I have this image of having coffee with my brother-in-law who happens to be an M.D. — a research physician. He says to me “anything new in your life Bob?” I say, “Oh, I just took a workshop on Pranic Healing — it was pretty cool. You know, energy stuff. The healer waves his hands around a patient, and as a result of working with the patient’s energy field, the patient is healed.”
My brother-in-law, who is very intellectually oriented, (studies statistics, does double-blind studies, reads respected scientific journals) is faced with a dilemma. Should he ask for the check from the waiter, declaring that he has an important meeting to attend, change the subject, or probe, while holding back an urge to laugh? My bet says he changes the subject.
Pranic Healing is however, making its way into the jargon and minds of the west. And like acupuncture and other healing modalities that have come from the east, Pranic Healing will first have to overcome the skepticism of the western world.
I’m a skeptic by nature myself, but after attending a two-day workshop on Pranic Healing®, I believe those walls of skepticism will break, crumble and fall, sooner rather than later.
WHAT IS PRANIC HEALING®? Pranic Healing, according to their website — www.pranichealing.com — “is a highly developed and tested system of energy-based healing techniques that utilizes ‘prana’ to balance, harmonize and transform the body’s energy processes. ‘Prana’ is a Sanskrit word meaning ‘life-force.’ This invisible bio-energy or vital energy keeps the body alive and maintains a state of good health.”
Prana is an invisible energy which has eluded western methods of detection. Although a few years back a Russian scientist developed what came to be known as Kirlian photography, which documented an energy field around the body, there is still a reluctance on the part of western medicine to accept what cannot be tested by traditional scientific methods.
The website continues on, describing Pranic Healing® as “a simple, yet powerful and effective, no-touch energy healing. It is based on the fundamental principle that the body is a ‘self-repairing’ living entity that possesses the innate ability to heal itself. Pranic Healing works on the principle that the healing process is accelerated by increasing the life force or vital energy on the affected part of the physical body.”
THE WORKSHOP The two-day workshop on Pranic Healing® which I attended was held at the Holiday Inn in Burbank, California. The workshop was led by Master Stephen Co, a disciple of Grand Master Choa Kok Sui, the founder of Pranic Healing®. There were about twenty attendees and five or six support staff for this particular workshop. The purpose of the workshop was to learn the basic healing techniques of Pranic Healing®. The workshop ran from 9:30 to 5:30, Saturday and Sunday. By the end of the two-day workshop, we would be able to practice Pranic Healing techniques on family and friends.
As I entered the room, a few minutes before the workshop was scheduled to begin, I was immediately aware of the soothing music floating through the air, and two individuals at the front of the room. One of the individuals was Master Stephen Co. Trim and youthful in appearance, Master Co was holding in his hand what appeared to be a crystal. It had the shape of a very fat pencil and was about six or seven inches long.
Apparently Master Co was performing a healing. The “patient” had his back toward Master Co, and was about three feet away from him. From my vantage point, it looked like Master Co was scribbling in the air with the crystal, occasional flicking his wrist (the one holding the crystal) toward a bowl of salt water on the floor. This mini-healing session lasted a few more minutes, as I stared in fascination. The “scribbling” I witnessed would make more sense by the end of the workshop.
The premise of Pranic Healing® is that there is an energy field around the body. This field is sometimes seen by clairvoyants and referred to as the aura. According to the tenets of Pranic Healing, disease will first manifest itself in this energy field before expressing itself in the body. The Pranic Healer works with this energy field that surrounds the body. Healing the energy field acts as a catalyst to inspire the body’s ability to heal itself.
After introductions and a brief discussion, we broke off into partners and began learning the healing techniques developed by Grand Master Shui.
Grand Master Shui was an engineer by training. At a very young age he became interested in eastern thought — from yoga to mysticism. His engineering background, combined with an interest in eastern thought and the healing arts, led to the development of Pranic Healing®.
The first method we learned in the workshop was referred to as “sweeping.” The practitioner sweeps his hands over the patient’s energy field, eliminating any “dirty prana.” At the end of each sweep, the practitioner would flick his or her hands toward a bowl on the floor containing water and salt. This salt water bowl would neutralize the dirty prana. The general sweeping was done five times in front of the patient’s body and five times on the back of the patient’s body with the practitioner’s hands always being at least twelve inches from the person.
After practicing the sweeping techniques, we learned how to clean and energize the various chakras in the body. In the workshop we would be focusing on eleven major chakras, or energy centers as they are referred to in Pranic literature. Each chakra had corresponding ailments associated with it. For example, if the patient had anxiety issues — emotional distress, anger, irritability — certain chakras would be cleansed and then energized, using specific Pranic Healing® techniques. The techniques could not only be used on others, but we could essentially heal ourselves using these same techniques.
The training we received was, by the end of the two-day workshop, more than enough to launch the attendees off on their own adventures as novice Pranic Healers.
STORIES Perhaps the most enjoyable aspect of the workshop was listening to Stephen Co recount story after story of various healings. One that comes to mind was a trip that Co took up Mt. Baldy on a ski lift — as a sightseer — during the summer. Apparently he and his wife were traveling with another couple, who were in the ski lift chair directly behind them. Half way up the mountain, Co turned around expecting to see his friend enjoying the beautiful sights, only to see his friend, head tilted down, grabbing onto the chair lift center pole in sheer terror. is friend failed to mention to Co that he had a fear of heights.
At the top of the mountain the two couples decided to have lunch at the restaurant. Co, being the Pranic Healer he is, decided to perform a healing on his friend, to relieve his friend’s fear of heights. The problem was, they were in a public restaurant, eating lunch. So, if you can imagine . . . two couples sitting across from each other at a table, laughing, talking and eating, while Co surreptitiously attempts to heal his friend — right-hand making bizarre gyrations . . . scribbling in the air as covertly as possible. To the casual observer, it must have been quite a sight.
Well, to make a long story short, on the trip down the mountain on the ski lift, Co observed that his friend was not grabbing the chair lift bar in sheer terror, but gazing in sheer ecstasy, enjoying the majestic views that nature had to offer.
Eric Robins, M.D., had some stories to tell also (via a video we saw at the workshop). Apparently, Dr. Robins was the first western physician to introduce Pranic Healing to a major California hospital where he is a practitioner. Robins decided to offer Pranic Healing to his patients who weren’t responding to standard medical procedures. As a result, he observed firsthand, that Pranic Healing is an effective healing tool. So successful were his trials with Pranic Healing, well over a hundred physicians and nurses at his hospital took classes to learn these techniques themselves.
Dr. Robin’s stories can be read in the book, co-authored with Stephen Co and John Merryman, “Your Hands Can Heal You.”
Pranic Healing® will undoubtedly make inroads into the western medical community. As of this writing, it is being offered in some eighty countries. It’s just a matter of time before hospitals throughout the U.S. will have Pranic Healing on their list of services offered.
For those drawn to energy healing, I would highly recommend the Pranic Healing® courses being offered throughout the country. They are inexpensive and offer a first-hand look at energy healing.