Welcome back to Unit 8 of the Modern Order of Essenes course! If you are new to the course, it starts out here with Unit 1.
Before we dive into the content of Unit 8, a request: At some point soon, I’ll have to decide about my publishing schedule and my work for the upcoming months. In order to plan ahead, I need to know whether any of you are interested in continuing this course past the Apprentice grade.
So… Are you interested in tackling the Healer as well, or rather not? Please tell me in a comment below, even if you shouldn’t be quite sure yet.
Important: It doesn’t matter whether you are on schedule with the Apprentice lessons or lagging behind. I’m perfectly fine with preparing the Healer material even if people will only get to it a few weeks later! However, I would not put in the work if nobody is going to make use of the course… 😉
I.e. if you’re behind for whatever reason, please also let me know whether you intend to continue or not.
Well. Having gotten this out of the way, we’ll now proceed to the content of Unit 8…
In this unit, a new element is introduced, namely foot reflexology. If you’ve never done foot reflexology on yourself, or gotten a treatment by others, this might seem weird at first. For example, what does it have to do with spiritual healing?
Well, we’ll get into some of these questions further below – and I strongly encourage you to give the reflexology a try. Chances are good you’ll come to love it.
Coursework
- To Study – Foot Reflexology: Introduction + The Zones
In this unit, you’ll start to practice foot reflexology. To get a feel for the method and its background, you should first study the relevant introductory sections, including the diagrams included in the material:
Online Version (Sections “Essene Foot Reflexology” and “The Zones”, including both the vertical and horizontal zones, and also the diagrams at the very bottom. The rest of the text which starts with the heading “Daily Foot Reflexology Treatment” will be covered elsewhere.)
PDF Version (Pages 39 to 41) - To Practice – Foot Reflexology: Daily Self Treatment
This is the actual practice of foot reflexology on yourself. You should do this (ideally) daily. (Pro tip: It’s also a very nice way of relaxing your feet right before you go to bed… 😉 )
Online Version (Section “Daily Foot Reflexology Treatment”. The section below on treating others will be covered in a later unit.)
PDF Version (Section “Daily Foot Reflexology Treatment” on page 42 and the upper half of page 43.) - To Practice – Essene Healing Breath: Continue as before
Continue practicing the Essene Healing Breath as before, ideally daily, up to and including Step 4
Online Version (Section “Phase Two: Step Four – Watch your breathing”)
PDF Version (Section “Phase Two: Step Four – Watch your breathing” on page 19) - To Practice – Blessing Walk up to Step 5: Continue as before
Continue practicing the Blessing Walk up to and including Step 5.
Online Version (only Steps 1 to 5)
PDF Version (only Steps 1 to 5, on pages 11 to 14) - To Practice – Empower your Healing Hands: Continue as before
Continue to empower your Healing Hands in the morning.
Online Version (only the sections for empowering your Healing Hands, i.e. up to and including “Empowering Your Healing Hands, Step Three” – the rest is part of later units)
PDF Version (pages 31, 32 and the top of page 33, up to and including “Empowering Your Healing Hands, Step Three” – the rest is part of later units) - To Practice – Muscle Testing: Clasped Hand Technique
Practice the next of the muscle testing techniques, the “Clasped Hand Technique”.
Online Version (only the section titled “Clasped Hand Technique”)
PDF Version (Section “Clasped Hand Technique” on page 48)
Reflection Question
While you do the work of Unit 8, take some time to reflect on the following question:
How can physical healing be accomplished or facilitated?
Meditation Topics
If you need fodder for your discursive meditations beyond what you have found in this unit’s texts, the following topics should give you something to work with:
- What would it mean to you personally to be physically healed?
- How could you reach this state?
- Could you reach it?
- How are your feet connected to the rest of you?
- In which ways could parts of you be an image of you as a whole?
- In which ways could you be an image of the great whole you exist in?
- What are the effects of doing things more than once? Repeatedly? Regularly?
- What does clasping your hands mean or symbolize?
- How could you divide your body into zones, regions or groups, and why?
- How might illnesses show in other parts of your body?
- How might illnesses show in other parts of yourself?
- What could the effects of massage be?
- What is a tradition of healing?
- What does it mean to be part of a tradition of healing?
And if you have enough ideas on your own and don’t need any from this list, that’s even better!
Commentary
Some General Notes About the Course Structure
As you might have noted by now, we’ve got quite a few strands to juggle in the introductory and Apprentice practice: Healing Hands, foot reflexology, Essene Healing Breath meditation, muscle testing, and a load of theoretical texts. And you might have been wondering why the course sometimes starts certain practices, and then doesn’t seem to make any headway with them for quite a while.
(Seriously, being told over many weeks to “just continue empowering your Healing Hands” might not be the most motivating thing ever…)
There are two reasons for this: First, I had to lay things out in a meaningful way, without overloading certain units with too much coursework. Thus, sometimes something had to give…
But secondly, I also settled on this structure after some careful consideration. There are certain elements where I think you as a practitioner will actually profit from building them up more slowly, or doing them more thoroughly by continuing with the base stage for a while.
Healing Hands is one of these elements: Building up a robust energy flow over several weeks will help you to deal with the energies better later, and will also lay a stronger foundation for the actual practice which is still to come. (Well, at least I hope so – feedback appreciated!)
Foot reflexology is another area where we will (seemingly) continue slowly. Over the next few units, you’ll only continue to massage your own feet daily (or at least as often as you can manage).
My reasons for this structural choice were similar as in the case of the Healing Hands:
For the foot reflexology it will also do you good to have an established daily practice, in order to regularly clear the energy channels and help your (energy) body deal with the rest of the MOE work. At the same time, gaining some practice on your own feet before you start on those of family members and friends will help you considerably later.
There are also legal restrictions to consider, of course – you’ll need to check for your personal jurisdiction whether you’re allowed to practice foot reflexology on others, or teach it to them, and in which kind of settings (private vs. public, free vs. paid, people close to you vs. others).
However, there is one other important factor here: Competently performing foot reflexology on others or teaching it in a professional setting requires a lot more experience and knowledge than you can gain from studying the MOE material. The MOE will show you how to do it on yourself, and (if legally allowed) perform it on and show it to people close to you in a private setting.
But even this seemingly low-key application requires some basic level of competency – and your technique is likely to improve if you regularly perform foot reflexology on yourself for a while, and take note of the effects.
All that is to say there are several good reasons why you will only do foot reflexology on yourself for the next few units. We will eventually look at the section of material titled “Using Essene Foot Reflexology for Others”, but in due time… 🙂
Practice Habits
There isn’t much to say about the regular practices, especially of the Blessing Walk, Healing Hands and Essene Healing Breath, in this unit’s commentary. Simply continue to practice them, and observe the effects on yourself, your life and on others.
If your practice should have gotten a bit shaky over time, if life has started to interfere once too often, etc, now might also be good time to review your practice schedule and habits.
Remember how in Unit 1 we started out with building good practice habits? You could spend some time in this unit on reviewing your practice habits again. Figure out what works well for you, and what doesn’t – and how to improve the latter!
E.g. you could shift certain practices to other times of the day and see if this makes things easier for you. Or come up with certain “anchors” to remind you to do some of the practices at specific times or on specific occasions (e.g. practice body testing before each meal). Etc.
You’ll need to come up with your own solutions to your own problems, of course, but please feel free to make use of the comment section to discuss your challenges and problems, and to celebrate your wins! 🙂
Foot Reflexology
The text explains the basics of foot reflexology. What it skirts around a bit is the question of how it works – mainly because it’s a bit hard to explain in physical terms. Essentially, foot reflexology is one of the modes of healing which work mostly on the level of the energy body (like, e.g., acupuncture).
The impulses set by you pressing the massage points reach their target areas through etheric means, and then work their beneficial influences there. If this sounds a bit out-there to you, then, well, it is a bit out-there – until you try it. 😉
For starters, you should of course practice the full sequence as given, ideally daily. But if you don’t have any experience with this is similar modalities at all, it can be a bit hard to determine whether “it works”.
At first, it might be the case that your feet are rather hard and tight. The muscles, sinews, etc, are in hard use all day, every day, and simply aren’t used to being loose and relaxed. I.e. it might take a few massages for you to feel anything at all. The first few times, it might all feel nice and well, no tender spots. Until, a few times later, your feet slowly start to relax (they might become noticeably softer), and suddenly you start to feel where it hurts!
This is a good and welcome process. Just continue with the daily practice. The more regularly you perform foot reflexology on yourself, the easier it’ll be, and the more relaxed your feet will be in general.
Once you’re past this initial point and actually feel tender spots, you might start to wonder how to go about this, and how to determine if “it works”. At this stage, I recommend two things:
First, don’t sweat it if you aren’t sure whether a certain tender point on your feet relates to your back or your stomach or anything else. Just treat all the tender spots, and over time, the effects will be noticeable.
And secondly, most of us are way too tight around the shoulders and the neck. I have found that treating the related parts of the feet, i.e. around the toes, base of toes, and upper foot, to have very good effects on tensions in this area.
I.e. if you’d like to have a “quick win” for yourself when performing this technique, pay attention to this area of your body (i.e. your shoulders, neck, etc) before and after you treat your feet, and make sure to put some focus on the related areas on your feet during the treatment. I hope you’ll be pleasantly surprised! 🙂
(This isn’t medical advice. If you have serious issues in these areas, please see a competent practitioner. What I’m talking about here is simply relaxing your tense muscles a bit after a hard day at the computer or at work!)
Muscle Testing
You know how it works by now: Simply continue to practice, but with the next technique during this unit. There isn’t much to explain or comment on here, methinks, but if you should have any questions, you know where to find the comment section… 😉
Further Resources
First to note: I usually haven’t pointed them out separately, but when you read the MOE material online on JMG’s dreamwidth site, there are comment sections below each entry, and some comments are well worth reading.
You’re already aware of John Gilbert’s audio files. The relevant files for the Healing Hands, Blessing Walk, and Healing Breath have been listed in the respective units where the work was introduced, and you can easily look them up in the past units if you are so inclined.
For the foot reflexology, there are two relevant audio files: AE-L2.mp3 and Foot.mp3. It’s been a while that I listened to them in preparing the course, and I’m afraid to say I don’t quite remember the details anymore. (And since I’m not that much into audio, the appeal of listening through about 18 combined minutes of audio instructions again is, uhm, limited… 😉 ) I’ll thus simply quote from my earlier notes, and hope I’ll do the files justice…
According to what I noted down back then, I had two issues with these audios: The first is the stress on “teaching it to clients”, which I’d strongly encourage you to disregard at this stage!
The second is a matter of terminology. If I remember correctly, John Gilbert talks about the “astral realm” with regards to the effects of foot reflexology, to denote what I have been calling the “etheric body” or “energy body” throughout the course.
This latter isn’t about who is right (it’s just terminology, after all!), but I want you to be aware of it, and to make sure you connect the dots appropriately.
There are also two videos available on youtube, featuring John Gilbert performing foot reflexology on himself while he explains the process:
Foot reflexology video with John Gilbert, part 1
Foot reflexology video with John Gilbert, part 2
Finally, there is, as usual, our own comment section from Unit 7 as a valuable resource.
Outlook
Unit 9 will go live on Sunday, June 8th, 2025.
Until then, I’m looking forward to your comments and your feedback, and I hope you are happily hopping along with the MOE! 🙂
Vicki says
Hello Regine, thank you so much for this wonderful Apprentice course. It has definitely improved my mind, body and spirit, I am grateful. I would like to continue past the Apprentice course and learn more from you. Your teaching style and the pace of the program, and how you’ve organized it are perfect for me.
In gratitude and blessings to you!
p.s. I’ve located a local licensed reflexologist and will give it a try. My self massage this morning was relaxing and I judge physically helpful. What a lovely self care practice!
Regine says
Hi Vicki,
I’m very glad to hear the course is making a difference! But in the end, what is making the difference is the fact that you are putting in the work… 🙂
Thanks for the feedback and for raising your hand, that’s both helpful to know. I need to think through some stuff in the next few weeks, but will most likely continue the course.
This is awesome about the professional reflexologist. I’ve never gotten a treatment by a professional. If you don’t mind sharing later, tell us how it went, please. (And yes, even if “just” done by oneself, and without being a pro, it really is a very lovely practice, and very relaxing!)
Regine
Ridgely Hunt says
Oddly, I *have* jumped ahead a bit, I guess, since I’ve been asked for healing and prayers by two close friends, so I have been using the Apprentice level healing technique.
Regine says
Well, how has it been for you? 🙂
In the current course structure, the part where you folks only activate your Healing Hands, but don’t do anything with them, drags out for quite a long time – this could definitely be much shorter. I’ve explained this structural choice, so you’re probably aware why I did it that way. Since it seems to be an issue for more than one person, though, I might reconsider that if I should ever overhaul the course (mind you, there’s nothing inherently wrong with doing it this way – that’s to say, for everybody else, if you follow the course as given, you should be fine!).
Either way, if you folks wouldn’t mind giving me feedback on how things went for you with regards to the Healing Hands and their activation/application, that would be most helpful for the future:
E.g. was it ok for you to not apply the energies for that long – and if not, why not/what wasn’t ok/what didn’t work well? Do you feel you profit from this rather long activation-only time, or do you feel its a hindrance or burden?
And if you jumped ahead for whatever reason and dare to fess up ;-), how did that work for you? Did you feel you were ready? Did you knock yourself out or cope well? Would you rather have started applying the energy with more guidance and would thus have preferred for it to appear earlier in the course, or were you fine on your own? Etc.
Whatever any of you care to comment on in this area will help me to determine how I will deal with this matter in the future! 🙂
Ridgely Hunt says
Hmmm. With regards to a spiritual path I think the Divine sends us what we need when we need it, and what we need to do when we need and are able to do it. In this case I have two close friends, one dealing with the encroachment of early onset Alzheimer’s, the other with a number of age related ailments, who asked me for spiritual healing work. As it happens, all of us were long, long time members of AMORC, and there is a distant healing method taught there that has been effective in my experience that I would have used if I hadn’t been studying this.
I felt no difficulty in activating my healing hands for a long period, but the need presented itself and I “felt” the application was warranted. As for effect, I haven’t asked yet. I generally think no prayer goes unanswered, so I’m confident that my friends are getting what is needed, but both their conditions, being geriatric (im sorry to be wordy, but I’m trying to choose my words carefully, since words have power) are chronic and, ultimately, terminal, so I’m not looking for acphone call telling me they’ve leapt out of bed and are about to take up mountain climbing. That’s all just life.
Regine says
Thanks a lot for sharing! This is very good to know.
I don’t suppose you can tell anything about AMORC’s distance healing method, but if you could, I’d be very interested in learning more, in particular how it compares (not in effectiveness, as this might be hard to tell, but how it is/feels different to you compared to the Healing Hands, etc). If not, no worries. 🙂
Indeed, some things are part of the human existence, whether we like them or not. Either way, I hope your friends are as fine and comfortable as they can be at this stage of their lives.
Regine
Ridgely Hunt says
I can’t really go into a lot of detail obviously, but, to speak generally, there is a similarity, namely that a request has to be made before healing work can be done. Also, my understanding always was that I wasn’t the healer, that healing force was present in the universe, so my job was to bring healing energy together with the person who needed it and then let it do its work. The MOE is obviously different in that we have a modality for feeling the energy passing through us. However I don’t feel any conflict with the general idea that *we* don’t heal, we bring energy that healds together with someone or something that needs healing and then let it do what is necessary and in the best interest of the person involved, meaning what does the most good from the point of view of that person’s role in the universe.
Regine says
This is very helpful and interesting. In a very general way, if I get you right, the idea of both the MOE and this other modality seems to be to connect the healing forces with their target, and then to step out of the way and let them do their work. Interesting indeed. From your explanation, the similarities are striking, even if the actual delivery mode might differ.
Thanks!
Ridgely Hunt says
Sure. Just my opinion, but I think that, in general, in occult work, there are two possible approaches: one is to view *yourself* as the causal agent, in which case, sooner or later, you’re going to run out of steam and be depleted, as well as certainly making potentially catastrophic errors in judgement due to the limited personal point of view; or to view the divine as the causal agent and the final arbiter of how things work out, in which case you never run out of steam, since it’s not you energy being employed to begin with, and you don’t louse things u by monkeying with things you shouldn’t or doing things the wrong way, since that is handles by higher intelligences that aren’t liable to those errors.
Regine says
While I agree in general, I don’t think the distinction is as clear cut. 🙂
When humans are the “contact points” of these higher powers, there will inevitably be a human factor in the equation, even if it should be small. And the second approach might not directly deplete one’s own powers, it could still lead to overload or other issues.I.e. while I’d view it more as a spectrum and not two distinct points, this is a helpful distinction even if things are likely to be a bit muddier in practice…
Ridgely Hunt says
We prefer the term “nuanced” 🙂
Sure. The distinction I’m drawing is that the human isn’t the source. The human is the coduit. But in any event, the human is the consciousness that’s aware that the work can be done and is willing that it happen through him or her, just as the other person asks for healing, in other words provides the negative polarity that completes the circuit and allows the energy to flow.
Regine says
I got your distinction and agree with it in principle. I mainly wanted to avoid others reading our exchange and assuming from it that if they “only” channel divine healing energies, it can’t affect them negatively, in contrast to using their own energies. Thus the practical distinction.
Although I have no idea what’s not to like about the nice and tangible term “muddy”… 😛
(just kidding!)
Seeker_Tom says
Hi Regine,
I would for sure be interested in continuing further than Apprentice grade.
To be honest, I have been lagging a bit with blessing walks, since my schedule got super full in the last month. What I’ve been doing so far: Blessing Walk, including people, animals and plants; foot reflexology (not daily, but at least 2 or 3 times per week), healing hand empowerment (same as foot reflexology) + Way of the Golden Section practices (discursive meditation, full SoP…)
In the upcoming months, my schedule should be more open, so I hope to do all the practices on a daily basis.
I wish you all the best,
Seeker Tom
Regine says
Hi again,
Noted about the Apprentice grade. Since several people have expressed interest, I plan to continue.
Lagging behind isn’t an issue. The important thing is to continue steadily, and you seem to do that. Doing 2 or 3 Blessing Walks per week is worth a lot more than doing none because you can’t be perfect right now! 😉 Also, this course is designed to make haste slowly, i.e. you will still have gotten a lot of practice under your belt by the time we finish. (And besides, you’re already doing a lot if you also practice the Golden Section Fellowship – don’t underestimate the amount of work!)
All that is to say: Don’t beat yourself up, but instead give yourself some much-deserved credit for doing the work at all! 🙂
Regine
The Dilettante Polymath says
Hey!
My practice sort of fell off a cliff (this and the GSF work as well) somewhere around Unit 3, and I’m just building it back up. So I’m way back on Unit 3 or 4, and have plenty of time. I have been remembering to add blessings to my normal walks from time to time, but not as regularly as I’d like.
But I’d love to (eventually) move on to Healer, at least, and probably further. So I’m glad you’re planning to continue.
Regine says
Hi Dilettante Polymath,
That name of yours is quite a mouthful – if you continue, I might have to abbreviate you to just “Polymath” in my replies… 😉
Kidding aside, though, sometimes life happens. But the important thing is you came back, and have started again! 🙂 That’s a great achievement, and you can be proud of yourself for it. Glad to hear you enjoy the practice so much that you intend to continue, even if it should be a bit later. There’s no rush, and the lessons will continue to be around.
Regine