|
Love Happens When You
This article is from the August 1997 issue of The Awareness Journal, which is published monthly in Tucson, Arizona. The author, Jan Henrikson, is a freelance writer and a features writer for The Awareness Journal. The article is reprinted here with permission from The Awareness Journal. by Jan Henrikson No one was safe from their healing touch. Paranoid cats became loving. Dysfunctional workplaces shed their negativity. Ill-tempered friends and husbands enjoyed a renewed sense of well-being. Actually, they were members of Phyllis Winslow's two-year training program for hands-on healing at The Institute for Health and Healing, in Tucson, Arizona. On their way back to class from lunch, they had experienced momentary giddiness about their developing repertoire of healing skills—which included everything from healing with the energy of sound and color, to performing past life and long-distance hearings. And it's no wonder with a teacher like Winslow. Winslow left a lucrative career with Fortune magazine to dedicate herself to hands-on healing. Now she shares her hard-earned wisdom with those who are serious about learning. "It's such a joy for me to instill in them a love of learning and an excitement that they can actually do the hearings," Winslow says. Her goal is to provide a safe atmosphere for her trainees to nurture their healing skills. Through exercises and instant feedback, she shows her classes that everyone has the innate ability to heal themselves and facilitate the healing of others. Take Geneva, a friend of a trainee in Winslow's institute. Geneva had been sexually abused by her father, her half-cousin, and her brother. For a year and half, she'd been tortured by flashbacks. Now, eight months pregnant and raw with emotion, she came to one of Winslow's classes for a group healing. "It was a miracle I was pregnant," Geneva says. "It only took one time. If my husband even touched me, I freaked out. I didn't trust myself or anyone else. I wouldn't have come to this class if a friend of mine weren't in it." She lay on the massage table while the healers placed their hands on her. Loving energy swirled up through her legs and poured into her heart, until she felt as though she was encircled in a cocoon of light. "I felt as if I was off the table. I'd never felt that much light and energy before, not even in meditation. It was a profound healing. Within a day, my husband and I were enjoying each other. I felt safe with myself again, and reconnected to my husband in a healthy way," Geneva says. How can directing energy through someone affect such a powerful shift? "The physical body manifests our feelings, belief systems and habitual thoughts. It's a concentration of what's going on in the auric field," Winslow explains. "The auric field is the electromagnetic energy field that surrounds and penetrates the human being. So an illness is more than just a physical problem. It's what comes into being as a result of our thoughts and feelings." We can learn to unblock and balance the auric fields by allowing our inherent healing energy to flow through us. "Love is the greatest healer," Winslow says. "Energy is basically transmuted through the heart. You bring the energy down from above and up from the Earth, out from the heart, through the hands, and to the other person. It's important to transmute the energy through the heart and allow the divinity through as love. "Love enables people to heal at a higher level. The reason most people get sick has to do with self-confidence, self-love, self-esteem. When you're sending love, you help people to love themselves. Love resonates with every part of their being. It heals at the deepest, core level of their being." Winslow's own path toward hands-on healing was launched by a zillion parasites she picked up while on vacation in the Yucatan in the early 70s. Parasites don't show up on X-rays. So, for 11 years she dragged herself from doctor to doctor, eating Mylanta and turning down the tranquilizers they recommended to ease her panic attacks. No one acknowledged the excruciating pain she felt in her abdomen, until a friend suggested she see a psychic healer. "She was the first person to acknowledge the fact that I was sick and in pain," Winslow says. "She took one look at my abdomen from across the room and said, "There's this black haze all around your abdomen, extending to your liver."' Through hands-on healing, the psychic healer was actually able to alleviate the previously non-stop pain for three days at a time. That experience was so profound that Winslow ended up studying with her for six months. A little while later, she ended her career with Fortune magazine to work with a homeopathic doctor she met at a lecture. "It was somewhat traumatic. I made less than half of what I was making. I left a conventional life behind to begin something unknown. But once the guardian angels call and you go down that road, everything opens up to you." Since then, she's immersed herself in many different types of healing modalities from massage therapy to kinesiology. Eventually, she became certified in hands-on healing by Barbara Brennan, the scientist-healer who authored Hands of Light and Light Emerging. Today, Winslow enthusiastically opens up the world of healing to others through her own private practice and The Institute for Health and Healing, both in Tucson. "The applications of healing are limitless," Winslow says. Recently, she worked with a woman who'd suffered from bulimia for two years. She suggested some supplements and performed a past life healing, and the bulimia cleared up. Another client was diagnosed with pneumonia in the emergency room the day before Winslow went to work with him at his home. "He couldn't talk, couldn't move. He was embarrassed for me to even come in. When I started working with him, he was coughing up mucous. He got scared that he'd vomit. By the time I left, he was sitting up, talking, drinking green tea, and eating crackers out of bed. "I am often amazed at what happens," she says about her healing sessions. "I just ask and intend." Winslow, who has an extensive background in physics, electricity, and magnetism, believes intent is everything. She once studied with a Hawaiian Kahuna. (Kahuna means "keeper of the secrets.") According to Winslow, the Kahuna had worked with herbs with the intent to heal ever since she was a child. One time, she forgot some of the herbs she'd planned to use in a healing with a client. Instead of chastising herself, she simply focused her mind and intended the essence of the herbs to heal whatever needed healing. And it did. "She showed very dramatically that you could change things simply with intention," Winslow says. The Kahuna also taught the healer a potent prayer: "Ho-opono-pono" can be used to release a dying person from their earthly attachments. Winslow repeated this prayer at a quarter to ten one night, as her grandmother lay dying miles away. "I got a call the next day from the nursing home saying my grandmother had died at ten minutes to ten," Winslow recalls, her eyes moist with tears. "I've always been fascinated with the power of thought. It's extraordinary. The mind is capable of things we don't acknowledge or realize. And it's not mysterious. It's scientific. It's quantifiable," she says. With such a momentum of healing intention, Winslow and her trainees undergo as much healing as do their clients. One trainee spontaneously remembers a rape and releases a lifelong terror of being violated. Others have healed back problems and experienced a growing sense of wholeness. Whatever is there to be healed will be healed. "What I do in class is teach the basic techniques and then allow everybody to use whatever skills they have to bring forth their healing creativity," Winslow says. "I'd like healing to become more accepted by society. For us to know that what we think impacts ourselves and other people. For us to acknowledge it is a powerful tool to heal humanity and land and houses and animals. With our minds and hearts, we can heal the planet. We can affect a shift. We are affecting a shift." She smiles and nods her head. Firmly. Quietly. Knowingly. |
