Inside The Reconnection with Dr. Eric Pearl by Jean-Noel Bassior
Twelve years ago, on a sunny March morning, advertising executive Jeff Olsen lost control of his car, rolled over eight times on the Interstate north of St. George, Utah, and skidded off the side of the road. “I probably fell asleep at the wheel,” says Jeff, who knows he had cruise control on, but doesn't remember much else. When rescue workers cut him free from the wreckage, both legs and his rib cage were crushed, his back was cracked in two places, his lungs had collapsed, his intestines had ruptured, and his right arm was completely torn out of its socket. “They had to amputate my left leg,” Jeff says matter-of-factly, adding that since his arm had been nearly severed, he went through shock treatments in rehab to try to rejuvenate the nerves. “You won't use your right arm very well again,” the doctors told him.
So in the fall of 2009, when Jeff and his wife Tonya attended Dr. Eric Pearl's Reconnective Healing seminar in Los Angeles and Pearl asked if there was anyone in the audience who could not lift both arms above their head, Jeff stood up promptly.
“Show me,” said Pearl.
“I can just raise them this far,” Jeff started to say. Then, for the first time since the horrific accident, he lifted both arms straight up over his head and touched his hands together, as Pearl, from the stage, saw a look of disbelief cross Tonya Olsen's face. Every morning, she had to comb her husband's hair because he couldn't raise his hand to his head. “I wasn't sure what was happening,” Jeff told Pearl later. “It was very surreal.” The good news: He'd just had a spontaneous healing. The bad news: To the audience of 450 who'd crowded into the hotel ballroom, he knew he might look like a plant or a shill. “I quickly put my arms down in embarrassment, Jeff recalls, “because I wasn't supposed to be able to do that.” As Jeff sat down, stunned, Pearl told the audience that since the evening began, they'd been soaking in Reconnective Healing frequencies ─ a field effect that Stanford professor (and Coast guest) Dr. William Tiller has measured in rooms where the seminars take place. “The room,” said Pearl, “has already changed.”
The next day, the Olsens and I chat with Pearl in his hotel suite overlooking the San Fernando Valley. Jeff touches his hand to his head to show that he can still do it. “This morning,” he tells Pearl excitedly, “I had an itch on my back ─ and around went my arm. And I was like, 'Look at that!'"
It all began, says Tonya, a slim, blond interior designer, when she and her husband were painting their bedroom while listening to George Noory interview Dr. Eric Pearl on Coast to Coast AM. The Olsens were fascinated. They ordered Pearl's book, The Reconnection: Heal Others, Heal Yourself, and flew from Utah to Los Angeles to attend his Reconnective Healing seminar. “I had strange sensations on the airplane,” says Jeff. He felt shocks in both feet ─ a phantom shock in the foot that had been amputated. Then he felt a powerful shock through the top of his head that hurt his teeth. Jeff had read enough of Pearl's book to know that some people report healings just from becoming aware that the Reconnective Healing frequencies exist, “but I didn't come here for a healing,” he tells Pearl. “I came to learn. I had no inkling that I'd receive anything like this!”
Pearl, a spare, boyish man with steady eyes and a mischievous smile, confirms that just hearing about Reconnective Healing can trigger change. “When we connect with this energy, there's an optimal regeneration ─ a reorganization of tissue outside the illusion of time and space,” he explains. That's why it's hard to pinpoint just when Jeff Olsen's healing took place. “We can theorize,” says Pearl. “Did it happen instantly last night, or when he decided to attend the seminar? Did it happen when he and Tonya heard the Coast to Coast broadcast?” Pearl, who has somehow managed to integrate these healing miracles into his life, leans forward intently. “It's all fascinating, but it's also, 'Who cares?' It doesn't really matter, because here it is. And the truth is, we don't know.”
“We don't know” are Pearl's three favorite words. He uses them later that day when he takes the stage in the vast ballroom of this Hilton hotel. Flanked by a sea of massage tables, he gazes out at an audience ranging from Reiki masters and psychics to bankers, physicians and construction workers ─ a strange mix of New Age and mainstream. Some are here because they heard him on Coast to Coast AM, and Pearl says the show has inspired a number of listeners to become practitioners and is responsible for many healings. These days, he travels the world, training others to use their hands to sense the Reconnective Healing frequencies of “energy, light and information.” To date, 65,000 people in 70 countries have taken the training. Some have a healing or medical background; others have none. It doesn't matter, because, according to Pearl, anyone can tap into the reconnective frequencies.
Funny, irreverent, and entertaining, Pearl cracks open a Dr. Pepper, shocking the food purists and clean-living healers in the audience. “Oh, I'm sorry!” he says defiantly. “Everyone knows you can't possibly drink this poison and do healing work.” He points to his watch and a microphone battery pack clipped to his metal-studded belt. “None of these affect the reconnective energy,” he informs the healers, who've been taught to remove metal jewelry when they work. According to Pearl, whatever this mysterious energy is that he first sensed with his hands in 1993, it's not affected by what we eat, drink or wear. “We're accessing an electro-magnetic bandwidth, but what kind of spectrum are we tapping into? The truth is, we don't know.”
If you watch reconnective healers at work, you'll see that they don't touch the subject's body, but make hand passes over and around it, exploring the energy field. During the weekend, we learn movements like “Waterfall” and “Satellite” that sweep, scoop and stir the air, but these hand motions, says Pearl's associate Doug De Vito, who co-hosts the seminar, are just training wheels that help us find the energy. In his book, Pearl gives similar movements that anyone can try at home, but eventually, he says, these disappear like dissolving stitches as you find the energy and intuitively “play” with it. Over the next two days, we practice on each other, watching our partner on the massage table for signs called “registers” that indicate a response to the healing frequencies. These range from an eye twitch to a knee jerk, from laughter to tears, and practitioners keep their eyes open during a session to monitor these signals. Both Pearl and De Vito stress that Reconnective Healing is not about technique. “You feel for the energy, find it and stretch it,” says Pearl. “You're interacting with life force.” When you find it, he adds, “your goal is to get out of the way.”
“Dr. Gary Schwartz at the University of Arizona [a Coast guest] tested over 100 energy healing modalities,” says Doug De Vito, “and all but one require practitioners to go into a state of balance, connect with 'Something,' and then send energy from their bodies into another person. The one exception is Reconnective Healing.” That's because practitioners do not act as filters or conduits, De Vito explains. Somehow, just through their presence, healing energy flows to the subject – straight from a Higher Source. That's a good thing, says De Vito, who asks, “Would you rather receive healing through the intelligence of the Universe – or through me?”
“We're catalysts,” says Pearl, citing quantum physics, which holds that our presence can alter reality – that just looking at a table can change its molecular makeup. “When
I'm working, it's a little like falling in love,” says Allou Guthmiller, a practitioner based in Mt. Shasta, California. “It feels very tender inside me while I am present with the client.” That presence, says Pearl, is the key. “By receiving the energy – without any attempt to direct it ─ we allow a higher form of healing to take place. How does it work? We just don't know.”
What he does know is that this energy zeros in on what needs to be healed. “The less you know when a client comes in, the better,” he tells the audience, “because we're not 'treating' or 'diagnosing' anything.” Symptoms don't matter, because practitioners do not send energy to a specific place. “There is no system,” Pearl says emphatically, once again shocking the energy healers who rely on technique. Reconnective Healing is not like Reiki, Qi Gong, Mah-Jongg or Beijing,” he adds, drawing a laugh from the crowd. “You don't need crystals, candles, talismans, prayers or protection.” By just showing up as a “catalyst,” the Reconnective Healing practitioner invites energy to flow from a Source that knows exactly what's needed and supplies whatever healing the client
can accept. “Everything denser,” says Pearl, “falls away.”
So why was Eric Pearl, a mild-mannered chiropractor and TV addict with three homes, two dogs and one Mercedes tapped by the Universe, God or some Higher Source to bring these new frequencies onto the planet? He hasn't a clue. His life swerved off-course in the summer of 1993 when his pushy, free-spirited receptionist dragged him to Venice Beach to get his cards read by a woman he describes as a “Jewish gypsy.” The reading was not memorable, but the encounter changed his life. “There's very special work I do,” the woman told him, explaining that she could connect meridian lines in his body to the Earth's grid lines, and then to the planets and stars. Feeling a crazy urge to do the work, Pearl signed up. After the first session his bed lamp turned on by itself and his house seemed filled with unseen visitors; during the next, on a hot August day, he felt chilled to the bone. And something inside him had changed. “I was not the same person,” he writes in The Reconnection. “My odyssey had begun.”
The next day at work, Pearl noticed strange sensations in his hands, and as he passed them over his patients, many received unexpected healings. They got up from the table pain-free and asked what he'd done. Pearl had no idea. Some patients felt his hands before he touched their bodies; others saw colors and shapes or sensed angels or guides in the room. Some didn't know what to make of this and never came back, but Pearl had his own problems. His ears buzzed, and his hands, legs and skull vibrated; sometimes his hands blistered and bled. Plus, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir seemed to be singing in his head. “That's it," he told himself. “Everyone knows that when you go crazy you hear voices.”
His patients heard voices too. It started with Fred, a seemingly normal man who'd been seeing him for over a year. Over the next few months, Fred and more than fifty other patients channeled the same phrases, word for word, during their treatments: “You are bringing light and information onto the planet.” “You are reconnecting strands.” “You are reconnecting strings.” Except for Fred, none of these people had ever channeled before. Pearl says these messages about reconnecting strings and strands inspired him to call his work The Reconnection. He thinks that “reconnecting strands” may mean that tapping the reconnective frequencies of energy, light and information can help us transcend our genetic blueprint ─ even add strands to our DNA. And “reconnecting strings”? Pearl concluded that this was a reference to “string theory” ─ a quantum physics hypothesis that vibrational “strings” or frequencies may be at the core of all matter and energy. Not a pressing issue in your life? Then consider this: Strings, which are even smaller than sub-atomic particles, may vibrate in more than one dimension. And since we are part of the food chain of matter, then maybe we exist in other dimensions, too. It's possible, says Pearl, that via the new reconnective frequencies, we can interact with those planes or dimensions ─ a theory supported by the fact that some of his patients saw the same non-physical colors and shapes, and the same other-worldly beings.
I ask Pearl how he's dealt with the strange and miraculous course his life has taken, and if it has changed him. “How did I handle it?” He's uncomfortable. “I don't know. That's like asking, how did I handle curly hair?” Silence. Then, slowly, “I guess I'm more aware of spirituality. I mean, the fact is, 'Something' causes trees to grow from acorns and children to be born with two eyes and one nose ─ I'm much more aware of that. But whatever we want to call it, it's not contained in any one religion.” Religions are like windows, says Pearl. The view from each is different, but all are correct. “If we look out of six windows, we'll see a bigger picture; and if we climb to the roof, we'll see the whole view.”
And his biggest vision for Reconnective Healing?
"Someday, it will be as well-known as Coca Cola.” The easy smile is back. He believes that one day these frequencies of energy, light and information will be transmitted by shared awareness held in a morphogenetic field. “We'll pick it up by sitting next to someone in a theater or on an airplane,” he explains.
I'm still curious about how he's dealt with being the lightning rod that brought these new frequencies onto the planet. “I know I'm not the message ─ I'm the messenger,” he says
quickly. “And I guess I just allow myself to stay in the state of awe I was in when I first saw it happen.” Years ago, Deepak Chopra told him to “remain childlike” in the face of these strange events, and he's followed that sage advice. And it's the nature of Reconnective Healing itself, he adds, that has kept him centered. As a practitioner, “you have to be present. There's nothing to hide behind, so you become responsible for that 'Something' being present, too, and sharing the space. That's the challenge we meet: to discover more of our center. And in that lies our own healing.” He pauses. “And in that lies our own Reconnection.”
SIDEBAR: DO TRY THIS AT HOME
Feeling the Energy
Relax, hands at your sides. Raise your forearms from your elbows, so that your palms face each other, one upward, one downward, with about 6 inches in between. Allow them to naturally rotate, so your right hand is pointing toward a ten o'clock position, and your left hand toward two o'clock.
Wait for a sensation to arrive in your palms. You may feel pressure, tingling, heaviness, buoyancy, electricity, air density changes, a "pushing and pulling" feeling ─ it can come in many forms.
Play with the energy: Feel for it, find it, stretch it. Imagine flipping a ping pong ball, or playing with a Slinky. Don't try to "send" the energy. Just allow yourself to feel for it and receive it. "It's like listening with your hands," says Pearl. "It's not what you feel; it's that you feel."
Self-Healing
Allow the sensation of the energy to appear in your hands. The more you notice it, the stronger it becomes. "The sensations are always there, once we bring our attention and awareness to the frequencies," says practitioner Kaille Padgett, based in Richmond, Virginia. "Feel the energy move through your body, getting larger and larger," says Pearl, "then slip into the silent gap between your thoughts and stay there for as long as you like, until you realize you're 'back.' Know that the healing has taken place ─ and then let it go. Releasing the energy and not looking back is your thanks and acceptance."
Reprinted with permission by Dark Magazine.
For more information on the Reconnection visit www.TheReconnection.com or come to an amazing workshop in Palm Springs April 17-20 at the Hilton Palm Springs Resort or their upcoming Phoenix workshop May 15-18 at Scottsdale Resort and Athletic Club, or call 800.269.9513.