A Healer's Handbook

Mary Kretzmann

Description

A Guidebook for Spiritual Healing

For those who wish to gain a deeper understanding of the nature and practice of spiritual and energy healing, A Healer’s Handbook offers a multitude of case studies of healings effected through attunement to a Higher Power.

Mary Kretzmann—director of the Ananda Healing Prayer Ministry for nearly thirty years—has guided many around the world in healing techniques such as prayers and affrmations, visualizations, and more. Her work has included “laying on of hands” sessions, drawn from the teachings of the great spiritual master Paramhansa Yogananda and of Jesus Christ. This book chronicles Mary’s in-depth experience and insights.

Many cases of instantaneous and near-instantaneous physical healing have occurred in her sessions. In addition, the principles and techniques revealed in this book have worked cures of deep emotional wounds. Many people have told the author, “One session with you helped me more than years of therapy.” Prospective and veteran healers, and those who seek hope and help for personal healing, will find inspiration and instruction from Mary’s accounts.

Mary Kretzmann teaches locally at The Expanding Light Retreat in Northern California, and travels internationally, sharing Yogananda’s teachings on energy healing. She is the author of Divine Will Healing.

Sujets

• Body (disambiguation)
• Swami Kriyananda
• Healing
• Spiritual
• Prayer
• Mind
• Alternative medicine
• Body
• Paramahansa Yogananda

Informations

• Publié par: Crystal Clarity Publishers
• Date de parution: 05 juillet 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781565895706
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

A H EALER S H ANDBOOK
Channeling the Light of Yogananda and Christ
Mary Kretzmann
CRYSTAL CLARITY PUBLISHERS Commerce, California
2017 by Mary Kretzmann
All rights reserved. Published 2017
First edition e-book 2023
Printed in United States of America

CRYSTAL CLARITY PUBLISHERS
crystalclarity.com [e-mail]
1123 Goodrich Blvd. Commerce, California
800.424.1055
ISBN 978-1-56589-309-2 (print)
ISBN 978-1-56589-570-6 (e-book)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 2017001017
Cover and interior designed by David Jensen
Interior layout by Michele Madhavi Molloy
The use on the front cover of this book of the painting The Lord Is My Shepherd is granted by written permission from the artist, Tiffany Nightingale. The author and publishers wish to thank Tiffany for her generosity Facebook, May 2023. Soul Speak - Art by Tiffany Nightingale, https://www.facebook.com/soulspeakart/photos/ .

The Joy Is Within You symbol is registered by Ananda Church of Self-Realization of Nevada County, California.
Now when the sun was setting, all they that had any sick with divers diseases brought them unto him; and he laid his hands on every one of them, and healed them.
-Luke 4:40
Contents
1. Empathy
2. The Healing Technique
3. Creating a Healing Space
4. Weekly Healing Prayer Groups
5. The Healing of Alcoholism and Drug Use
6. Stories of Healing and Transformation
7. More Healing Sessions
8. Tsunami
9. Suicide Prevention
10. Healing in Italy
11. Sacred Photographs
12. Yogananda on Fasting
13. Healing Chronic Illness
14. God Is the Doer: A Healer s Journey
15. Psalm 23 in the Chakras
16. A Miracle Withheld
17. Holy Land Pilgrimage
Appendix: Ideas for Further Growth
About the Author
Further Explorations
Chapter One
Empathy
People often ask me how to get started in laying-on-of-hands healing. It is purifying for the aspiring healer to first do prayers at a distance for others, often without receiving any outward feedback from the patient. The healer thus comes to rely more deeply on the role of God s grace in the process, and may even intuit when the prayer has been answered. The healer learns to focus on the various changes while feeling the healing energy flowing through their hands, and their whole being. For instance, sometimes the healing energy may feel like a wave of the vital energy of springtime, or alternatively, as a wave of compassionate and comforting love. Praying selflessly allows the healer to grow in spiritual healing strength and wisdom, without the danger of ego fascination. As Paramhansa Yogananda said, Just heal and forget. Say God is the Healer!
I encourage aspiring healers to join the Ananda Healing Prayer Ministry. Praying for others is a selfless and purifying divine service. The Ananda Healing Prayer Ministry receives hundreds of prayer requests a month that come in from all over the world, and we have a prayer team of over 750 people who help us in praying for these requests. Please join us; you will be gaining invaluable healing prayer experience while you study along in this book. You can learn more at ananda.org/prayers/ .
My Journey
My journey into spiritual healing is just one story - one facet on a vast prism with the one Light shining through it. You will have your own story and we all learn from each other. Over the years, I have benefitted from reading books by other spiritual healers, some of whom were devotionally inclined while others one might more properly refer to as energy healers. But on the deepest level, all of these healers were united in their profound compassion and empathy for the healing needs of others. I found it helpful to read their experiences, while yet remaining mindful of the principles of my own spiritual path, the Ananda path of Self-realization.
This steadfastness to the mystical knowledge given through this path held me in good stead, for on more than one occasion some very gifted healers have come to me seeking advice. Even though I was less experienced in many ways, I was able to be of service to them because of my understanding of Yogananda s teachings on healing. I will go into this more deeply in the following chapter, titled The Healing Technique .
The Aspiring Midwife
Originally, I never aspired to be a healer but rather a home-birth midwife. This was during the 1970s, when such a career was illegal in the United States, but I wanted to do it anyway. I recognized that homebirth, under the care of a well-trained midwife, was a very healthy option for mother and baby in a normal pregnancy and birth. So much happens during pregnancy; it is a crucial time to lay a healthy foundation for the baby s body, mind, and soul. I understood the importance of creating an aura of care around the pregnant mother and baby, and the birth process itself.
I studied midwifery independently, took some college courses, and apprenticed with an intelligent and intuitive midwife. Over a period of a few years, while also raising my own young children, I assisted at twenty-five homebirths, and delivered one baby myself when the midwife was delayed. Those twenty-five births also represent many long hours assisting the laboring woman. My focus during those long nights was totally on her needs, not my own.
Later on, that midwifery training of giving strength and comfort during the intensity of labor held me in good stead. Sometimes during deep healing sessions powerful memories from past lives were brought to the surface to be healed. Just like a labor coach, I had to be a rock of strength for the patient until the storm had passed. It was uncanny how for several intense minutes in those sessions it felt similar to labor coaching, while the person s hidden, painful memory was unveiled and released.
Of course, every healer does not need to first be a midwife! But hopefully there is a thread of compassion and helpfulness running through the experiences of the aspiring healer s life. The foundation of preparation for healing training should include a natural urge to give, not to get; for as Jesus said, It is more blessed to give than to receive. Paramhansa Yogananda said it this way, The instrument is blessed by what flows through it.
My midwifery training also gave me some direct, preliminary experience in hands-on healing and prayer. During my early twenties I was in nursing school for almost two years, and I got a job in a hospital in order to gain practical experience. I worked the evening shift, from 3 p.m. to 11 p.m., as a nurse s aide on the OB/GYN floor.
I realized that some of the patients felt alone and afraid, especially as their evenings wore on into the night. I could sense it when I first entered a patient s room in my normal course of duties. When I felt this, I would linger a moment to see if the patient wanted to talk. Many times they opened up in the quiet of the night, and told me their fears as they faced the new circumstances of their lives, be it an illness, or perhaps a baby for a single teen mother.
I often offered a back rub, which was a normal thing for a nurse s aide to do. Time and again, as I rubbed the center of a woman s back, I could sense how to best pray with her in a natural way, from the center of her religious or spiritual feeling rather than my own. Mind you, I was a young devotee living in the Bible belt, so I had to put my own approach aside. They would remark how comforted they felt by the prayer and back rub, and were deeply grateful. The inner strength they gained was transformative and lasted for the remainder of their stay in the hospital.
I moved to Ananda at age twenty-three and studied Yogananda s teachings more deeply, I then realized in retrospect that during the backrubs it was when the palm of my hand was over the woman s heart chakra that I received that intuitive understanding on how to best pray with each woman.
Pray Like a Mother for Her Sick Child
Paramhansa Yogananda said to learn to pray for others the way a mother would pray for her sick child. A mother always wants her child to recover, even if it takes a miracle. But even more than that, if things are very dire and a miracle is not forthcoming, the mother will finally surrender, and eventually find peace, because she wants no more suffering for her child. We want peace and happiness for our children, preferably here with us. But if that cannot be, then the mother is comforted that her child is at peace in the freedom of the astral world. And the grieving mother should be comforted knowing that prayers will help the soul of her child very much, for the soul lives on, and love is eternal. Yogananda s powerful statement to pray that way challenges us to shake the heavens with a prayer demand on behalf of others, and then leave the final results to God.
Thy Will Be Done
Thy will be done. People often repeat these words in passive surrender as though there is nothing that can be done. But remember, Jesus spoke these words after he first had made a prayer demand to the Heavenly Father, saying, Lord, let this cup pass from me, but nevertheless not my will, but Thine be done.
The omniscient Christ knew the events that were about to unfold, and yet in his humanity, he was praying that if they could be avoided, then please make it so. In the same way, we should make our prayer demands clear to God; let them resound in the heavens, and then, in that fullness, let the results rest in God s peace that passeth understanding. Our job is to shake the heavens and then rest in God s everlasting arms.
Cleft Palate Healed in the Womb
I participated in an unusual healing experience in my early days at Ananda Village. A single woman moved into my vicinity and told me that she was newly pregnant. She had a source of family income, so at least she could provide for the child. However, she knew that even with this income, a single mom wasn t ideal for the child. And she wanted to do everything