The Fascinating World of Pranic Healing: What in the world is it?

On the 4th of June, I had my most amazing experience in Pranic healing. I was treating someone who was recovering from a severe stroke that had left him a quadriplegic for six months, last year. His right side was very weak. In the first session that he received he saw a 50 percent improvement and he could raise his right arm and leg very high and also walk with much better coordination. I’m still a student and very grateful that I could bring so much relief to someone who had been written off by many doctors. His blessings afterwards were the greatest reward. After I wrote my first article what really interesting to read was that the largest number of emails that I read through, either ended or began with-Is Pranic Healing another form of Reiki? And I remembered one of the things that I had asked as well was-how is this different from Reiki? Now of course I can say, no, it’s not Reiki. If it was, I would call it Reiki and not Pranic Healing. So then of course the next question, for many who don’t know is-what in the world is Pranic Healing? I would highly recommend the book co authored by Master Stephen Co, an engineer, who heads the west coast center for Pranic healing and Dr Eric Robbins a physician who combines Pranic healing with traditional medicine when he treats his patients. The results are quite outstanding, from what I have seen and read. The book is called “Your Hands can heal you” and is available at Amazon and other leading bookstores. You will also benefit greatly by reading the book “Miracles through Pranic Healing,” written by Master Choa Kok Sui. They are very easy reads and give you a comprehensive idea of the origin of Pranic healing and how it works. Reiki is described in Co’s book as a Japanese hands-on energy channeling system, originating, it is believed, from the esoteric practices of Tibetan monks. Reiki practitioners become masters after going through 3 levels of training. They supposedly “tune in” to the universal healing energy by a Reiki master, and then allow the energy to flow through them to the body of the person they are healing. Pranic healing, says Co, is a more comprehensive and treatment specific form of energy medicine than Reiki and some other systems. It is simpler to learn and a lot easier to apply than many ancient and revered formal Chinese systems like acupuncture or Chi Kung, for instance. Additionally Pranic healing includes techniques rarely found in other energy medicine systems. These techniques were perfected after many years of due diligence and experimenting done by Master Choa Kok Sui. Master Choa Kok Sui was a Chinese Filipino businessman, and engineer, who spent years researching the very foundation of many meditative and spiritual systems and his focus, was to find a way to use vital life force for healing. “He concluded that healing, at its most basic, consists of cleansing and energizing-that is cleaning away dirty or blocked life force from the aura and replenishing the aura with fresh energy,” writes Stephen Co. He adds that Master Choa then applied a rigorous scientific approach to test the effectiveness of different energy healing systems. Each patient received a particular type of energetic treatment and the results were observed and recorded, with the help of highly skilled healers. The experiments were overseen by nurses and other medical professionals. Finally, after years of constant testing and refining methods to clean out dirty energy and increase the supply of healing energy, Master Choa published his first book in 1987. That book was called Pranic Healing. Its latest, updated edition is called “Miracles through Pranic Healing”, and is the basis for the first level course that I learnt. I think we all know one very important fact even though many of us often don’t pay attention to it. Our body has the ability to heal itself. How many times do we get a small cut on a finger and if we leave it alone it just heals by itself. I remember legendary singer Asha Bhosle’s son Anand telling me how she had broken her toe and continued on her long tour. By the time the doctor got to it, the fracture had already healed. So when we are sick, we use drugs and other forms of treatment as aids. However, it’s really the body that does the repair work. Stephen Co points out that while medical science can explain the neurological and bio chemical responses involved in healing a cut finger, it cannot explain how the body interprets those responses and heals itself. “We know intuitively that there must be a consciousness behind this self healing ability, one that knows how to work in the same way that our body knows how to breathe without our having to command our lungs to inhale and exhale.” It seems that our body has a storehouse of energy that it uses for healing and Master Choa’s life’s work was to find a way where a person could learn how to regulate that energy not just to improve our general well being but also to relieve specific problems. Energy medicine encompasses a variety of alternative healing methods. Many are being used in collaboration with traditional medicine, and now finally health insurance companies have started covering some of these alternative treatments, like acupuncture etc. What causes our body to manifest illness? According to Co, good health results from having the right amount of energy flowing smoothly through the body and ill health is caused when there are blockages that stop the smooth flow of that energy. Once that is corrected through increasing or stimulating the amount of life force in the body, the body will heal. Pranic healing seems to have an edge over some other forms of alternative healing because according to Co, it is “a more comprehensive and treatment specific form of energy medicine than Reiki or therapeutic touch for instance. It’s simpler and a lot easier to apply. Besides Pranic healing includes teachings rarely found in other energy medicine systems like the detailed use of colored prana and the practice of energetic hygiene”. In Pranic healing the healers look at the aura and any disturbances in the aura. It’s interesting that I had heard of the word “aura’ and people reading auras and had no clue, what it was, other than thinking that it’s some sort of energy that shadows our body. I didn’t know how to read auras either, but I would look at people and intuitively feel, at times that something was wrong with someone; but it was more of a psychic sense than an understanding of what an aura is. I remember a couple of years ago meeting a friend’s mother and while she was very health conscious, active, exercised regularly and had been a life time vegetarian I saw some kind of darkness around her and kept telling him that she doesn’t look well. That something was wrong. A few months later she was diagnosed with breast cancer. But reading an aura was something I learnt in the first basic course. Aura has been described as a field of luminous multicolored radiation that surrounds a person or object. Each color signifies a certain vibration which has different meanings. I saw an online site devoted to aura, describing it as being connected with the activity of the chakra (Sanskrit for "energy wheel"), and that “the colors of the aura give us information about the quality of consciousness, as well as one's emotions, thoughts, abilities and the vital energies of a person.” What was interesting was that once you learn, it is so easy to read the aura. During the basic and advanced courses, we looked at trees and their auras, and energy particles in the sky which in hindsight I had always seen but never quite realized what they were. Similarly you can see energy globs on the earth as well. We had a fun time looking up at trees and the sky, and interestingly, every one of us saw the aura as well as the energy particles. Then we looked at some people in the class and could see their aura as well. In Pranic healing you learn how to sensitize your hands and they literally turn into what I laughingly call my MRI scanners. With those hands you scan the body of the person before you. You can also scan plants and animals, and with a little bit of practice feel the areas which are diseased. The scanning once done is followed by two hand techniques. One is called sweeping, and the other energizing. Sweeping cleans away the dirty energy from the affected areas and energizing fills the diseased area with positive, healing energy. Reiki has no such comparable sweeping technique says Stephen Co. All these techniques are extremely easy to use-so easy that we learnt them and practiced them right away in the very first course. It was even more fascinating that each one of the students could see instant results. These powerful techniques enable the Pranic healer to draw energy from the atmosphere and project it into the body of the person who needs treatment. I saw that the relief the sick person feels is almost immediate. I have yet to meet someone who I have treated say-I didn’t feel a thing. And that is what has fascinated me. What is even more fascinating is how well long distance healing works. I have treated several friends and even my dad long distance after his surgery and a friend’s mom and the results were quite startling.