Healing Chronic Illness

Q: Have you been successful in helping people with chronic illnesses?

A: Yes. Sometimes the healing has been instantaneous, but most times it is gradual. Last year I worked with a man who had a long standing chronic illness and it’s a good example of how the process can work. In a short healing session, I was able to help him to open his medulla oblongata and he regained his health, but after several months the problem came back.

I realized then that he needed a way that he, on his own, could regularly energize the medulla. So I gave him Paramhansa Yogananda’s affirmations for the medulla and they helped him a great deal.

Q: Why is the medulla oblongata so important?

A: The medulla oblongata is also called the “mouth of God.” It’s where life force (God’s energy) enters the body. Many of Yogananda’s healing techniques involve drawing energy in through the medulla and directing it to your own body or out through the hands to send healing to others.

In doing hands-on healing with devotees who have chronic illnesses, I’ve noticed that the spiritual eye is often very strong but that the medulla oblongata will feel either “dead” or weak—there’s very little energy there. Whenever I’ve been able to help energize the medulla with a strong flow of energy, the person’s health has improved.

Q: I imagine that for the healing to be permanent, the person needs to continue to be actively engaged in the healing process?

A: Affirmations are one of the most powerful ways to address any healing need—be it physical, mental, or spiritual, chronic or short-term. Healing depends on the power of the healer and the receptivity of the patient. The process of powerfully affirming health increases a person’s receptivity to the healing process.

Some people think of receptivity as a passive state, but it’s actually very dynamic. The person who expects the healer to do it all won’t heal nearly as quickly as someone who takes responsibility to affirm and visualize health for himself.

Yogananda put it this way: “Faith, not time, will determine when the cure will be effected.” Faith motivates people to put out the energy that healing requires.

Q: It’s obvious, then, that a person’s attitudes are a key to drawing energy into the body through the medulla?

A: Very much so. People who are healthy, vibrant and full of energy aren’t usually thinking about the medulla at all! They simply wake up with a lot of enthusiasm, saying “I want to do that project today!” And then there’s a rush of energy. Enthusiasm, a strong will, embracing what each day brings with gratitude and joy, giving energy to others—all of these help to keep a strong flow through the medulla.

Q: The Energization Exercises, then, would also be very helpful?

A: That’s what they’re designed for—to bring a strong flow of energy into the body through the medulla. But the mental aspects of energization are just as important as the physical. The exercises won’t help you very much if you do them grudgingly or absentmindedly.

I love the words in the prayer for energization, “O eternal youth of body and mind, abide within me forever and ever.” Think of the life force entering the body through the medulla and then filling your body cells with that kind of energy!

Q: In working with people who have chronic illnesses, do you try to help them release suppressed emotions?

A: I used to devote a lot of energy to helping people release deeply held feelings and blocks (from this life and past lives) and it was very helpful. In the past year, however, I’ve felt Divine Mother guiding me to help people in a much deeper and faster way, by sending healing energy into the person’s spiritual eye and medulla, down the spine to the chakras.

Yogananda describes this technique as sending “divine healing rays into the patient’s heart and brain,” thus destroying the “seeds of ignorance” and enabling him to “smile with the health of God-love.”

Q: Can you offer any guidelines for selecting a spiritual healer?

A: It’s important that the healer not make you “healer-dependent” but, rather, assists you in regaining your God-given ability to be well. Just as herbalists and nutritionists empower their patients by giving them specific knowledge for health, likewise, “spiritual healers” should also empower their patients with suitable tools for self-healing, such as positive thoughts and affirmations, healing exercises, and ideas for right living.

When possible, I think it’s wonderful if followers of Yogananda are able to go to practitioners who have deeply studied and applied his teachings on healing. The truths they embody are powerful and limitless and only beginning to be explored.

Q: Where does the teaching that “God is the doer” fit in with healing? Is the healer necessary?

A: The true spiritual healer has experienced God’s healing power and knows that even miracles are possible, if God wills it. This faith in divine healing becomes a deep part of the healer’s vibration. Proximity to such faith often helps the patient begin to believe healing is possible and thus makes him more receptive to healing energy.

The patient, of course, can hold healing thoughts for himself, and it is vital to do so, but sometimes he needs the help of someone who firmly holds this faith. When the healer touches the patient under such circumstances, wonderful healing can occur.

God needs instruments, and the healer is only that—a willing instrument of something much, much greater. It would be the deathblow to a spiritual healer to think otherwise. You have to remain humble.