Live Blogging At The Higher Chakra Intensive

I attended Rosalyn L. Bruyere’s Chakra 7-9 Intensive in Germany, September  8 – 12, 2010 at the Sonnenstrahl Retreat Center outside Munich. Below, you will find my live blogging report from the event.

Background Info: I seriously studied with Rev Rosalyn Bruyere  from 1988-1992, and still consider Rosalyn a  primary source of inspiration for energy healing knowledge and guidance. I feel tremendous gratitude to Rosalyn for her generous spirit and vast knowledge base over the decades, and I am looking forward to this particular learning – and nourishment – experience in Germany. So much so that I’d like to share it with you.

For new student healers unaware of Rosalyn, she is the premier spiritual healer and energy healing ritual elder in North America, with skill sets ranging across multiple disciplines such as mediumship, energy healing scientific and medical research, Native American ritual eldership, Ancient Egyptian mystery studies, and Bon (Shamanic Tibetan) studies. In conjunction with her partner Ken Weintrub, a martial arts instructor and healer, she currently teaches high-level Energy Healing intensives internationally.

DAY ONE: Wednesday September 8, 2010

2.00 am: I’m wide awake early in the morning at the Sonnenstrahl Retreat Center, just outside of Munich. After two days of traveling to Germany from North Borneo, which including a missed flight in Malaysia and a short layover on the Persian Gulf, Yui Wang and I finally arrived here earlier yesterday. After a typical German breakfast of freshly-baked bread, cheese, granola, and yogurt we did manage to grab a few hours of sleep but we feel remarkably fresh after our long journey. Flying West around the globe does produce a less brutal jet-lag experience than when flying East, but it still knocks you off your game. Luckily, the cultural matrix in Germany is heavily grounded into the earth and – like our solid breakfast – will anchor us quickly.

My hopes for live-blogging directly from the Intensive floor itself were dashed upon arrival when I discovered that the retreat’s Wi-Fi exists only in the Astro Bar (see below), leaving me to update this page every few hours rather than hour-by-hour. Oh, well.

I do like the Sonnenstrahl retreat center. Most of the staff speak good English, which is great because my Deutsch is minimal (mostly confined to basic polite expressions and earthy German expletives). If you are concerned about attending any future Intensive here do not be worried about language difficulties; you’ll manage just fine.

The accommodation rooms are small and very basic, more seminary-style than a regular hotel, but you have everything you need, including a heated towel rack in your room (essential in this damp climate), and a hair dryer (ditto). True, the mattress is a back-ache inviting foam rather than a coiled-spring, but the essential thing you need in Germany is … heat. The rooms do have solid radiators, and are nicely insulated from the outside. Don’t forget to bring a bunch of those pig-nosed German electrical adapters, for your electronics and your computer. In a nutshell, everything here is very functional, and I would expected nothing less from the German people. They do lose points for an absence of wide-ranging Wi-Fi access, however.

The dining room here is delightful, and the buffet dinner food last night was excellent. I’ve been on other Intensives at retreat centers, and I usually lose a kilo or two because the food, well… it usually sucks. But no weight loss here, methinks. Delicious vegetarian food, significant root vegetables, German beer or apple juice to accompany the evening meal, and I may as well kiss my waistline goodbye right now.

We met Rosalyn and Ken briefly, in the hallway, soon after we first arrived. They both look rested and in good health, and are clearly happy to be here. They told us that there will be 120 participants this week, the perfect group size for this retreat center. There will be English-to-German translation, so while I will miss Rosalyn’s trademark quick-fire delivery there will be additional time for reflection between translations.

I’ll update again in a few hours, and just add to this page as we move through our first day here. Feel free to post your questions or comments in the “Leave a Reply” box below, and I’ll try and respond to your specific needs.

8.15 am

Heading out to breakfast, on this misty and cool morning. I’m watching hearty German people jogging along the road, in front of the retreat center, and then Yui and I will walk over to the Intensive room, for a 10.00 am start with Rosalyn and Ken. Well, I’m guessing more like 10.30 am …

9.40 am

Yui and I have staked out our place in the prepared Pyramid Room: our home at the Intensive for the next few days. People are still having breakfast, but we will be starting soon.

6.00 pm: The first day morning session ran from 10.00 am to 1 pm, and was a delightful introduction to Rosalyn’s work here in Europe. My concern that her natural flow of teaching would be interrupted by the German translation proved not to be the case; bite-sizing her teaching topics allows for more digestion of the material, and additional coherence. Similarly, when Ken added his own observations or comments to the mix the translation “pause” worked well for me, as an English speaker. More space between their sentences led me to a deeper appreciation of their material.

Rosalyn began the morning by talking about brain research, and the process of remembering things as she becomes a little older. Then she branched out into family stories, a familiar teaching motif of Rosalyn’s teaching delivery, but always important to track. She is not rambling. These tid bits of her family life always contain extreme relevancy to the topic, and it pays dividends to listen carefully.  Sure enough, she suddenly began to relate the first six major chakras to that which embodies your family history, and the challenges of your current personality. Then came the important statement: “What is in your seventh, eighth and ninth chakras is what is in your distant past, and in your (impersonal) distant future.” Where the first six chakras are orientated around developing your shortcomings and growing as an individual, the upper chakras extend Rosalyn’s seven-colored chakra model into a Silver center and a Gold center, adding another intake and output chakra to her existing schema.

The importance of the chakras as alternating intake and output functioning is fundamental to Rosalyn’s way of working as an energy healer. For those of you interested in this I highly recommend you attend one of her Intensives and find out all about this directly from her. The gift you will give yourself is to bridge an intellectual understanding of the chakras and their function with a practical experience that to what is useful, not merely adding information to what you already know.

Then she is back to talking about brain research, as well as meditation states, and the importance of daydreaming. And, of course, she brings in the vital importance of humor. For the first time in twenty-two years of studying with Rosalyn it suddenly dawned on me the tremendous importance in the way she always uses humor in her teaching work:  her humor breaks up our studious egoic effort to stay in safe intellectual territory, and allows for the possibility of a brand-new insight, a life-changing understanding. As well as a delightful part of her personality, Rosalyn’s irreverent humor tips the serious mind off balance, so perhaps something new can come in, through the back door of your awareness.

“Let me tell you how I define neurosis: it’s the inability for us to learn from experience.” – Rosalyn L. Bruyere.

Rosalyn was now at the whiteboard, and drawing out the four directions, while stressing the need for equal personal development in mind, body, emotion, and spirit. The upper chakras extend this personal growth towards your own hidden potential, inclusive of service towards others. The upper chakras combine our highest nature (and what we create or attract into our lives) with a higher perspective: that which connects us to something greater than the personal self.

So, healing our neurosis (breaking apart intellectual stagnation and learning to move past our habits or family patterns) is the transformational work of the first six chakras. The practical uses of the seventh, eighth, and ninth chakras are a leap above the personal, into our higher consciousness. These higher chakras speak a different language to the first six chakras. How do I know this? Because Rosalyn has just launched into an entertaining tale about her pet parrot,  and the wild parrots now hatched in her front yard. This was going to be long – and fun – story …

8.00 pm

The afternoon segment of Day One, a few hours ago, was a stretching and exercise class with Ken. An integral part of Rosalyn and Ken’s Intensives is the emphasis on the physical development work of being a healer. For healers, exercise that stretches, strengthens, and integrates spiritual concepts into the physical world is not an option; it’s a requirement. It’s not enough to simply “intend” energy to move; one must actually move the muscle, the limbs, the breath. Only then can the prana flow strongly, and can change things.

Getting healers into their body and away from intellectualizing the material is far more than just an add-on addition to Rosalyn’s map; it is the foundation of it. One example of this came later during the evening segment when Rosalyn moved into a demonstration of how she and Ken work in a hospital setting. Avoiding any esoteric hand movements is an important part of working in any medical facility, or other public setting, Rosalyn stressed. Don’t scare people. Let me show you, she said.

Rosalyn took up a standing position behind a seated Ken, to demonstrate how to run energy into someone’s heart area. To most beginners it would look like a relaxed Rosalyn with hands resting lightly on Ken’s upper chest. But feel into the energetics of this demonstration and you become aware of Rosalyn’s strong rooting into the earth, with her casual hand placement energetically very active. Look and feel into the demonstration even closer, and you can perceive her auric field wrapping around Ken, first to make gentle and peaceful contact, and then to begin increasing the joined field strength. No theatrical gestures or statements here; just deep contact, caring, and the boosting of energy fields.

Rosalyn then made an almost imperceptible shift in her hand placement, her energy fingers deepening directly into heart tissue, while making a parallel movement in the upper part of her auric field. Now she seemed to be embodying the practical use of the material we were studying – the use of the upper chakras – in how to become available to a miracle happening, (i.e., a positive event outside of the healer’s design that occurs during the act of healing.)

Learning how to be available for a miracle happening for the client seems to be an important part of this Intensive. We are not so much “intending” or controlling the flow from the higher chakras (using our personal preference as to the outcome) as aligning ourselves in a balanced way, and  being open to a higher outcome to present itself to our client. Watching Rosalyn work I began to look at my own style of working, with its strong focus on energy flows, and astral clearing. I can begin to see where the next level of my development can start to open: for a miracle to happen for my client, something outside of my knowing or intention. And, something that I can never take credit for…

Yui and I have now shifted our position from our seats at the back of the room and closer to the action, so that we can more easily observe Rosalyn and Ken work on an intensive participant. I have been aware of the multileveled teaching style Rosalyn uses for two decades, and yet it still impresses me every time I see it in action. The best analogy I have is that of visiting an Egyptian temple, where ordinary people will only see the statues, the symbols, and perhaps listen to the stories. But look deeper, and you can feel how the statues run powerful energies, see how the symbols have multiple levels of meaning, and allow the stories to change your life. It’s up to the student, not up to Rosalyn, in deciding what to take away from each healing demonstration, or lecture. As students it is our job to pay attention, to strive to drop our intellectual rigidity, and to endlessly cultivate Beginners Mind. Only when we are willing to let go of what we think is happening can something new enter into our consciousness. Our work as healing students is the polar opposite of the Western way of accumulating knowledge; our work is to let go of what we know, again and again, and …. to wait for a miracle.

More questions from the group come, but it’s been a long day and I’m losing interest and getting sleepy, ready for my jet-lag induced sleep. As I leave the Pyramid Room I am grateful for being here, today. And, I note to myself, I have changed.

DAY TWO: Thursday, September 9 , 2010

8.30 am: A late breakfast, but I am feeling nicely rested today. The rain is clearing, and we will have a blue sky and some sun today. .

5.30 pm.

Looking around the Intensive, you know you are getting old when all the new participants look like babies.

“I want to remind you about our schedule … in the morning with do the technical material and in the evening we do the spiritual stuff…” So began Rosalyn on Day Two of the intensive. She continued, “ I can’t emphasize enough to energy healers that you must understand energy theory. Healing is not going to become more religious, it is going to become more technical. You have to be able to explain what it is you do…”

Rosalyn and Ken had started the day with questioning how fast thought is transmitted across space, before transitioning into talking out the various vibrational rates of the organs within the body. Then we jumped into a discussion about auric vision (more accurately, auric “perception”), and the necessary ability of healers to assess the energy body. These were connected discussions, linking in to  yesterday’s material (“don’t limit any outcome from your healing work”) and into the energy healer’s ability to know something about the client’s auric field prior to working on them.

Rosalyn chose a German participant from the front row and demonstrated basic hand scanning, and then did a drawing of what she had picked up, on the whiteboard. Fifteen minutes later we were all happily hand-scanning a partner, and then were instructed to use a specific energy healing procedure: running energy into the lungs. Finally, Rosalyn led the group through an intermediate-level organ-balancing protocol, giving all the participants a chance to work on their practice partner, and to learn something about organ vibrational states.

Yui and I worked on each other, and I was happy to feel my lungs quickly return to good functioning after our long trip from SE Asia.

There are multiple advantages to learning energy healing skills in any group setting such as this one. Firstly, the leader of the group energetically holds the skill as a template, and then transmits (“teaches”) it to attendees. The skill presented will be interpreted at multiple levels dependent, of course, upon the openness of the student. For the beginner student, it may be their first introduction to tangible energy work. For the intermediate-to-advanced practitioner it is a chance to upgrade what they already know. If we bypass our Western habit of exams (ie, performance for authority) this form of transmission teaching can move us quickly past the rational mind and directly into a significant energetic upgrade.

Rosalyn and Ken were now teaching the technical aspects of the higher chakras. The Seventh Chakra is the gateway out of the body, where we leave at the point of sleeping. The Eighth and Ninth Chakras are not fixed in permanent locations but move in specific ways, and relocate themselves according around the spiritual needs of the individual. The intake function of the Eighth (Silver) Chakra brings challenges and opportunities towards you that you are not yet ready to fully master. The output function of Ninth (Gold) Chakra is that state of highest resonance: your potential – and ultimate – future.

Rosalyn demonstrated the various positioning of the Silver and Gold chakras, leaving me both observing and to do my usual cross-cultural internal comparison of the material. It always helps me to understand new things by comparing it with something I know from another system. Rosalyn’s system of aura dynamics always hits me as hydraulic in nature (ie, practical, down-to-earth, extremely functional) rather than vague and New Age (as in “just set your intention”), while at the same time her teaching style always provides multiple access points to much higher levels of understanding. Remember my Egyptian temple metaphor from earlier in the article? Listening to the practical functioning of the Silver and Gold chakras began to lead me down some speculative paths.

One of the thoughts I had was a fascinating concept in psychology called Affect Theory, which is Tomkin’s idea of biologically-based motivators (See Donald L. Nathanson’s book, “Shame and Pride”). Affect Theory is one of the many recent paradigm shifts in psychology, suggesting that all human experience is filtered through nine discrete feelings (or affects), and that these all lead into a stimulus-response pattern. Therefore, a “crisis” is necessary to occur in the seeking of any emotional resolution, or personal growth-enhancing situation. This is how we evolve as psychological and emotional beings.

I began to wonder if the function of the Silver and Gold Chakras could be a variation on Affect Theory, if applied to soul development. The use of the Silver Chakra (that which pushes you towards what is challenging for you to experience – or to come to accept – about life) and the Gold Chakra (your potential and integral creative experience that comes along after the challenge is completed) suddenly took on a coherent meaning for me as I sat in the room. Perhaps the Eighth (Silver) Chakra attracts life lessons to us (or challenges), activating the stimulus-response pattern (of letting go of our habitual viewpoint and opinion so as to re-initialize the consciousness system with something new) via interaction with the Ninth (Gold) Chakra. So, we accumulate life experience and can choose to be stimulated into greater growth by confronting something that is uncomfortable (Silver Chakra), even though the process eventually asks us to drop everything we have accumulated throughout the learning process except for the distilled soul’s knowledge (Gold Chakra). Alchemy?  Perhaps. It’s very Hegalian, also. Hmmm, my jet-lagged brain is slow but happily chewing on all this new information. But I suspect that this may not necessarily be what Rosalyn is teaching or meaning here, so I will be staying open to other possibilities.

It’s getting late, and today the Intensive material has spiraled around the Higher Chakra teachings, dipping down into the foundations and practice of energy healing theory, swirled up through snippets of medical and scientific research, keeps shining a searchlight on miracles and on faith, before it once again has dived down into the physical body. And right now my own physical body is tired, but in a good way. Time to grab some rest.

DAY THREE: Friday, September 10 , 2010

 

In Day 3 we are transitioning from the Silver and Gold chakras into the practical uses of running gold energy with clients. Ken has been teaching some Qi Gong and martial art exercises to help develop the ability for participants to run this particular frequency, which is good for nervous system conditions.

Rosalyn has also been lecturing extensively on the gold frequency, and its uses, with almost no emphasis on the silver frequency. One of the things that strikes me about this particular Intensive is the time spent on the extremely practical application of energy healing. In other Intensives I’ve attended with Rosalyn there has always been a heavy weighting of the material towards spiritual development, with energy healing skills sitting on the sideline. Now I feel I’m taking classes at an energy healing school, with Rosalyn and Ken taking participants through both demo and practice sessions. This is great news for both new and experienced energy healers looking for quality training.

Rosalyn presented example after example of the uses of the gold frequency, from direct transmission to fine, laser precision work. While there is little time to practice every skill she mentions we are left inspired to learn more, and to study more. There is so much to learn.

“The most fun thing in the spiritual world is to take the spiritual and lofty and make it real practical” – Rosalyn L. Bruyere

Despite the rich material there is plenty of opportunity for questions, and  I am left feeling full and satisfied with the day. But we have a special evening planned tonight, as Rosalyn will be ordaining one of the German students. This is a rare and auspicious event, as ordination with Rosalyn is not just a case of a student showing up and doing a certain number of intensives with her; it’s about being ready to take a huge step into service for others.

DAY FOUR: Saturday, September 11 , 2010

We’ve listened to a lot of information about the Silver and Gold chakras, and experienced some useful practices that help a student healer channel gold energy into the top of the head. One student pointed out that he observed different colors of gold energy in the pyramid room as people worked, with which Rosalyn concurred. Just as there are different kinds of gold metal in the earth, so there are different colors of gold energy that each healer will run.

 

There was a short discussion about how to get gold energy to run, and more general questions around related topics. But it looks today like we are transitioning into another useful skill for healers: the brain balancing technique. Earlier in the week Rosalyn had taught us a simple but powerful breathing technique to open up the head, and the brain balancing skill seemed like a natural part of that sequence.

The group split up into pairs, and began to practice this most important of skills. Every energy healer will use variations of this skill on a regular basis.

Afterwards, Rosalyn talked to us about using crystals and certain stones for healing, as one way to boost the different frequencies available for healing. She related the qualities of minerals and chemical composition of stones to specific needs of the physical body.

Now we are back to our main topic: The Silver Chakra “pushes” you, and the Gold  Chakra “pulls” you. “Your best self pushes you towards your possible self”, said Rosalyn. “… and there is no end.”

But we were looping back to a familiar and important theme: the importance of developing and maintaining a strong physical body while also developing increasing chakra frequency versatility. In essence: practice. The more you do – either in the gym or in your healing practice – creates even more energy to be available. This is what we pass on to clients, to either reduce their suffering, or enhance their healing process. But we all need to work at it, we all need to study and practice.

In answer to a question Rosalyn pointed out that the rising of the kundalini is only a problem for intellectual people, as increased prana overstimulates the rational mind and can drive some people a little crazy. But if you are strong in your body, and grounded, you can increase your pranic level safely and get good results.

Looking around the intensive I can truly appreciate the strong community formed, here in Germany. I can only expect Rosalyn’s influence on European healers to grow in the future, given the richness and depth of the energy healing training she and Ken are offering here, with four Intensives each year in Germany.

But now it’s time to pack up our things soon, as we must leave the Intensive early. We have a flight to Tuscany in the morning, causing us to miss the group closure on Day Five. I do hope these few notes I’ve jotted down during this event have been useful to you, and perhaps even inspire you to study with Rosalyn and Ken in the future. There is no other teacher of energy healing in the West that comes close to Rosalyn’s skill, knowledge, and experience, and we are most fortunate that she and Ken offer these ongoing Intensives for us all. Please take advantage when you can, and I don’t think you will be disappointed.

For myself, I can most definitely leave the Intensive in a place of expansion and increased insight, especially around an increased appreciation of the practical uses of the higher three chakras. My main insight has been the importance of activating the “miracle” energy: supporting a client to move from ideal resolution towards the potential self. For this, we as healers cannot plan or even have an opinion for the client … we can only help them move from a painful or restricted place inside themselves, track where they are being pushed (Silver) or pulled towards an as-yet unknown expression of their Golden potential. This is our act of service with others: to help where we can, and to let the Gold – and God – do the rest.

Related posts: Chakra Upgrade.

Video of Rosalyn teaching in Germany can be found here, on our sister site, www.ProfessionalEnergyHealers.com.

A recent interview with Rosalyn Bruyere.

© 2013 by Dean Ramsden. All rights reserved.

Chakras, Dean's Travels