The research project:
The complete version part 3: Discussion and Conclusion

(NB: If you'd like to skip the more technical points of discussion at the beginning of this section, the most interesting points about heart of Love healing are to be found in 5.3 Heart of Love healing: the evolution of the work and the spiritual dimension)

4.    Discussion

Since I had no idea what would come of this journey into the unknown territory of ‘heart of Love healing’, I was really very positively surprised about the overall outcome.  As a therapist, I am used to perceiving subtle shifts and changes in my clients, or even major energetic, emotional, mental or spiritual shifts and breakthroughs.  Having these perceptions confirmed through the questionnaires was a very new, and personally very confirming experience.  I was even more thrilled to see the quantitative ratings displayed in tables and charts!  There is a hidden scientist in me that loves to see concrete evidence of what is usually only in the realm of what is sensed subtly.  So not only was I delighted about the very positive results, I was also pleased about having results that were so tangible and could be shared with others.

4.1    Possible biases?
Of course I am also very aware that there could be some bias in these results.  To start with, the questionnaires were not filled out anonymously, and the participants obviously knew that I was going to read them and must have some interest in having positive results.  However, in looking at the questionnaires, my sense was that people were really quite honest in their answers, and I made it clear in my instructions for the questionnaires that I was as much interested in hearing about what didn’t work for them as I was in what worked for them.  The instruction for the qualitative questions read as follows: ‘As for … feedback about the session, please feel free to be totally frank, I learn as much (or more) from what didn’t work for you as I learn from what worked!’  In other words, I was interested in the truth of their experience.  My sense is that this was a shared understanding between myself and the participants. 

Secondly, I also wondered about the fact that two participants did not complete the process of filling out the questionnaires after the third session.  My sense is that one participant might not have done so because they were not very satisfied with their experience of the last session, possibly also the second session, as there were some critical points in their answers on the after the session questionnaire.  The other participant was very busy and it had already been difficult to get them to fill out the after the session questionnaires for the first two sessions.  In terms of their experience of the sessions, the questionnaire for the first session did indicate one point of dissatisfaction (too much talking, not enough energy work) that was discussed and changed in the last two sessions, and the pre- and post-session questionnaires did follow the general trend of improvement, though not for the last session (with the exception of how they felt about their issue, for which there was consistent improvement).  So with respect to the third after the session questionnaires and closing questionnaires, it is possible that the average ratings and qualitative results might have been slightly less good had those two persons contributed their answers.  However, given that the results are averages, I doubt that the difference would have been very significant.  Note also the discussion of the ‘physical case’ which affected the average ratings in the opposite, more negative sense.

4.2    The physical case
I did consider excluding the data from the participant whose physical issue had not improved.  There were two good reasons for doing so.  First, this was the only participant with a physical issue whilst all others presented with emotional, mental or spiritual issues, so there was a question of comparability between them.  A second reason was the fact that there was clearly not enough evidence to come to any conclusions about physical issues: in order to assess heart of Love healing in relation to physical issues, I would have needed evidence from a lot more participants.  So it would have made some sense to evaluate the results without the data from this participant and to restrict the interpretation to the more subtle emotional, mental and spiritual levels.

The results would certainly have been more positive if I had excluded these data: as indicated in table 3 in the quantitative results, the average rating of the overall helpfulness of the sessions increases from 6.8 to 7.52 when this participant’s rating is excluded, and the qualitative answers would have been more uniformly positive.  However, I decided to include the data despite their obvious negative bias.  As I was more interested in general trends, the fact that overall ratings were pulled somewhat down by these ratings did not seem to be too important.  It is moreover interesting to note that this participant still appreciated the sessions, particularly in terms of their body-mind perspective, the energy work, and the empathetic listening.  They also felt they benefited from the sessions at the other levels (as indicated in the pre- and post-session ratings), as well as in terms of their awareness of what emotional issues were related to their physical issue (as indicated in the after the session and closing questionnaires).

4.3    The mental variable
As mentioned in the presentation of the results, the results for the mental variable were somewhat anomalous in two ways: they were less marked in terms of improvement over the course of the three sessions, but the rating of the helpfulness of the sessions in terms of the mental level was almost as high as that of the spiritual level, as well as higher than the ratings for the physical and energetic level.  My sense is that the problem is to be found in the formulation of the scale that participants filled out.  The scale was presented as follows:

How do you feel mentally?
1 = very sluggish             5-6 = normal     10 = mind is very active/racing

The scale was meant to measure the amount of mental activity as an indicator of well being, with the presumption that the mind was more active with emotional stress and would become less active with relaxation during the session.  Some participants did read and understand the scale like this, and also commented verbally in this direction, with the result that their mental ratings decreased during the sessions.  Other participants clearly didn’t, and hence rated their mental state roughly in line with their emotional state.  As a result, the mental ratings on the pre- and post-session and the after the session questionnaires were overall very inconsistent and unfortunately really not very meaningful. 

Furthermore, it is clear from the closing questionnaire, that participants who commented on the helpfulness of the sessions at a mental level felt that the sessions had been helpful in terms of mental clarity and the shifting of mental patterns.  Here are the qualitative comments that they added to their ratings: ‘less scattered and anxious, I feel more focused’; ‘quite a few of my beliefs shifted, helping me overall to deal with the issue’; ‘this is where I feel the impact the most’ (a participant who commented throughout on shifts in mental/belief patterns); ‘I feel a lot of clarity’; ‘freer, unshackling some old patterns’.  Obviously, with the exception maybe of the first comment, the other comments indicate a very different and much more common understanding of ‘mental’ than what I had intended to measure with the mental scale!

It therefore makes sense to disregard the inconsistent quantitative ratings on the mental scale, and to accept the more common understanding of ‘mental’ that participants clearly used in the closing questionnaire.  When doing so, the quantitative results also become much more consistent: there is then a clear trend of greater improvement, especially during the first session, at the more subtle emotional and spiritual levels as compared to the physical and energetic levels.  The high ratings of the helpfulness of the sessions at the mental level then also make sense: presumably, participants did feel an improvement at the mental level in terms of shifts in mental patterns and mental clarity during the sessions as well as after, but were not able to indicate that on the quantitative scale given the way it was formulated.  However, in the closing questionnaire, as well as in their qualitative answers, there is much evidence that the improvement was very much experienced at the level of mental patterns and beliefs, in parallel with the emotional and spiritual levels.


5.    The effectiveness of heart of Love healing

In looking at the quantitative and qualitative results together, it is very obvious that the sessions were overall very helpful for the participants, excepting the one participant with the physical issue.  Both types of results suggest that participants felt a lot better about their issue by the end of the series of three sessions: not only had they given increasingly higher ratings in terms of how they felt about it, they had also reported shifts and changes all through the series.   They had also indicated that the sessions were overall very helpful and effective.  What is interesting to ask, then, is: in what ways did they benefit more specifically, and what exactly worked for them during and after those sessions?

5.1      Physical/energetic versus emotional/mental/spiritual levels
When looking at the results in more detail according to the different variables, it seems clear that the benefits were greater at the more subtle emotional, mental and spiritual level than they were at the physical and energetic level (but note above discussion of the mental variable).  This conclusion is supported both by the quantitative ratings in the closing questionnaire and the qualitative reports that participants gave throughout.  It may seen to be confirmed further by the fact that the one participant who had no improvement in their issue had a physical issue.  However, interestingly enough, the ratings in the physical and energetic variables immediately after the sessions suggest consistent and quite high improvement during the sessions.  Moreover, the average physical improvement for all sessions is equal to the average emotional improvement for all sessions.  Also, some participants do report overall changes at the physical and energetic level in their closing questionnaire (‘I was overall feeling better physically’, ‘I feel less tired’; ‘I maintained a rather high energy level during the process’, ‘I feel lighter [energetically]’).   So there is some evidence that the physical and energetic improvement was not much less than that at the more subtle levels, and in the case of the emotional and physical improvement actually equal.

There are two possibilities for making sense of these discrepancies.  One is that the improvements at the physical and energetic level were simply overlooked by participants in their qualitative reports about the sessions because their focus was on the more subtle levels at which their issue was located.  Since they had come with emotional, mental or spiritual issues, these were the levels at which they sought out help and would notice improvement most.  It is therefore possible that the physical and energetic level simply didn’t register as much for them because it was of less concern.  I would say this is quite a plausible explanation, which is also supported by the fact that the qualitative comments in the after the session questionnaires were almost exclusively about the more subtle levels, with the exception of comments about feeling calmer, more relaxed, and more balanced.  So even though most participants did not necessarily notice except immediately after the sessions, the sessions clearly had a positive impact on their physical well-being and overall energy levels.

An additional possibility is that the lower average improvement at the emotional level (compared to improvements at the spiritual level and for the issue) is a result of the fact that some of the sessions were emotionally quite challenging for participants.  Thus there were two participants in the second, and two in the third session, whose emotional ratings after the session were lower than before, as they had come in touch with some rather difficult emotions.  In the most extreme case, one participant’s emotional ratings in the second session went down by three points from 6 (feeling ‘good’) to 3 (‘mixed feelings, kind of sad’).  However, their emotional rating three days after the session was 7 (feeling ‘good’), and the rating of the effectiveness of the session also at 7 (‘very helpful’), with the additional comment that ‘the session really brought me forward’.  Visiting difficult and painful emotional places, then, is clearly part of the process of working with emotional issues, especially as the work goes deeper (as it did in sessions 2 and 3).  It is through ‘unearthing’ these difficult emotions that old patterns become more conscious and new openings and possibilities arise.  This interpretation is confirmed by the very high ratings of the overall helpfulness of sessions at the emotional level in the closing questionnaires (8.6, the highest rating overall) and the high ratings of the benefit in terms of increasing awareness and supporting their personal journey (7.39 and 8.28 respectively).  It is further confirmed by the qualitative comments about the sessions.  So in assessing the helpfulness of the sessions, participants clearly saw the improvement that had taken place, rather than just the ‘lows’ that they might have felt as part of the process.

My sense is, then, that both points are probably true.  The focus on the more subtle levels for all participants but one clearly did make most participants overlook the benefit that they had indicated at the physical and energetic levels during the process when it came to evaluating the whole series of sessions and they were looking back to assess its overall impact.  And it is also very likely the case that the dynamics of entering a process of emotional healing may have been reflected in the emotional ratings during the process, whilst not affecting the overall ratings at the end. 

What this means, then, is that even though almost all participants were looking for help with their more subtle personal issues, the sessions were also beneficial at a more general physical and energetic level.  At the same time, this benefit seemed to go more unnoticed than the more obvious and overall stronger benefit at the emotional, mental and spiritual levels.  The highest improvement of all took place, maybe not surprisingly, in relation to the issue that participants had brought to the sessions.  This issue was the focus of the sessions, and clearly also the focus of participants when they filled out the questionnaires.  In reporting such improvement, participants confirmed that heart of Love healing is a good and powerful modality for addressing personal issues and for supporting people in their journeys of personal growth.  

5.2      Physical conditions
What is more questionable is whether this form of work is an effective tool for physical conditions.  Since only one participant sought help for a physical problem and this problem did not improve during the sessions, there is some doubt as to whether heart of Love healing is a good modality for treating purely physical problems.  The physical issue in question was a knee problem which did not respond significantly to the work in the sessions, although the participant commented at the end that it ‘feels maybe a little easier’.  It is possible that the results for the physical issue reflected my own personal strengths and weaknesses: my strength as a therapist clearly lies more in the subtle realms as compared to the purely physical level.  But it should be noted that knee problems are indeed difficult to treat even with more physical modalities, and it is certainly possible that other physical conditions, maybe especially more obviously psycho-somatic  conditions, might well respond more strongly.  Given the very real improvement at more subtle personal and psychological levels that heart of Love healing could bring about, this may be an interesting area to investigate.  But this remains in the realm of speculation, and much more evidence is needed before any conclusions can be drawn in this respect. 

My personal sense regarding heart of Love healing at the physical level is that benefits are indeed possible, but that a more obvious psycho-somatic dimension to the physical issue may make positive results more likely.  It is also worth taking into account that improvement at the physical level, given that it is the densest level of all, may take longer and/or more sessions in order to happen.

5.3    Heart of Love healing: the evolution of the work and the spiritual dimension
As mentioned in the introduction, the nature of the therapeutic and healing work that I did with participants was somewhat experimental.  In fact it was through conducting the sessions that the work took on a more concrete form and that I realized that I could integrate counseling, energy work and some body work as techniques in a session that was guided by, and based on, the energy of Love. 

A good example of a therapeutic ‘tool’ that evolved during this process is what I described as the ‘tuning in’ periods in presenting the results.  I had originally proposed these periods in order to give myself space to connect with Love more specifically in relation to what a participant had introduced as a topic or concern at the beginning stages of a session, and often also at one or two more crucial points during a session when I felt I needed to return to the heart level in order to connect more profoundly with the energy of Love.  My instructions to participants for these periods were to suggest that they turn inside at the same time and connect with a deeper level or a heart level of what they were feeling, or simply that they open their hearts to themselves in whatever it was they feeling.  The periods were several minutes long, ranging anywhere from 3 to 5 or 6 minutes.  In therapeutic terms, these periods turned out to be extremely important as they often allowed insights or images to emerge in me and/or the participants that would be very evocative and powerful for the participants.  They tended to provoke insights as well as emotional shifts, and participants often remarked on them for this reason.  Connecting with Love even more directly and deeply during those ‘tuning in’ periods, in other words, often turned out to be powerful moments during a session.

Another very striking experience were times when the energy of Love came to be very ‘palpable’ to both therapist and participant.  The participant with whom these moments had happened most powerfully described them as ‘love coming full blast through the phone’, and others similarly mentioned feeling like they were receiving or in the presence of a loving energy.  These moments, or longer periods, would just happen.  They were beyond my conscious control in that I could not ‘make them happen’: it was as if Love revealed itself in its purity and power and touched both, therapist and participant, with its grace.  I did notice that these moments tended to arise more with participants who were emotionally and spiritually more open and able to recognize and receive such Love.  These moments were probably also very transformational in their impact: the participant who experienced them most strongly commented on their experience of the series of sessions in the following terms: ‘It’s just love pouring at me … amazing … like a shower of diamonds and lighting all my cells, emotions, mind and spirit. … I could connect with the love energy like never before … and I can see that there is nothing but that.  It’s the truth … everything else is just layers.’  So the experience of receiving or being in this Love could be very potent.  What is most striking in reflecting about these moments is that they were really moments of true grace, beyond my making, happening when they were happening, and touching both therapist and participant very profoundly.  All I could do was to stay open to that Love and trust that it would guide and manifest as was needed.

A further aspect of this work is worth noting.  There were many comments by participants that they were able to reach into the depths of their psyche and experience because they felt safe to do so in a therapeutic environment that was loving, compassionate and kind.  As the comment by one participant about feeling judged in the past indicates, I have not always been above judgment as a therapist, and there are probably still lapses from time to time.  However, the very clear and conscious anchoring of my intention and being in the energy of Love certainly helped enormously in creating this safe environment for participants.  In fact, this may be one of the explanations of the healing power of Love: when faced with pure love, protection, defenses, and the contraction that goes with protective defense, are simply not necessary, allowing the person to open fully to whatever it is that needs to be seen or felt, and to relax whatever tension is habitually there as a result of the defense.  In this deep relaxation (another aspect that was often remarked on by participants), what is tight and contracted can release, thus allowing people to let go of old emotional, mental and spiritual patterns of contraction and holding. 

An additional point of explanation of the healing power of Love may be that such a release of tension will also allow vital energy and forces to flow more freely, thus allowing people to feel clearer, stronger, and more grounded in themselves.  This deep relaxation and re-vitalisation could eventually have an effect even at the physical level – which is the densest and therefore slowest to respond – and bring about healing at that level, too.  It is therefore possible, even though there is no evidence of this from this research project, that healing will result also at the physical level, much as it did at the more subtle levels.

Given all this, and especially the profound and almost mystical nature of some of the moments of pure Love during sessions, it is not surprising, then, that participants felt the benefit of the sessions at the spiritual level, too, even though they tended to comment more on the benefits with respect to their issue.  However, when asked more directly about the spiritual level, they responded that they felt more connected spiritually and to themselves during and after the sessions.  With the exception of one participant who focused more on the intuitive nature of the work, they were also positive in their response to the question whether they had felt that the sessions were an expression of a loving intention and energy, many adding ‘definitely’ or ‘absolutely’ and further comments to their response of ‘yes’.  Even the participant who responded in more uncertain terms to the questions that were directly about heart of Love healing or the loving energy and intention commented as follows on the question how they had experienced the sessions in comparison with other types of therapy: ‘The [therapists] I had seen were not as spiritual … I like the way you always brought me around to a more forgiving, accepting and loving relationship to myself and the world.  This allowed me to see that I am ok and that there is nothing wrong.  From this more compassionate perspective, I could go deeper into the process of getting to know myself.  If I am ok and if what I feel is also ok, I can relax and be at peace with myself and the moment.’

In looking at the spiritual dimension of the sessions and the work that was done, then, it is clear that this dimension was very noticeable for participants, and that it was quite powerful in its effects.  In this respect, the results of the research confirm the more intuitive understanding of the healing power of love with which I started when I embarked on this journey.  What the research project cannot inform us of is to what extent the improvements were due to the spiritual dimension of the work, and to what extent they were due to other aspects and tools that I integrated into the sessions, especially counseling and energy work.  It would take a much more sophisticated research design to be able to distinguish between these different aspects and their specific contribution to the benefits of the sessions.


6.    Conclusion

The experience of this research project was not only beneficial to the participants in terms of helping them feel better at all levels, including about the issue they came to look for help with, it was also enormously beneficial to me.  It confirmed the intuitive understanding of the healing power of Love that I started off with, and it allowed me to develop ways of working with people that were an expression of Love.  Even if there is some question mark over the beneficial effects it can have in relation to specific physical issues, the benefits at all other levels, including general physical well-being, are very clear.  In fact, the results are so encouraging that I started reflecting on integrating heart of Love healing into all of my work with clients.  The beauty of the energy of Love is that it can indeed be combined with all sorts of other healing modalities, as I found out during the course of the sessions for the research project.  At the same time it will modify these other modalities in a subtle way and introduce a sweetness and softness that are maybe its most characteristic features.

In conclusion, then, the research project did provide a ‘reality check’ in terms of seeing what effects heart of Love healing could have, even if it does not measure up to scientific standards as defined by the scientific community.  Its results are strong and striking enough to support the conclusion that heart of Love healing does have a very positive effect on people’s well being and personal growth.  For me personally, the results are encouraging and do inspire me to offer this healing modality to those who feel drawn to it.

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The short version

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

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Below, you can download a file of the complete version to print out and read more easily. 

research project -- the complete version
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In order to look at the qualitative results (answers to the questionnaires) in more detail go to qualitative results 1: comments about the sessions or qualitative results 2: comments about the overall experience.  You can also download the files below.

qualitative results 1 -- after the session questionnaires.pdf
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qualitative results 2 -- closing questionnaire.pdf
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