by Gabriele Conrad, Goonellabah, Australia

When I first saw Serge Benhayon in early 2004, it was a mixture of curiosity and my aching right shoulder that prompted me to break my resolve to never ever try anything again, be it mainstream medical or so-called alternative. I mainly came because my shoulder, even though much improved, was still aching and I only had a limited range of movement. I had a frozen shoulder, but I never called it that – I suppose I just did not want to own up to what I had actually done to myself through years of massage practice and hard work on the land.

That I had been suffering from depression since my early teenage years I only mentioned at the very end and in passing – I didn’t even know why it came out of my mouth. By then, I had been through nearly 40 years of severe bi-annual bouts of depression and didn’t even consider that it could be otherwise. I had suffered from, or should that be indulged in, suicidal ideations – not because I really wanted to die but because I did not want to live anymore. When I was not acutely depressed I was very serious, glum and mainly outright pessimistic – whilst trying really hard to be as normal as I possibly could and carry on with life regardless.

In my third year at uni I had decided I really needed help, had plucked up my courage and gone to see our family GP and told him how miserable and down I was all the time. All the poor man could say was that I was lucky to be alive and not to have lived through the war and all the hardship and deprivation his generation had had to endure – I couldn’t argue with that, but it wasn’t any help either.

I never chose to have medication, having observed clients and friends go on anti-depressants and the ensuing fog that seemed to come between them and the unrelenting blackness. In hindsight, I could have been kinder to myself with the help of anti-depressants, but I just knew and had observed that they alone were not the answer, albeit a very welcome and very needed break from the intensity and relentlessness of the black void.

My maternal grandmother had been ‘melancholic’ and it was said that she had died from a broken heart; not the kind you get from unrequited love, but from the aftermath of the Second World War in Germany and the suffering and hardship that ensued. A cousin of mine in Canada hanged himself in the garage at home at age 15. My father was found slumped in his chair a day after my mother had been admitted to hospital with the apparently sudden and unexplained onset of severe dementia. He had always told me that he was determined to not live through another war – ever. He was born in 1914, his father had not come back from the front, and he told me early on that he had the means to make sure he wouldn’t be alive should it ever happen again. More recently my brother, who was suffering from epilepsy, committed suicide aged 54; he hanged himself in the bathroom while his wife had gone out for a walk one Sunday afternoon.

So I had my first session with Serge – after some talking, he gave me a hands-on session on the treatment table. At one point he said, “… and that was your soul.”

How strange – I had definitely felt something, but ‘soul’ didn’t really mean anything to me.

I felt great and much lighter after my first session – and made an appointment to see Serge again in another four weeks. The next morning I woke up earlier than usual and had a lot more energy than I had had for a long time. I started taking care of some things in the house that I had not been able to attend to and that felt great. The increase in energy lasted about two and a half weeks, and ten days later it was time to see Serge again. I had about four sessions, each one making me feel somehow stronger and more energised.

Then I realised that miraculously, I had missed my second depressive period that year. Each bout would normally last two to three months. In my twenties there were times when it was so overwhelming I would hardly get out of bed except towards evening when a cloud seemed to have lifted off me. In later years I got used to just keeping going, no matter how awful I felt and how all consuming the bottomless void engulfing me was. I knew then that suicide wasn’t the answer, but living at the bottom of a black pit for about half of each year was truly awful – and I feared that it would become worse as I grew older. Already I had started having unexplained panic attacks in the middle of the night and waking up with thoughts of death and doom on a daily basis.

Since seeing Serge Benhayon for the first time in 2004, I have never had depression again. At first it seemed nearly unbelievable and I thought that maybe I had missed just one episode. After my initial surprise I paid closer attention to what was happening and how I was feeling. Around the times that I would normally get depressed each year I had a sensation of the threat of depression like a kind of shadow for about two years and then that also totally disappeared.

In the years following my first Esoteric Healing session with Serge I learnt a lot from attending the Esoteric Healing courses; about how I could look after myself better and make changes that had nothing to do with a modification of behaviour or better coping mechanisms, but all to do with taking responsibility for myself and my actions. I learnt and understood that my life is what I make it by the way I live on a daily basis.

That nothing happens by chance is a concept I had always embraced as natural and self-evident, but the teachings of Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine made this much clearer and provided the background, foundation and science to something I had somehow always known. In the past I had explored many different options through therapy and alternative medicine and nothing had ever truly worked – everything had only ever scratched the surface and temporarily rearranged the deck chairs on my personal Titanic. With the help of Serge’s sessions, other practitioners at the Universal Medicine clinic and the Esoteric Healing workshops, I started to truly heal from deep within to the point that I now actually forget that I had been so badly affected by depression for nearly forty years of my life.