One weekend in the mountains there was an event called A Gathering of the Peacemakers in Grandfather Mountain campground. It was a beautiful setting, and the weather was outstanding. My acupuncturist friend and I went to promote our healing work. I backed in and parked the car in the grass at the edge of a meadow along with a few other ‘vendors’, and we set up a card table and chairs. She put out information on her acupuncture practice, and I had cards for my healing energy work.  

A couple of cars down the line to the left a few people were showing off their car canopies, which were very original tent-type structures that you attach to the back of a car to provide a sheltered space for these types of events, and for camping too. They offered to let us use one, which helped promote their inventions and we gladly accepted. The shade it provided was very welcome.

One of the guys with the canopy group said he had a bad headache. I reached up and began sweeping it out. I could feel the pain there and after I’d reduced it a fair amount I showed him how to do it for himself. He continued, and I checked back with him later to make sure he was okay. 

The crowd wasn’t huge, but maybe a few hundred people came to the event. A lot of them camped there. My friend and I lived close by so we were able to head home in the evening and return early in the morning. It was all very casual and flowed very smoothly. 

People, mostly young college-aged people cruised the line of vendors to see what was on offer. To our right was a woman giving chair massages for a nominal fee.

At our table they’d pick up my friend’s card on acupuncture and thank her, then they’d pick up mine and ask, what kind of energy work do you do? It became clear right away that it would be easier to give a demonstration than to explain what I do, and that got the ball rolling.

I’d ask the person if they’d like a demo and when they said yes, I’d have them sit in a chair opposite me, and I’d move some energy in their hands until they could feel it, and if they were okay with that I’d then ask if they had anything that needed healing.

By the end of the weekend, the acupuncturist and I figured I’d done between 35 and 40 healings. Most of them took five minutes or less. Fewer than five needed more time than that. Word spread around the campground about what I was doing and people showed up to give it a try.

A lot of longstanding pains were cleared out, like persistent pain in the neck or back, or hip — things like that. I don’t recall all the details. For the most part, people came in small groups or clusters. This pushed me to work rapidly and prevented me from overthinking and talking too much about it. Also, with a few people around the atmosphere was more fun. It took the seriousness out of the situation, even though the issue may have been somewhat serious to the person suffering from it. 

During a calm spell, we got to chatting with the woman beside us doing chair massage, and she asked if I could work on her shin. She had fallen down a short flight of stairs a month before, and it was slow to heal. She was wearing shorts, and she turned so I could see the purple bruise and raised bump halfway between her knee and ankle. It was quite large and surprised me that it had been a month since it happened.

Standing maybe fifteen feet away from her I casually swept energy down her shin several times before people showed up that we needed to pay attention to. When things would quiet down I would sweep her shin and within a few hours the purple turned pink, and the bump shrank in size. I never did get to give her ‘proper’ close-up treatment, but I appreciated the opportunity to practice doing things a bit differently. 

I’m sure some ‘authorities’ on healing work, people fully indoctrinated in how it “should be done” would have conniptions if they saw several things I’d done that weekend, but that’s what indoctrination can do to a person. 

Sometime Saturday afternoon at the gathering in the campground a young man brought a friend for me to work on. He had a lump on his neck and had consulted doctors and dentists, and no one knew what to do. The guy who brought his friend had seen me working on others and was fairly enthusiastic about what I might be able to do for his friend, but the friend was very uncertain about it. I’d say he was a bit introverted as well, but maybe it was that the energy healing was too new and just too weird. Nevertheless, he was willing to give it a try.

I introduced him to the work and began pulling the unwanted mass off his neck. Every few minutes I’d stop and ask him how it was going. He’d feel it and let me know it was smaller and would begin to thank me like he thought I was done. I’d ask if he’d like to continue, to see if we could take it all away and he’d meekly allow that we could. I almost felt like I was pushing him, but I was wanting his permission to continue. His friend was beaming as the mass shrank and eventually went away entirely after maybe fifteen minutes of work. The guy still seemed very unsure about it all, but thanked me. However, a month or two later I saw his friend again, and he said the mass had returned. It sometimes happens like that. I’m not going to pretend that I know for sure why it happens when it does. It could be a combination of factors, but I think it has to do with being open to the Causal realm if only for a split second, to allow the ‘miracle’ to happen, or to allow yourself to have it or keep it.

A strong wind kicked up late Saturday afternoon, and many of the vendors there helped one another chase down things that were blowing away. Chairs, tables, flyers, and such were blowing in the wind. A short cloudburst followed the wind, and people went home or retreated to tents, campers, or nearby hotels to escape the rain. My friend and I gathered our things and went home.

We were back early in the morning, and my friend had gone off to explore while I held down the fort. Two little kids came by to see what I was up to. They couldn’t have been more than six years old. The boy and a girl came straight to me and asked what I was doing. I let them feel the energy in my palms, and their faces lit up with delight. I showed them how to do an exercise to flow more energy through their hands, and they followed along for a minute or two before their attention span came to an end, and they thanked me and ran off across the field. 

I sat quietly and watched as the sun continued to brighten the sky and the moisture in the grass from the previous days' rain turned to steam, creating a knee-deep mist across the open field.  Through this mist came a barefoot young woman in shorts and a halter top who appeared to be in her early twenties. She said her friends talked about me and suggested she come to see me.

I sensed the young woman was carrying a burden. I invited her to sit and tell me what was going on. She said when she was sixteen, her mother died from an aggressive form of cancer that came on suddenly. She had a younger sister too, and life had been difficult for them and her father. She’d come to this area to go to college, and she had pains in her abdomen. She’d gone to doctors, but they could find nothing wrong. They’d even done a colonoscopy. 

I listened carefully and then offered to introduce her to the kind of energy I work with. I took her hand and moved some energy around as I explained how blockages and tangles can get in a persons' energy field, and the work I do can clear them out, kind of like brushing tangles out of hair. She understood, and I worked her hands and arms, and then her feet and legs. I was starting to work on her abdomen when she started showing a little fear and grief. I stopped and asked if she was okay.  She said yes.

I moved my hands slower and more gently, and even though my hands were three or four feet away from her, we both could feel something pretty big starting to move. I stopped again and asked her to stand up a moment. I thought she needed to take a breath and maybe get some extra reassurance or focus on the present moment a bit better. I stood up with her and asked if she needed a hug. After a brief hug, I asked if she was ready to continue. She nodded, we sat back down, and I did more work, slow and easy. 

It was as if something large in her abdominal region was waking up. Like we were gently waking an independent energy field and asking it to leave, though this was unspoken. Moreover, when the energy shifted, it started to roll over and stretch or expand. I asked the young woman if she was ready to let it go. With eyes welling up she nodded, and with another gentle motion and energy coming from my right hand there was a sensation of a large energy system letting go, leaving her abdomen, and going off into the sky.  

We sat still, experiencing the moment, not knowing or needing to know with any certainty what had just occurred. We sat a few minutes quietly to let things stabilize. I watched as she changed from overly burdened and prematurely aging to a beautiful young woman in her early twenties with a life of possibilities ahead of her. 

After a few minutes had passed, she got up and thanked me with a hug then walked a few steps, then began running across the field. It was like those videos you see where a trapped animal is released and runs free. I can’t express how honored I felt to have facilitated that healing.

~ S