The Warren Grossman Story

I was a psychologist. It was interesting and helpful to others, but psychotherapy is not a cure. It is a palliative. It helps people communicate, think about their lives and express themselves. It teaches ways to cope with problems. It does not cure.

I accepted this and was glad to do what I could. I continued until a 1986 vacation in Brazil in which a parasite laid its eggs in my liver. I became desperately ill. Back home my physician said I had a week to live. I did not die, although I stayed dangerously sick for a year.

It is hard to account for blocks of time during that year. I remember feeling my energy diminishing daily, and thinking, so this is dying. Eventually this shifted and I have memories of my energy slowly increasing, but I cannot account for the time between. I do not know if it was a moment or a month.

When I could get out of bed, it was summer. Each day I would drag myself outdoors and lie on the ground. My perception had changed. It became apparent that the Earth was alive, that I lay on an Earthly bed, glowing and tangibly flowing with energy. I stared at the trees watching energy coursing the length of their trunks. A year after the illness began, I was finally able to walk to the corner of the street. Although I was pale and haggard, I wanted to engage in life again.

Having lost my entire practice in that year of illness, I asked a colleague for help. I was given two clients and saw them both on the same day. That day my life changed forever.

The first was a man diagnosed as agoraphobic (terrified of many things). Shocked, I saw that he glowed like a stained glass window, except for one black spot right in the middle of his diaphragm. I was transfixed by his beauty. I watched the black hole in his diaphragm enlarge each time he recalled his fears. Suddenly the hour was over. He left and the only other patient came in. This man had been diagnosed as having an anxiety disorder, a lesser order of continual fear. He sat down and he too was glowing. His light was so beautiful I began to cry. Every part of him glowed except for a dark line that followed the margin of his rib cage. It seemed by the time I had finished staring, the hour was over.

I don’t know where the patients came from, but they seemed to find me. All of them would sit and glow. There were similarities to all of their light, but there were also noticeable differences. There are others who see human energy, analyze it and heal its imperfections. I had an advantage. I was in possession of the Rosetta Stone. As a psychologist I am an excellent diagnostician. Doing skillful diagnosis is like having good musical pitch. It’s more of a gift than an acquired skill. I was always sensitive to that slight tilt of the head, or inflection of the voice which brought the symptomatic information together into a diagnosis, and plan of treatment.

There I was, Rosetta Stone in hand. At the first meeting with each patient, I would do a conventional diagnoses on the left side of the chart. On the right I would draw a picture of their energy. After the first hundred clients there were few mysteries left. The patterns of their energies were their diagnosis. For example, depressed people had one of three different energy patterns which correlated with one of three different levels of severity, as well as temporal onset of symptoms. As this continued, the obvious next step was to help change my patient’s energy patterns to do healing.

The first way I tried to learn was in the way I had been trained to learn anything — I read books and also attended classes.

I could not learn healing this way. I had to pay attention to what was happening right in front of me and spontaneously do what I felt. I learned healing, actually facilitating another’s healing, is innate. It is a spontaneous response of a mature and loving heart when faced by another in need.

If this was so, why wasn’t it being done all the time? I can only guess that we had lost touch with our true nature, with our connection to the Earth and with our capacity to love easily. When the Industrial Revolution began we became captivated by a technological and Cartesian image of ourselves. Now people barely realize that they live upon the Earth, or they are dependent on its well being.

As I found myself getting healthier and stronger, I became aware that there was a relationship between efficacy as a healer and vigor. So, I begin each day lying on the Earth and then running for miles to prepare for the day’s work. Healers must draw much energy from nature to support the volume of love necessary to mediate healing.

I was wasting my life unless I passed these skills on. So, I gathered a board to advise and support me and formed a school. I invited 50 of my colleagues to come and see a new way of doing our work. One morning, in my living room jammed with psychologists and social workers, I did one healing after another and finished by saying, I will teach anyone who wants to learn. Nine people signed up.

Teaching healing is more like teaching athletics than academics. The healer-to-be must master two skills. One is the skill of connecting to the Earth. The second skill is learning how to deliberately open the heart at any moment, as it is love that mediates healing. They both occur within the context of nature, so the healer must also become intimate with nature. In class, one learns how to concentrate on the feet and the heart, to develop control over behaviors that do not have names in our society. I’m sure these behaviors have names in other places, because I see my colleagues when I watch anthropological films on television. My colleagues who happened to be indigenous people in New Guinea, Australia or South America do the same thing I do. I have invented nothing at all. I have merely stumbled upon the obvious.

As time passed, few asked for psychotherapy, but many asked for healing. I was slightly aghast. Here I was, a bourgeois scholar who had become a healer. It was the only thing that made sense for me to do. I have since devoted myself to the process of teaching people how to love and how to connect themselves to the Earth, and consequently to be healthier and happier.

Ohio-based Warren Grossman, Ph.D. is a healer, a psychologist, a trainer of healers and author of the book To Be Healed By The Earth (Seven Stories Press). He can be reached by visiting http://www.warrengrossman.com