Energy Healing Is A Gift From God
By Robert Harris Blum
As a shomer Shabbos, teffilin-wearing Jew, I was not exactly primed to believe in the transference of bio-electrical energy (“Ki” in Japanese, “Chi” in Chinese).
But I was living in Japan and one day contracted such a severe radiculopathy that for a year I was unable to turn my head or raise my arms even mere inches. I was told by three independent orthopedic surgeons that corrective surgery was impossible, and that I would remain in my injured state for the rest of my life.
One night, I saw Ki master Kozo Nishino on television. He was surrounded by nine men who charged at him simultaneously. He turned the palm of his hand toward them, repelling all of them backward several feet. I watched the replay three times, and decided that I had nothing to lose; I went to his school in Shibuya-ku, Tokyo.
I asked him to heal me. He said, “If you want to be healed, join my school.” I replied that I was unable to turn my head or raise my arms. To which he replied, “Please wait for my head instructor, Mr. Yoshio Yuzaki. He will be here in 30 minutes. He will heal you.”
I sarcastically replied, “You’re the master. Why can’t you heal me?” He said, “He is a master too. Be patient and just wait.”
I explained my condition to Mr. Yuzaki. I sat beside him for about 40 minutes, with his hand on my neck. At the end of that time, he said. “You can move your head. Go on, raise your arms.” I did so. I was so amazed. I kissed his hand and thanked him.
I joined his school because he said, “Don’t you want to be able to heal people too?” I said, “But I’m just an ordinary person,” to which he replied, “Ordinary people can do extraordinary things.”
I didn’t understand what I was doing and asked, “Is this some kind of a religion?” If it was, I wanted no part of it, despite the personal miracle I had experienced. But I learned that it was not religion-related. I stayed in the school until Master Yuzaki took a liking to me and I began training at his home.
After another year or so, my identical twin brother had a chondroplasty and meniscus repair from a doctor in southern California from which he developed many blood clots in his leg. The surgeons were considering amputating it.
Later, sever complications ensued and my brother was in danger of dying. I frantically called Mr. Yuzaki and explained the situation to him. The following Wednesday we went to L.A. and for many hours over a three-day period, Mr. Yuzaki put his hands and feet upon my brother’s swollen blackened leg. At the end of the third day, my brother no longer needed an amputation. He became well.
Eleven years later, my five-year-old daughter pulled a pot of boiling water onto her chest. She was writhing on the floor in agony, her eyes rolled back in her head. Paramedics came and lifted her shirt. It peeled off all her skin, leaving a huge hideous purple under-flesh exposed.
At Cedars Sinai hospital, the doctor advised that she would need skin grafting and, ultimately, plastic surgery. I told him, “Doctor, you are not going to touch my little girl. I will take her home and heal her with my own hands.”
He said, “You are crazy!” I replied, “No, I am not crazy. Just different.” He told me there would be thick scabbing and permanent scarring.
I took my daughter home. Every day I placed my hand (left, passive, therefore stronger hand for transferring energy) onto her chest for long periods of time, transferring my energy into her, then replenishing my Ki through circular breathing. At the end of two weeks, her chest had turned a rose-pink and finally was perfect without any scabs, without any scars whatsoever.
When I moved to Ohio, the principal of a Jewish school injured his back severely. I put my hand on the base of his back for about 15 minutes and transferred Ki into him. He too was a skeptic until then. I healed him completely.
On February 22, 2007, I was in a car accident. I had a detached macular and a detached retina. Nobody recovers central vision after that. My eye also developed an epiretinal membrane, which never dissolves! But I transferred Ki into my eye every day for 17 months and healed myself.
All the healing power I have attained through my studying I attribute to Hashem. Ki is a gift from Hashem! Ki power is clearly not a part of Rabbi Leiter’s life, but it is a great part of mine and of those I have healed.
I feel sorry for Rabbi Leiter, but he shouldn’t disseminate misinformation simply because he has no such experience. He shouldn’t dismiss it as both false and connected to religion when it is not. Why would he write about a subject that he knows absolutely nothing about?
Rabbi Leiter is welcome to contact the people I have mentioned. Afterward, he should issue an apology so that readers may benefit from learning how to heal themselves and others through circular breathing and bio-electrical energy healing.
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Energy Healing Is Idol Worship
By Rabbi Noson Leiter
It is a relentless source of encouragement that every energy-healing proponent who actually describes his experience confirms – and often amplifies – the halachic objections to both “energy-healing” practices and the theology behind them.
Mr. Blum describes his experience discovering “miracle cures,” attributed to “Ki” (or “universal energy” as it’s known in Japan). He also relates his initial concern that it was connected to a foreign religion. He then immediately insists that Ki has nothing to do with religion without providing any rationale or explanation.
In truth, his initial concern was well-founded. Ki is foundational to far-Eastern metaphysics and New Age religion. It refers to a force that is imagined to animate all of existence; it allegedly flows and stagnates and can be manipulated by man.
We, of course, know that Hashem alone animates all of creation. Even those Ki proponents who believe in Hashem (many explicitly deny Him, including New Age leader Alice Bailey in Esoteric Healing, p. 393) believe He is subject to physical qualities. Ki, by definition, therefore, is kefirah.
In addition, many energy healing proponents explicitly describe the “energy” they purportedly utilize as “god” (see Otto and Knight, Dimensions in Wholistic Healing, p.48). Furthermore, some (e.g., in health kinesiology) attribute to Ki energy the ability to “willingly” help diagnose clients (documentation provided in Rav Belsky on Alternative Medicine). Attributing to any force (real or imagined) the ability to independently help or harm is avodah zarah, plain and simple (see Rambam, Principle 5, and Chazon Ish, Yoreh De’ah 62:19).
Not only, therefore, is it prohibited to believe in Ki, it is prohibited to expose oneself or others to them (see Rambam, Hilchos Avodah Zarah 2:2-3, quoted in part 3 of the psak printed in Rav Belsky on Alternative Medicine).
Whatever mystical “miracle” cures Mr. Blum claims to have experienced, they did not result from scientific or natural techniques or from known segulos. By attributing effectiveness (real, exaggerated, or imagined) to techniques based on to Ki, he is thus attributing power to a kefira concept and violating a prohibition of the severity of yaharog ve’al ya’avor. (If an avoda zarah related act ever results in a “miracle cure,” other factors are the cause [e.g., placebo, a Divine test, etc. – cf. Rambam, Hilchos Yesodei HaTorah 9:5].)
Mr. Blum refers to Ki as “bio-electric” energy, which sounds like a real physical force. But modern technology cannot detect this “energy.” Ki proponents may reply that the levels of electricity involved are so low as to be undetectable, but, if so, this energy couldn’t possibly accomplish the feats ascribed to it.
Some may ask: Granted that Ki isn’t electrical energy, or any other understood scientific phenomenon, but how do we know it’s not some yet undiscovered natural force?
The answer is that not only is this “energy” not detectable, its usage flies in the face of the basic laws of science. To appreciate how deeply absurd it is to claim that energy healing is “natural,” one needs to know the facts:
1) Energy workers claim to channel, or somehow manipulate, Ki to heal, harm, repel attackers, attain “enlightenment,” bring world peace, heal the planet, etc. This force is not measurable, or even detectable, using physical, scientific methods. Only certain individuals claim to be able to detect it.
2) Energy practitioners allegedly manipulate Ki by emptying their mind (an easy technique for many), meditation, visualization, nonsensical hand motions, verbal utterances, requests from Spirit-Guides, prerequisite empowerment rituals like slow non-touch “clapping” (see Moreh Nevuchim 3:37), and “attunements” involving being “initiated” by a practitioner who himself has a “mesorah” of receiving “the force” from another link in the chain of “mesorah.”
3) Energy healing is often performed long-distance. Many energy practitioners will “send energy” to a client thousands of miles away.
It goes without saying that none of these types of New-Age energy manipulation techniques has ever been shown to work in any consistent manner. Thus, these methods don’t even meet the threshold of a non-understood natural technique.
May Hashem open up the eyes of all those who truly wish to see, and may we merit the coming of the geulah sheleimah b’karov.