Falls Church Caring Center

Trained Energy Work Volunteers offer 20-30 min. sessions

Open every Thursday evening from 7:30-9:00 pm

Closed for holidays and when Fairfax County schools are closed

All are welcome.  Donations appreciated.

February 2004 this article was published in the Falls Church News-Press

F.C. Center Offers Unique Healing Practice

By Justin Follin
      There is a sense of peace pulsing through the softly glowing lobby. “I am so relaxed,”

exclaims a visitor as she collapses into one of the three armchairs clustered in this tiny room.

“Every time … it just feels so good,” she says through a face-wide smile and a heavy gaze that

reinforces her enthusiastic remarks. This seems to resonate a common sentiment throughout

the center as the therapy rooms open and the same recognizable calm drapes the expressions

of those who trickle out.
      Tonight, as it does every Thursday night, the Healthy By Intention massage therapy center located

in Falls Church City hosts The Falls Church Caring Center, a group of volunteers who practice various forms

of subtle energy healing. Available to anyone with a desire to receive healing and an open attitude to

alternative medicine, the healers operate completely free of charge. “They come to volunteer their skills,

both to help and to educate the community that it’s nothing to be afraid of,” says Jodi Nicholson,

Director of Healthy Intention and Coordinator for the Falls Church Caring Center.
      The process itself is simple and non-invasive. The “patient” lies back on a massage table face up

and remains fully clothed. The practitioner “channels” the energy through the body by resting their hands on

various focal points from the head to the feet. Music may be used to relax the energy recipient, who simply

rests and receives the treatment.  In fact, many believe it is the patient, not the practitioner, who guides the

energy. “We don’t tell it where to go, your body knows,” says Jack Monroe, a former marine who now practices

energy healing in his spare time.
Despite a wealth of practitioners throughout the world, no one knows exactly how it works or what is happening.

The theory behind Reiki, Healing Touch, CranioSacral healing, bioenergy work and other forms of energy

healing suggests that the practitioners are drawing on a universal life energy to clear blockages in our

personal energy fields. Some suggest that the energy stabilizing the molecules in our bodies becomes

unbalanced, and an energy-based healing method can realign that irregularity. This energy strengthens the

body’s natural healing ability, and, according to those who practice energy healing, can alleviate pain, hasten

the recovery of an injury, and release emotional blockages such as stress.
      While the scientific community remains skeptical, the practitioners and many recipients of energy healing

are confident in its effectiveness. One of the center’s volunteers, Lois Weik, who practices a form of healing

called CranioSacral, says her own experience receiving the work lead her to become a full time healer.

“I had a health problem no doctors could diagnose, and I was on crutches. I went to a CranioSacral therapist

and she made me better.” After that experience, Weik made the career transition from engineer to full time

massage therapist and CranioSacral healer, working with both people and animals. “I made the transition

from one side of the head to the other,” she says.
      Often it is the sort of unrelenting pain Weik described that leads people to try various forms of Complementary

Alternative Medicine (CAM). Frustrated with conventional medicine, they find energy healing offers a unique

approach that might provide elusive relief or speed up the conventional healing process. Nicholson emphasizes,

however, that it is very much complementary, and should in no way interfere with more traditional medicinal practices,

or even one's religious beliefs. “The Caring Center’s intention is to work in concert with allopathic, or traditional,

medicine,” she affirms. "It can help aid chemotherapy, the process of illness, giving birth, dying, or life.”
      Until the scientific community embraces these sorts of alternative treatments, there will most likely remain

more skeptics than believers. But for those with a little curiosity, the Caring Center offers the opportunity to try

out what many claim must be experienced to believe.
      The Falls Church Caring Center meets every Thursday evening at 7:30 pm at Healthy By Intention, Inc. 100 N Washington St., # 307 Falls Church. For more information call 703-241-0128.

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