she expressed no thoughts of suicide, she too was experiencing that agonizing, frozen grief.

  She had a similar abreaction the night before we focused on her in the healing seminar and she experienced the same shift in process as Bella.  Greta had complained that she had lost her ability to work with the meditation and healing and missed it terribly.  Following this seminar she was able to resume her work, though the grief intensified again and she was again unable to focus on the healing.  We continue to work regularly with her at a distance.

Joyce Goodrich, PhD, Consciousness Research and Training Project, Inc., 315 East 68 Street, Box 9G, New York, NY 10021
 

You may quote from or reproduce these editorial clips if you include the following credits and email contact:
Copyright © Daniel J. Benor, M.D. 1993 Reprinted with permission of the author P.O. Box 76 Bellmawr, NJ 08099 www.WholisticHealingResearch.com   DB@WholisticHealingResearch.com 

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