by Rowena Stewart, England

When I first met Serge Benhayon, I felt tired, frumpy and fat. At the time I considered myself to be a life-long student, practitioner and teacher of kinesiology, and ran a very successful kinesiology clinic with my partner. However, we were also both overweight, consumed too much alcohol, chocolate and coffee, worked too hard and argued a lot. Added to this I was pre-diabetic, had endometriosis, suffered from migraines, depression, had a slipped disc and underlying exhaustion. In short, I wasn’t very well.

I had, like plenty of other people in the world, a professional persona and a private one, and at times they were greatly at odds with one another. I knew that drinking alcohol wasn’t a great thing to do and would often vow to cut down on my intake, but every Friday night my partner and I would slump exhausted onto the sofa and out would come the wine and chocolate. It felt like a treat at the end of a long week.

In April 2006 a friend and colleague invited us to join a workshop given by a “very interesting man”. He shared a few pieces of intriguing information that seemed radically at odds with our current philosophies. We were interested in discovering more and signed up to go on a Sacred Esoteric Healing Level 1 course.

As the course unfolded there appeared to be a few fundamental points that create the platform for true healing. On the basis that everything in the world is made of energy, there are in fact two types of energy: one is the energy of love, and the other is an energy that is not love. We were introduced to a beautifully simple breathing technique that enabled us to connect with the energy of love within us, and then taken through some practical exercises that allowed us to feel the tangible difference between these two energies. It was like choosing between a warm bath and a cold shower. This was very new to me, but from now on I was suddenly very sure about which energy I wanted to start choosing.

The second point built on the first. If everything is energy, then there is no magic boundary between the professional persona and the private one. I realised that, like it or not, everything that I did privately had been joining in with my professional work. It didn’t matter how qualified I might be, all those emotional dumping, wine swigging, chocolate scoffing, coffee guzzling little moments had been accompanying me into my clinic room and mingling with my healing sessions. Oh my God, why hasn’t someone said this before?

The next profound point was that in every other healing modality, alternative and orthodox, the focus is always on the client and their body. As practitioners, we never pay attention to what is happening in our own bodies, and hence are not caring for ourselves as we might. If we are serious about healing, then we need to be focussing on connecting to love and creating a loving way of life, so that when we step into the clinic room we bring with us all the love we have been living. Healing is about love first and foremost, not knowledge or formulae, and if we truly want to heal, then we truly need to immerse ourselves in love first!

During the course, the firm focus was on connecting to and feeling a delicious and divine energy of love in our own bodies, and to stay with it using the breathing technique. Using this as the fundamental principle we paired up and began some guided ‘hands on’ sessions. We put our hands on the other person’s body, all the while focussing on our breath and letting the other person’s body get on with the healing. As I lay on the couch, memories of past traumas, of which there have been many, began evaporating out of my body. Ten years of kinesiology had never done that.

The morning after the course we both had a healing session with Serge Benhayon, and this time I could fully appreciate and feel all of the truth of what he had spent the last two days presenting. Serge was simply the most astute, honourable and trustworthy man I have ever had the privilege to meet, and this session the most direct healing I had ever experienced. Serge simply felt astonishingly transparent. It was very evident, (and still is today) that there were no dual personas with this man; he walked his talk in every conceivable way possible. We never spoke about alcohol or drinking in my session – just focussed on my depression. However, from that day forward, wine, no matter how splendid the vintage or grape, just smells of vinegar and is rather off-putting. Going teetotal is one of the most natural things I have ever done.

In over 26 years of combined experience in the field of alternative medicine, neither my partner nor I had ever been introduced to such an easy way to discern energy, or such a commonsense approach to health and healing. When we attended this course, it was with the firm expectation of going home with some brand new tools under our belt to offer our clients. What we ended up with was a completely new healing paradigm and an awful lot of questions. It was very evident to us that whatever we had spent the last ten years plus doing, it wasn’t healing – and subsequently put into question all of our long held business plans. Over the ensuing months we began to cut our ties with kinesiology and transform not only our working practice but also our day-to-day living, and six years on we are very different people enjoying a very different relationship.

The task of building a ‘body of love’ with which to work soon became a path of just naturally discovering what supported me and us and what didn’t. I began to feel that all the things I had considered to be ‘treats’ – staying up late to watch a movie, coffee with cream, ice cream, cakes and chocolate – in fact made me really ill. Compared to this delicious warm energy I could feel inside me, I began to know what the word ‘treat’ really meant. It is a ‘treat’ to feel well, and so I continued the process of finding out what heals me and what harms me and the beauty of it is, it’s my call… not some imposed dictate. All Serge had done and continues to do to this day, is gracefully reflect how to love ourselves. One of the main things he encourages us to do is feel for ourselves. If we discern the world on an energetic basis first and trust our own feelings, we can never be fooled.

Over six years my blood sugar level has returned to normal and I have lost weight without trying, in fact I feel like I have got a slow puncture. My endometriosis has almost entirely cleared up and my periods are becoming, wait for it, joyful! My slipped disc slipped back and my migraines are now mi-gones. That ever so constant and underlying depression and exhaustion vanished, and my relationship with my beautiful husband is playful, honest, supportive and yes, loving. Learning to love and nurture myself is still a process of trial and error, but now I am a lifelong student of Me and my day-to-day living. There is no qualification at the end, and by its very nature this journey will always be on-going.

I stepped back from treating. I have issues to heal and I was pretending to be the perfect practitioner – never a good thing – particularly as it is an impossibility. I had to learn to make loving choices just for me, not because I was an esoteric practitioner. Throughout the entire process all I have ever experienced is love and support from Serge Benhayon and the Universal Medicine team. Love after all is not about what I do, what I know or pertain to be. Love is who I am and that applies to every one of us in equal measure. I know now that healing comes from me choosing love and permeates everything I do. It does not come from affirmations, tapping points, the latest modality or prescribed formulas. Healing is about taking responsibility for the choice of energy behind my behaviour, thoughts and emotions, nurturing my body and living each day with grace, ready and willing to do whatever is required.

Thank you Serge Benhayon, for so solidly and consistently reflecting with such loving regard for all humanity, that there is a true way to live on this planet – a way full of grace, tenderness and harmony – a way that makes the ordinary life extraordinary to live.