The Teachers: Dr. Barbara Briner and Esoteric Healing

Soon after I began my profession as a massage therapist I began to receive hints from my Inner Voice that I should do some training in the subtle energy realm of healing arts information. I had both received and done some foundational training in Reiki, reflexology, hypnotherapy, Polarity Therapy and Esoteric Healing, but it was the lure of a local teacher of international acclaim, Barbara Briner, that made my entry into the vast and wonderful world of Esoteric Healing happen. Being in my same community, it was natural and easy. Plus, the credits for taking classes in Esoteric Healing satisfied my profession's requirements for annual Continuing Education Units. Obviously, The Universe (and my Higher Consciousness) was making it exceedingly easy for me to find and use Esoteric Healing for my growth and expanding Self-realization.
     Dr. Barbara Briner is an osteopathic physician--a D.O.--who had her own manual medicine practice in Okemos, Michigan. At the same time she also occupied herself with teaching and research at Michigan State University's School of Osteopathic Medicine. As a physician Dr. Briner was often referred to as the "last chance" doctor. This is because so many of the people who found her were at there wits end. They were patients who felt that they had exhausted all of the options and hope offered them within the world of conventional, allopathic medicine. Then they would hear of Dr. Briner and appear on her door step. As a healer and helper she had a remarkable reputation. And a remarkable following. And, I think, a remarkable success rate. I think all of these were in no small part due to her ability to restore hope in her rather desperate and forlorn patients. But, I am sure that her additional offering of Esoteric Healing also helped.
     Esoteric Healing is a version of what I call "structured prayer." It is a form of energy work that draws from many resources and traditions in order to bring its form to us. Alice Bailey's channelled writings from Master Djwal Khul is a primary source, but many, many people and traditions have helped to add to, expand upon and clarify the information since Ms. Bailey's time. It involves learning and working with a scientized structuring or mapping of the anatomy and pathology of the bioenergy field as well as developing personal receptors to the information to be gleaned while working within these fields. A familiarity with anatomy and physiology is helpful to the acquisition of the Esoteric Healing information as is a sound practice and familiarity with the impressionistic feel of meditation. The science gives you a language with which to receive and express your findings; meditation gives you the familiar "vision" with which to "see" that which you access in the energetic realms.
     Esoteric Healing's basic premise that "energy follows thought" finds us rooting our causology in the fact that thought is a creative force, that thought may, in fact, be the Creative Force. This notion also gives great power (and confidence) to our own intuition. "Never discount the imagination," osteopath John Upleger, the pioneer of CranioSacral Therapy, used to say. We all know that Albert Einstein would second John on this suggestion. What they are saying is:  If you can imagine it--a thing, then that thing, "it," is entirely possible . . . probable . . . even likely. Any impression, no matter how wild or far-fetched, is considered viable information--and should, therefore, be considered as pertinent, even valuable, to the current situation.
     An Esoteric Healing session comprises a practitioner to ask for the presence of the energy field of a desired beneficiary. This process involves the practitioner asking for permission from the desired beneficiary of the treatment, "according to the highest good of that person [or entity] and The Universe." The practitioner is always sensitive and respectful to any reservations or guardedness on the part of the intended beneficiary--and the skilled and True intentioned practitioner will sense this. If a being is unprepared, unwilling, or otherwise resistant to 'being worked on,' their Higher Consciousness will convey this to the practitioner. And the practitioner is bound by a sacred trust to be always respectful in honoring the wishes and boundaries of the other entity. Like prayer, Esoteric Healing is supposed to be, after all, a gift, a benevolence, and thus should never be forced upon a resistant other.
     Most energy beings are usually very eager and grateful for contact that is intended for their "highest good and the Good of all The Universe." In my practice of thousands of hours of Esoteric Healing it has been very seldom that I have been denied access to the energy field of another. And when it has happened I always react with, "Oh! Well, I guess now is not a good time!"
     Once "alignment and attunement" have occurred, one of many variations of protocols unfold in the effort to assess and treat energy flow. Though I called Esoteric Healing "structured prayer," and my alignment and attunement processes require me to ask for the treatment to go according to the Highest "good" of both my client and The Universe, it is with an understanding that I, in my finite abilities and meager comprehension of The Universe and all its workings, may not exactly understand that which is the "Highest Good."
     The odd thing in all this is that we Westerners get caught up in thinking that there is a right or a wrong, a good or a bad, a better or worse, when, in fact, there is just stuff. Just information. Information that is always changing, always in flux, never static. "Energy follows thought." Is thought static? No. Then neither is energy. The Highest Good for one person according to it's Soul Plan may be for dis-ease and death. Esoteric Healing's most profound effect, in my experience, has been in its ability to help people expand their understanding of the temporary place that things like their human bodymind, the Earth, their thoughts, and their troubles have in the perspective of the great scheme of all things--in the "Big Picture." This awareness, this reminder, of the "smallness" of their troubles, of their lives, of the human experiment, seems to be quite comforting to most people. "Deflating" the Ego and its tendency toward egocentricity is often quite a relief for those who are ready for sacrifice, that is, ready to make everything sacred.
    Though the Original God State has no need of linear time or dimensional space, we Monads in human form are willing subjects to space-time rules and regulations. While working in the energetic realms there is one space-time regulation that does not confine us:  that of our own perceived space or time. That is, while working with (and within) an energy field we are not confined to our present "now" nor are we confined to our present "here." We can work with energy beings while they are not in our physical presence. Another person does not have to be in our presence in order for us to work on them. Just as a subatomic particle like a lepton or a Higgs-Boson particle can, in the very same instant, be found at opposite ends of the Universe, so all thoughts and imaginations originate and are accessible from an infinity of locations.
     Ten years of training, with each five day class spaced six months apart--and many of the classes required to take twice before moving on to the next level--allowed for slow and full integration and practice of the dense and deeply profound information into my core being. I had to sit with it, meditate upon it, practice it, review it, discuss it, familiarize myself with it, deepen my engagement with it, in order to be ready to receive and work with the next level's information. Interestingly, as the coursework progressed each learning manual would thicken. Also, the feeling that I was walking around in a state of floating, time-slowed expandedness which followed each class would last longer as well.
     Barbara Briner was once a student to some of the founders of the first organized teaching of Esoteric Healing. But she took the information further. Through meditation and exploration Dr. Briner was able to bring through, organize, codify and teach deeper and expanded forms, protocols, and informations than the original teachers. I believe that I am not exaggerating when I say that Dr. Briner has expanded the information of Esoteric Healing threefold since that of its inception in the 1970s. And I dare say that I believe that any serious student of Esoteric Healing is doing the same:  They have learned to make it their own. They have learned to listen to and trust their imaginations, their intuitions, to recognize that any and all information revealed to them is relevant and viable in the practice and expansion of Esoteric Healing. Dr. Briner, however, has been the most prolific, profound, and organized. This is part of her nature, being a scientist. And yet, there are few people that I have come across with the heart and verbal skill to express their information in the profoundly effective and affective way that Dr. Briner does. Her science mind gives you the maps and templates but her heartfelt experiences and anecdotes render them human and personal--making them realistic and potentially applicable to oneself as well as to all others. This is such a gift to be able to bridge the Heart and Mind as Dr. Briner does. That is why she has been such a profoundly influential and inspiring teacher of mine.
    Esoteric Healing, on the other hand, has been an even more profoundly effective and contributing teacher of mine because it has immediate relevance--and immediate effects--on both me and the beneficiary. It is little understood that once you "hook up" with the energy field of another you have in fact unified your two energy fields--you have removed the illusory walls of individuality and merged two energy fields into one. Thus, my "reading" and assessment of another's energy field is going to be quite different from that of another person's assessment because "reading skills" are affected, biased and skewed by my "stuff"--all of the accumulated baggage of information, experience, and emotion that I have access to filters my interpretation of the energy field of the so-called "other" person. Also, because our energy fields have merged into one, any "treatment" I "give" to another is received by my own field as well. Just as in the quantum field the observer and the observed cannot be separated, so in the world of energy treatment there can be no separation of the treater and treatee, thus both receive the benefits of the "structured prayer."
    It has long been proved under rigorous scientific conditions that the effect of prayer is real. Prayer really does work! It has been measured. It has been proven--time and time again. Energy follows thought. This follows the same principle:  If you think it, it is given energy, it is real. Anything--and I mean anything--you think is given the power of Creation. (Remember: We are all Creators as we are all animated by a Spark of the Divine.) Anything you think is helping to increase the potential for the mental, emotional, and/or physical manifestation of that thing. The more your thoughts align and attune with the thoughts of others, of other thoughts, the more likely that thought is to manifest itself into our conscious reality.
     Esoteric Healing is a means to information. More, it is a means to Self-awareness, Self-empowerment, and Self-realization. Barbara Briner, Esoteric Healing, Dr. Briner's Center for Bioenergy Studies and its associated bookstore have all lead me, Drew Fisher, to many, many other teachers--some of which you will be hearing about in future podcasts. Thank you so much, Dr. Briner. Your giving has been for me a wellspring of endless bounty.