by Jonathan Stewart, United Kingdom

Before meeting Serge Benhayon I was a full-time practising remedial masseur and kinesiologist of 16 years experience. With my then partner, and now wife, we had over 8 years established a thriving kinesiology clinic specialising in brain function and in particular treating children with learning disabilities. We were so confident in our work and approach to healing that we had founded a kinesiology college with arguably the highest training standards in the UK and were well on the way to establishing a fully residential training centre par excellence. I was the UK trainer for my main discipline and on its International Board, spoke at international conferences and sponsored many leading international kinesiology trainers to teach in the UK. Over the 16 years I had spent thousands of hours training, teaching, treating, attending courses in a wide spectrum of complementary therapies and met, both professionally and socially, many of the leading practitioners in the field of complementary medicine. However, within a matter of hours of attending a Universal Medicine workshop presented by Serge Benhayon, both my wife and I were feeling we had to question the very foundation of our confidence and approach to healing.

On the surface, and to all intents and purposes, Esoteric Medicine does not appear dis-similar to other complementary therapies. As with Universal Medicine, they talk about/work with the subtle bodies and energies of the human body; perceive that unresolved emotions underpin illnesses; that the mind and stress impact upon our wellbeing; that what we eat influences our emotional, mental and physical states; address the cause of an illness rather than the symptom; and appear to have many other aspects of healing in common. However, within 6 months we had made the decision to abandon all our future plans, irrespective of all the time and money we had spent, and to forsake kinesiology completely in favour of a whole new approach to life. So you may ask, why would someone give up in such a short time all that they had so successfully established and planned over many years to start all over again from the beginning for something that appears so similar?

I have been a student of Universal Medicine and living the work for six years now and so feel able to express with confidence what makes it different and distinct from other modalities.

• Code of Ethics: When establishing our kinesiology college we looked at many models and what we established was very rigorous but nothing compared to the standards of Universal Medicine, which are arguably the highest in the world. Not only is the training of the highest standards but also the code states that practitioners are to abstain unequivocally from pornography, the use of alcohol, recreational or illicit drugs, nicotine and/or any other substance that will obscure and/or alter in any way their state of being. A practitioner accepting this code of ethics also commits to the best of their ability to live a lifestyle that supports in every way a reflection of the esoteric way of life.

• Integrity: From my previous experience of practitioners, complementary and orthodox, myself included, it was common practice to advise a healthy lifestyle and then privately do things we told our clients and students not to do. It was not at all uncommon for lecturers to go out and party, smoke and drink, have unhealthy relationships, view pornography, abuse their status, etc. With Universal Medicine practitioners you know categorically that this is not the case. They “walk their talk” and this is lead by example by Serge. This importance of practitioner lifestyle is increasingly being shown to have an impact on client health. In 2010 Dr Siân Williams, director of the Health and Work Development Unit at the Royal College of Physicians, stated in a news bulletin announcing an audit into the standard of care in the NHS that, “Evidence shows that healthy staff deliver better care to patients”. With Esoteric Medicine this is taken much further in that how you are in everything you do and think becomes the expression of your energy and it is that energy that you bring to the treatment room and impacts on the client. If you have any energy that is unloving, angry, abusive etc. you cannot leave it outside the treatment room as you enter.

• Energy: Most complementary therapies claim to work with the energies of the body with many practitioners calling themselves ‘energy healers’. In the case of kinesiology it claims to be the therapy that interacts most evidently and visibly with the body’s energies and that the body actually determines the treatment procedure. However, no therapy that I know discusses the actual nature of energy, if there are different energies and if there are, how to discern them or whether some can be harmful. This was not even presented in the course that I taught, The Energetic Sciences of Man.

In the first session of the first Universal Medicine workshop that I attended these questions were directly addressed and demonstrated clearly and succinctly through simple exercises. If there is murder, rape, paedophilia and other such atrocities, which are not loving, and there is also love it then follows these must be different energies. In fact, there can only be two energies: either that which is love or that which is not love. As everything is energy, as stated by Einstein and a scientific fact, and everything is because of energy, as observed by Serge Benhayon, then surely everyone should be able to discern what energy they engage and work with, if not at least a practitioner claiming to work with energy? This question challenged the whole foundation of the integrity of the way my wife and I worked.

• Soul and Spirit – Fire and Prana: So many complementary therapies talk about, and claim, to work with the ‘Higher-Self’ yet never really questioning or understanding what they are claiming. As with the issue of the nature of energy, whatever belief fits with their ideology, or what is most in vogue at a given time, is naively accepted and espoused. For Universal Medicine this is not acceptable. As everything is energy then the ‘Higher-Self’, too, must have an energy and be discerned. Again clearly and simply the nature of this was presented and that there are in fact two distinct energies: the energy of the Soul, which is the energy of Love known as Fire, and the energy of the Spirit, which is not of love and is known as Prana. There is no attempt at persuasion or argument by Serge, or any Universal Medicine practitioner, to get anybody to conform to what is presented. The question is posed and it is for the individual to discern what is true or not true for him or her. The simple exercises to discern energy enable one to do this.

• Innermost: Most, if not all, complementary therapies and many other practices, medical, social and religious, support the concept that in our innermost we are ‘healthy’, in balance, and this is our true nature. All that is required is to remove/heal that which is not of the innermost. In Buddhism there is an analogy with gold. When gold is extracted from the earth it is in the form of 9ct or less and to make it 24ct pure gold one needs to remove the impurities and so, too, it is with us.

Initially when Serge talked about the innermost, which is actually the meaning of esoteric, I thought I understood what he was presenting and how to connect with it. However, after time I came to appreciate that what Universal Medicine presents, and Esoteric teachings have presented consistently throughout the ages, is fundamentally different to all other approaches that I know.

As with the Buddhist analogy all other approaches endeavour to connect to this innermost by removing and/or healing what Buddhists call ‘obscurities’, generally perceived as illness, symptoms, behaviour patterns, unresolved emotional issues etc. With this approach one is coming from the outside to get to the innermost. What the Esoteric presents is that to truly heal and remove the ‘obscurities’ it is necessary to connect first with your innermost and using the energy of the innermost, the energy of the Soul, to express outwards to dissolve those things that are creating the dis-harmony in the body and in life. From this approach one is working from the inside out. Energetically this is completely different and consequently the two approaches are using two different energies.

With the standard approach you are using the same energy that caused the problem to heal the problem – the energy of the Spirit, Prana. If you have a mental problem, such as anger you use a mental approach, such as anger management, to address it, or physical symptoms, such as obesity with changing your diet or use pharmaceuticals to modify the body responses. If none of these work then the choice is usually to suppress and/or numb the symptoms using drugs – pharmaceuticals, social (coffee, alcohol etc.) – or distractions such as excessive exercise, computer games, hobbies etc.

• Function: The primary marker for an improvement of health, of ‘moving closer’ to the innermost, by traditional approaches is a lessening of the symptom and an improvement in function. With kinesiology we had great success in achieving a functional change and improvement for our clients: freedom from physical pain, a lessening of stress in daily life, greatly enhanced brain function demonstrated by academic results and the improvement in physical co-ordination for children at school, etc. Personally I had struggled throughout my life with dyslexic and related issues. Through kinesiology treatments, in particular the brain function work, I experienced great functional change that resulted in a far more positive lifestyle, by society’s standards, compared to my life prior to my involvement with kinesiology – a string of broken relationships and not very successful work endeavours.

The question posed by Serge Benhayon was, if function was such a valid marker to determine health, how come that top athletes, who have the greatest care taken of their bodies that money can buy and science can deliver, still get ill and have mental and emotional problems, as do the super rich who have the same opportunity? In my own case I was overweight, drank coffee for energy along with alcohol regularly (verging on being alcoholic) for the sugar and relaxation due to work stress, and my relationships were not conflict free.

What was posed was that by addressing the function one was still addressing the symptoms, however much kinesiology and other modalities claim they are treating the cause. Because they are using the same energy that was responsible for the problem in the first place they can never see the bigger picture, ‘not see the wood for the trees’, and thereby have a truly objective perspective, or means, to address the situation in its full context – see it spherically. They are always looking at the problem in pieces. The consequence is that the best that can be managed is to move the energy of the problem around the body conveying the impression of improvement but in truth resulting in the problem arising in another form (the multi-symptomatic condition), or to numb the body so the problem is not felt, which in reality is burying it further into the body.

• Healing: No illness suddenly arises without a process of development. And that process is not something that randomly happens to us but is something that results from our choices. For example, if one goes to bed late the hormone system becomes disrupted depleting the body of adrenaline, which puts it in an energy crisis. If one then counters the tiredness by consuming refined carbohydrates, sugar, alcohol for the sugar, caffeine and/or other forms of energy ‘hits’ these then in turn upset the blood sugar and insulin levels, which over a prolonged period, leads to putting on weight and can take one on the path to diabetes. At whatever level in the process one decides to attempt to address the situation the normal route is to take oneself and the condition to the doctor and/or complementary therapist to get ‘fixed’. Depending on the condition and approach one may be given medication, dietary and lifestyle advice, or a combination of these. The Esoteric approach is completely different.

There is no attempt at ‘fixing’. The practitioner presents, through whatever modality they are using, whether it be gentle touch, massage, counselling etc., loving gentleness that enables the person to connect to their own innermost and it is the energy of that person’s innermost that does the healing – not the practitioner. This eventually leads to one realising that one’s health and general wellbeing is a reflection of past decisions and it is not possible to blame anyone or anything for the situation one is in. In that acceptance of responsibility one comes to understand how and why one is not making self-loving choices, which result in the dis-harmony and unhappiness in one’s life, and to now change that and to make self-loving choices instead. This is not instead of modern medicine. Where it is appropriate it can be the most loving choice at a particular time in the healing journey. Esoteric Medicine supports this demonstrating it is truly complementary. This was a radical change for me as I had taken on the perspective through the kinesiology, and which is common among so many other alternative and so-called, complementary therapies, that modern medicine is one of the causes of the worsening health conditions.

In my own case, although the kinesiology had ‘switched-on’ my brain and I was functioning more successfully in society, it had not solved but only masked the underlying causes: the feelings of lack of self-worth, not being good enough, feeling unloved and depressed. When tired and overwhelmed these feelings would return with the old patterns of anger, depression and worthlessness. Kinesiology had given me an identity so I did not have to be with myself. With the Esoteric I was presented and supported to reconnect with my true essence. Through the guidance of the presentations from Serge Benhayon, the support of treatments from Universal Medicine practitioners and my own endeavours I have learnt to make self-loving choices for myself. All this has lead me to know and be with myself with no need for an external identification, that I am complete and full requiring nothing from the outside for acknowledgment and recognition. I do not manage this all the time but it is becoming increasingly consistent.

• An Esoteric Practitioner: For a practitioner to practise Esoterically there is a primary distinction from all other types of practitioners that I have encountered. And that is they bring no agenda to the treatment. This is because they are complete in themselves. They have confidence in their own worthiness and love for who they are without any reliance on the skills and experience they have. They are just themselves and just meet the client for who they are without any judgment. They do not have to prove anything to, or need anything from, the client. From my experience all other practitioners required something back from their clients to validate themselves or their practice in some form or other. As a kinesiologist I used to say my reward was not in the money but in seeing the improvement in my clients. In fact, I needed them so that I could feel good about myself.

This Esoteric approach brings a quality to the treatment that no other does. As the practitioner does not require anything from the client so neither does the client have to provide or give anything either. This creates and allows a space in which there is no need for defence, judgment or criticism and whatever is there can be seen for what it is, released and the appropriate action taken. To achieve this, it is not in skills learnt or qualifications gained by the practitioner but by the way they have lived and developed their own connection with their own innermost.

It is for these reasons primarily that Esoteric Medicine stands heads and shoulders above any other complementary therapy. At the time my wife and I met Serge Benhayon and the Esoteric Medicine we did not have this understanding, but we felt the difference in our bodies. That difference and the common sense of what was presented we understood, felt and knew was Truth. We knew that we could not go back and treat in the same way we had been doing. We could no longer say with integrity that what we were doing was the best that we knew, either for our clients or ourselves.

When my wife and I stopped doing kinesiology we both believed we would be able to just switch modalities to be Esoteric Healers and everything would flow effortlessly. When we made that step we did not appreciate the level of shift required. My wife has since given up being a practitioner and is so much lighter and joyful for doing so. Although the majority of my time is doing general maintenance and gardening work I have managed to continue to practise. However, it is only in the recent few months that my practice has become steady with a regular flow of clients.

The changes I have made have been gradual, occurring when I have felt ready to make them and prepared for the next step in my healing. This is an on-going process and un-folding of my innermost, which is becoming my everyday expression. Only a month ago I was triggered to recall how I used to feel before I came across kinesiology and realised that deep down I still had not completely let go of constantly battling to fight off feelings of depression, helplessness, worthlessness and needing external recognition and acknowledgement to feel okay. I realised how powerful the kinesiology had been to suppress and numb me so well from feeling all of this that I had no longer even remembered how I had felt. All it had done was to strengthen and harden my shield from feeling love and accepting love from others. With the Esoteric support of Love I have been able to face and feel the hurt for what it is, to take responsibility for my choices and to move on. This has resulted in my life being increasingly joyful, feeling love and value for myself without needing external acknowledgement to endorse it. My marriage is now one of so much more tenderness and I am feeling and am far more healthy and fitter than I can really remember (I have lost 63lbs/28kg which is about 18inches round the waist in six years) and enjoy whatever I am doing without striving to be something.

This on-going journey of unfoldment of my true nature has come about from the inspiration and loving support of Serge Benhayon, his family, the Universal Medicine practitioners and my own willingness, even if reluctantly at times, to take responsibility for my choices. This loving support has never been one of telling me how I should live, what I should or should not eat but rather from a sharing of lived experiences that work and that I have chosen in my own time and pace to experiment with and adopt in a way that that is correct for me. This approach is not the way of a cult or a guru, but of the most loving, truthful friend that you can ever have. Thank you Serge Benhayon for being the love filled, inspirational man you are.