Pearl of wisdom

In line to use the bathroom at Serenity Crystals (in Versova) stand Reiki, crystal, theta healers, who combine their skills with constellation and planetary healing, along with hypnotherapy and past-life regression. They're here to attend a seminar on Reconnective Healing; and should they choose to be certified in this form of "alternative healthcare", they'll have to flush all their other modalities down the drain.

Los Angeles-based chiropracter Dr Eric Pearl interacts with participants, including former actress Pooja Bedi (with bag), at a seminar on Reconnective Healing earlier this week at Versova. Pic/Sameer Markande

Reconnective Healing is a form of energy healing discovered, christened and marketed by former Los Angeles-based chiropractor Dr Eric Pearl. He's here, in this small residence-turned-seminar place in Andheri West, addressing a room mainly filled with women wearing healing crystal beads, asymmetrical, flowing clothing and worshipping looks.

Till 1993, 12 years into his practice as a chiropractor, Pearl lived an "external, party lifestyle." He took breaks from his TV addiction to go to the movies; he would keep looking for relationships. "Then one night," he writes in his book, The Reconnection: Heal Others, Heal Yourself, and tells us, "I woke up surrounded by a glow of light." He pauses for effect. "Now, I don't mean a divine light. I meant the night lamp next to my bed was switched on and the door to my room was open. I went out with a knife and a pepper spray, thinking it was an intruder, found no one, went back to sleep a little disconcerted."

On Monday, when he went back to his practice, his patients reported strange experiences. "A significant number of them had healed. Tumours were gone. Epilepsy episodes stopped. Many said they felt multiple sets of hands on them. Many of them also experienced strange activity like the TV going on and off, garage doors opening. Doctors started calling to ask what I had done.

Scientists said, ‘You are accessing something that hasn't been here before'." He relates all this with dramatic pauses and light movements of interpretive dance, the diamond rings on his pinkies acting like punctuation marks. He's dressed in a light pink shirt with a black waistcoat and quiet tie - the skin on his face is tight, smooth and red. His age? "I am timeless," he insists.

For the next six years, Pearl juggled his chiropractic and healing practice, trying out crystals, wands and other mediums to channelise this 'energy'. "But I experienced that the healing was going down when I used these accessories," he says, softly. "Because when I was using these methods, in the back of my mind, was the fear of doing it wrong." What he did find was that he was "channelling a field of energy, light and information that could bring healing at a DNA level. It brought us to the optimal harmonic level."

A trial 20-minute session with Toral Vithalani, one of the few certified Foundational level practitioners of Reconnective Healing in Mumbai, involves lying down and resting while she channels the energy. Receivers report experiencing lightness, smiling a fragrance or seeing colours they cannot describe. Sometimes they don't experience anything. "I tell people, healing does not care whether you believe in it or not. You just have to think ‘I am willing to lie here and receive the experience'. It's a unique opportunity to rest in the middle of the day and then go experience LA, since you are already here," says Pearl.

You may heal. You may not heal, because you may have ‘chosen the suffering as a pact made before you came to this life to experience something' Or ‘You have put conditions on your healing' like Bhairavi Mehta, a Mumbai-based member of Pearl's healing team. You suffering could also be a "reminder of something; a balance you need to strike". Or ‘because healing has taken place at a level you cannot recognise currently.' "We have to allow healing to come in the form most appropriate for us," he says.

In words of our wise rickshawalas, ‘Change must come from within. Mere paas nahi hai.'

Pearl looks for a suffering volunteer in the group. Someone with perhaps a limited range of motion in their arms. When no one from the audience volunteers, Mehta steps in. A surgery in 2011 damaged her nerves and she cannot raise her right arm, without bending, over her head. He calls for a young volunteer, somebody under 13 years old. Eleven-year-old Ishant goes up from the back. Asking him to spread his fingers strong and wide, Pearl wiggles his fingers behind Ishant's; Mehta too has spread her hands, and is seated about four feet away. Pearl is "teaching Ishant to play with energy." Mehta's fingers move and wiggle in tandem with Ishant's. After the session, she is able to raise her hands and clap above her head. She's overwhelmed and says, "I used to always wonder why I couldn't heal myself after all these years."

"But," Pearl pauses, "I don't heal you. Ishant did. You set conditions for your healing…"

In the absence of a young person, Pearl says he would have asked for someone who was "dragged along to the seminar. Or was an unwilling participant" to come be a conduit.

Pearl's talk is replete with String Theory references, statements such as ‘This is a time of quantum human evolution'. And meme-ready quotes such as "Expectancy allows us to receive; expectation is limiting." Verbal acrobatics is his finely honed skill which distracts the process of understanding how Reconnective Healing is different from Reconnection. It's the same maze he leads us through when asked how many such healers currently exist, initiated by his organisation, Illuminations Wellbeing centre that holds seminars and workshops across the world. Because of a re-juggle in their certification system, he is not quite sure of the number. His partner, Jillian Fleer, executive director at The Reconnection, puts the figure at 85,000 to 90,000.

A strict code of conduct such as the establishment of an office, an exclusion of practice of any other energy modality and a set of what you can and cannot promise a client has to be adhered to be certified by Reconnection. The teachers are listed on the website. Sisters Jalpa and Toral Vithalani of Cosmic Heart in Marine Drive, have been practising this since 2010. While most clients come for relief from a disease, many come for a "broadening of the consciousness".

The name also came to Pearl via an unusual medium. "I did not want to call it specifically anything. But then one day, when a client was in my office, asleep on the massage table, he spoke in a voice that was not his and said, 'Continue doing what you are doing. You are bringing light and love into the planet. You are reconnecting strands,'" he says. "This happened again and again with some 50 patients, some saying 'strands' some saying ‘strings'." He believes this was a message passed on by a higher intelligence who was occupying the same space as him, on another level and had found a way to relay the message.

And now this message is his life's work.