Above the River Q&A #1: Tingling

I’m finally getting started on answering your questions about Above the River! Here’s one from Janet:

“I’m curious about the tingling sensation people feel when attending a healing. Is that related to energy work?”

This tingling in the body that a number of the characters in Above the River feel when they’re in the room with Bruno Groening is something that many people have felt when they encounter what Bruno referred to as the “Heilstrom” (“the healing stream”).

Bruno Groening, as I mention in the Author’s Note at the beginning of the book, was a real person who carried out healing work in Germany after World War II. He said that the Heilstrom came from God, whom he described as “the greatest physician”. Many, many people who spent time in Bruno’s presence reported feeling this tingling that you mention, whether in their hands or feet, or throughout their bodies. Some people said that it felt like an electric current running through their body. When asked about this sensation, Bruno just said that it was the sensation of the Heilstrom moving through the body. He said that the Heilstrom would flow to every spot in the body where there was something that was “not from God”, and would clear it all out.

Certainly, not everyone felt this. Some people felt nothing at all. Others felt a deep sense of peace and calm and love, as did some of the characters in my novel. Bruno made a point of saying that it’s not necessary to feel the Heilstrom in order for it to have a healing effect on the body and mind.

This is so similar to what we sometimes experience during energy healing work. As someone who practices Reiki, I can say that both my recipients and I often feel tingling in the body during a session.  And it’s my belief, which is shared by other practitioners, too, that what we’re feeling at those moments is the flow of the healing energy through our bodies, to the spots where healing is needed – a process similar to what Bruno said about the Heilstrom going to where there’s something that’s not from God.  However, Bruno said that the Heilstrom was different from prana or chi.  I imagine that he would also say it is different from the energy that we Reiki practitioners access when we give Reiki. And I can say, personally, that the Heilstrom feels different to me from the energy I use during a Reiki session, and also from the energy I’ve felt moving through me during, say, acupuncture or jin shin jyutsu. All of these have their own distinct feel to me.

I’m able to share this personal take on how the Heilstrom feels thanks to having been part of the Bruno Groening Circle of Friends: After Bruno passed away in 1959, a small group of what he called his Circle of Friends, managed to continue his work.  These friends began helping people connect to the Heilstrom by instructing them the way Bruno did during his lifetime (basically in the same way that Bruno and Egon Arthur Schmidt explain it in my novel when the Gassmann-Bunke family goes to see Bruno). They also shared Bruno’s teaching about the healing process and Regelungen.  One of these friends, Grete Häusler, who was a close associate of Bruno’s during his lifetime, eventually formed the Bruno Groening Circle of Friends, which is active today throughout the world. I was in that group for quite a few years, and that’s how I came to experience the Heilstrom.

Now, although the Heilstrom feels different to me than all of these others energies, I feel that they all do fall into the category of “healing energies”. Maybe they have different sources, and maybe they work in the body and mind in different ways. I don’t know.  As far as I know, Bruno didn’t talk about whether the Heilstrom differs from prana or chi in terms of source. He just said that the Heilstrom is the healing energy from God. Maybe another reader who has more info about this could comment.

The main point, though, is that I’d say you’re absolutely right: When people take in the Heilstrom, they can feel a tingling that is similar to the tingling folks sometimes feel during Reiki or acupuncture or other types of energy work; and that, in both cases, this tingling sensationresults from the flow of healing energy through the body.