The research project
The complete version part 1: How it all started and research sessions


1.    How it all started: the vision, love as a healing force, and the 'reality check'

Heart of Love healing is a way of working with people therapeutically and in a healing way that came to me in a vision.  The vision was very simple, so simple in fact that my rational mind doubted immediately whether this was worth taking seriously!  The vision was that I myself was totally open to, and immersed in, an energy of pure Love, and that I interacted with people with and from this energy in a healing way.   A more concrete way of putting this would be to say that I opened my heart to this energy, and that whatever I did with people was an expression of this energy.  I could even say that whatever I did was guided by pure Love.  I had an intuitive sense that the energy of love was very powerfully transformative and healing, but I had never done this before, and I couldn’t know for sure!  I also did not know whether and, if so how, the therapeutic modalities that I used as a matter of course (counseling, intuitive energy work, acupressure, massage) in my sessions with clients could be integrated into this way of working.

All I knew was that people who had gone through near death experiences, which are often described afterwards by them as an immersion into total, unconditional love, often healed quite quickly and dramatically from physical conditions that were thought to be fatal and incurable, such as cancer or fatal wounds.  These people also invariably report that their experience had a powerfully positive effect on their minds and emotions.  And of course there are also the healing ‘miracles’ that Jesus was well known for that could similarly be attributed to the healing power of love.

The healing power of love is a subject that has interested me for the longest time.  Intuitively, I have always known that love can be infinitely healing, and also that subtle energy is actually more powerfully healing than the denser physical energy.  The energy of love is a particularly harmonious energy, and it is also profoundly peaceful and nurturing.  If we speculate that dis-ease and dis-comfort are a form of distortion of what would naturally be more harmonious and therefore comfortable and at ease, then the energy of love could have the power to reverse or ‘undo’ disharmonious states and to enable people to move back into the direction of harmony, ease, and comfort.

These ideas are not at all new: many have speculated on the nature of subtle healing, on what it means to be well or unwell, healthy or subject to disease.  The concepts of harmony and disharmony, balance and lack of balance are often used in order to understand both what is disease and how it heals, what it means to move from disease back to well-being and health.

So there was an intuitive understanding that love is really the most powerful healing force of all.  Why would it be the most powerful healing force?  There are two reasons: one, because it is the most harmonious of all energies; and two, because in its purity, it is at the origin of all life.  Love is the life force that runs through us all and that we get disconnected from in various ways.  So being exposed to this energy cannot but be helpful.

Now I need to be clear that when I talk about the energy of love I don’t mean emotional or romantic love, which are at least to some extent based on emotional need.  Emotional love stops, or turns into pain, disappointment or anger, when the need that it responded to is no longer satisfied.  Similarly with romantic love: if it does not become truly unconditional over time, and therefore more like pure love, it turns into other emotional states when it meets with frustration of various kinds.  Pure love, by contrast, does not stop ever; it is more akin to a totally open heart that feels and emanates love unconditionally, no matter what happens, no matter what response it meets with.  The image of the open heart, in fact, is probably the best approximation that can be used in order to suggest the idea of a pure loving energy.

So how could my vision and the idea that such love is a powerful healing force be put to the test?  Was there a way of finding out whether this is indeed true?

This is where the idea of the research project came in: why not simply try and see whether it is true?  Why not do a study of this?  Now I realize that it is really not that simple.  Having had a very scientific training during my psychology studies at university, I am very aware of the rigorous standards of scientific research.  This research project does not meet those standards:  there is no statistical analysis of the results, which would be required for research that meets scientific standards; nor is this a double blind study; nor do I have a control group.  The results are also not necessarily replicable in the sense that it is difficult to assess to what extent other therapists are able to be in this energy of Love, or I for that matter!  Moreover, the very nature of the therapeutic work that I was going to do with people was very experimental in the sense that I had to find out as I was going along how the energy of Love could express through me and be combined with the healing modalities that I already knew.  I had conducted some trial sessions with friends before starting the research project, but essentially it was through the sessions of the research project that I hoped that the vision would take a more concrete form.

So I realize I cannot claim to contribute to the scientific understanding of healing, such as science has come to be understood.  But I did feel there was a real point to giving this vision a concrete form and a ‘reality check’ at the same time, whether doing so met scientific standards or not.  What I have been able to do with this research project is to satisfy myself, within the small frame that I chose, that the sessions that I did with people clearly had a positive effect.  I hope that this may be interesting to other practitioners and even the public at large.


2.    Research sessions and questionnaires

Research sessions were conducted in April, May and June 2012 at my offices in Montreal and St-Adolphe (Laurentians), with 11 participants.  Three participants were male, eight female, with an age spread between 32 and 70.  The majority of participants (8) were in the 30s and early 40s age range.  The sessions were one hour long and offered at a reduced rate, with the understanding that participants would fill out all the questionnaires that were part of the project.  Some sessions were conducted in person, others on the phone: 3 participants had phone sessions only, one participant had one face-to-face session and two phone sessions, the other 7 participants saw me either in Montreal or in the Laurentians.  One participant came with a physical problem, 9 wanted to work on mental/emotional issues, one participant on a spiritual issue.  Each participant received three sessions which, for the most part, took place with one week intervals in between.

As the very nature of the sessions was experimental, the work I did with participants evolved over time.  Throughout the sessions, I took care to maintain an awareness, focus, and anchor in the open heart and the energy of Love.  An element that I came to use very consistently, usually around two or three times during a session, were the ‘tuning in’ periods.  These could be several minutes long and allowed me to deepen my immersion into the energy of love at the same time as the participant would also connect with their experience at a deeper level.  If the session consisted mostly of counseling, these periods were introduced at points where I felt it would be useful to deepen the connection before continuing, and also to allow guidance to emerge out of it.  During phases of energy work or body work, which would often be in silence, I would similarly maintain and monitor the focus on the open heart and the energy of love every alongside the actual energetic or physical interventions.  

In terms of types of intervention, then, what I did in these sessions – a combination of counseling, energy work and body work – was not necessarily all that different from what I had done before.  What was different, but obviously very subtly so, was the energy and focus with which it was done.  A further difference could be described as the work being guided by Love as compared to being guided intuitively.  Again, this is a subtle difference that might have expressed as a slightly different tone of voice or a slightly different kind of intervention, but would not necessarily be very noticeable from the outside, even though the difference was very clear to me at an energetic and felt level.

In order to assess the effect of the sessions both quantitatively and qualitatively, participants filled out the following questionnaires:

1.       An ‘initial questionnaire’, in which they gave personal details and where the conditions of participating in the research were stated.  In addition, participants named, stated and rated how they felt about the issue they wanted help with, gave information about other therapies they might have received for it, and indicated their expectations in respect to receiving this form of healing.  This questionnaire was either filled out in the days before the first session, or immediately before the first session (click here to see).

2.       A short, quantitative ‘pre-session questionnaire’, in which they rated, on a scale of 1 to 10, how they felt about their issue, and how they felt at a physical, energetic, emotional, mental, and spiritual level.  This questionnaire was filled out three times immediately before each of the three sessions (click here to see).

3.       A ‘post-session questionnaire’, identical to the pre-session questionnaire in its quantitative scales, in order to assess the difference the session had made.  This questionnaire was filled out three times immediately after each of the three sessions had ended (click here to see).

4.       An ‘after the session questionnaire’, which contained the same quantitative scales as the pre- and post-session questionnaires, a quantitative question about the effectiveness of the session, as well as qualitative questions about participants’ experience in the session and its effects.  This questionnaire was to be filled out 24 - 48 hours after each of the three sessions (click here to see).

5.       A ‘closing questionnaire’, in which participants rated the effectiveness of the sessions overall and with respect to the different levels (physical, energetic, emotional, mental, spiritual), as well as in terms of their contribution to developing their awareness, the healing of wounds, and their personal growth.  In addition, there were a number of qualitative questions to get more feedback about various aspects of the sessions.  This questionnaire was filled out about a week after the last session (click here to see).

Most of the intake questionnaires and all of the pre- and post-session questionnaires were filled out on paper if the sessions were conducted in person, the rest of the questionnaires were filled out on the computer and sent to me by e-mail.  Due to various factors, not all participants filled out all the questionnaires, so the number of answers to a particular questionnaire is indicated in brackets in the corresponding tables with the results.

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The short version

You'll find the short version of this research project here.

Downloads

Below, you can download a file of the complete version to print out and read more easily.  You can also download copies of the questionnaires that I used.
research project -- the complete version
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initial questionnaire
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pre-session questionnaire
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post-session questionnaire
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after the session questionnaire
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closing questionnaire
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