The Phoenix Spirit Home

See Me, Feel Me, Touch Me, Heal Me

By Suzanne Nielsen

"Great strides have been made in the arts and in the cure of diseases, but in the future, as the flower of our civilization unfolds, new diseases will arise and more strange disorders will be known, springing from causes that lie deep in the minds of men and which can only be eradicated by spiritual living."

-H. P. Blavatsky.

A few weeks back I met my cousin Diane at Burger King on Rice Street for coffee. We do this once a month in an attempt to solve the world's problems. Before coffee we engage in a deep search for one-of-a-kind items at Unique Thrift across the street. On holidays the store marks everything half price. In order to get a parking place you must get there at least 30 minutes before they open. My cousin was there before me, but not by much. Compulsivity runs in the family.

I slip in line behind her and start to shiver. It's Martin Luther King Jr's. birthday, and the morning is frigid. I don't want to talk because the cold hurts my teeth. "What are you writing?" she asks. I bury my mouth inside my jacket and mumble, "an article on spiritual healing. I thought I'd write about a certain type of hands-on healing I learned back in the mid-eighties called Mari-EL."

My cousin looks into my eyes and says, "I've been working with healing prayers and the laying on of hands at my church since the early 1990s." This is the only one-of-a-kind find I need this morning, so I suggest we ditch the line and go right for the coffee. At Burger King she lays it on the table, so to speak.

It all started when her father became sick. For five years, every Sunday, Diane would navigate his wheel chair up to the altar of the Episcopal Church so he could receive hands-on healing. "I would stand off to the side and watch my father's body sink into contentment. As I watched I also felt a soothing, calming feeling overtake my spirit, and occasionally I would have a huge release of emotions by crying, then sobbing. I knew my father was dying, and so did he, but the weekly sessions comforted him for five years."

At my uncle's service they offered healing prayers and the laying on of hands. After the funeral one of the healers approached my cousin and said she thought Diane had a gift for this. In 1997 Diane met with Margaret, who is now an Episcopal priest, and began a mentorship.

This story fascinated me, and I wondered what kept her from telling me this years before. Of course I had never told her my experience with Mari- EL, though at one time it was a huge part of my life.

Diane read a host of books, and she began working with a small group of women with whom she continues to practice the laying on of hands each Sunday at her church. "Every Sunday three to seven people go forward to the altar. The healers work with each person for about a minute or two. If we are asked to visit someone outside of the church we sometimes bring a book of prayers to read, and we are with the person receiving the healing for usually 30 minutes. We lightly touch, either by putting our hands on their heads, or by putting our hands on their shoulders. Healing is to let out emotion Ñknowing your body may not healÑit's about praying for acceptance or release. It's about you simply healing yourself with the help of a magnetic field around you."

As Diane tells me this I think back to Ethel Lombardi's teaching of Mari-EL, which stemmed from her knowledge of Reiki. Reiki was founded in Tokyo in 1922 by Mikao Usui, and offers a subtle energy to the laying on of hands. An entire Reiki treatment may last as long as 45 minutes to an hour; the energy field that Reiki works with is similar to Mari-EL, in that the healer is open to providing a method of good fortune by following five basic principles. Light touch is applied, usually to the head and shoulders, and it works in conjunction with regular medical or psychological treatment.

"I always start off by saying, ÔI lay my hands upon you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,'" Diane said. During her preparation her hands get warm and then hot. "I feel an electrical charge, especially if I dont claim it for myself." Diane believes she is a vehicle in the process; the actual healing is outside of her. She never feels depleted of energy after a healing. Some practitioners quit because they feel they "pick up the pain of the person. This is God doing this; it is not me. Therefore the pain doesn't transfer." As she said this I couldn't help but feel I had heard these same words from Ethel Lombardi when she spoke of Mari-EL and Reiki healing, always ending with "You, the healee are the ultimate healer."

I look into Diane's sky-blue eyes. I look at her long, slender fingers and remember how she caressed me at my mother's funeral almost 20 years ago now, moving her fingers up and down my back as I sobbed uncontrollably. Although I thought I would never recover, my sobbing subsided, my own breathing steadied. I breathed, and I was comforted by the healing energy of laying on of hands, Reiki, Mari-El, or whatever name you wish to attribute to this lightness of being.

Seven years before my mother's death, in 1992, I went to Carlton College in June for a conference sponsored by Spiritual Frontiers Fellowship. Four days before I was to leave I had surgery on my right foot. I was in a wooden- soled shoe-like boot to protect the padding, making my foot appear three times its size. I had a metal pin that secured the tip of my big toe halfway up the arch atop my foot. Although I couldn't feel it directly, I could feel a prodding sensation whenever I twisted it out of its marginalized range of motion.

Upon arriving at this five-day conference, I learned that the dorm I was staying in was on the third floor of a building with no air conditioning or working elevator. The steps were shallow, cement and cumbersome, and my schedule between classes varied, making my days slip into 14-hour repetitions. Between sessions on channeling and electromagnetic energy fields I received hands-on healing from people I had never met before; one of these women was Ethel Lombardi, whose healing touch reduced my foot pain to a tingling sensation. My foot tickled. I felt giddy. Shirley, a mentee of Ethel's, insisted on offering me Mari-EL healing throughout my stay at Carlton, and it was Shirley who comforted me on my third night as I climbed to the third floor and fell, causing me to spring the pin out of my foot and tumble down several flights of stairs. The commotion on the steps alerted Shirley, who, luckily, was just around the corner and promptly retrieved my metal pin, which I re-inserted into the tip of my toe. I waited for her hands to warm my deep ache, and calm my foot again.

Like Reiki, Mari-EL was one of the first energy systems to evolve in America. It is the healing energy of the mother Mary. Its theory is that every cell in our body has a memory. Negative memories (emotional and/or physical) block the flow of energy. Mari-EL healing helps to release the negative memories by using energy lines and symbols. The practitioners, either hands-on or with the hands not touching the body, but within close proximity, channel a loving and gentle energy.

Three weeks after Carlton I returned to my podiatrist who upon unwrapping the gauze from my injury smiled in delight to see how well my foot had healed. "It's almost a miracle," he said as he turned the heel of my foot in every direction, examining his work as though this were the foot of Frankenstein. The swelling was under control, and the foot itself hurt little. When I told him about the healing I'd received at Carlton he listened half-heartedly, and claimed that it was relatively easy for the body to heal itself at my age (I was 29 at the time). The following week I had surgery on my left foot. This foot caused me several complications, including another surgery six weeks later to remove a nerve that still leaves my foot numb from toe to heel. I never did feel Ethel's healing hands on this foot.

A year after my surgeries I studied under Ethel Lombardi to learn the techniques of Mari-EL healing. Our work started with guided imagery in healing my "inner child." During our months of working together I felt a negative energy leave my body. Years later I practiced Mari-El working with a dear friend who was dying of cancer; she claimed that her death transition was one she welcomed with a serenity that she could not truly explain. Four years later I entered treatment for drug abuse and alcoholism. I recalled Ethel and her kind eyes, her healing energy and once again I reclaimed that energy to see me through to sobriety.

Each of us has a story. Some of these stories are memorable through positive experience, some through negative experience. Mari-EL and other spiritual healing connects the transitions by making our stories whole, but not before we recognize the blockages, traumas, patterns and pain that affect our health spiritually, and often physically.

It's been 16 years since my days in treatment at Chrysalis. I have learned that Mari-EL and other forms of healing help us become self-empowered, protected and capable of manifesting our dreams. I also know we can help others achieve health, confidence, fulfilling relationships, and success by remembering that everything is energy and we are energetic beings. Energy healers are able to enhance their energy fields to match the energy field of the healee. This is what Diane does on Sundays at her church. This is what I've practiced in my own understanding of physical and emotional pain.

I wanted to call and thank Ethel Lombardi this week for putting me back in touch with spiritual healing, but as I searched for her email I found out she had passed on in October 2009. Instead, I called my friend and asked her if she would read this article. "I went a long time ago to see a woman in a church in Golden Valley do hands-on healing. Her name was something like Lugosi," she said. "Lombardi," I corrected her, then remembered why keeping thoughts like this to myself seems more manageable. "Yeah, yeah, that was it, Ethel Lombardi was her name," my friend said. "You know me," she continued, "faith's been a stretch since Reagan got elected. But Ethel was something."

I told her I was there that year, in the same church. I also told her that as far as a preference between methods of hands-on healing, I could see more similarities than differences. She said, "Both of us in a church at the same time is a miracle. Send me the article." And so I did, and so what do any of us have to lose?

I like to think of Blavatsky warming her hands as we come to a close of this article, in hopes of passing along the flame that begins in spiritual living.

Suzanne Nielsen is a local writer and instructor of writing at Augsburg, Metro State, and the College of St. Scholastica. You may view more of her writing at http://www.suzannenielsen.com.