Nathan also works extensively as a healer - or rather ‘witness to healing’.

The text below offers an attempt at a secular description, the link above describes the same process in language that will be familiar to those dedicated to following a spiritual path.

This word ‘healer’ is not accurate, since a more precise term would be ‘witness to healing’. This is because the healing comes from you, I simply help create the space for your self-healing to start. One way to describe this is that I can help catalyse and support your healing process. As my own awareness deepens, my ability to support you on your journey of healing also deepens.

Healing has to be experienced to be understood, though in a nutshell I help create a very still, deeply relaxed place within you. This is done partially by removing the blocks you have to remembering this place of stillness (e.g. by doing some gentle bodywork to free up tension) and partly by me coming into a place of stillness, and then you coming into resonance with this place. From this point of stillness and awareness, many things can be achieved that are very difficult within more day to day consciousness.

The crux of all naturopathic therapies is that the body is it’s own best healer - with healing, we remind the body of it’s natural state of wellbeing. Doing so can then help clear blocks to your own healing - often gently, but sometimes quite suprisingly and dramatically!

I am qualified in massage and aromatherapy and have been initiated into Reiki, Siechim, Vortex healing and Theta healing. My approach to healing often involves therapeutic touch, gentle body manipulation, the extensive use of sound, incense, and of course herbs! Everyone I have treated has an experience during healing, ranging from ‘that was very strange’ to ‘wow, I don’t want to ever get up!’ or ‘I don’t know what just happened, but that was great!’. Often the healing will be experienced in the form of deep relaxation, a sense of connection, a remembering of the feeling of joy or a shifting of old emotional patterns.

NB: Healing is known by various names such as Therapeutic touch, reiki, energy work, spiritual healing - all are slightly different but essential realate to a very similar body of therapeutic work.

I offer training in Reiki for small groups on request. I believe one of the greatest values in training in Reiki is for your own development, and as your healing unfolds, your ability to help others also unfolds.

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Research: So far several tens of papers have been published concerning therapeutic touch/reiki - a very small quantity, but an interesting start. Area’s investigated include anxiety, relaxation, muscle tension, wound recovery and on reducing pain. By the way, if anyone reading is in a position to develop research projects related to healing I’d love to be involved! Some interesting links to research relating to spiritual healing:

• Healing helping reduce anxiety and hospital stay following bypass operations

• Therapeutic touch in chronic neuropathic pain (indicating positive effects on well-being and reduction in fatigue and confusion)

• Healing may help reduce tiredeness, anxiety and pain in cancer treatment whilst also improving quality of life.

• Therapeutic touch appears to even have an effect on cells in a test tube!

• Experience of a Reiki session ‘Participants described a liminal state of awareness in which sensate and symbolic phenomena were experienced in a paradoxical way. Liminality was apparent in participants’ orientation to time, place, environment, and self Paradox also was seen in participants’ symbolic experiences of internal feelings, cognitive experience, and external experience of relationship to the Reiki master’

• An interesting paper on the psychopysiological effect of distant healing.

• A small trial of distant healing on chronic pain.

• Other research of interest: Energy work practises, Supporting cancer treatment, Prayer, ‘Six pillars of energy healing’

Links:

• Heartmath have a good collection of research links. In my clinic I sometimes assess Heart Rate Variability as a biofeedback device for help bring people into their heart consciousness.

• A good article on past lives and relevance in therapy/healing. From my point of view I rarely if ever actively go seeking past life information, but it does often ‘pop up’ during treatment. This is often as a body memory or emotional resonance with a visual or kinaesthetic story attached to it. The great thing working with past lives is that it makes absolutely no difference if you believe in them or not - when you hit one of your own, it has a power that is undeniable, wherever it comes from! For those who don’t believe in them they can be seen as a highly charged and personal symbolic narratives touching on archetypal human themes. ‘Past lives’ is easier to say tough ;-).