Diagnosis and Healing:
Role Play and Real Play

I recently got a call from someone in the Health Department asking if I’d like to participate in a role-play for doctors who were practicing their diagnostic skills before their final exams. My role was to play the part of Mr. Bourke, a patient in his late fifties with clinical depression. I was to be accompanied by my “daughter” Mel, who’d flown in from Brisbane to make sure I attended the GP appointment because “Dad really hasn’t been himself lately, especially since mum left three months ago”.

The doctors’ job was to review my case notes for exactly two minutes before entering the room, then interview me and my daughter and arrive at a diagnosis in eight minutes before rushing off to the next role-play station.

The situation was, at times, hilarious. Not least because we were being assessed by the hospital’s psychiatric registrar and were being video-taped for the doctors’ final review later in the day, but also because I found it quite strange to act depressed as the role demanded.

It also provided an interesting contrast to what I do as a Reconnective Healing practitioner. Firstly, we don’t have to rush because we have up to an hour for the appointment. Secondly I’m not trained in diagnosis nor am I a “medical intuitive” as some people expect of a person who does what they see as energy healing.

A client once asked me, after her healing session, what I was able to understand about her during the session. She was looking at Reconnective Healing through her Reiki training paradigm and expecting that I’d be able to tell her about any blockages I felt and where they were.

I’m not sure if my answer made sense to her at first. I explained that this is really the essence of healing; that the power that always heals the body and mind needs minimal intervention from us; that the Reconnective Healing frequencies allow for balance throughout all our systems: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual and it is from this place of balance that healing can occur.

She then asked what I experienced while facilitating the session. To me, it’s quite simple and profound at the same time. Rather than diagnosing what’s wrong, I see what’s right with you. I feel for the frequencies near the person’s body, which may appear as heat, cool, sparkly energy, magnetic pushing or pulling or a feeling of ease and flow.

I interact with these sensations and watch as the client displays registers, most often a rapid eye movement (REM), and changes in breathing, stomach gurgles and sometimes vibrations in their fingers, toes or neck muscles. I stay present with the client who is lying on the massage table, becoming, as Dr Pearl says, “the observer and the observed.”

The Healing Equation

In this way the practitioner acts as a catalyst in the healing equation:

Client + Practitioner + God/Love/The Field

(choose your own word)


= Healing



I find it difficult to articulate, but what I really feel while facilitating a healing session is Love, Peace and Gratitude: the kind of love that comes from deep respect for the person and for the moment, for the opportunity to feel and be in such Grace, such Light and for the privilege of knowing that the most appropriate healing is unfolding for this person whether we recognize it immediately or not.


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