THE TOUCH ~ Principles and Practice
Principles and Practice of the Healing Modality, The Touch
by Doug Heyes, M.A.
I learned what consciousness was when I was nineteen. That’s when my light switch got flipped. It was 1976, the same year Wayne Dyer published Your Erroneous Zones. Blessings on your journey, Wayne. Werner Erhard was kicking ass with est, Oscar Ichazo was opening minds with ARICA, Jon-Roger was opening hearts with Insight, Richard Alpert had long since completed his transformation to Ram Dass, and Jerry Brown let Tim Leary out of prison. It was a heady time for California consciousness. I dove into that river head first. Didn’t even check for rocks.
It wasn’t my first trip to the spiritual rodeo. I grew up in metaphysics – in Christian Science and Religious Science. The concept of Mind over Matter is one of my earliest childhood imprints, and I have had countless demonstrations of its truth throughout my life. Lived in Mexico when I was a kid, saw throngs of sacred pilgrims on their knees. Sang Christmas mass in an Episcopal choir. Went walkabout when I was fifteen, got saved in a baptism tank at a Pentecostal Revival Church. Did a lot of psychedelics. Finished high school in Grenoble, France, where I skied the same runs where Jean-Claude KiIly took the world by storm. I was trained as an actor by Professor George Shdanoff, co-founder with Michael Chekov of the Moscow Art Theatre. I mention this because it is of no less spiritual significance than the others. We used to call it “finding the inner life of the character.” Now, it’s more like, “finding the inner life of the human being.”
I got married at twenty to the woman I loved. Stayed that way for more than thirty years. Raised an amazing son. Had a great run as a writer and creative executive in television. Wrote an award-winning play. Climbed mountains. Kayaked rivers. Worked for 20 years as a volunteer ski patroller. Ran hundreds of trauma rescues. All of this could barely prepare me for what happened next.
One snowy Valentine’s weekend, while on ski patrol, I hit a patch of bad snow, took a forward-launching fall, and did a pile-driver head first into the ground. It felt like a bomb went off in my body. I tumbled like a rag doll shot from a cannon. My screen went totally white. I don’t know for how long. But when I came to, I couldn’t move, feel or breathe.
The events that followed changed everything. I’ve written about them in detail in my book, “THE TOUCH – Healing Miracles and Methods.” As I lay flattened out on that mountainside, I had a visitation from my dad who had died seven years earlier. When I asked him, “What do I do?” meaning, what do I do to leave this broken body and join him higher on the mountain, he said, “Just breathe.” And I started breathing again. Six angels in red jackets with white crosses on them – my ski patrol brothers – came and put their hands on me and prayed for my healing. I surrendered my fear, realizing that something was happening that was bigger than I was, and put my trust into whatever that was. As my brothers ended the prayer and went to secure my hands across my chest, I said, “I feel that.”
The E.R doc said it was, short of a fatality, the worst injury he’d ever seen – a massive “three-level spinal cord contusion with incomplete quadriplegia and deep-cord syndrome.” My prognosis was very guarded, but basically it was a coin-flip whether I’d be able to walk again. I grinned. “Doc,” I said, “you have no idea who you’re dealing with.”
My recovery was utterly mind-blowing, even to my doctors, but what had happened on that mountain was far more than that. It is as though my old self had died up there and a whole new being, like Doug 2.0, had been born. Each moment, each breath, was gift of grace. As I explored the meaning of what had happened, I remember holding up my hands in the hospital garden, you know – artfully backlit with the light streaming through my fingers, and said to God, “If it’s possible for a group of guys to put their hands on me and transmit this kind of healing energy, why couldn’t I do that for someone else?”
God said, “What makes you think you can’t?”
“Oh,” I said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. And so it is. I wheeled myself back inside, where, with the help of my friend Pat, a 300-pound black Baptist Earth-mother, I performed my first hands-on healing: an 87 year old black woman named Macie. Macie hadn’t been able to walk for months, wasn’t participating in her therapy, wouldn’t get out of bed and had the bedsores to prove it. She had no visitors, no one who seemed to care. She wouldn’t eat or sleep, and make constant pleas for attention from the nursing staff. All she wanted to do was go home. She was just about to be cut from the program and sent to a facility – God’s waiting room, as we used to say – where she would surely die. I had no training in this at all, just an experience, an intention for healing, and a certainty that anything was possible. Pat and I put our hands on Macie and began to pray. Pat was a professional, and could pray like nobody’s business. I was a total newbie, so I just went with what the guys on the mountain had prayed over me – that I would be healed, that my healing would be a demonstration of God’s love, compassion and will, and that I would always be a witness – and then I just sort of improvised from there.
The next morning Pat and I wheeled up together in the hall, debriefing about last night. Suddenly we heard this high pitched voice behind us. “There he is!” Pat and I spun around in astonishment to see Macie walking towards us down the hall with her stunned physical therapist. “There he is! The power of Christ has come through Doug and I can walk again today!” That’s when my conversion to the healing arts was formally confirmed. I kept getting better, Macie kept getting better, and on the same day that I left the hospital to go home, Macie also left the hospital… to go home. For the record, I don’t claim “credit” for Macie’s healing. That was between her and her Spirit. I was, however, called upon to facilitate a process, or perhaps more accurately – an interaction. And I haven’t stopped doing it since.
Consumed by my passion for healing and a burning desire to understand, I became a laboratory of one, beginning my total immersion in the study and practice of this newly awakened gift. I sought out masters, teachers, practitioners in many modalities – healing arts, martial arts, qi gong, breathwork, lightwork, harmonic resonance, western medicine, eastern medicine, intuitive medicine, shamanic medicine. In nine months, I was back on skis. In a year, I was back in the handles of a rescue toboggan running wrecks on the mountain. Not long after, I was doing triathlons. Went back to school, picked up a psych degree at UCLA and a master’s in spiritual psych at USM (both degrees, by the way, received side-by-side with my son!) Continued to practice, practice, practice. Saw hundreds of private clients, experienced numerous eye-opening demonstrations of the extraordinary potential of this work, started teaching and conducting workshops, finally synthesizing what I had discovered into a practical system called RAM Healing (*Radiance Aesthesia Method), and then wrote a book about it, “THE TOUCH ~ Healing Miracles and Methods.”
I share this not to bask in my own spotlight, but to illustrate that none of this has happened by coincidence, that there has been a deep, detailed, perhaps even orchestrated process which has led me to this place where we now meet. I suggest the same is true for you. Along the way, I’ve picked up a few principles, which I’ll share.
7 Principles of The Touch
1) The power to heal is in all of us.
I don’t consider myself special. What was revealed through my experience is something that has always been there. It was simply reawakened. It can be learned and practiced by anyone, anywhere. In my case, it took being thrown on my head. I suggest you don’t learn it that way.
2) Mastery takes time.
It’s like chess: you can learn the moves in an hour and spend a lifetime learning the game. My kung fu Grandmaster Don Baird says, “You can begin to claim mastery of a form when you have practiced it ten thousand times.” My qi gong master Dr. Baolin Wu says, “The secret to mastering qi gong is to do it, and do it, and do it.” My great teacher and wise sage Dr. Kam Yuen puts it this way: “When we first start doing this work, we do a lot to accomplish minimal results. As we progress, we do less and less to achieve more and more. When we become masters, we achieve our most dramatic results by doing nothing at all.”
3) It’s not about religion. It’s about Energy.
It is not necessary to have a deep religious conviction or a physics degree to do this work. We only need to accept that human beings exist on many levels, i.e. physical, emotional, mental, psychological, spiritual, etc., that these levels are in a constant state of interaction and mutual influence unified by patterns of energy, that there is a relationship between one’s internal and external environment, that we are influenced by and connected to one another, and that total health depends on optimal integration across all of these levels of experience.
4) Consciousness influences energy and matter.
It’s all about this. It’s the entire field of theoretical physics, you know, quantum non-locality, the effects of observation on outcome, stuff like that. The greatest minds of all time have blown up on this one, and mine is in the process. But I really love the visual understanding provided by Hans Jenny in Cymatics, and of course, Dr. Masaru Emoto on the effects of thoughts, words and feelings on the molecular arrangement of water.
5) Healing is an authentic form for Self-awakening.
You don’t have to be perfect to do this work. Lucky for me. You do have to be willing to learn and grow. As you deepen into your practice, you will come into ever-increasing alignment with its core principles. You will confront your own doubt, fear and resistance and move through it. You will raise your own personal vibratory frequency and those around you. You will experience things you never thought possible, and through that, come into an expanded awareness of who you are and what you can achieve. You will experience greater energy and clarity, expanded creativity and productivity, higher levels of personal performance and satisfaction, a sense of peace and purpose, greater prosperity and better health.
6) It is unaffected by time or distance.
You can be equally effective whether working “hands-on” or at a distance. It’s quantum physics again, okay? Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance.” Too much to talk about here. Just trust me on this one.
7) The best defense is a good practice.
Let’s face it: we’re all under siege all the time. We’re all affected by the viciousness of this world, the madness, hatred, intolerance, mayhem and misery. Throw in all the toxic crap, the poisons we put in our bodies, the GMO’s, the EMF’s, the noise and traffic and talking heads and bullshit. Stress levels and their associated health issues are skyrocketing worldwide. Alcoholism, depression, prescription drug abuse and suicide are at epidemic levels. Environmental damage is killing our planet. It’s a wonder we’re even able to survive. All the votes aren’t in on that one. This doesn’t begin to account for all the stuff we bring to the party, all our mean self-talk and judgment, all our sadness and pain and trauma and fear, all our stories and limitations and justifications, all our trials and failures and reasons why “we can’t.”
As practitioners in the healing arts, we seek to be the eye of the storm, to be a point of light in the darkness, to practice love, compassion, understanding, communication. We learn to develop and maintain a practice which allows us to come fully present, to shed for a moment our doubts and perceived limitations, to tune our personal vibration to a higher frequency, to open ourselves to a universe of pure potential. We do this through breath, light, meditation, creativity, imagination, and devotion to service. Ultimately, it does not matter what path or modality of practice we choose, only that we choose and practice it. This is what “THE TOUCH” is all about.
If you haven’t noticed we’re at a crossroads in human history, then you’re not paying attention. Either that, or you’ve been systematically lulled into a state of hypnotic complacency. Even so, you can’t ignore the quiet voice within urging you to wake up. You’re more than you think you are. There is an authentic purpose to your life. The more you come into alignment with it, the happier you will be and the greater difference you will make. The clock is ticking. The time is now. Our choices determine how it all turns out, and the stakes for humanity have never been higher. Now get out there and practice!
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About the Author
Doug Heyes became a healer after his own miraculous recovery from a dramatic and life threatening ski injury left him paralyzed from the neck down. This experience led Heyes to learn his craft by studying with some of the world’s master healers and going back to school where he became educated as a psychologist. As well as his thriving practice in Spiritual Coaching, Transformational Coaching and Ram Healing, Heyes is also a red belt in Pyong An Do Wan (Peaceful Mind Way) Kung Fu.
