The Spirit of Ma’at
Vol 1 November 2000
When Barbara Ann Brennan first began to take seriously the energy fields she saw around the human body, she was employed by NASA as an astrophysicist. Since leaving to pursue her vision, Brennan has almost singlehandedly brought energy healing into the realm of rigorous science. That her focus is also deeply spiritual attests to the growing knowledge in our world that the two -- science and spirituality -- can no longer productively be separated.
The following interview was conducted by Roger Windsor, editor of Spectrum magazine, and originally appeared in that publication. The Spirit of Ma'at is reprinting it here by permission of Spectrum and Dr. Brennan.
QUESTION: How did you go from being research
scientist and astrophysicist working for NASA, to becoming an energy healer?
They seem to be very different professions.
BARBARA BRENNAN: I was living in Washington, D.C.,
and during one of the race riots in the early 70s I was on top of a building
looking down at people breaking into stores, burning the city. That seemed to
be a turning point for me. I got very interested in human rights, and human
problems. Before then I was primarily interested in science.
At that time, encounter groups were
just beginning. I started joining different humanistic groups like primal
scream and Gestalt therapy while I was still working at NASA. My interests
switched from outer space to inner space. I began to apply what I knew about
the world from the perspective of a scientist and a physicist to inner space,
and trying to understand it in that way. That's how it switched over.
I felt that I needed to develop the
other side of myself. I had worked very hard to learn a lot. I studied science
and philosophy in college, trying to find how the world worked. Then, I
realized that neither of those was broad enough.
Incidentally, it was at this time
that I remembered my experiences of seeing energy as a child. I spent a lot of
time alone as a child, so I would go down into the woods and look at the energy
around trees, and not really think anything of it. I never talked about it
because I didn't think I was experiencing anything differently from anyone
else.
Another thing that moved me in the
direction of healing was a car accident. A friend recommended acupuncture
treatments, and that started me on the road to complementary/alternative
health. I was studying Bioenergetics at the time, a form of body psychotherapy,
but nobody seemed to be applying it to health and healing of the whole person.
QUESTION: These psychologies left out
something?
BARBARA: They realized that the physical
body is a manifestation of psychological health and psychological history. Most
people understand that the body is a manifestation of our genes, our physical
heritage, but it's also directly related to our psychology. Our emotional,
social and environmental issues as we were growing up within the family
structure, and how we dealt with them, show up in the physical body.
Even though these therapies
understood the psychological component, they didn't deal directly with physical
illness. They only approached healing from the psychological perspective. They
taught the mind/body connection, but it wasn't looked at in terms of healing.
I was at a two-year training
program in Washington, D.C., at the Community of the Whole Person. It was all
about body psychology, not about physical stuff, other than using hypnosis or
deconditioning to deal with some physical problems. But, when I began my own
practice, I began seeing my clients' auric fields, the human energy fields. I
started noticing how the problems in their physical bodies were directly
related to their psychologies by looking at the structure and organization of
their auric fields. People distorted the auric field through their
psychological issues, or, shall we say, psychological defenses. In order not to
experience and feel something that is very painful in the past, one changes or
blocks the flow in the auric field. Eventually, that affects the physical body
and creates disease.
In the beginning, people were
coming for psychological reasons, and I kept watching this phenomenon of auric
distortion. Eventually, I referred all my therapy clients to other therapists,
because more and more people came to me for healing. I had this ability to
perceive exactly what was going wrong in the auric field, and heal that -
restructure it, recharge it, balance it - and they would get well.
QUESTION: Can you give an example of a
common trauma a person might experience in childhood, and how it can be healed?
BARBARA: In terms of characterology, there
are five major character structures resulting from trauma that I list in my
book, and these come directly from Bioenergetics. Each has its own cause.
For example, when a child at an
extremely early age, even in the womb or shortly after birth, experiences any
kind of direct negative aggression from an authority figure, a parent or anyone
else, that child's consciousness will react with the "flight"
syndrome. This could be physical abuse, or repeated psychological abuse such as
yelling, or even aggressive looks. When you're a little kid, and an adult is
striking you, wherever it is, you're going to defend against it. It's a very
terrifying experience, they're five times bigger than you are. There is an
immediate reaction.
Physically, this results in release
of adrenaline, rapid heartbeat, etc. Energetically, it means that the auric
field and some of the consciousness just go out of the body. The person is not
present with their consciousness. They're trying to defend from a dangerous
experience.
Usually, the child will pull energy
out of the area that has been traumatized, but there are different reactions to
trauma. One type will pull it out of the area, another type, however, might
make that area very big and heavy. A person might gain weight in that area.
This will continue as a pattern throughout life. Wherever the reaction, you'll
end up with some kind of physical problem, eventually.
When the person is so scared that
they leave the body, they'll actually twist the auric field. They're not
consciously aware they are doing this. In order to effect breaking your
consciousness away from the terrifying situation, you twist the auric field to
get out, and may even break the human energy field at the joints. Many times
the auric field will show energy squirting out some of the joints, not
necessarily where the person is hit.
Another example of a different kind
of childhood trauma is when parents over-attend the child, over-caretaking. In
the world of psychology it's called "invasion" - constantly invading
the person psychologically and not letting them have their own space. What
happens with these people is that the 3rd chakra is blown out, and they will be
very vulnerable there, and feel very empty because that chakra may be
constantly pouring out energy. These people tend to overeat. In this case,
instead of getting out of the body for safety, what they will do is compress
themselves inside of the body and gain a lot of weight, tying to create a
boundary so they can't be invaded.
The result is weight gain, with all
its concomitant physical and psychological problems. There would be problems in
the digestive organs, possibly the liver or pancreas, and most likely the
stomach.
Just by looking at someone's auric
field you can see which chakras are in trauma. A chakra to me looks like a
funnel or vortex. In the Eastern tradition they are described as petals or
wheels of light, but in Western terminology, it's a vortex, six to eight inches
in diameter, containing smaller vortexes. All these vortexes spin, pulling in
life energy from the energy all around us. Each vortex relates to a particular
organ. A trauma tears open the chakras, causing some of the vortexes to fail at
pulling sufficient life energy into the organ. Those organs deprived of energy
will not function well.
When I look at a chakra, I check
out the vortex, follow it down, look at the organ associated with it, and check
out the organ to see if it has the correct pulse. If the chakra is torn open,
the organ would be pulsing too slowly and be extremely weak. The colors would
be faded out. If the vortex going to that organ is clogged up, the organ is
probably going to be clogged up and dark, and needs clearing. It wouldn't be
functioning well because of congestion.
QUESTION: So people have these patterns of
energy dysfunction with which they're living every day. In most cases, they're
totally unconscious of the cause, only aware of the outward manifestations,
such as fears and physical disease. This means that, in someone who's
overweight, for example, they may try many things, like diet schemes or herbal
preparations, but it wouldn't get to the real cause of the problem. The cause
is a pattern of functioning that needs to be changed on a different level.
BARBARA: It's actually on both levels. If a
person starts using their will power to stop overeating - that is assuming that
they get the right diet information when they stop the overeating, it will
bring up the childhood pain, because that's the defense. As the weight starts
coming off, then that person will feel much more vulnerable, and it will allow
the bringing to consciousness what had occurred and the cause of the pain in
the first place, which is what needs to be healed. At that point, they might go
get some help. When they get the help, if they go to a healer who knows how to
work with chakras, they're able to get the chakras to function properly again.
Of course, the person can do it on
their own, but, if you go to a healer, they can work directly right on the
chakra as well as deal with the psychological issues, then things can be healed
quite rapidly.
QUESTION: Those techniques of Gestalt and
body psychotherapies, they're thinking of the bodily manifestations of trauma
in terms of muscles and tightness, and not in auras and subtle energy. Would a
person have the same result from using these techniques? For example, would
those therapies help an overweight person carrying a trauma that caused them to
build a separation between themselves and the world with their own body fat.
BARBARA: They could very well do that. It
depends on the bodywork. I think that what must be dealt with eventually in
order to bring out the childhood traumas, or past-life traumas, is to
understand how you are holding the entire distorted, negative or defensive
state in the auric field in the present. You must understand the childhood
origin, and experience it, so you feel how powerful it is in your life. Just
thinking about it isn't going to work, which is why body psychotherapy is so
important. You do need to understand it with the mind, you need to experience
the power it has in your life, and then you need to go the next step, and
understand that it's a habitual defense, a habitual pattern of behavior, not
only psychological, but in the auric field and in the body, something that you
hold in place all the time.
Usually the most difficult parts of
the work are coming out of denial, and going in and actually facing and
experiencing the pain, and then understanding it, and your belief system under
it, and then, on purpose, aligning yourself to change it, and making that
choice every day. Sometimes this is the hard work - to change the habit, to
learn to run your energy field in a balanced way, to begin to feel what that
feels like to be balanced and clear.
QUESTION: Let's say that I've had a trauma,
and have a distortion in my human energy field that is causing me to overeat. I
go to a therapist and realize that this is a pattern I have. Then, what
happens? How does the healing process go from that point?
BARBARA: The internal struggle is started -
a choice of change. Many times overeating is related to dependency, such as a
person who has been over-cared for. Since the issue is dependency, there will
be quite a long struggle of claiming independence, learning how to make your
own choices in life and run your own life, without the kind of dependency that
you've been experiencing.
The defensive pattern is to not
understand and to not act from the internal self. It's so compressed inside,
it's not accessible. When I say the inner self, I mean the self that is full of
creativity, love, and divine wisdom. It's very difficult for many people to
reconnect to this self, because there's never been anybody in their life that
has verified it for them. Therefore, there's a long-term learning period that
each individual goes through.
By the way, everybody is full of
these traumas. If you're incarnated, you've got problems. It's part of the
schoolroom. The uniqueness of the work we do, that I've innovated, is that the
connection of mind, psychology, body, spirit, feelings, etc., can all be
perceived in the auric field, and worked on directly. That means we can work
directly on the energy consciousness causing the difficulty. In the auric
field, energy and consciousness cannot be divided.
In the example of dependency that
we were talking about, if the energy field is stagnated, you can pull a lot of
dark energy out, and help the person have the experience of independence. For
someone full of fear who leaves their body, we can work directly with the
energy field to help the person stay present in direct contact with another
human being and feel safe. In this way, the person gets the experience, feels
it in their own field, and learns how to regulate their own energy
consciousness, which is the auric field.
QUESTION: Let me see if I understand what
you're saying. People avoid situations in their lives that reawaken their
childhood traumas and cause them anxiety. To heal, they need to go through that
anxiety, and be present with it. When this is repeatedly done, and nothing bad
happens to them because their fears were, after all, illusory, their anxiety
disappears. The body learns there is no need to flee or defend against those
situations.
BARBARA: In the beginning that's what
happens, but, ultimately the idea is to hold your center with a balanced field
even when something "bad" happens to you. And, then, begin
understanding how your own actions have created certain situations in your
life, and how you can also deal with things that used to frighten you.
When you find the origins, they're
not necessarily going to frighten you anymore, because all of it's based on a
child's consciousness. If the child experiences a trauma, he or she is going to
apply that lesson in a generalized way to their life. They unconsciously make a
conclusion about what is dangerous in the world and what isn't. That's the learning
process. If a child is young, and a male or female person is directly
aggressive to them, they're going to watch out for all male or female people
from then on, whichever one it was. They may not consciously know they are
doing this.
The issue shows directly in the
life. Wherever there is a problem of unfulfillment, chaos, trauma --- whatever
your life situation is that is not fulfilling to you - the reason it's that way
is because you are blocking your ability to create that kind of fulfillment.
You hold a block in your auric field, because of your defensive patterns. There
is a direct correlation to what's going on in your life right now, and what you
haven't yet been able to bring to conscious awareness.
When we're talking about bringing
out consciousness, and bringing out childhood pain, the whole larger picture of
this is not just bringing out childhood issues, it's bringing out all the
unresolved experiences that you've had in your entire life. It's also all
directly related to any lack that you have in your life right now.
We create from the center of our
being. That creation wells up from our core essence through our intentionality,
through the levels of the auric field, and is manifested in the physical world
in whatever form. I'm talking about relationships, careers, children, income
tax, artwork, whatever. Human beings are constantly creating. The difficulty is
that, as this creative energy upwells from the center of our being, and
precipitates down the levels of our fields based on intentionality, it hits all
these blocks that have been held in our fields for centuries, because we've had
all these incarnations. It hits these blocks and becomes distorted.
Any flow of energy consciousness
that is blocked blocks everything - not only the negative feelings, but all the
positive ones, and all of the creative force. So, the key here is to open up
your life. On the physical level, we're talking about opening up your life and
having human needs met. From the spiritual perspective, we're talking about awakening.
In order to clear these unresolved patterns, we need to bring them to conscious
awareness. That, in fact, turns out to be the awakening process of
enlightenment that everybody is talking about.
If you think about it in terms of
the auric fields, all of the blocks in the field are actually unresolved
creations. If you think of a human being as a generator of creation, that comes
from the core center, the Divine within us, in order to create in the physical
plane it has to precipitate from the higher frequencies down to the physical
world, anything that is blocked in the field is, in fact, that creative energy.
The way that is blocked is that the energy is split from the consciousness.
Eventually, it causes all these other problems, physical, emotional or in our
lives. The spiritual process of awakening, which the Buddhists, Hindus, and
everybody talks about, we're also talking about that, because, when it's
blocked, it becomes unconscious. So we are in the process of bringing all of
this to conscious awareness, becoming awake and aware. This is the spiritual
process of enlightenment.
QUESTION: Many spiritual teachings say that
the goal is the realization that the individual ego is an illusion, that
everything is One. On the other hand, psychological therapies focus on the many
problems besetting the individual, and their resolution. These seem like two,
very different approaches.
BARBARA: These are two different approaches
that I think are coming together. Probably we have a language difficulty here.
I agree with both of them, except it isn't the ego that we're trying to get rid
of. Many religions talk about giving up attachments. In my experience, the
attachments are actually the attachments to all of the blocks, and all of the
negative belief systems about reality, as well as our blaming everyone else for
our own problems, rather than looking inside to see how we are creating them.
The psychological language is based
on the preservation of the self, and the language that is used to refer to the
self is ego and those kinds of words. The Buddhist and other religious
traditions talk about AtOnement with the Divine, which includes an awareness of
that AtOnement. The positive ego, from my perspective, is a good thing, because
it is our conscious awareness making choices from the sounding board of all of
our life experiences that we call our "truth" - our conscious
awareness using our truth to make choices for ourselves and our lives. Usually
these choices are about our growth, which is where I believe it should be
centered. That's a positive thing.
The process of growth is to become
consciously awake and aware of the AtOnement that already exists in the Divine.
The part of ourselves that is usually relegated to human consciousness doesn't
yet know that experience of Oneness, but there's a deeper part of ourselves
that does and always has. What we are doing now is bringing the part of
ourselves that is consciously aware of self into the experience of AtOnement.
It is not an experience of void, it is an experience of expanded, universal
Self, but it still is an experience of self.
Many views of AtOnement come from
the Eastern traditions, where the ego and the consciousness itself is not so
highly structured as it is in Western society. I think that we are getting to a
deeper truth by moving from both ends of this into the center.
QUESTION: Some believe that the enlightened
being is always in some kind of trance-like state of samadhi, off in some other
worlds. However, in your view they would be fully in the world and creative?
BARBARA: Yes, without the separation
between spiritual, mental, emotional and physical, and between divine and
human.
There's another way to look at
this. Here's some theology: In the beginning, there was the unmanifest Divine.
In that, there was no conscious awareness of any separation or individuality.
The next stage is becoming aware of individuation, which is the process we're
in now. One of the ways to individuate is to incarnate and become self-aware.
QUESTION: "Self" with a big S?
BARBARA: In the beginning, it seems like
self with a small S. I haven't met a human being that is beyond the self with
the small S. So there is the self, and there is the Divine, and some of us can
feel the divine self. The process of awakening is one of becoming consciously
awake and aware of the self as one with the Divine, but it is still self, the
individuated Divine.
QUESTION: Can you talk a bit about the
nature of auras? Why do most people not see them?
BARBARA: Most people see auras when they
are kids, but it's not verified, therefore, they disregard the phenomena. For
example, a child will look at Aunt Bessie and say, "What's that orange
around Aunt Bessie's stomach?" And, Mommy will say, "She's not
wearing an orange dress, it's a yellow dress." As a result, the child
learns that what mommy is looking at is a yellow dress, and forgets about the
orange human energy field around the belly that shows Aunt Bessie's hepatitis.
QUESTION: So the human energy field is an
visual phenomenon, not more of a feeling or intuition?
BARBARA: The auric can be perceived with
all of the five senses. When you begin perceiving auras, you begin to
distinguish more senses. The three major ways are seeing, feeling and hearing,
and distinguishing between emotion and love. Seeing can be very precise,
whereas intuition is usually more vague. You can see into the body, see the
different organs, and see the different levels of the fields.
QUESTION: What happens during a healing
session?
BARBARA: I do not have a practice anymore.
I now teach, run our school and write. But I'll describe what I did when I had
a practice.
I would have the person come in and
have a seat. I didn't tell them I could see auras, because I didn't want them
to be uncomfortable. (Of course, after my books came out, everyone wanted to
know what their human energy field looked like.) I would sit in another chair,
several feet away, outside of the 7th level of their auric field. Then, I would
sit there casually and ask them what they wanted my help for. While they were
talking I would read their fields. In their talking, when they told me about
anything that was wrong, it would emphasize it in the field. Any time you worry
about what is wrong with you, you increase the manifestation in the field. Then
I would ask them to lie on the table and I'd work on them. I'd get more
information as I was working.
Depending on what I perceive, I
usually will tell the person right away what I saw, but only to a certain
extent. I also learned quite early on in my practice not to tell people
everything because it frightened them. And, I learned to check my perceptions
three times, with three different senses, before I would give any information.
Then, I would find out what the person was capable of implementing into their
life before I would give them suggestions.
Any kind of description of the
problem would include the psychological issues - which of the family members
are connected with the trauma, what was the particular incident that occurred
that initiated the whole thing, what happened after that. All of this can be
read in the field, related to any particular part of the body. You can also see
the state of the organs right now, and how many sessions it will take to
resolve things.
Some illnesses require more than
subtle energy work. Life-threatening illnesses always require more intervention
that straight hands-on healing. I would never work on anyone with a
life-threatening illness unless they were seeing other medical people. With any
serious problem, the person needs to go to their choice of physician - M.D.,
naturopath, etc.
QUESTION: What is the actual technique of
correcting the human energy field?
BARBARA: I would ask the person to lie on
the table and remove their shoes. Then I would proceed to give a healing, which
would usually begin at the feet and work up the body, charging and balancing
the field. I would go to the specific areas of the body that needed work and
clear, charge, balance and restructure the field. Restructuring involves
rebuilding the specific pattern of the field in the area that's been distorted.
I primarily work on the first seven
levels of the field, but there are many more. The auric field has two major
components. One is a standing, structured energy field, with a very specific
configuration. Levels 1, 3, 5 and 7 are structured, while the in-between fields
are unstructured, so they require different healing techniques. The structured
levels need more advanced techniques - more high-sense perception, and more
ability to control the energy coming out of your fingers. You're rebuilding
lines of light, rather than removing mucus or bioplasma from the unstructured
fields.
QUESTION: So, you use your own body's energy
to heal the human energy field?
BARBARA: I use my energy field by clearing
and balancing it, bringing energy in through all my chakras, then running it
out my hands. So, it's not just my energy, it's energy I take in. That's why
it's called channeling healing energy. Your body acts as a transformer during
the healing, and the regulation of the energy through your field is important.
You can change the frequency of the energy out of your hands, change where it
goes, you can make it very specific to rebuild certain structures. You can even
rebuild the energy fields of organs that have been removed from the body,
reducing the requirement for medication. For example, if the thyroid is
removed, you can restructure the energy field of the thyroid, and the person
will have to take less synthetic thyroid hormone. There are a lot of specific
types of healing that can be done.
QUESTION: So, you don't become depleted
doing a healing?
BARBARA: I actually get energized.
Any thing that you do in your life
that appears to be depleting is because you are not living in the creative moment
of the now. You have brought your energy consciousness or awareness off the
wave of creation, and have separated your awareness from the
energy-consciousness flow within you. Therefore, it doesn't matter what the
activity is, what matters is your reaction, or response to it. If you react to
it in a defensive manner, no matter how slight, it will be draining. If you
respond by synchronizing with the life purpose, realizing that whatever is
before you is exactly what is to be attended to for your greater growth, then,
indeed, nothing is depleting.
QUESTION: It would seem that a person's
energy field would be not only affected by their childhood experiences, but by
the food that eat, their exercise level, etc. Do you recommend lifestyle
adjustments?
BARBARA: Absolutely. Lifestyle adjustments
include: eating a balanced diet, fresh, natural foods that are not poisoned
with insecticides; getting exercise; and taking care of all of your needs. A
lot of this is detailed in Light Emerging, my second book, in which I relate
needs to each level of the auric field, and the things that you must do to keep
your fields healthy and balanced. Living in a pollution-free area is also
important. Some of the big cities are very unhealthy now. There's no separation
between you and your surroundings.
QUESTION: What are your goals for the
future?
BARBARA: I want to answer this from the
perspective of our school. What we are doing now is starting internship
programs in university medical schools - bringing healing techniques into the
medical schools. We are already giving lectures there, but now our students
will learn to work in the medical setting, where they need to be. Many of our
students are already in operating rooms and working in conjunction with
hospitals; now we are starting an official program.
Of our 700 and some students
enrolled now, we have about 15 to 20 medical doctors studying with us, as well
as lots of other health care professionals.
I personally would love to do
research, but it doesn't seem to be happening. I'm so busy running around the
country giving lectures, and running the school. I also want to clear the way
for more writing, because I have a lot of material for another book.
On the personal level, I'd really
love to study more science, and to have more fun. I'm interested in the whole
integration thing, so I've been doing things like integrating my life more.
I've had an awful lot of work over the last several years, and it's taken an
enormous amount of effort to build the school, and to create this whole
training program. I want to go work in my flower gardens and swim more.
QUESTION: Would you like to see more
scientific research on auric fields?
BARBARA: There are two major types of
research that need to be done in terms of the fields. One, which I'm less
interested in, is efficacy studies. That is, which kind of healing techniques
work for what. This is underway under the sponsorship of the Office of
Alternative Medicine (OAM).
The area I'm really interested in
as a scientist is creating some kind of device to measure the fields. Then, we
can use it as a way to diagnose health problems, just as we do now with X-rays,
CAT scans and MRIs. If we develop equipment that shows the field for diagnostic
purposes, then we'll also be able to build instrumentation to heal the field.
This will be a huge step in preventive health care because all physical
problems show in the human energy field before they are precipitated down into
the physical body. As a result, people can be healed before they become
physically sick.
There's a lot of tinkering going on
now that is not rigorously researched. People are creating all kinds of devices
with little efficacy study behind them. Some of the ones I have seen damage the
human energy field.
QUESTION: Any final comments or advice for
us?
BARBARA: I think the major thing for
self-healing is to center into your divine essence daily, which I see as the
Core Star, located about one and a half inches above the navel, right in the
center of the body. It's a beautiful, brilliant light, the individuated Divine,
the God within. Expand it outward. The more we learn to identify with that part
of ourselves, instead of all our problems, the more support we give ourselves
to become awakened and aware into the AtOnement that already exists within us.
It's just a matter of becoming aware of it. It's also a great healing technique
to bring that light into any part of your body that you are concerned about.
Also, it's important to realize
that anything in your life that is not fulfilled is a key to where you're
blocking your energy of creativity. All of your problems are directly related
to the creative force within you that needs to express itself. They are the way
through, and you must go through them to create your fulfillment.