Energy Healing: How To Harness Your Lifeforce
From the ancient Orient to modern Western societies like ours, the therapeutic technique of Pranic Healing has travelled through time to cure more and more people.
By Serpil Senelmis
On a typical Western Australian summer's day, it's not unusual to lie back on your hammock, with the sea breeze brushing your cheek and stare out at the endless blue sky. And if you're lucky, while you continue to study your surroundings, you may be able to see a multitude of white flitting specks swirling together in a remarkable atmospheric tango. This sparkling vision is a unique view of 'prana', the animating force behind life itself, at play in one of its many forms. 'Prana' is a Sanskrit word meaning 'life force' or 'vital energy' and it is the core power behind Pranic Healing.
Derived from ancient esoteric beliefs, Pranic Healing is founded on the idea that physical, emotional and psychological ailments are symptoms of imbalances in a person's electro-magnetic energy field or bio-plasmic body, also known as the aura. So if we become ill, pranic healers believe that the cause ultimately stems from a contaminated or depleted energy body.
Melaney Ryan, an advanced pranic healer from the WA Institute of Inner Studies, says disease first appears when emotional issues come into sight on a person's energy body.
"A lot of people spend a lot of time and effort on the physical body and they actually forget that it's the energy body that keeps the physical body alive," explains Melaney.
In Pranic Healing, the practitioner first scans the patient's energy field for signs of any energy blocks. He or she then goes through the process of cleansing and clearing diseased energy from the aura and "energising it with fresh and vital prana". According to Melaney, prana is drawn from various sources like the sun, the air and the earth and provides nourishment for the energy body during the healing process. "Prana is a vital force that surrounds us so we direct it and bring it in through our energy centres and transmit it through to the person who needs the healing. We believe this helps the natural healing of the physical body."
If the energy body is healthier, this will have a definite reflection on the physical body, says Melaney. She adds that while the physical body stays alive through its internal organs, the energy body stays alive through its chakras. Chakras she likens to whirling energy centres with each centre relating to a different physical organ. If the energy level of a particular chakra is out of balance, then the relating physical organ is going to be out of balance, too. She says redistributing the prana through the energy body can rectify this situation.
"If the naval chakra were out of balance, that would mean there would be problems with that person's digestion. If a person's heart chakra is out of balance that would suggest that the person is suffering in the lungs, maybe from asthma. We actually work with 11 chakras while most people only work with seven. Because we work quite specifically with some conditions and the emotional origin of those conditions, we've been given a few extra chakras to work with."
The remedial techniques of Pranic Healing can be used to treat a variety of ailments, from persistent headaches right through to more intense conditions like ADD and cancer. Pranic Healing can also be used as a stress-buster and aid in combating negative emotions. Furthermore, the ancient therapy can enhance a person's life by simply restoring their balance. Finding a balance, says Melaney, could mean "finding peace within oneself or just being able to laugh, or simply sharing time with someone."
"In creating balance you not only improve a person's health, wellbeing and life, but that also reflects onto others. As you get more balanced and aligned, you only have to smile to touch somebody's life."
While Melaney has actually worked with energy healing for over 17 years, with the skill passed down to her from her great grandmother, she says it wasn't until she picked up a book titled The Pranic Healing that she realised energy was universal and not personal.
While knowledge of Pranic Healing has been around for centuries among Tibetan monks and Chinese Taoists, this ancient science has been modernised for today's use by Grand Master Choa Kok Sui from the Philippines, who is aptly called the modern founder of Pranic Healing. Master Choa, a former chemical engineer and scientist and now enlightened teacher, has spent the past 25 years developing Pranic Healing to create a holistic care system that is easy to learn and is practical in its application.
Melaney, who trained with the Grand Master, points out that while the therapy requires a highly trained practitioner for certain treatments, his simple step by step techniques allow everyone to tap into this healing faculty.
"For instance, a housewife who wants to bring down her child's fever is able to do so. If someone has a fever you just look up fever in his book and it tells you what you need to work with, where you need to draw the energy from and how you have to clean the prana. The process of cleansing and energising can be learnt by anyone."
The master also teaches a variety of advanced techniques including pranic psychotherapy, pranic crystal work and the breathing technique of Arhatic Yoga, some of which can take up to six years to learn.
Master Choa's progressive approach towards Pranic Healing comes from his desire to have at least one competent pranic healer in every household, says Melaney. She explains that meeting the medical needs of families in the Third World was his major incentive, spurred by his belief that if at least one member of each family could alleviate suffering, then it would be worthwhile trying to teach the healing technique.
Since its inception, Pranic Healing has exploded in popularity, particularly in Switzerland, Holland and America. So how does Australia compare in the scheme of things? "If you look at places like England even royalty has alternative therapists. Yet I think alternative therapies are more slowly accepted in Australia and this is because if you scan Australians as a whole many lack confidence and the grounding that gives them confidence. But I can see that changing."
Despite our slow embrace of alternative therapies, Melaney says we've come a long way since her early days as a practitioner working with energy. "I had a clinic in Fremantle and I had to be very careful even 15 to 17 years ago about how I showed the energy work I was doing because people would be sceptical. I found the only thing that got me through was to get results that actually made a difference."
She believes there is now an awakening among Australians with more and more people wanting to be grounded. "Even when you speak to people who are quite enlightened, they still want to be human and they still want to function well within society. They don't want to end up on a mountain or isolate themselves from other people. You'll find a lot of spiritual teachers are out there in the crowds now and that's because people have finally realised through a shift in thinking that they're here to have an experience."
This change in perception has led to the emergence of a mutually beneficial relationship between conventional medicine and complementary therapies. In most parts of the world, Pranic Healing has now been introduced to hospitals with doctors asking pranic healers to do scans more and more.
"I actually have doctors who ask me for advice on what I feel. So they may actually say, 'There are no medical reasons here, what do you feel?' So I scan for emotions that may be stored or why a particular energy centre is out of balance and where that relates to in the physical body."
With the global demand for Pranic Healing growing and the introduction of a worldwide certification program, it looks like the therapy may become a common practice. The WA Institute of Inner Studies has already been running for four years and now boasts up to 13 teachers who travel throughout the State with some servicing centres in isolated and remote areas. "There's only ever one pranic healer in any regional area and it's great especially for the remote areas like the Wheatbelt. These teachers travel in their own time usually once a month. It's very special," Melaney says.
In her opinion a good Pranic Healer is "someone who is very grounded, who actually has a very strong heart and who has a very good sense of intuition or higher knowing".
She believes it is a technique to heal others and us. Above all, Melaney leaves us with the strong message to "just sit and be still".
"Even if you are very busy just sit, be present, be quiet and listen. People are finding this is a very important part of their life. Even in business people are actually saying you can't talk to the director now because he's in meditation. People are now happy to say this is my own time and my time to just breathe.
"The only person who can change your life or the essence of your life is yourself. If you can't give yourself five minutes in a day then how can you touch other people's lives?"
