“The Barbara Brennan School of Healing” by Cornelia Wathen

Laying on of hands healing is often regarded as a non-scientific, non-specific, intuitive hope-and-prayer practice. Healer Barbara Brennan, trained as a scientist herself, is demonstrating that hands on healing can be based on an extensive, coherent, highly specific body of knowledge that joins high sense perception and empirical scientific process. Furthermore, the Barbara Brennan School of Healing, founded in 1982, is demonstrating that both this body of knowledge and high sense perception can be taught.

The techniques and the concepts taught at Brennan’s school have their origin in her personal history. As a child, Brennan perceived energy fields around plants and animals and assumed that her vision was like everyone else’s. As she grew into adolescence, her ability to see subtle energies faded temporarily as she pursued her interest in science which led to an M.S. in Atmospheric Physics and a job as a research scientist with NASA during its heyday in the 60’s. She left NASA in 1971 to become a masseuse and bioenergetic therapist. It was at this time that her ability to see energy fields resurfaced, and she noticed clouds of colors around her clients which correlated with their emotional states. This vision became more and more specific over time. Eventually she not only saw a variety of phenomena on different layers of the human energy field, but also developed internal vision, or the ability to “see” inside the physical body. This internal vision became so accurate that it correlated with what x-rays show.

After living for nine years at the Pathwork Center, a spiritual community in Phoenicia, New York, Brennan opened a private healing practice in New York City. When I first met her in 1987 she was a healer of great renown. Indeed, one had to book months in advance to become her client. When her book, Hands of Light, was published, hundreds of people wanted to become her students, and so she closed her practice and devoted herself entirely to the development of her school…

Brennan teaches that illness is caused by the blocking of universal energy or creative force in the human energy field (or HEF). She describes the HEF with great specificity, differentiating between many layers of the field, each layer being associated with a particular chakra and a specific color/sound frequency band on the level of subtle energy. All layers occupy the space of the human body simultaneously but extend beyond the body progressive distances, appearing in layers around the body. Blockages begin in the belief system and can manifest in any or all layers of the HEF as well as in the physical body. Illness can be detected and treated in the HEF months or sometimes years before they crystallize down into the physical body.

Students in Brennan’s four year Healing Science Training learn to perceive the first seven layers of the field. For example, one can learn to see the etheric body on which the physical body is formed; one can learn to see the thinking process of the client by observing the mental layer of the field; one can learn to see the emotions circulating around the body as subtle energy clouds and observe how they affect the physical body; and one can learn to perceive seven chakras and to notice whether they are open or closed, congested or clear, injured or intact. Students build confidence in their ability to perceive through the constant verification offered by the teaching staff.

High sense perception is a source of information for healers. Once information is gathered, positive change is brought about by the running of energy into the client’s field by laying on of hands. Students in Brennan’s school learn to modulate their own energy field to the frequencies of each of the first seven layers of the HEF and to run those specific energies to effect specific change in the client’s field. Again, this is learned through a process of constant feedback from the teaching staff as they use high sense perception to perceive the students’ work.

The perception of the varying colors and frequencies of subtle energies was scientifically validated by the research of Valerie Hunt and others at UCLA. In her book, Hands of Light, Brennan describes Hunt’s work: “In a study of the effects of rolfing on the body and the psyche (“A Study of Structural Neuromuscular Energy Field and Emotional Approaches”), she recorded the frequency of low millivoltage signals from the body during a series of rolfing sessions. To make these recordings, she used elementary electrodes made of silver/silver chloride placed on the skin. Simultaneously with the recording of the electrode signals, Rosalyn Bruyere, of the Healing Light Center in Glendale, California, observed the auras of both the rolfer and the person being rolfed. Her comments were recorded on the same tape recorder as the electronic data. She gave a running report of the color, size and energy movements of the chakras and the auric clouds involved. The scientists then mathematically analyzed the wave patterns recorded by a Fourier analysis and a sonogram frequency analysis. Both revealed remarkable results. Consistent wave forms and frequencies correlated specifically with the colors Bruyere reported. In other words, when Bruyere observed blue in the aura at any specific location, the electronic measurements would always show the characteristic blue wave form and frequency in the same location…These frequency bands do not correspond to visible light… but the colors can occur in the same frequency sequence that visible light displays…” (p.33) This experiment was then repeated with ten other persons capable of using high sense perception to read the aura of HEF of the rolfer and the rolfee, and the same results were obtained.

Inseparable from the study of energy healing techniques is the study of psychodynamics as it relates directly to patterns and phenomena perceived in the HEF. Brennan has incorporated four years of study of Psychodynamics for Healers, based on the work of Willhelm Reich and John Pierrakos, M.D., into her four year training. This study enables the healer to understand the characterology of the client and to anticipate the client’s major character defenses. This knowledge has a profound effect on the depth and the success of the healing process.

In conjunction with techniques for the healing of others, Brennan teaches students techniques for self healing. Unless a healer knows how to maintain his own energy field in an open, charged state during a healing, he will deplete the client and become depleted himself. In addition to techniques for self-regulation, students are required to be in therapy themselves a minimum of two sessions per month throughout their four year training. Though conventional therapy is acceptable, it is recommended that students work with a Core Energetics Therapist or a Pathwork Helper. Following graduation, it is recommended that they work with a supervisor. Supervisors are all graduates of the school who have also been trained as therapists.

In order to graduate from the four year program and receive a certificate from the school, students must pass examinations in the theoretical, psychological, physiological and energetic aspects of laying on of hands healing, must complete a college level course in anatomy and physiology, and must demonstrate the ability to perceive and effect change on all layers of the HEF…. By maintaining these very high standards, the school’s certificate provides a serious model for future professional certification in the field.