Deirdre Meintelto thank him for what he and their relationship have done for her in
this difficult time. She says that she opened her eyes several times to
see what I was doing and that she felt the air moving even when my
hands were still.
Like the other individual for whom I had done healing outside the
church, Bridget tells me that she felt cool air moving around her like
a breeze. On the other hand, when Michel has given me healing, I felt
heat. When I asked about this, he told me that some people have heal-
ing energy that feels cool, that one person who used to do healing in
the church gave off energy that was icy cold. “Even sometimes from
one month to the other there is different healing.... [E]verybody is
unique... as long as they follow in front of people the laws of the
church.... Not only every person is different, it can feel different
from one time to another, also the state you are in on that day” (Mi-
chel, August 20 , 2004 ).
Embodiment and Experience(s)While, for the observer, Spiritualist healing looks to be the laying on
of hands, appearances are somewhat deceptive. One can indeed feel
healing energy in the hands, and in the church setting healers use their
hands while giving healing. However, healing energy can be trans-
mitted in other ways, depending on the healer and the situation: by
thought and prayer, through the eyes, even through the breath. Joce-
lyne (fifty-two-year-old clerk in a large department store) has a Spir-
itualist friend who does healing silently while on the phone with her.
Once I began doing healing, I found that I could feel healing energy
while meditating, not only in the hands but more generally through
my skin. Over time, it has become a kind of sensation that does not
always have a restricted physical locus. From the Spiritualist point of
view, healing energy has its origin not in the human body, but else-
where. Like clairvoyance, it is a divine gift whose positive develop-
ment is aided by spirit guides. In the end, it is a kind of energy, so dif-
fuse that as Blaise, a Spiritualist in his early fifties who was born in
West Africa, puts it, “It’s in everything you do.” For Blaise, healing
has become an existential attitude. Yet, as my first experience of heal-
ing attests, somatic happenings may herald the extraordinary. Healing