September/October 2003 Featured Stories
Your Hands Can Heal You

Master Stephen Co interviewed by Miriam Knight

Q: Master Co, you come from a Tibetan/Chinese tradition. Could you give us a bit of historical perspective on the use of Prana in healing?

A: Sure, prana is called chi in Chinese; Ruach, or the breath of life, in the Old Testament; and basically it’s the life force that sustains us. So in China, since ancient times it is chi that governs people’s lives and health. Acupuncture, acupressure and herbal medicine were used to simulate chi in the body and Feng Shui was used to manipulate this chi or prana in the environment. In Japan it is called Qi or Ki, so you have disciplines like Akkido and Reiki.

So it has been around for thousands and thousands of years, and what my teacher did was to actually synthesize this into a very simple, step by step, practical system that anybody could learn and apply immediately.

Q: You talk about your teacher; was this Grandmaster Choa Kok Sui?

A: Yes. He is the modern founder of Pranic Healing, and I learned it from him in 1988.

Q: How did he come to have this inspiration?

A: He had been studying many different healing modalities and spiritual practices for 30 or 40 years. He is an engineer, like me, and has a tendency not to believe things without proof. So what he did was to collect all these teachings from many cultures and traditions, and sat down with a medical staff and also some high level clairvoyants – people who could see and feel energy – and actually experimented with each of those techniques to sort out what is real, what works and what is pure superstition. And from there, also with the inspiration of his teacher, who had been guiding him the whole time, he came up with Pranic Healing in 1987 in its present form.

Q: So it was applying a scientific approach to an esoteric field?

A: Exactly! And even in our classes that’s what we do. We tell people, "this energy when applied to this point in the body has this effect." But after we tell them what the principle is, we have everyone immediately get up, use their hands and try to feel the energy. Then we apply the technique and get them to feel the results. So everything is very experiential and the result of many years of experiments.

Q: It is interesting that many modalities like Reiki and the Reconnection require an initiation, but you seem to be de-mystifying yours.

A: You know, I can understand why they do that. With Reiki I have over 500 Reiki masters that come to me for my courses. And after I interviewed them, basically I figured out that the symbols are ways to tap into that energy if you can’t do it yourself. Now with pranic healing, we understand that prana is everywhere and you can tap into it at any time and just pop it into other people or back into your body to heal yourself.

Q: So you have made it accessible to anybody?

A: You just need to be able to do the proper breathing technique, the proper either visualization or mind intent in order to pull this energy into your body and do what you want with it. What people don’t realize is that energy is everywhere. So if you really think about it, if you just knew how to pull it in, anybody and everybody has access to it.

Q: In your book, Your Hands Can Heal You, you talk about Six Steps to self healing. Is this what you are talking about when you say that people just need to learn the techniques?

A: Exactly. These are techniques on how to deal with your emotions; techniques on how to do deep breathing to be able to pull in more energy; how to remove the used up or dirty energy that is stored in the body; techniques to supercharge your body through physical exercises. And then you have meditation, and so on. These are basically "cookbook" approaches. One thing we really want to stress is that the easiest way to access these energies is to just follow these simple, step by step techniques. That’s really what the book is for.

Q: Did you write the book with a medical doctor for the same reason Grandmaster Choa had when he assembled his medical staff?

A: Yes. We believed from the outset that Pranic Healing is here to complement both mainstream medicine and other alternative modalities. The medical community specializes in the physical body, and they often forget that the physical body is not all there is to a person. We have an energy field; we have this life force that flows through your body. When we take an integrative approach, healing is much, much more accelerated for the person.

Dr. Eric Robbins got the book written by my teacher and started using Pranic Healing in the hospital, which happened to be open to it. When he started getting results, he took the class. He then noticed that he was getting 40-80% accelerated healing rates in his patients. So from there, we got together and started writing this book.

Q: How is this book different from your teacher’s book?

A: My teacher’s book specializes in how to heal other people. It’s more detailed and more like a medical textbook. This book is primarily for self-healing and also it does not assume any prior knowledge. We take you by the hand from the basics to the more advanced techniques.

Q: I noticed that some of the techniques are quite familiar and some less so. The use of color, for example seems pretty unique.

A: Very unique. When you do techniques like breathing, the energy comes in primarily as white energy or prana. When this is absorbed by your body it is broken down into the spectrum, and different parts of your body respond better to certain energies. So what my teacher did is in learning how to accelerate the healing of more severe cases, he was able to break it down and understand that, ok, red energy is for strengthening, orange is to help someone with constipation – different colors have different effects in the body. So when you do that for every single ailment, you literally have a recipe for thousands of different ailments. Even if you are color blind and have difficulty visualizing it, you just form the intent and that is the color that will come out of your hand.

Q: How does one fit all these techniques into a busy schedule?

A: You do them as you need them. You have a preventative maintenance, where you keep your energy clean by doing self-cleansing, salt water baths. Before you go to bed, you do the cutting of the cords so people don’t drain your life force. This is one of the strengths of Pranic healing. Most modalities do not focus at all on decontamination, or self-cleansing. They focus more on giving energy.

When we do a healing in the body, either for maintenance or to fix a problem, the first step is a cleansing. The body has consciousness, and when you remove the blockages, the body will be able to absorb more energy. The danger of not cleansing is what most people call a radical (or detox) reaction.

You have probably heard of people receiving a healing getting worse before they got better? That is a radical reaction. When a person is sick, either physically or emotionally, a lot of energy centers and channels have been blocked. Now if you just put energy into that person, it is very possible that you just shove some of that stuff deeper into the body. When you do that, the body will now try to get rid of it. And the way it gets rid of it is through vomiting, diarrhea, sweating, fevers. All those are reactions of the body to release all this stuff that was unintentionally pushed in.

Now if you started out by clearing them out first, just like we do in our demos when we get somebody from the class who has, say, back pain; you start by doing a gentle sweeping, just remove the blockages from the back and some strategic areas. Within a few minutes the pain subsides by 80-90%. Just by cleansing, anybody could benefit.

Q: That is totally fascinating. I also liked the section in your book about decontaminating your house and energy environment.

A: That is a very big deal. As I always say, the health of the water in an aquarium makes a big difference to the fish. The same thing with us. We are made of energy. Energy interpenetrates our system. So wherever we are, at work or at home, if the energy is not clean it will affect you. So by learning to purify not only yourself but your environment, you can be healthier.

Q: How far can the reader go just with your book?

A: They can learn how to cleanse themselves and their environment. In one chapter we give instructions on the 24 most common ailments which they will be able to use immediately. They will be able to energize themselves, have more inner peace. It is basically a comprehensive system that they can use for the more simple cases. There are references to more advanced books and to the free healing clinics that we have all over the country. We are here to share what we know so that everyone can benefit.

Q: How long does it take to achieve a greater level of mastery?

A: The 2-day course teaches the basics. Then it is a matter of practice. If someone has migraine, insomnia, stress, I would expect you to be able to relieve that problem within half an hour. Back pain you should do in 10 minutes. During the class you ask your partner if they have any pain, and you should substantially relieve it on the spot.

Q: I was impressed with Grandmaster Choa’s comment in the introduction, that whenever we take steps to heal ourselves, we heal the world. What did he mean by that?

A: It is the very core of the Pranic Healing teachings that we are not only here for ourselves. On one level, we are here to learn something that will help humanity and alleviate suffering. Another part of our system is meditation and blessing. So we believe that the earth is merely a gigantic being where we are the cells.

As you know in the physical body, if a part of the body is hurting, the rest of the body would feel it, either directly or indirectly. So we believe that as we change ourselves, we are able to change our consciousness – be happier, be healthier – this has an energetic pattern that will affect other parts of the world, given enough time.

Maybe on the physical level there is a separation, but energetically we are all swimming in the same ocean, the ocean of life force around the earth. So whatever affects us will affect other people, and whatever we feel reverberates towards humanity. And you can’t expect humanity to improve without an inner change. What we see as a physical environment is nothing more than a reflection of what is inside of us.

As we learn how to love, how to give, to share, and this spreads throughout the country and ultimately the whole world, it will make a big difference.

Master Stephen Co will be in Portland October 17-19. Download for free the powerful "Meditation on Twin Hearts" from the website: www.yourhandscanhealyou.com.