The Magic of Healing
Dr. Keith Willcock PhD
Author Bio
I was born in Suffolk, England in 1945. In 1952 I moved to Nova Scotia, Canada where I grew up. My academic degrees include a Bachelor’s Degree in Physical Education, a Master’s Degree in Religion, a Master’s Degree in Social Work, an advanced Diploma in Clinical Hypnosis and a Doctorate in Psychotherapy.
During the 1980’s I began experimenting with LSD and other alternative methods of treating problems of the mind. As part of this search for solutions to problems that were only being partially addressed by traditional medicine I went to India where I completed my Yoga Teacher Training at the Shivananda Ashram. Since then Yoga has become my lifestyle and has formed the basis for my healing work.During these years I was an associate in an alternative community that provided services to people suffering from schizophrenia.
In the 1990’s I studied Occidental Shamanism in Canada and worked with shamans in Cuba, Peru, Bolivia and Central America.
In 1982 I set up a private clinical practice in Montreal Canada and over the ensuing years developed a unique system of mind-body healing which was designed to help students connect with their own Inner Wisdom and their true Life Path.
I have conducted healing workshops throughout Eastern Canada, the US, and Central America. I moved to Central America in 2000. I presently live in Nicaragua where I offer private consultations and healing sessions. I take students on spiritual journeys to Peru, Bolivia, and India. In my spare time I write and do wood sculptures
Description
When our mind, our body or our spirit become unbalanced we need healing. Healing is required to restore the balance. Of course there is a natural process of healing going on all the time. If we overeat for example, our body will let us know by giving us indigestion and then it will set about to correct the problem to the best of its ability. We may complain about the way it goes about rebalancing but if we listen to it and follow its directions, like don’t eat fried food, we’ll eventually feel better.
Not all problems are like that. We often self heal perhaps without even knowing that the problem ever existed. It was just a minor blip on our mind screen.
Some problems are very clear and straightforward and require interventions by skilled professionals. You broke your leg. Call the doctor. That’s the solution.
Other problems are more subtle and we often don’t know exactly what we need or where to go to get it. When a friend dies or we lose our job, what can we do to avoid depression and understand what really happened?
There are some problems that are very deep. These have to do with the meaning of life. Why am I here? What is the nature of pain and suffering and happiness? Not everyone thinks about these things but in the end they cannot be avoided. We have to come up with a satisfactory answer to what makes everything tick.
This book is about the ticking. Where does it originate and how does it really affect us? The ticking that I am talking about is our Soul and our relationship with it. Where is it? Why is it so important? If we do connect with it what difference will it make in our daily lives?
There are no categories here. There is no Divine guidance. There are many stories of people who have found the way to their own Truth and some who didn’t. This book is not about you as a category or a disorder, a success or a failure. It won’t prescribe any religion or call on you to repent and make an offering to someone so you will feel better. It doesn’t offer any magic pills for feeling good. However if you read it there’s a good chance that it will help you know who you really are and why you are doing what you are doing in life. It will give you some guidelines and suggestions to help you live a happy life. And all of that seems to me to be a very good thing.
Book excerpt
Have you ever known anyone who has snakes in their belly? Perhaps not because its an unusual state of mind. Nevertheless I have met several people who suffered from this malady.
One of them was Tony. He came to one of my groups in Panama with his wife. Tony came for help. His wife on the other hand, came to see what i was all about and perhaps prove that Tony couldn’t get well. She sat across from me, arms crossed, dark sun glasses hiding her feelings, like an FBI agent conducting and interrogation.
When I asked Tony what his problem was his wife answered for him that he had pains in his stomach which were so intense that they caused him to hallucinate at times. She went on to say that Tony had been to many specialists and that he was taking medication that controlled the symptoms but it did nothing for the underlying problem. Nobody seemed to know what that underlying problem was.
When she had finished she looked at me accusingly and asked. “So, what are you going to do about it?
Frankly, I had no idea . I felt that my back was against the wall and that I had better produce something good and now. I expected that Tony had felt that way many times.
Fear can open the door to bursts of inspiration sometimes and this was one of those times. Without thinking I looked at Tony and said, “It’s quite simple. You have a snake in your stomach. All we have to do is take it out and you’ll be fine.”
As soon as I had his agreement I moved quickly over to him and began to dig my fingers deeply into his belly and yelled at him to breathe deeply and help me get the snake out.He opened his mouth and I became quite theatrical a I put my fingers in his mouth and began to pull the imaginary snake out. Tony seemed to be totally engaged in the drama that I had artificially created. He seemed to really be in a life and death struggle with the imaginary snake.
Of course we got the snake out and burned it in a fire that we made. Then I asked Tony. “Now there are no more pains, are there?”
He assured me that there weren’t and the fact was that he left the group without any recurrence of pain or anxiety. Tony’s wife was the only person who seemed unhappy about the extraordinary results. She kept her dark glasses on and when we had a break she asked to see my credentials. What a way to celebrate.
When I called Tony several weeks later to invite him to a follow up group, without his wife, he had several reasons why he could not attend but he told me that he was still pain free and off medication. I never heard from him again.
I expect that his symptoms came back over time or took another form because at least at one level, the snake represented his wife. It would be a lot more difficult to change his relationship with her than it had been to remove the snake from his belly.
The point of the story is not whether the treatment worked or not. It is to show that in any healing there is a moment of magic when something mysterious, an incomprehensible something, happens, without which all the techniques in the world mean little.
In this case Tony believed me. I don’t know why. Perhaps he was just desperate enough at that moment to trust somebody who talked as if they knew what they were doing. His blind faith seemed to bring him to a place where he believed that something good would happen to him if he went along for the ride.
There was a magical synapse that brought all the elements together for Tony and that is what I call the mystical element of healing.
Author Website
http://www.keithwillcock.com