Psychic Surgery
It was 1983. I was living near Houston, Texas, with two little sons and an ongoing case of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Besides having compromised energy, I was experiencing chronic sore lymph nodes, particularly in my neck and to the point that it hurt to turn my neck. At that time I was about five years into my symptoms and was searching for a cure, or at least an explanation, but I had given up thinking that the medical establishment could help me. Blood tests showed nothing was wrong. There was no name for what I had yet.
I was loosely associated with a nearby Unity Church (a Christian based church with a metaphysical bent) after having my son Dylan christened there in 1982. The Unity minister, a woman named Barry, called me one day to let me know that a psychic surgeon from the Philippines was in town. Knowing I was dealing with health issues, she asked if I might want to set-up an appointment. I did.
I tend to be skeptically open-minded about things I don’t understand. I had seen the TV special debunking psychic surgery (going into the body with hands and without cutting), but it seemed they were bent on debunking it. I hoped I would discover if it was for-real or not.
Stretched out on a massage table, I didn’t know what to expect. The dark haired surgeon who stood over me asked in broken English why I had come, before starting to work on my neck. I felt his hands press deeply into my skin and was startled to feel fluid drip down. Was it my own blood?
By the time he began working on my stomach he asked if I wanted to watch, so I leaned up to study his every move, hoping my curiosity would be satisfied. Once again, I saw his hands penetrate into my skin, but I wasn’t convinced that they were actually inside my body. He asked if I knew that I had an adhesion, while holding up a two inch piece of what looked like skin. At the time, I didn’t even know what an adhesion was, but when he told me it was scar tissue, I understood.
After my second cesarean, on occasion when I moved a certain way, I would experience a sharp pulsating pain, something akin to a “Charlie horse.” When it happened, I could visually see spasms on the left side of my stomach. I never thought to get it checked out because the pain never lasted long.
After the session, I was stunned, trying to integrate what had happened. I had asked the physic surgeon some questions but because of our language barrier I got no satisfying answers. His wife was American, so I made sure to talk to her before I left. I asked her two questions. First, ‘how is it possible to go into the body without a knife and leave no scar?’ She talked about it being like other body work, such as reiki, a healing technique that involves the laying on of hands. I was familiar with reflexology and acupressure, and she reminded me that when doing acupressure, a practitioner presses a part of the body to the point where it seems to open up. “He creates so much energy with his hands that they part cells,” she told me. She might have used laser surgery (cutting through tissue with high intensity light) as an analogy to explain psychic surgery, but, as far as I know, it hadn’t been invented yet.
My second question was “Why the Philippines? Why do physic surgeons come from there?" She said it was because they grow up with the tradition. They are born into it, accept it, and are trained from an early age to perform it.
I wasn’t convinced by the actual physic surgery session that anything significant had happened to me, but I came to believe something happened because the pulsating pain I sometimes felt on the side of my stomach never came back. Although I continued to experience the symptoms of CFS, my neck pain and mobility were markedly improved.
Even after having it performed on me, I can’t say whether physic surgery is real or not, but the experience taught me that anything could be possible … even if it isn’t logical.
Post note: My daughter-in-law is a R.N. who is furthering her nursing studies. Imagine my surprise when I learned that she was doing a paper on psychic surgery? Imagine hers when she found I had an experience with it? This entry was the result of her asking me to write down my story.
Comments
Its difficult to know where the real effects start and stop with these things. I'm sure that energy lines, acupuncture and chakras have some basis and there are too many reports of success for this to all be bunkum.
However, there have been some charlatan exposures too, and we had a television programme about Philipines based psychic surgery in the UK a few months ago, which seemed to use magician's sleight of hand rather than true healing. So I guess caveat emptor applies.
My wishes for your good health.
rashbre
Posted by: rashbre | December 2, 2006 9:56 AM
And oops, I got so into this post that I forgot to say that Michele sent me!!
Posted by: rashbre | December 2, 2006 9:57 AM
More things 'twixt heaven and hell and all that.......
But again, I would echo rashbre's caution - we have seen a lot of psychic debunking lately.......
Be careful and stay well, Colleen...
Michele sent me today
cq
Posted by: craziequeen | December 2, 2006 10:00 AM
i'm pretty open to non-traditional medicine and think the human mind and body has infinite self-healing possibilities that we have yet to tap in to. as far as "psychic surgery", i've never heard of it, but i know the Bible speaks of "laying on of hands" for healing numerous times and many Christians do this while they pray for healing over someone.
Posted by: bluemountainmama | December 2, 2006 10:41 AM
"Skeptically open-minded" is the way I feel about these things, too. I'm sure there are energies we haven't discovered or found a way to measure yet. And I'm glad you received some relief! I also like the synchronicity of your daughter-in-law's paper.
Posted by: Elissa | December 2, 2006 12:17 PM
Interesting.. let us know what your daughter-in-law finds out.. be well! :)
Posted by: Rebekah | December 2, 2006 12:41 PM
It is a new phrase.... I will have to remember...
"skeptically open-minded"... I really like that.
Of course I don't believe in psychic surgery but I do think acupuncture can be really helpful for certain types of pain.
Posted by: srp | December 2, 2006 2:54 PM
That is one really interesting story. The reason I keep going to my Indian general physican is because she believes in having patients use holistic remedies as well as traditional medicine. She is big in the Hindu community here and teaches meditation on the weekends.
In 1983 I was married in July and we lived in south central Indiana, in Bloomington (home of Indiana University), my husband's hometown.
Posted by: Karen | December 2, 2006 4:02 PM
srp, I understand. Studies on the effectiveness of acupuncture have been promising and it is becoming more and more accepted in the West, but of course that hasn't always been the case. I sort of wish my daughter-in-law had picked acupunture for a subject. I've had it done many times and could have offered her my experiences on that. It would have been a better introduction for her into alternative therapies. As it is, she picked a far-out one!
Posted by: colleen | December 2, 2006 4:05 PM
I have seen the TV special on psychic surgery and read some magazine articles about it, and I can see why they would connect it with Reiki and other similar laying on of hands therapies. Whatever works is good for me. I took a class in Reiki once, and reached the first level, but I never went further and now I have forgotten all that I knew.
Posted by: kenju | December 2, 2006 4:51 PM
Very interesting, Colleen. My skeptical self has a friend who is a massage therapist and she worked on an elbow that had hurt in an accident years before and always gave me pain. She worked very slowly and little by little kept manipulating the elbow until it hurt, then held it in that position until "the pain will be released and travel through my hands and be gone" and then she would take it a little further and do the same. I thought it was a bunch of malarky but she kept at it for well over an hour and then pronounced me "fixed". I'VE NEVER HAD A BIT OF PAIN IN THAT ELBOW SINCE !!
Posted by: ginnie | December 2, 2006 9:09 PM
I saw a documentary on that once....I don't understand it at all but the people that had been really believed it....who knows. I guess it is like our people who can take the fire out. Some things should remain a mystery and if we believe they truly will help us.
Do you take medication for CFS?
Posted by: Deana | December 2, 2006 11:02 PM
I don't know of any medication for CFS. Some people take meds for various symptoms that go with it, like sleep problems. I manage it by limiting activity and resting in between them, eating well, protecting against stress etc. I could fill a couple of pages on all the things I've tried and most have helped but none have cured. My case is not as severe as some I have heard about and I'm healthy otherwise.
I heard someone say once ... get a chronic illness and learn to take care of yourself and you'll live longer than most people. There's some truth to that.
CFS is an immune dysfunction. It's as if the body thinks it's constantly fighting off a threat and gets stuck in second gear and won't go in neutral, which can result in fatigue. Every one knows the feeling of burnout/exhaustion, for me it just doesn't take much for that to happen.
Posted by: colleen | December 3, 2006 12:52 AM
I've never heard of psychic surgery before but it sounds fascinating. I'm very open minded with regards to alternative therapies and really believe in combining conventional and alternative medicines for the best results. I'm investigating different therapies that could help my being bipolar...although they aren't looking too cheap right now!
Great post...thanks for sharing!
Posted by: Claire | December 3, 2006 9:22 AM
That is one of the hokiest things I've ever heard. If it worked then it could be measured statistically, but try finding that puppy in the real medical journal. But if it makes you feel better then hey, go for it.
Posted by: Jim | December 3, 2006 11:11 AM
That’s true, Jim, but it’s also true that most everything in the world could be viewed as unbelievable -- that we’re here at all, each unique, how babies are made and born, how wounds heal themselves -- but we have a collective agreement of what is accepted as real and normal. This is a tradition not unlike that of the Shaman in Native American culture and a practice that probably won’t ever get studied and recorded in a medical journal. No money for the pharmaceutical companies (who tend to pay for the majority of the tests) to make.
Sometimes it’s fun to imagine the world as if you were a Martian who just landed. How unbelievable it all would seem. How miraculous going into the body with concentrated light would have seemed to someone 50 years ago.
I don’t view much as completely black or white and I’m okay with saying, “who knows?” because I know there’s a lot more going on here than what we can see.
Posted by: colleen | December 3, 2006 12:17 PM
I think you have to keep open to anything that could help. I was diagnosed with CFS/Fibromyalgia in '89 and it continues to rear its ugly head in flare-ups. Some days I am just one ball of pain in every area in my body. It's just something I live with now and not much really takes it away.
Posted by: ruth | December 3, 2006 12:27 PM
Wow, that's a pretty remarkable experience. I have heard of it but not described from a patient's point of view.
Posted by: Pearl | December 3, 2006 7:34 PM
Wonderfully rich article you pointed to as well.
Posted by: Pearl | December 3, 2006 7:46 PM
Wow. Hmmm...I like that you are skeptically open minded. I tend to be that way, too. There is a lot to this world that is still mysterious, too much of it to think we can know everthing with certainty.
Posted by: Jos | December 4, 2006 9:26 AM
Colleen, I kept reading because I like your blog and this is fascinating. I like the concept of "skeptical open-mindedness." I think it's too bad when people dismiss things we know little about out of hand. There's a lot of mystery in the world. I had a horse with problems cantering to the left once. I tried lots of things and accupressure seemed to work best, but my dad scoffed and said "Placebo effect." With a HORSE?! When he went to a new home, his owner called me to find out if he'd ever been injured on his left side in the girth area. She'd talked to an animal psychic who said he told her he'd been kicked there. I don't know if he'd been injured there, but I do know that the accupressure guy told me his ribs were always out in that area. Coincidence? Maybe. But I'll keep an open mind. Regardless of how, the animal psychic was able to help him.
Posted by: tarakuanyin | December 4, 2006 2:03 PM
This is so cool! I believe it....Plus, if it works and there were no bad side effects, how can it be wrong?
I just think this is the coolest thing.
Posted by: Nancy | December 5, 2006 9:40 AM
Very interesting post. As an RN, while I believe in traditional medicine and healing....I think there's a lot to be said for this type of alternative healing. It's all about the energy.
Posted by: Terri | December 5, 2006 11:27 AM