How does it feel to touch the soul of another? What is it like to be touched by the soul of another? How is one healed by God?

Kabbalah means to receive. It is the nonliteral or spiritual interpretation of Torah, the first five books of the Bible, and describes the interconnectedness between God and us in all events, circumstances and endeavors. Kabbalah is the esoteric or mystical aspect of Judaism as distinct from the traditional or exoteric pathway. Thus, Kabbalah is the spiritual meaning behind the rules and laws that people follow in order to live a God-oriented life as described in Judaism.

According to Kabbalah, we cannot take in the essence of God full strength, so to speak. The full strength of God is so powerful that we would blow ourselves up or disintegrate if we did. However, God’s emanations are available in a titrated or diluted form that is harmonious to us. These divine qualities are represented by ten sephirot or vessels. Each divine emanation is a different quality which thereby enables us to know the nature of God, for example the quality of loving kindness and the quality of strength. Furthermore, each of these ten qualities of the sephirot is present in all of us. It is by experiencing and knowing these qualities in ourselves that we can then understand the nature of God. Thus the sephirot is a means of helping us to understand God’s nature and also to understand and experience the nature of God inside us.

Integrated Kabbalistic Healing was developed by Jason Shulman, an internationally known healer and spiritual teacher who is the founder and director of A Society of Souls, a three year professional-level training program. The hallmark of Integrated Kabbalistic Healing is that all dimensions of the human experience - the mind, body, and soul - are incorporated in the healing process which, in turn, draws on the divine energies of the sephirot.

Kabbalah teaches us that fundamentally, separation between self and other does not exist; that is, all is one. It also teaches us that we live in a relational universe and that all events and experiences occur in relationship. In addition, we learn from Kabbalah that our impurities arise from the Divine creative process itself and that these imperfections can be used to bring us back to wholeness. Holding this paradox in consciousness as a healer creates a very different experience in the healing relationship than one in which someone does something to someone else. Integrated Kabbalistic Healing is not some magical or mystical manipulations that a healer does on or to someone who is in need of physical/mental/emotional and/or spiritual healing. Rather, it is a healing approach in which God’s presence is remembered, evoked and felt in the interaction between healer and client. It is in the experience of God’s presence in the context of this relationship that promotes healing.

A client comes to an Integrated Kabbalistic Healer in order to heal, for example, a physical problem. Since Integrated Kabbalistic Healing is a mind/body/spirit approach to healing, the physical problem which brought the client to the healer is viewed from each of these perspectives. The client discusses with the healer his/her problem, how his/her life is being affected, his/her emotional state, the impact of early learnings and parenting, etc. There is an exploration of the issue, problem and feelings present. Integrated Kabbalistic Healing is not a "methods" approach to healing. It is not one healing for all regardless of the problem or issue presented. It is not "category" healing where those manifesting or experiencing one type of problem all receive a specific type of healing while those fitting a description of another type of problem receive another.

The Integrated Kabbalistic Healing approach is based on the healer coming to a deep understanding of how the client’s physical pain, emotional state, habitual patterns and beliefs interfere with his/her contact with the Divine and therefore interfere with the opportunity to have a fuller experience of life. In Integrated Kabbalistic Healing, the healer cannot help another with something s/he is not already familiar with in him/herself. By being with the client in an open, receptive and accepting manner, the healer can sink to the root of the client’s presenting problem. The healer does this by connecting and aligning with her/his own pain, separation from inner divine qualities, solutions, both effective and ineffective, and her/his own struggles. This does not mean that the healer over-empathizes with the client, but that s/he simply understands and endeavors to experience all facets of the human condition deeply and openly. In this way, the healer seeks to embrace the full range of her/his humanity. This then allows her/him to come to a deep understanding of the client’s problem and thus puts the healer and client into a relationship which engenders healing. This is called the "diagnostic process". Healing begins even in the diagnostic process.

Throughout the diagnostic and healing process, the client is fully clothed and may be lying down on a table or sitting in a chair, usually opposite the healer. The healer, through training and practice, selects the most efficacious healing for this moment in time. The goal is to enable the client to remember that the quality of God that was most inaccessible is still present in her/him. Healing occurs because there is an awakening to what existed all along. In this state of consciousness, the client will again be able to experience formerly repressed feelings, an abating of physical pain, a lessening of emotional heartache, and support for giving up unproductive habits and limiting beliefs. This can lead to an opening to one’s fullness allowing the innate divine qualities to emerge.

Like all healings, Integrated Kabbalistic Healing is a process. For some, change can occur immediately. For others, change occurs over time. But for all, the opportunity to experience oneself and one’s connection with God more fully is readily created and available.

George, age 44, called me at the suggestion of his psychiatrist. He had presenting symptoms of hypertension, depression and stomach pain and was on three different medications to control his hypertension, as well as stomach medication and an antidepressant. The medications were only marginally helpful. He desperately wanted relief.

George was a friendly faced, round-looking man who was struggling to gain control of his body. In our initial session, he told me about his background and the problems with which he was dealing. George had been adopted by parents who became alcoholic. He often had been left to take care of himself, even when he was sick, as both his parents were frequently passed out from drinking. His parents had divorced when he was 10. He and his mom then lived with an aunt who did not drink.

George had developed hypertension at 12 years of age and when he was 28 he went on medication for it. George felt disabled by hypertension. He suffered constant pain in the back of his neck, a sharp pain in his shoulder and pressure behind his eyes. When he was 32 years old, cardiac problems began to manifest themselves - he experienced severe pounding in his chest and had an erratic EKG. From the onset of these symptoms, he was unable to exercise because the more he did, the worse he felt. George was also a musician who played professionally in a group, but had lost the ability to play his wind instrument due to his shortness of breath. Since the cardiac condition developed, George felt that he no longer lived a normal life.

In addition, George had been devastated by the break-up of his 3-year marriage. He has also had attempted unsuccessfully to locate his birth mother. In short, George was struggling to find himself and longed for meaningful relationships.

As I listened intently to George with an open heart/mind/spirit, I was struck by the fact that he recounted the events and experiences in his life with little affect, as if he were telling someone else’s story. Although he admitted that certain things in his life were difficult, he exhibited no bitter or angry feelings. There was a disconnection between the events he had described and his feelings. It was as if he had squeezed his feelings deep into his body, causing them to manifest in a distorted manner as stomach problems, hypertension and depression. As I attuned myself to George during this diagnostic process, I just accepted what he had to say noting his mental, emotional and spiritual states. I questioned him in order to obtain a sense of which of the sephirotic (or divine) qualities were not in relationship to each other, were distorted or not accessible to him.

George had experienced few successes, had little sense of himself and had no connection to his innate divine nature. It became clear that George’s relationship with two of the primal or divine sephirotic essences accessed in Integrated Kabbalistic Healing - victory and splendor, success and personal glory - was distorted. For example, personal victory in the sense of getting what you want, is not possible if it is not built on a foundation of good boundaries, which means knowing what to take in and what to leave out. Thus, I was able to determine that the most effective Integrated Kabbalistic Healing for him was one which helped bring these qualities into his awareness. At the end of this session, George commented that he was the most relaxed he had ever felt.

Soon thereafter, George came for another Integrated Kabbalistic Healing session. We discussed his awareness of his present state on the physical, emotional and spiritual levels. Again, using the diagnostic process to align myself with George and to gain clarity on the best healing for him, I selected a healing which focused on helping him connect to his inner divine nature. George lay down on a table and I placed my hands on the side of his thigh and on his upper arm. Then, knowing that the divine is already present in George, and keeping this knowing in my mind and also feeling the divine inside of me, I was simply open to receiving his divine nature so that it could emerge. I felt it first in my hands and then in my body. I was awakening in him that which already existed but was inaccessible. When George got up from the table, he was in a most relaxed and almost euphoric state of peace.

After that session, I did not hear from George until he called me a year-and-a-half later. First, he told me that after our sessions together, he had succeeded in discontinuing all of his medications except one for hypertension. He was most grateful. He now was scheduled for a hernia operation, which was causing him much anxiety. He wanted assistance in calming himself prior to the operation.

George came in for a healing session and recounted what was going on in his life. He was struggling: pleasurable things would cause him pain, his job was no longer secure and his motto was "whatever you do, you end up paying for it." There was not much positive in his life to which he could connect. Through the diagnostic process, I was able to determine which of the divine essences were distorted or inaccessible to him. I decided again that George needed to reconnect to his inner divine nature to become more aware that even his struggles had a divine quality to them. This healing left him calmed and with a sense of his own fullness.

George came for two more sessions after the operation. By being open and present in relationship with him as he shared his struggles and concerns, I accepted him and did not make him better by fixing him as if he were broken or by diminishing his experiences. Two different Integrated Kabbalistic Healings were presented. Again, these focused on helping George reconnect with existing divine emanations or qualities which were not in dynamic balance. George commented how safe and open he felt as a result of the healings and that he had never experienced these feelings before.

I did not hear from George after that. However, from his previous pattern of not calling when improvement resulted, I took this as a signal that he had found a level of comfort for the time being. I imagine that I will hear from him again if his discomfort, on either the mental, emotional, physical and/or spiritual levels, increases.

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Myrna Finn, Ed.D is a graduate of Jason Shulman’s A Society of Souls program. She is an assistant to Jason in his program as well as a professor at Salem State College, Salem, MA teaching courses in oral communication and communication disorders. Myrna is also a graduate of the Barbara Brennan School of Healing where she served as a faculty member for three years. She has a private Integrated Kabbalistic Healing practice in Jamaica Plain, MA and does both face-to-face and long distance healing. Her telephone number is (617) 278-1807 and her e-mail address is: mfinn@salemstate.edu