McRae Shannon - The healing effects of energy medicine : memoirs of a medical intuitive

The gift of unbearable need is such that those who have suffered a loss, especially in childhood, are especially gifted in unusual ways.

LAURA DAY, How to Rule the World from Your Couch

Having experienced the energy medicine that Shannon McRae describes, I accept what I know to be true even if I cant explain it. Like Albert Einstein, I believe that everything is a miracle and that all living things have incredible innate potential. Science often functions with a closed mind, is based upon limited beliefs, and ignores the kinds of experiences Shannon describes in which she uses her intuition and channels healing energies to help restore others to health. Science, because it cannot explain such healings, in general refuses to do research related to them.

In a way similar to Shannons seminal near-death experience (NDE) as a child, I had an early-life NDE that showed me that there is more to living than we can perceive with our five senses. When I was four years old, I was home in bed with one of my frequent ear infections. I unscrewed the dial on a toy telephone and put all the pieces in my mouth, just as I had seen carpenters do with nails that they pulled out to reuse. The problem was that I aspirated the pieces and went into laryngospasm. My intercostal muscles and diaphragm contracted forcefully, trying to get some air into my lungs, but nothing worked, and I was unable to call for help. I had no sense of the time but suddenly realized I was not struggling anymore. I was now at the head of the bed watching myself dying.

During my NDE I found it fascinating and a blessing to be free of my four-year-old body. I never stopped to wonder about how I could still see and think while out of my body, but in remembering the event, I know that I could. At the time, my mother was in the kitchen. I felt sorry for her and feared her finding me dead. But thinking it over, I found my new state preferable, so intellectually I chose death over life in my body.

Then I watched myself as the four-year-old boy on the bed vomited. All the toy pieces came flying out, and he began to breathe again. I was very angry as I returned to my body, seemingly against my will. I can still remember yelling, Who did that? In recalling the event later, I began to think that there was a God who had a plan and that I hadnt been supposed to die yet. The way I would explain the experience today is that an angel had done a Heimlich maneuver on me. Shannon describes silvery beings who comforted her when she was sick as a child, and I think these unseen helpers are there for all of us.

Later in life, as a practicing physician, I was at an American Holistic Medical Association conference where the healer Olga Worrall was a guest speaker. I had just injured my leg while training for a marathon. It was very painful and not responding to rest or therapy. My wife told me to ask Olga, after her presentation, to heal me. I was embarrassed to ask and, very frankly, a nonbeliever. Nevertheless, my wife pushed me forward, and Olga sat me down in a chair and placed her two hands on my leg. The heat from her hands was incredible. I remember putting my hands on my other leg to compare the heat sensation. There was no sense of warmth coming from my hands through the dungarees. When Olga was finished, I stood up and was completely healed. The pain was gone, and I could walk normally. That the same healing energy comes through Shannon therefore does not surprise me. Nor am I surprised that her many clients often say they can feel warmth or tingling sensations, or even that she can conduct this healing energy long distance over the phone, as well. Her powerful stories in this book are proof that unseen energies of healing are perpetually accessible.

Shannons descriptions of being able to see intuitively remind me of a number of such events I have experienced myself, with my patients as well as in my private life. One time, for example, Olga and I spoke at the funeral of a mutual friend. After the ceremony, we were standing in a deserted hallway when she asked, Are you Jewish?

Why are you asking? I said.

Because there are two rabbis standing next to you. She went on to tell me their names and describe their garments, which included their prayer shawls and caps. Her description of them was exactly what I saw in my meditation and imagery sessions, where I had perceived these figures as inner guides.

On another occasion, as I gave a lecture, it felt like someone else was giving it. I simply verbalized the thoughts that came to me. Afterward, a woman came up to me and said, Standing in front of you for the entire lecture was a certain man in spirit, and I drew his picture for you. She had drawn exactly as I had pictured before, in my mind, the face and features of one of my inner guides. I have the picture hanging in our home.