How 'The Journey' healing method can help people

Dec 24 2008 by Hilarie Stelfox, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

‘Repressed emotions and memories can sabotage the ability to heal. We work to bring these emotions into the conscious mind so that the person can be free of them’

In 1992 American Brandon Bays was diagnosed with a football-sized tumour, which she claims to have healed herself without surgery or drugs. Since that time she has travelled the world teaching others how to make The Journey, a mind/body technique that she devised to remove emotional and physical blocks to healing. HILARIE STELFOX talked to one of Brandon’s students, Skelmanthorpe therapist Clare Walters

IT’S AN AMAZING story. Brandon Bays, diagnosed with a massive internal tumour, embarks on a spiritual journey to rid herself of what she describes as the “emotional and physical blocks to healing’’.

Just six weeks later her tumour has shrunk and her health is restored.

It’s a story that Brandon has told at seminars and training sessions around the world ever since claiming her miraculous recovery in 1992.

She has since inspired others to adopt the healing techniques that she used on herself and are now known, and trademarked, as The Journey.

Clare Walters, a former ecologist and newly-qualified Journey practitioner from Huddersfield, says she heard about Brandon’s experience while working as a homoeopath and decided to find out more.

“I went to a weekend seminar and was struck by how it was based on the same principles as homeopathy. It gets to the root of what’s really wrong.”

Clare decided then and there to invest several thousands of pounds in the training needed to take patients on The Journey. She made repeated trips to Germany, where Brandon was working at the time.

In order to qualify Clare had to provide evidence of 50 case studies, as well as submitting to weekly Journey sessions with a fellow therapist.

At the heart of The Journey is the theory that repressed emotions from traumatic life events and experiences can cause chronic pain and/or ill-health.

It’s a controversial belief, whose critics say that it’s all too easy to ‘find’ false memories, which may be potentially harmful. Those who believe in it say the therapy is rooted in respected Freudian psychology.

However, Clare is convinced that she has already helped clients willing to try The Journey. Among those she has worked with are people suffering from back pain, depression, arthritis, addiction problems and self-esteem issues.

“Repressed emotions and memories can sabotage the ability to heal.

“We work to bring these emotions into the conscious mind so that the person can be free of them,” she explained.

Taking The Journey involves sessions of deep meditation, during which clients are ‘talked down’ through layers of emotional ‘baggage’. Clare feels that the work could be particularly helpful with children and is keen to further links that she’s already made with a local school.

“It’s used in disaster areas with children who have seen too much and need to find the inner resources to cope. I’m going to be working one to one with children who have behavioural problems,” she says.

Clare, originally from Peterborough, studied biology at university before becoming an ecologist. She worked for organisations such as The Forestry Commission before turning to homeopathy when her children were young.

If the move to alternative medicine seems a strange one for someone with a conventional scientific background Clare sees no conflict of interest. “Homeopathy is evidence-based. Every remedy being used has been researched and there is a huge body of evidence that it works.”

Although homoeopathic remedies contain no traceable amounts of the substance from which they are made – being diluted thousands of times – Clare says the theory is that they can stimulate the body’s healing responses. And she firmly believes this.

She is also certain that The Journey offers a drug-free way to better mental and physical health.

“But for it to work, people have to be open to doing the work and want to access the truth,” she said.

For more information check out Brandon Bays The Journey, the book that describes her emotional and spiritual journey while healing herself. It’s a touchy feelly volume with spiritual overtones, describing in candid detail how to make The Journey and how it helped its author to survive not only illness but the break-up of her marriage.

Clare has a website with information about The Journey at www.healthyandhappy.co.uk