The autobiographies of healers and time spent in a
neurological damage / recovery community have given me the impression that it
is harder to do effective energy healing on neurological problems than on any
other kind of ailment. I recently asked
the well-established healer Rosalyn Bruyere for her thoughts on this.
For the purposes of this essay, the term “energy healing”
will be used broadly to include an array of healing methods that may use
electromagnetic energy, other energy, consciousness, information, or some other
mechanism as yet unidentified.
Rev. Rosalyn Bruyere is the author of “Wheels of light: Chakras, auras, and the healing energy of the
body.” This is the most systematic and
precise explanation of chakras and auras I have ever read. She is an electrical engineer, healer,
clairvoyant, and ordained minister, who was trained by healers from a variety
of traditions and cultures. She has
been an active healer and teacher for several decades.
In an August 2011 interview with blogger and energy healer
Adele Wang, Rev. Bruyere said that many healers have difficulty with
neurological problems, and that she, herself, had been on a trajectory toward
ever greater skill with neurological issues:
“I think it’s really important for healers to think in terms
of what you like doing, and what you are compelled to do. So, I happen to like
cancer patients – I always have. I’ve always had some trouble with some
neurological diseases. But, I was also trained by 80 year old people in my
youth, who always said that healing didn’t do much for neurological disease.
Over the years, I’ve worked more and more with neurological disease and brain
disorders, and I now understand why healers didn’t traditionally do well with
them. It’s because their own nervous system energy is allowed to dissipate
because they don’t maintain their own coordination. And I’ve learned through a
lot of physical training myself, how to maintain my high energy level, that I’m
better able to treat some neurological diseases than other healers. Because I
trained for it.”
Last week, Rev. Bruyere graciously agreed to a phone
interview with me to further explore the challenges of energy healing for
neurological problems. Her responses
have been paraphrased, with her permission.
* * * * *
What has made it possible for
you to have increasing success with healing neurological problems?
First of all, Bruyere has always had an easy time working with
the neuropathy caused by chemo drugs.
The difference between this neurological damage and other neurological
problems is that with chemo-induced neuropathy “there is no obstruction, just
dirt.” In other words, it is a less
entrenched energy pattern. Also, there
has not been time for bad adaptations to accumulate.
Bruyere said that she has discovered the value of
continuously improving her own nervous system.
She lifts weights – but, particularly in a way that challenges the
nervous system, rather than purely for building strength. In other words, she emphasizes improving
coordination, balance, and cross-hemisphere collaboration. She is also taking up tap dancing for the
same reasons.
She also attributes her increasing skill to some spiritual
developments that were private. I
mention this for reasons of scientific method – in studying this puzzle, it is
important to remember that this may be a variable in a healer’s development.
Furthermore, she had a big insight at one point that made a
difference in her work. She realized we
had been using the wrong metaphor in thinking of the nervous system as
electrical wiring. When electricity
propagates along a copper wire, it travels through the wire, or inside it. Free electrons move from one copper atom to
the next.
But, with the nervous system, she says the signal travels on
the outside of the nerve. This is the
“Action Potential.”
Electrically-charged sodium and potassium ions trade places across the
neuron membrane, and propagate an electrical impulse along the membrane. She said “it’s like a wire, but inside
out. The signal travels outside the
nerve, not inside.”
According to Bruyere, this means the energy of a
neurological problem is “coming at you” and you have to “get behind it.” With most ailments, a healer needs to “push”
energy into the body. But, with the
energy of a neuro ailment, the healer needs to get behind the source of the
energy and “come back at yourself.”
Another exception to the general rule of pushing energy into
an ailing body is the case of pain and inflammation. There, you want to “pull” energy out in order to relieve the
symptoms. Still, this pulling is
different from getting behind an energy and regulating it as you move with it
back toward yourself.
Dysautonomia (dysregulation
of the autonomic nervous system):
For example, with a systemic neurological problem like
dysautonomia from discontinuing SSRIs – where there are no lesions or gross
tissue damage – she would go to the brain and re-regulate it. She would do this by creating a kind of
“tidal flow,” similar to what is done with craniosacral therapy, creating a
constant, breathing, in-and-out kind of rhythm. She blends her rhythm with that of the client, but hers is the
“alpha aura” or guiding frequency.
In my case (dysautonomia from SSRIs), what she would do is go
to the top of the brain stem, see what the frequency is there, and try to
re-regulate it.
She is familiar with dysautonomia. She has had it more than once.
Once it was secondary to a concussion, and it lasted for months. And, another time it was when she had been
putting out and taking in too much energy, doing healings. She had healer burnout. She needed help from other professionals to
re-regulate herself.
What, if anything, is
different in your internal experience when working with neurological injury /
disorder vs. non-neurological ailments?
Bruyere said that there is a tactile difference. She experiences neuro healing as more
electrical within her. There is more
buzzing, more charge. Her hands vibrate
more. She also experiences heightened
senses – sight, taste, etc. In other
words, *her* nervous system is more stimulated.
What makes neurological
problems less responsive to energy healing than other ailments?
Bruyere said that the nervous system is very paradoxical,
more so than any other system in the body.
“It holds parts together that could in no way communicate without it.”
What does she recommend to
healers for working with neuro problems?
Healing neuro problems requires more refined, subtle
understanding of the energies you are reading from the client. It requires the ability to do more than one
thing as a healer. It requires more enlightenment, more work on yourself, more
self-development.
She said that, in order to work with neuro problems, healers
need to become more refined themselves, use less energy, become sensitive to
the original energy rhythms of the client and strengthen them. More precision is required. Whereas a broader range of frequencies will
be at least somewhat healing for other ailments, healers have to hit the right
frequency more precisely and not waver from it when they are dealing with neuro
ailments.
There are many different
causes and forms of neurological disorder, but is there a chakra or energy
dynamic they tend to have in common?
Whereas with non-neuro ailments, you might focus on just
some of the chakras, neurological problems require you to focus on all the
chakras. You’re working on the brain
and the entire length of the spine.
“This is the ultimate place where you have to say OK, the whole
enchilada. You *really* have to be
holistic.”
To generalize, is there a
frequency range that tends to work better for neurological problems (analogous
to how she writes that raising the frequency in the area of the body that has
the cancer slows cancer cell division)?
The ancient Asians and Egyptians agreed that what the
nervous system needs to heal is the frequency of golden light. Also, it needs energy that spins, which is
“the way energy travels.”
You write in your book that
rheumatoid arthritis requires healing in phases. The first phase should use blue and green frequencies to counter
inflammation, and the second phase should use red frequencies to regenerate
tissue. Do you see neurological
problems as requiring a similar phased approach?
No.
You have said that genetic
diseases also don’t respond well to energy healing (p. 203). What, if anything, do genetic diseases and
neuro disorders have in common?
Nothing. They are
different things.
Are neurological problems
less amenable to distant healing than other ailments?
She prefers to work in person, but does do distant healing
as well, and thinks neurological problems can be addressed by distant healing
just as well as they can in person.
What can people with
neurological problems do to help themselves?
Most people are not taking good physical care of their
nervous system. She recommends getting
plenty of protein in a form that’s digestible for you. In other words, amino acids.
She also recommends challenging your coordination through
sport or dance; focusing on bilateral symmetry; and making your muscles
stronger in general, because they report to the nervous system more if they are
stronger. She recommends developing
your speed.
In general, she suggests doing things differently from how
you usually do them. This creates new
neural paths.
Observations about working
with Kundalini risings.
A Kundalini rising is about the unification of the upper
three chakras with the lower three. If
it’s a dramatic enough rising, people will start reacting very differently to
you. You’ll be emitting more energy
than ever, and people will be drawn to you.
You can’t make any generalizations about working with people
with difficulties with Kundalini rising.
They are all different.
Often people get stuck at the third chakra due to
intellectualization.
* * * * *
Some thoughts after the interview
Doing things differently to
stimulate neuroplasticity
Bruyere’s recommendations jibed with what a
neuropsychologist said to me several years ago – people seem to recover faster
from neuro damage if they study / practice things that are different from what
they usually do. He mentioned a man who
had taken up knitting, the Thai language, and the bagpipe.
Gold
The ancient insight that Bruyere mentioned about the value
of the gold light frequency for neuro healing is thought-provoking.
Gold is the third best metal electrical conductor after
silver and copper. It has the advantage
of being the least prone to corrosion.
This makes it more consistent and predictable over time, and minimizes
signal change. Gold is preferred for the
transmission of low current signals. It
conducts heat well and is very malleable.
Because it’s a good conductor, you can use a very thin amount of it,
which is helpful in small spaces. For
all these reasons, it is used in the electronics and aeronautics
industries. (kleinplating.com, avrev.com,
thenakedscientists.com/forum)
A thin layer of gold is used in astronauts’ space suits to
protect them from radiation and to reflect the heat of the sun. It’s used in aeronautic circuitry for the
above reasons, and to reflect radiation which increases as the atmosphere gets
thinner and then disappears away from the Earth (mgsrefining.com).
The gleam of gold is produced by the jump of an electron
from one orbital to another, and by the contraction of some orbitals towards
others, which causes the absorption of blue light. That leaves the remaining frequencies, which combine to look
golden (fourmilab.ch, scienceforums.com).
The reason for the contraction of some orbitals is that gold
is a heavy element ( a lot of protons in the nucleus), which causes great
velocity of the electrons, which means the effective mass of the electron
significantly exceeds its rest mass.
The speed of the electrons is so great – 58% of the speed of light --
that “relativistic effects” (special relativity) are operating that do not
operate in the lighter elements (wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativistic_quantum_chemistry,
chem1.com).
It’s provocative to find out that gold, itself, is so
effective for transmitting signals (especially low current ones in small
spaces), when the nervous system is fundamentally about transmitting signals,
and when Bruyere says there is more than one ancient tradition that recommends
the golden light frequency for neurological healing. Likewise, it’s provocative to find out that gold color / light/
frequency has something to do with an unusual property of a precious element,
when the nervous system is, according to Bruyere, unusual in its properties.
Spin
According to the radical physics scholar Nassim Haramein,
the universe is driven, at all levels, by spin / angular momentum / torque /
rotation / twisting. He says this
movement is fundamental to the structure and nature of spacetime (“The power of
spin” video). The exact nature of the
movement varies somewhat, but electrons through planets through galaxies all
have some variant of angular momentum.
In the interview, Bruyere said that spin on the healing
energy was mentioned as important for neuro problems in some of the ancient
traditions she has studied. In her
book, Bruyere doesn’t mention the importance of spin for any type of ailment
per se. However, she does talk about
spin a lot in terms of how the chakras work.
Each chakra spins and produces its own electromagnetic
field. The fields of the different
chakras combine to generate the aura or overall electromagnetic field of the
individual (Bruyere, p. 61). The color of
each chakra is determined by the frequency of the energy created by the
spinning (p. 63).
According to Bruyere, the healthy chakra spins clockwise
(when you’re facing the person) north of the equator. The healthy chakra spins counterclockwise south of the equator
(p. 73). She says both men and women
have a 28-day regenerative cycle, during one phase of which, every other chakra
is supposed to spin backwards, and that’s healthy (pp. 75 – 76).
In her book, there is a drawing of the various dysfunctional
shapes and directions chakras can take (p. 74). It seems oddly reminiscent of the different functional shapes
that atomic orbitals can take (Wiki).
To speculate, there may be a way for healers to use
spin. It might improve efficacy with
all types of ailments, but be crucial for having an impact on neurological
ailments.
Precision
This brings us to one of the overall impressions that
emerged from the interview, which is that greater precision is required for
healing neurological problems.
If we take James Carpenter’s First Sight model as a starting
point, and add in what Bruyere is saying, we might hypothesize that daily,
regular functioning is dependent on basic psi; energy healing requires advanced
psi; and neurological energy healing requires even more advanced psi.
According to Bruyere, the healer must also have more precise
coordination and focus in her / his own nervous system, and maintain this while
doing neuro healing.
Neurological injury /
disorder and psi
The main thesis of this blog is that some of the symptoms of
neurological damage and recovery are actually misinterpretations of an abrupt
psychic opening that was triggered by the neurological damage.
This kind of psychic opening is very discontinuous with the
person’s previous way of being, and there is little or no preparation for
it. So, the individual is
psychologically and neurologically not equipped to interpret accurately what is
happening, and falls back on early training and primitive, emergency responding
to make sense of the new access to more information.
In the interview, Bruyere commented that, in my case of
SSRI-withdrawal-induced dysautonomia, she would go to the top of the brain stem
and try to regulate the frequency there.
Clearly, this makes sense in that the brain stem is heavily involved in
autonomic regulation. But, it’s
additionally interesting in that this is also the location of the pineal
gland. It may be that the pineal gland
is strongly implicated in both neurological dysregulation and psychic opening.
In her book, Bruyere points out that when higher frequencies
of energy move through us, we become less engaged in the physical, material
self, and more involved with subtler aspects of self. Also, it is through the higher frequencies that we operate in the
esoteric world (p. 65). You can see how
an abrupt shift to higher frequencies than those to which you are accustomed
might increase psi, but might also make you feel less physical, less grounded,
more airy, more vibratory – and you can see how this would be
anxiety-provoking.
I’m inclined to see all physical and mental illness as an
attempt to correct being off track. In
this sense, they are all Kundalini risings or shamanic initiatory
illnesses. But, maybe neurological
problems represent a specific sub-type of Kundalini rising / shamanic
initiatory illness.
I’m also inclined to see psychic development as a universal
potential available to everybody, but, anecdotally, one does hear more often of
a link between neuro damage and psi opening, as opposed to say, cancer and psi
opening. Also, there are clearer
parallels between Kundalini / shamanic illness and neurological disorder than
there are between K. / shamanic and non-neuro ailments. Kundalini and neuro are both very
electrical, and involve the spine. K.
often has neuropathy and sensory disturbances.
Shamanic illnesses are infamous for having disordered cognition and
emotion.
Why on Earth would energy healing work less well on an
ailment which might be particularly connected to psi???
Who are you?
--- There is more than one
self or self-part
Perhaps part of the answer lies in the fact that
neurological problems may be more inextricably linked with self than other
ailments are. People tend to experience
cancer as an alien invader. Even with
auto-immune disorders, I have not heard the people in those communities focus
so much on the illness as, say, an attack by the self on itself. But, being on the inside of a neurological
injury or disorder is supremely confusing.
In this ailment community, we spend countless hours debating among
ourselves what’s “us” and what’s “not us.”
Neurological injuries and illnesses tend to take your
pre-existing psychological dynamics and then exaggerate them. They also seem to temporarily undo years of
psychotherapy or other psychological healing and maturation work, and return
you to your early psychology. Yet,
there are also emotions that are common in all neurological ailments – such as
rage and anxiety -- and these are truly not stemming only from your psychological
history.
In short, in a neurological ailment, you can have thoughts,
perceptions, or feelings that might be 10% psychological and 90% neurological;
90% psychological and 10% neurological; and everything in between. And you never quite know which it is at any
given moment!
In the interview, Bruyere said that the nervous system is
very paradoxical, more so than any other system in the body. “It holds parts together that could in no
way communicate without it.” This is an
intriguing statement and it may apply to the physical level – say, helping
different organs coordinate – and to the psychological level – the case of
multiple personality may be the most extreme end of a spectrum which we all
are on – and to the spiritual level – there may be many parts of the self –
reincarnations, the personal conscious, the personal unconscious, the
collective unconscious, the infinite self, etc.
It is very common both in neurological disorders and in
Kundalini to feel that there are two selves – the more familiar self; and a
newer, wilder, apparently dysfunctional, and certainly suffering self.
--- Need for stability
Even granted that consciousness exists throughout the body,
in a field around the body, and non-locally, the neurological system is still the
central seat of the self while we’re here on Earth. So, the nervous system has good reason to resist change; its
stability is important for a stable sense of self.
--- Complexity
Neurological injuries and illnesses can be among the slowest
to heal in the modern, Western medical paradigm as well. One of the reasons is that the nervous
system is vastly more complex than any other part of the body. There are more “moving parts” to fix.
The brain has about 100 billion neurons. A typical neuron has 1,000 to 10,000
synaptic connections to other neurons.
That’s an average of 100 trillion synapses (10 ^ 14) (Wiki). By comparison, we each have more synapses
than there are stars in our galaxy, or galaxies in the observable universe
(decodethemind.wordpress.com).
Repairing a broken bone is much simpler.
Dysautonomia and energy
healing
Here is another possible answer to why energy healing (psi)
may be less effective on neurological problems even though psi and neuro seem
to be particularly connected. Maybe
it’s *because* they’re so connected.
Bruyere said two things that may provide some clues to the
relationship between energy healing and neurological problems. She said that doing too much healing in
general caused her to have dysautonomia.
And, she said that when she’s doing neurological healing in particular
it stimulates her own nervous system in a way that working on non-neuro
ailments does not (electrical charge, hands vibrating, hyperesthesia).
There are many different forms of neurological problem. Not all involve dysautonomia by any means,
but dysautonomia is a far more common component of many neurological conditions
than has been realized. It is
dysregulation of the autonomic nervous system and can express itself in
many different ways – heartbeat and blood pressure irregularities, vertigo,
anxiety, derealization, visual disturbances, hyperesthesia, neuropathy,
seizure, migraine, and more.
Usually, we think of dysautonomia as being caused by some
sort of neurological incident – toxic exposure, virus, blunt force, tumor,
etc. But, Bruyere, herself, gives us an
example of someone who developed the syndrome from “overuse” of psi. If someone with established psi ability can
somehow overuse their psi and develop dysautonomia, then maybe a psi neophyte’s
abrupt psychic opening could cause them to develop dysautonomia.
Perhaps there is a bi-directional relationship between the
nervous system and psi – too much psi causes neurological problems, and
neurological problems open a person to too much psi.
Some disassembly required
This leads us back to Bruyere’s observation that, with
neurological problems in general, it is important for the healer not to just
add energy – even well-intentioned – into the system, but rather to be
respectful of the energy pattern that is going on and try to smooth it out.
Let us, for the sake of argument, accept the following
propositions: 1) that all physical and
mental illness is an attempt to correct being off track, 2) that neurological
problems are more inextricably linked with self than other ailments are, and 3)
that psi undergirds who we really are, with more advanced psi being even more
who we really are.
If these premises are true, then what we may be looking at
in the case of the resistance of neurological problems to energy (psi) healing
is 1) an attempt – driven by the personal unconscious and / or the Tao and /
other forces – to become *much* more truly one’s self. But, 2) the existing self is afraid of being
remodeled. And, 3) healing is experienced
as interfering with the nascent self.
It is a titanic struggle for an adult to go through a
profound reconfiguring of the self.
There will be resistance, terror, and rage. The existing self-structure has to be dismantled. Both because of the dismantlement itself,
and because of the inevitable resistance to it, there will be chaos. Initially, the newly emerging self will seem
wild and dysfunctional, and probably is in some ways, but maybe not as much as it
appears. A psi opening will be part of
becoming more of who one is supposed to be, but it will initially be very
threatening.
The juxtaposition between a highly stable, complex
psychophysiological edifice and a cosmic shove to change in a big way =
"Fasten your seat belts. It's going to be a bumpy [dark] night [of the
soul]."
In a book on the Brahmanic roots of Buddhist meditation, the
Buddhism scholar Alexander Wynne wrote something that might jibe with this
thesis. He said that ancient Indian
meditation theory included a complex developmental model that instructed
practitioners to slowly dismantle their identifications with aspects of
physical and mental self, and approach stepwise the original state of the
cosmos. They reversed cosmogony.
Wynne wrote: “Thus
it seems that the most basic presupposition of the early Brahmanic passages on
meditation is that the creation of the world must be reversed, through a series
of meditative states, by the yogin who seeks the realization of the self”
(Wynne, p. 36).
Now, in the case of neurological problems, the individual is
not consciously, voluntarily, or slowly working toward transformation. Instead, accident or injury seems to
initiate a rather heartless, it’s-for-your-own-good transformation. So, understandably, an individual is going
to be more afraid and resistant.
On top of that, such an individual may also intuitively
resist healing if it is or might be an imposition -- even well-intentioned --
of the healer’s self on the ailing person’s nascent, wild, emerging, confused
self. The nascent self may be currently
chaotic and not usable, but there is something important there to be
protected. This may be part of what
makes neurological problems a greater challenge for energy healers. It’s analogous to the way that many
psychotherapists can help many people, but fewer psychotherapists are able to
help the more chaotic, deeply shaken people – including people in spiritual
emergency -- who require greater precision.
A Summoning
We may be seeing more and more neurological damage, and
we're going to have to stretch to develop healing methods for it.
Traumatic brain injury is the signature injury of the Iraq
and Afghanistan wars, and people are surviving it more; powerful, new drugs in
many categories have neuro-toxic side effects; the increasing toxic load of the
planet is contributing to developmental disorders in children and Parkinson’s
in younger and younger people; the population is aging; etc. An epidemic may be emerging.
Furthermore, Gaia or the Tao or the collective unconscious
may be enlisting these neurological injuries in the service of more rapid
evolution to solve our pressing planetary crisis.
Hopefully, energy healers, alternative health practitioners,
and parapsychologists will take up the challenge of better understanding and
healing neurological disorder and injury.
It may be possible to use insights from neurological
recovery to help people open up psychically, and it may be possible to use
insights from psi development to help people heal neurologically.
Sources:
Bruyere, R. (1994). Wheels of light: Chakras, auras, and the healing energy of the body. New York:
Simon & Schuster.
Davidson, S. Interview with Rosalyn Bruyere. http://www.saradavidson.com/articleA7.html
Haramein, N.
(2011). The power of spin. The Resonance Project.
Wang, A.
(2011). Interview with Rosalyn
Bruyere.
Wynne, A.
(2007). The origin of Buddhist
meditation. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
