Over the years, my son has watched hundreds of clients show up at my home office. Frequently, they’d arrive unhappy or sickly and leave more joyful and healthy. He once asked me if I was a doctor. I told him I wasn’t, but I was a healer. He responded, “So not all healers are doctors—does that mean there are some doctors who aren’t healers?”
Fortunately, the bar has been shifting over the years. We’re starting to see that physical health-care modalities—including surgery, technological evaluations such as X-rays and MRIs, and, yes, bodywork—are more similar than not to the softer healing processes, which include emotional therapy, hands-on healing, and homeopathy. The commonality is that all health-care practices qualify as energy medicine. The main distinction is there are two main types of energy: physical and subtle. These days, practitioners mix these two types of energy more frequently, getting great results for their clients, thus earning for their discipline the label of energy medicine.
The purpose of this column is to introduce you to a little-known but amazing man whose subtle energy practice led to startling recoveries for his patients. You’ve probably not heard of him, although he assisted thousands of people in the 1800s. He began his life as a physician and ended it as a miracle maker. I’ve culled clues from his philosophies and successes to present a few tips for how you can better integrate subtle energy into your physically oriented healing practice. His client accomplishments serve as the best testimony I could provide for blending these two sides of healing in your own world.
It’s All About Energy
Before I introduce you to this person, I want to explain why all medicine is energy medicine and the main differences between subtle and physical medicines. The basis of my discussion is that everything is made of energy, which I define as “information that vibrates.”
There are two basic types of energy: physical and subtle.
• Physical energy is measurable. It’s the stuff in our coffee cups in the morning. It’s the rush of adrenaline that gets us out the door when the winter winds threaten to dismantle our progress, and it formulates the dyes coloring your clothing.
• Subtle energy is less measurable. It’s quantum in nature, which means it doesn’t always behave in ways that manifest in our everyday perception of time and space. But subtle doesn’t mean weak. Subtle energy underlies physical reality, deciding what will appear or not appear. Subtle systems, such as the chakras, meridians, and human and other fields, are the girders and beams that determine the shape of physicality.
The truth is, whether you are working with measurable or subtle realities, you are operating energetically. As explained by energy expert and scientist James L. Oschman, PhD, “An intervention in a living system involves energy in one form or another.”1 Therefore, he points out, allopathic or traditional medical care is energy medicine, as are other ways of applying the applications of energies, including electromagnetic activity, light, and sound.2
As a bodyworker, you massage physical energy to produce beneficial results for your clients. Consciously or not, you also maneuver subtle energy. Your thoughts, intentions, feelings, hopes, and dreams for your clients move more than muscles. They boost clients’ moods, alter their subtle structures, and support positive goals.
Historic Wisdom
Now, let’s meet Dr. James Rogers Newton, whose incredible results provide me with inspiration for my subtle energy work. I believe they can do the same for you.
Imagine you are on a steamer in 1853 and yellow fever breaks out. The ship’s surgeon loses every single patient he attends to, totaling 74 people. But Newton—a passenger who also pitches in—saves every person he assists.3 If you were on that ship, who would you want as your healer?
These days, the Internet would be overwhelmed with the amazing news. But the interest wouldn’t have ended with the disembarking of the passengers from the Golden Gate Steamer. Paparazzi would have followed Newton to his healing practice in Cincinnati, Ohio (which opened in 1858), where he became so popular that he saw up to 100 patients a day.
There are thousands of healings attributed to Newton. He was so effective he was sued three times by the envious. To bolster him during one suit, 1,000 people gave statements testifying to his healing gifts. What’s even more remarkable is that the majority of the healings didn’t involve the use of his medical skills. (OK, once, after healing someone of a critical problem, he insisted the patient go home and eat a steak.) Rather, he applied what he called the principle of love to enable healings and cures.4
Newton’s Reliance on Love
In basic terms, Newton’s modus operandi—his main technique—was to gaze at his patients with love.5 Obviously, this method is easy enough. We can perform it for our clients, friends, even our bank teller. What enabled Newton’s process to create change, however, was his understanding of love, which I’ll be exploring via information in the book The Modern Bethesda, or, The Gift of Healing Restored.6 Written in 1879, this text includes direct accounts and explanations of Newton’s work and references to his philosophies. Because I am drawing from a copy of one of the original texts, the page numbers are sometimes difficult to read. I heartily encourage you to download the PDF quoted in the footnotes and read about Newton for yourself.
Newton’s views were based on the healings of Jesus Christ. Contrary to most Christians of that time, Newton didn’t believe that spiritual gifts, which included miraculous healing, dried up with the apostles’ deaths. Rather, he understood that healing powers were accessible to anyone who comprehended the absolute power of love. Specifically, Newton pointed out that Christ was moved by compassion to use healing to show spiritual truths that applied to all people.7 In Newton’s words, this “energy is still available.”8
Newton’s Christian beliefs weren’t exclusive. From my reading of the material, I conclude that he didn’t care whether people were Christian. In fact, many Christians today might not approve of him. He was frequently described as a “psychic” and a “medium,” and was comfortable with those labels. One reason was that Newton believed angels and the departed were continually available and assisted with healing the living.
Newton also embraced the sense of Oneness that I find in so many spiritual disciplines, including forms of Buddhism and Hinduism. He believed everyone was related through a single Father and that the spirit of this One Being dwelled within each person.9 In my reading of Newton’s works, I suggest that his principles were inclusive of everyone, no matter their age, class, creed, gender, or religion.
Instead of worrying about the qualities of the patient, Newton focused on the nature of the healer. He advised that healers be childlike, humble, and imbued with love. If a healer was able do this, Newton said, the magnetism of love would assert itself and everyone involved in a healing might experience the sense—and reality—of heaven on earth.
As well, Newton’s powers worked on clients present and not present. Besides serving as a vessel for love, a healer’s job was to focus his or her mind on two simultaneous points: the Father and the patient. The ultimate role of the healer, he asserted, was to complete the circuit between the sick and the Father. Sometimes Newton would hold a possession or garment from the absent patient, but this wasn’t necessary. Rather, he relied on the magnetism created when love interconnected the One, the patient, the invisible helpers, and his own heart.
What was the result? A patient in Wales provided what might have been the simplest answer. The Welshman saw threads of light pass from himself to Newton during a healing.10 Quite literally, Newton’s simple reliance on love invoked healing light that brought forth a more healed state for the client.
Contemporary researchers would call these streams of light “subtle energy.” The fact that our emotional and mental states impact our health has already been established scientifically. The link between mainstream and holistic medical approaches lies in the existence of biofields, electromagnetic patterns that impact all levels of a being. These fields, measurable (physical) and not (subtle), are linked to consciousness.11
Today’s Applications
The contemporary upshot is that our conscious state can impact a client, positively or negatively. Newton’s practice and philosophies provide more than an age-old trail of breadcrumbs that reveal how a superhuman can create miracles. Rather, they illuminate principles any of us can employ to advance our own and others’ health. My outline of his advice, organized for practical use, is as follows:
1. Believe in something bigger and higher. I don’t believe it matters what religion or spirituality you relate to, or even if you do. One of the teachings in the 12-Step Programs provides wonderful advice in this regard. The program suggests that you simply believe in a Higher Power, whether that is a religious figure or the goodness in humanity.
2. Concentrate on Oneness. There truly is a connection between us all. For a healer, this truth enables the connection that can create the most effective outcome.
3. Focus your mind. Specifically, we must get out of our own way, and rather than “be the healer,” become the humble link between the client, the Oneness, and whatever other invisible helpers you believe exist. These can be considered angels, the deceased, or guides, but could also be understood as subtle energy fields that hold information that can encourage health.
4. Hold the state of love. When have you felt loved? What occurs inside you when you have best expressed love? Take a few minutes and tune into the feeling and meaning of love to you. Practice recreating this sensation in every area of your life, and it will be easier to hold it during a client session.
5. Release the outcome. I’m sure Newton desired healing for a client, but even more important, he wished for them to feel cared about.
6. Be at peace. My readings of Newton’s work suggest that the misery of human existence took second place to his childlike nature. Rather than worry about what might not happen, he concentrated on believing that the best might happen. And that frequently brought about the best outcomes.
As shared by Debasish Mridha, a poet and seer, “Once you chose [sic] the power of love, nothing is impossible.” This also means that through the power of love, everything just might be possible.
Notes
1. James L. Oschman, “What is Healing Energy? Part 3: Silent Pulses,” Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies 1, no. 3 (April 1997): 184.
2. Cyndi Dale, The Subtle Body: An Encyclopedia of Your Energetic Anatomy (Boulder: Sounds True, 2009): 6.
3. World Research Foundation, “Dr. James Rogers Newton … and His Gift of Healing,” accessed March 2016, www.wrf.org/men-women-medicine/dr-james-newton-healing-gift.php.
4. Ibid.
5. Underground Health Reporter, Danica Collins, “Extraordinary Healing Power of Love … Causes Cancer to Vanish,” accessed March 2016, www.undergroundhealthreporter.com/braco-healing-power-of-love-cancer/#axzz3stZ2HJu2.
6. Alonzo Eliot Newton, The Modern Bethesda, or, The Gift of Healing Restored (New York: Newton Publishing, 1879), accessed March 2016, https://ia802604.us.archive.org/31/items/modernbethesdaor00newtrich/modernbethesdaor00newtrich.pdf.
7. Ibid., Introduction.
8. Ibid., Preface.
9. Ibid.: 102; Edward Macomb Duff and Thomas Gilchrist Allen, Psychic Research and Gospel Miracles (New York: Thomas Whittaker, 1902): 261–3.
10. Newton, The Modern Bethesda.
11. Huffington Post, The Blog, Shamini Jain et al., “Biofield Science and Healing: An Emerging Frontier in Health and Medicine,” November 23, 2015, accessed March 2016, www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak-chopra/biofield-science-and-heal_b_8613438.html.
Cyndi Dale is an internationally renowned author, speaker, and intuitive consultant. Her books include the bestselling The Subtle Body: An Encyclopedia of Your Energetic Anatomy (Sounds True, 2009), The Complete Book of Chakra Healing (Llewellyn Publications, 2009), and Advanced Chakra Healing (Crossing Press, 2005). To learn more about Dale and her products, services, and classes, please visit www.cyndidale.com.