TORONTO STAR MAY 4. 2010

health
Author proves hands-on healing can cure many ailments
TORONTO STAR May 4, 2010
BARBARA TURNBULL
LIVING REPORTE

A friendship with a psychic when he was 21 has led PhD sociologist William Bengston on a 35-year exploration of energy healing.
In Chasing the Cure, published last month by Key Porter, Bengston recounts his journey — including clinical experiments on mice, which were injected with a lethal strain of mammary cancer and 90 per cent of them cured with hands-on healing. The 10 studies were conducted in four different labs in the U.S., and results published in peer-reviewed journals.
The Long Island, N.Y., resident has also treated people with cancer, including pancreatic, breast, bone and rectal, and helped many others with a wide variety of physical and psychological conditions. One person with gangrene was cured, while several diabetics were able to reduce their dependence on insulin.
Bengston, who considers himself more scientist than healer, is advocating for systematic studies to see what responds to the energy work and to what degree.
Co-author Sylvia Fraser took on the project without a publisher or guaranteed income, she was so convinced of the work’s importance. “Bill simply blew me away with his research and his proof,” says the Toronto resident.
This is an edited version of the Star’s interview with Bengston:
Q: How did you discover your talent as a hands-on healer?
A: I was working with Bennett Mayrick, watching him develop naturally into a healer, and I started to join him on the side. The two of us started to treat people together, then I went off on my own and did it by myself. I was really following his mentorship.
Q: Have you ever been cured by hands-on healing?
A: I was the first person he ever treated directly. He went from doing psychic readings (to) picking up physical symptoms on his own body and people were alleging those symptoms would leave their own body when he did that. I started connecting the dots. He put his hands on my back with an intention to help and my back has been pain-free ever since.
Q: That was something you had a problem with?
A: I used to have chronic back pain. I gave up a swimming scholarship because of it.
Q: How do you work with your hands?
A: I place my hands around the area that the person says they need help with and then I feel for a pull from the person’s body. The sensation I have is feeling a hot spot coming out of their body. I treat where the hot spot is. Their body guides me. It’s in response to need.
Q: Do you feel anything in your hands when you treat?
A: I often feel a sensation of something running through me. I sometimes feel my hand getting hot. There’s not a clear-cut pattern.
Q: You say you use a mental imaging technique. How does that work?
A: Very rapid imaging of things that are personal to me, specific images of things that I want without regard to why or how. This is not a technique of vague generalities, it’s a technique of very specific pictures that what (we) want is already achieved. This goes on as background while you’re doing hands-on.
Q: Can you summarize your scientific data?
A: In 10 separate experiments we had full lifespan cure of mice that normally have full death. So it’s not a question of whether the results are real. The next question is what do we do with the results?
Q: What diseases or ailments in people are you best at treating?
A: Malignant growths seem to respond very quickly. Benign growths don’t respond well. I think what’s happening is if you have a problem and the body recognizes it as a problem, this is when you tend to have a most quick response.
Q: You have trouble treating people with cancer after they’ve had chemo or radiation. Why is that?
A: Speculatively, I think the approach I have is contrary to the approach they have in conventional treatment. In conventional treatment the intent is made to kill a cell or kill a tumor and in my treatment the goal is to restore health.
Q: You say many who consider themselves skeptics are really believers?
A: I’m a skeptic, in that I don’t understand all of this and I’m following the data. People who have their minds made up are believers. Do you believe cancerous animals are cured using this technique? Well, they are cured. It’s not a belief question. The interpretation of it is more open-ended, but the fact that this occurs is pretty much nailed down. I am skeptical, that’s one of the reasons I did the thing 10 times. It was very difficult to accept this.
Q: So it’s not about positive attitude, belief or religion?
A: Oh, no. Every single time that I do an experiment I’m amazed at the results because I don’t begin as a believer. And the only people I’ve ever trained to repeat the experiment have been extremely skeptical people. Certainly, you don’t need to be a believer in the positive sense.
Q: Can anyone learn to be a healer?
A: Don’t know. My guess is that there’s a natural variation in the amount of talent out there, as there would be for anything else. But I suspect — and I’m speculating here — that anyone could be taken from the natural ability they have and be given a little bit more.
bturnbull@thestar.ca