Healing as A Balanced State of Living

"In an ideal sense, well being is the condition of living consciously and fully - to the degree we are able. When we embrace the state of wellness, we accept responsibility for our own existence - our own physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual health. In a broader sense, wellness is a feeling of connectedness with ourselves, our community and our environment, and begins with a decision to live each day actively and productively…."

Those beautiful and meaningful words were written by Keitha McLean in the seniors' news magazine CARP more than six years ago and which I had quoted in an editorial for OHNews, the quarterly newsletter for the Ontario Healers Network

The events of September only made them more poignant!

And meaningful for spiritual/natural healers, many of whom added their own powerful healing energies to bring back wellness and connectedness to all those who had, and continue, to suffer terrible physical, mental and spiritual damage. And Ms. McLean's beliefs mirror wonderfully the mission statements of this 12 year-old healing organization: To make spiritual healing known and available to everyone in Canada; To create a social environment and spiritual consciousness in which people are accountable for their own health; To create a change in the medical emphasis from sickness-curing to health maintenance.

Those statements were first voiced almost ten years ago by a fledgling organization whose aim it was to make this most ancient of all healing techniques more widely known and available to the general public. And now, with more than 800 Certified Healers throughout Ontario, across Canada and several overseas countries, the Ontario Healers Network realizes and, I would surmise, all other complementary therapies,that its work is not only just beginning but that it has to change!

Despite the fact that the medical profession in Great Britain now accepts spiritual healers into its clinics and hospitals; that several complementary therapies, including Therapeutic Touch, Reiki,Yoga and Spiritual Healing are being introduced into the curriculum of medical teaching hospitals in the U.S., Canada is only just beginning to recognize the value of these complements to allopathic medicine. Therapeutic Touch is quietly being practiced by many thousands of professional nurses in hospitals in the U.S. and Canada.

Just this Spring, after years of hounding of such outstanding environmental medical professionals such as Ontario's Dr. Josef Krop by the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons, the province's medical doctors were given the right to use, or recommend other colleagues', complementary therapies. All of this after the City Of Toronto tried to control all aspects of "hands-on" therapies (including spiritual healing) in order to get at the body-rub parlors! And, of course, there was a hefty annual registration fee of $140. Other cities throughout Ontario were watching the experiment with interest. The province's Bill #2, An Act To Amend the Medicine Act,1991, scotched that. And then Winnipeg's bureaucrats tried the same tactic. That one, I believe, has not yet been resolved. I wonder how many other provincial cities are watching and waiting to see if they can control and milk the cash cow? But a bright spot is Vancouver where several complementary therapies are permitted in its hospitals and a much more relaxed system of flexible medical treatment.

I believe that some of the reticence of the medical profession is due to the lack of recognized standards, codes of conduct, basic acceptable standards of procedure and organizational structure of the many complementary therapies now widely and freely available. The Ontario Healers Network, and the Manitoba Healers Network, have tried to overcome some of these barriers by adopting a proper Constitution and By-Laws, a carefully thought out Code of Ethics, a Protocol of healing procedures and registering with the provincial governments as incorporated organizations. Much of this important groundwork was developed from the famous British healing organization, the National Federation Of Spiritual Healers, with which OHN and MHN are affiliated (as is The Association of Spiritual Healers of Alberta.)

Taken one step further all three last year became part of a world-wide healing organization called the Healers Network International, all connected through a website that also includes NFSH New Zealand, MPH Israel and the U.S.-based The Heart Awakening Project. I am sure that, over the next little while, outstanding healing organizations in Australia and South Africa, for instance, will add their strength to the growing world-wide healing community.

The world is changing so rapidly! As the speed of doing business, lengthening working hours with little or no pay increases, the stresses of caring for the aging population that will shortly begin to include the huge "boomer" generation, and many other factors, so the growing sense of isolation and helplessness comes to many. This is reflected, I believe, in the difficulties faced by many volunteer complementary therapists in organizing, and holding together, viable community organizations. Even though the "e-mail" and Internet developers boasted that this "instant" communications system would cut out paper work, speed up networking capabilities, I think that, in many cases, the opposite has happened. Many have withdrawn into the private, cocoon-like world of faceless interaction through the computer.

It is, perhaps, true for many in the business world. But complementary therapists for whom hands-on, compassionate treatment is so essential, this "Internet escapism" is so counterproductive to community activity and healing social activism. But there ARE answers, some of which are becoming evident: the need for various complementary therapies to begin to work together, to share a common code of ethics; a basic, standard set of skill qualifications (as are now operating in the European Union); a shared means of country-wide communication; perhaps a shared teaching "college," development of a wide range of small community-centre healing circles connected to each other by Internet. There must be many more original ideas out there waiting to be created, considered and, if worthy, put into practice.

The Ontario Healers Network has created the Canadian Network of Spiritual/Natural Healers as an umbrella to try and do just that. It is still in the formative stage. It needs ideas; it needs help, intellectual and financial.

There is an immense future ahead for the field of complementary therapies - if it is well organized, properly instituted, responsibly operated and trusted by the public at large. Let's tackle it together! Because, whatever technique each of us may be using, we are all tapping the one great spiritual source of all energy.

By Bryan W. Fearon