Delcia McNeil           

        We are tool and vessel and will.  We connect with powers beyond our own fractional consciousness to the rest of the living being we all make up together.  The power flows through us just as it does through the tiger and through the oak and through the river breaking over its rocks, and we know in our core the fire that fuels the sun.                                                                              Marcy Piercy, Body of Glass

Like so many healers I came to healing through my own need.
 
  I fractured my sacrum in 1979.  I was a burnt out social worker who had managed to get a grant to complete a social sciences degree as a full time student .  My back injury had forced me to take a year off my studies and gave me a major challenge:  to learn to cope with incredible chronic pain and to literally go back to my root and find the right direction in life.

  Fortunately I saw a cranial osteopath in the early days of my recovery.  I learned that I was extremely sensitive.  The osteopath only needed to make a small intervention and my 'energy flow' responded, often dramatically.  When I apologised for being so sensitive the osteopath said, "Don't apologise.  See this as a gift."  Later I went to see a spiritual healer.  I was totally fascinated by the fact that he didn't even touch my body but I could feel the same kinds of energy flows and movements as I did on the osteopath's table.  I knew I had 'come home'.

  Less than four years after my injury I had trained with the National Federation of Spiritual Healers and was running my first self healing and healer development groups within the then Inner London Education Authority.  Later, I trained in humanistic psychotherapy.  The group work skills I gained and my own personal therapy remain invaluable to me as a teacher and facilitator of healing groups.  I felt a certainty that this was what I was meant to be doing.  This was a most wonderful feeling for me because one of my major issues in life is dealing with self doubt.

  The task I set myself was to demystify healing, to make it available to the public in a way that would be empowering and effective.  There have been many rewards, ups and downs, tough challenges and magical times.

  My main goal is to help people who are interested to explore their own potential to be healers.  I also have a growing number of professional body work therapists who become aware of subtle energies and wish to understand this more, to learn ways of grounding and clearing excess energy which they may pick up from clients, and to work with it.

  The first step is to encourage people to take their intuition and personal spirituality seriously.  By grounding the 'life force' (or what I prefer to call the 'love force') through the act of laying-on hands we are reconnecting each other regularly to the source of life and creative intelligence.  Any of us involved in healing know about the power of positive thought, a compassionate heart and trust in life giving energy which is much greater than us.

  A further step is to provide an opportunity for psychic experiences to be validated as real and understood more fully.  We do our best to clarify what is purely psychic from what is psychological projection and explore the relationships between the two.  We clarify how psychic insights and information should be interpreted and then shared with healees.  Another step is to encourage self healing and to make the space for this to take place as and when appropriate.  This usually arises as a result of teaching a particular technique such as self cleansing of one's aura, grounding, chakra meditation.    We focus on many nuances of energies, including tuning in, channelling and enabling the transfer of energy in the energy field as a whole and through the chakras, and distant healing.

  People come to learn healing with different objectives.  Many start out with the wish to find out about healing and to see whether they have any abilities and to clarify the responsibilities involved.  Some plan ultimately to make this a profession, while others are satisfied to use healing only with their family and friends.  Some focus mainly on their own self healing issues, ranging from chronic physical symptoms, low self esteem, lack of energy, chaotic lifestyle, lack of direction and so on.  The challenge here is to strike a balance between structured teaching and allowing an organic unfolding of questions about healing and time for healing personal issues.

  It is important to make the distinction that the teaching groups are not therapy groups so I do not spend time working on relationships.  I do take into account the energies of the group through experiential exercises, discussions, sharing of information and of personal experiences.

  Healing is not just about the laying on of hands or the transfer of energies.  We can help through relaxation, creative visualisation, positive thinking, clarification of philosophies and belief systems, grounding and protection, and the use of colour and sound.

  A common worry for people is: "Can I harm someone if I'm in a bad mood myself when I'm giving healing?"  I say you cannot harm someone unless you intend to do so and that you need to deal with the cause of your bad mood prior to the healing and transcend it during the healing.  If you cannot, postpone doing the healing till you feel better.

  A problem for some student healers is that they don't want to face and deal with what I call our 'nasty parts'.  We tend to see healers stereotypically as some kind of human angels who are 'beyond' negativity.  Many would-be healers do not want to acknowledge their own destructive inner parts and much of the New Age language can encourage people to be what I call 'space cadets' - where problems with living are deemed to be outside of oneself, due to fate or the universe, and with the attitude that it must be 'how it's meant to be'.  It is possible for some - especially the very psychic - to disown their own personal projections and see themselves as victims of 'negative energy' or energy generally.  Clearly there are many things in life we have no direct control over, such as the weather, growing up with an alcoholic parent, being male or female, and so on - but the value I teach is that we are responsible for how we respond to what happens to us.

  Sometimes I find people are what I call 'anger phobic', or deal with their anger by blaming or putting others down sometimes in 'jokes'.  Anger itself is a controversial area within healing and some healers teach that expressing anger is harmful.  I disagree, though I make definite distinction between expressing anger appropriately and 'dumping' it on others.  In my experience anger is healthy and necessary at times.  It is the suppression of anger that causes problems.
 
  In my groups I do not work expressively with anger though I tell people how they can.  I do work with creative visualisation, exploring ways of transforming the energy of anger into constructive behaviour.  This involves a process of really connecting with the somatic experience of anger, taking responsibility for this and finding a way of communicating what needs to be said.

  For a lot of people learning through experiential exercises is new.  They may be much more used to being told what the 'truth' is rather than discovering what it is for themselves.  They may also be unused to learning through discomfort - perhaps through inner conflicts or physical symptoms.

  After a period of digesting and practising the basics, many people return to what I term the Part II course.  We cover topics like creating your own inner sanctuary and finding your healer within; looking at the meaning of illness in our lives; working with specific and more challenging emotions such as fear, anger and envy; counselling within healing; styles of meditation; working in more depth with the chakra system; professionalism; and individual and group healing practice.

  The chakras in particular can be a gateway to the unconscious mind, and we focus on this in more advanced groups, along with continued healer development.

  The Association of Therapeutic Healers offers supervised clinical experience to advanced students.

  I have presented some of the more challenging issues that can arise in teaching healing.  I do also want to share the immediate rewards.  It is a great joy to me to see what I call people getting 'turned on' to healing.  I find it exciting to see people discover for themselves that we do not end at our skin, that they can actually feel the human energy field and develop the sensitivity required to recognise the variety of vibrations within it.  People find that their contact healing is effective from the first time they try it.  Their partner relaxes, often deeply.  They feel changes in temperature, tingling sensations, changes in intensity of energy on and around the other.  They find - often with ease - that they get images, colours or verbal messages as they work.  Personal insights are gained, past hurts get released, physical symptoms may disappear completely or alleviate.  The group itself becomes a vehicle for the healing of each of its members.

  What makes a good healer?  Is it someone who simply channels and works with energy effectively or is it someone who can do that but also is willing to engage in their own personal spiritual and psychological process as openly as possible?  What is integrity and how on earth do you teach it?

  The future trend for all complementary therapies now is towards accreditation.  This obviously affects those of us who teach healing.  I think it is very important that the public is protected from unprofessional healers.  At the same time I do not want to see healing taken back into the hands of the favoured few.  Many of the best healers in the world are illiterate.  To make healing too academic would be wrong.  However, we have to be highly respectable and be able to communicate with other professionals.

  How should we evaluate healers?  What are criteria for judging effectiveness of healing?  What standard are we referring to when we judge outcomes?  How do we distinguish between a 'remission' and a 'miracle' or indeed healing and cure?  In allopathic medicine a death is seen as a failure.  In healing we assist the process of dying, if that is what is right.

  It is almost impossible to separate myself from being a healer to being a healing teacher.  Teaching and facilitating my groups is for me a primary way in which I operate as a healer.  It is also the way in which I receive so much healing and learning for myself.  This is not to say I use my groups to meet my own emotional needs but rather that what they present me with and the experiences that people bring keep me on my toes.  There is a synchronicity between what I am dealing with in my own healing journey and what comes up in the groups.  I love the richness and challenge of this work.

Delcia McNeil, Flat 2, 56 Queens Avenue, Muswell Hill, London N10 3NU   081-442 0391
 

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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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