“I complain that life is a rollercoaster, there is never time for anything, I am increasingly stressed out and want to change my lifestyle and live like a native American Indian, preferably in a tepee, and – for good measure – I am worried sick by my own mortality… All of which happens to be true. So why should I be any different from the rest of you? Keith Richardson visits the Centre for Complementary Care at Muncaster and talks to healer Gretchen Stevens

The comedian Harry Enfield’s dad, Edward, is a firm believer in healing. He is a great supporter of the work of Gretchen Stevens and her team at the Centre for Complementary Care at Muncaster, of which the vastly entertaining Harry – my personal favourite is Kevin, the ever complaining son going through teenage angst – is patron.

Edward also seems to have a strong sense of humour (so that’s where Harry got it from) as he relates the stories which have lead to his faith and belief in healers and healing.

“My own health I regard as a boring subject,” he says, “and try to ignore it unless it forces itself on my attention. One of my principles is not to go to the doctor unless I have got three things wrong with me and as the first usually gets better before the third develops, I don’t normally trouble him very much. Some 25 years ago I went to his surgery for some forgotten reason and in order to get the number up to three I pointed to a rather ugly patch on my cheek and said ‘is that anything to bother about?’”

The end result was a biopsy, but this would not take place for a further six weeks and in the meantime a friend recommended that Edward visit a healer. The patch began to fade but not before the six weeks expired. Even though the treatment appeared to be working, the healer said that Edward should still go ahead with the biopsy.

“They did the biopsy” recalls Edward, “and got into an immediate panic as the patch turned out to be a nasty cancerous item called a melanoma which sometimes kills people. They insisted on operating and would not let me out of their clutches altogether for the next 10 years, but here I am and considering myself living testimony to the effectiveness of healing as an adjunct to conventional cancer treatment.
“My next bit of healing was to do with a disease called osteomylitis, or which I am a great expert as I get it every 40 years. I had it when I was 14 and again when I was 54 and am now at 74, half way to 94 when I shall get it again.

“It is like an abscess in a tooth but I get it in my leg and it hurts like anything. They tried curing it with antibiotics but that didn’t work so they drilled a hole in the bone and said it would be along business before I got over it. It wasn’t. I went to Gretchen Stevens and was fit again a great deal more quickly than they expected, and they skipped over one part of intermediate treatment altogether.”

Edward points out that healing (in Gretchen’s case through gentle touching) is not a guaranteed cure all and it is not a medical procedure and does not take the place of medical treatment.

“You may,” he adds, “have an experience like mine, where it seems to have been a valuable complement to normal procedures. Otherwise with a chronic or incurable condition, it commonly happens that the relief of pain, fear and anxiety which comes with healing will enable patients to cope far better with life than they otherwise could. For which very good reasons, GPs and health workers and social workers and the clergy have been referring people to Gretchen in large numbers for the last 15 years.”

And you can’t say fairer than that…

Armed with all this useful information and Edward Enfield’s recommendation still ringing in my ears, I set off for Muncaster Chase, which is described as “an island of calm in a confusing world.” By the time I got there, the sciatica in my left leg and buttock area, the result probably of years of monotonous driving along the country roads of Cumbria, including the M6, was giving me gyp. The condition wasn’t helped by an invariable sedentary lifestyle (complete with bad posture) spent gazing into the screen of an Apple Mac computer that refused to speak back but occasionally decided to ‘bomb’ of its own volition… a worrying trait in these troubled times.

When Gretchen suggested that I undergo a little healing there and then, I thought I had better come up with something more significant and so I complained that life is a rollercoaster; there is never time for anything; I am increasingly stressed out and want to change my lifestyle and live like a native American Indian, preferably in a tepee, and – for good measure – I’m worried sick by my own mortality… all of which happens to be true. So why should I be any different from the rest of you?

So there I was, stretched out on a bed, fully clothed but minus my shoes and displaying to the world an embarrassing hole in a sock, as Gretchen gave me the first of what should ideally be three or four 40 minute sessions of healing. The experience which ensued was very relaxing and pleasant as Gretchen worked her way around my body in a clockwise direction, touching my arms, hands, legs, feet, chest and head. As she did so I asked questions about the Centre or dwelt, a little self-indulgently perhaps, on my life problems, real or imagined.

The fee is £45 per session but the centre has a philosophy that it turns away no one and if the client cannot afford to pay, then they need not do so but might like to make a contribution at some point.
“I felt very strongly and so did the people associated with the Centre that we weren’t setting up a service for the worried well or only people who were affluent or seeking their inner child,” said Gretchen. “If it was going to exist we wanted it to exist in Cumbria for people who needed it. Often the people who are in most need are in the most dire financial straits and possibly not in employment.
“We have always relied on people’s honour and they have not taken advantage. We have wonderful support in West Cumbria.”

The centre has a fund, The Sheila Robinson Memorial Fund, which helps to provide healing for those who cannot contribute fully or at all to the cost of their treatment. Muncaster Chase is a former vicarage standing on the edge of Muncaster Fell (the centre was previously in Eskdale for many years).
“It’s a big house in a lovely setting and very therapeutic for people,” says Gretchen. “The idea is to make it homely, and of course, we are not medical. It’s not a clinical environment and because healing is such a strange notion for a lot of people, when they first come they are understandably apprehensive. They don’t want to be embarrassed. I think their greatest fear is that somebody is going to get straight in their face and say ridiculous things."

Clients first experience of a visit to Muncaster Chase is likely to be Ben, who is the Centre Manager Moira Brigg’s three-legged dog, a friendly little fellow who can be tucked away in the event of any clients who are nervous of canines.

American born and with a background in teaching, business and last, but certainly not least, in healing and care, Gretchen Stevens exudes a quiet calm, confidence and a sense of understanding that is accepting and does not make judgements. She is certainly a very good listener and as you undergo the treatment by gentle touching, you feel that here is a person who is your friend and who is on your side and that it’s unconditional.

During our conversation I quiz her ever so gently about healing and her capacity for it and she says: “If you look at a discipline like silent meditation, being contemplative, you are not wordy, you’re just trying to clear the ground. A lot of superficial stuff falls away and you become more aware of the essential abilities you have. But nobody is a healer, nor can anyone heal someone else. What I can do – and because it is a non-verbal process, it’s difficult to explain – is help that person to heal themselves.

I call it healing by light or gentle touch because I don’t have any other name for it. The effects are real, physical, mental and psychological.

“Healing is not condition- specific because it’s not about the client’s particular condition…
I do touch people but I don’t do a different thing for people with cancer than I would for a child with eczema or somebody with depression or stress.

I think the way that it works is that a physical connection, perhaps electro-magnetic, is made by the touch. It is certainly deeply intuitive and releases inner tensions that build up without our even being aware. Over a period of three or four sessions, healing helps a person recover their original shape and balance, which enables the body to self heal.”

In the early stages of the treatment, Gretchen says she looks at the client as a flat battery. Each session increases the charge and deepens the effect.

“At first it’s a bit like knocking on a closed door,” she says. “You don’t know what’s going to happen because we are asking the body to change its patterns.”

And when I whinge on a bit more about life and stress she says: “I think you have just put your finger on something that underlies modern life and can eventually contribute to illness. The whole obsession with stress is such a modern phenomenon I think what you are describing is what happens to us when we just keep winding the spring up a bit tighter to meet the needs of the day. Eventually we lose the rhythm. The sense of going flat out creeps into everything until you are just dancing all the time.

“You are expressing something that I think people feel terrifically… yes they like their jobs and enjoy stimulation in all they do, but the pace of life is so fast, too fast. Sometimes we need to be a fallow field and it’s hard to be that. We have lost a certain stillness in our lives because there’s so much overlay, which can lead to illness.

“Somewhere deep in us is the place of the spirit and the longing for what exists in another dimension. Many people express a feeling of loss, something missing in our lives. We have many advantages in terms of health and welfare, but we have lost the pace. It’s hard to maintain your own pace in the midst of the world’s demands, but it’s important that you do so because that is what keeps us healthy, flexible and springing back.”

What about my energy levels? Gretchen asks. I say I think they are probably fairly low right now, the result of a particular taxing year.

“What you are describing is so pertinent to the state that we are all in,” she says. “ You have been doing this since you were 21. You love it. You are not stale in that way, but you take on more and more and more until that level of stress becomes your norm. Then, when a new dimension opens up and it’s exiting and you want to do it, or have to do it, you just crank yourself up some more and push through. Even though you do manage to accomplish a lot of work, your first perception, your instinctive answer is that your energy levels are pretty low. Perhaps you are not yet running on empty, but there’s not a lot left in reserve, is there? Just using up all your energy as you go is not terribly satisfying, because there’s an imbalance. It’s a common state of being and you’ve handled it well, but at some level you are recognise that it would be better to have a slightly different balance. People leading the sort of lives you have just described can push themselves to burn out and crash, exceeding their own limits because there is always something else that needs doing.”

Gretchen suggests that I should consider coming back to complete the course of four treatments. If only I had the time. Perhaps I should make the time…?

“People may initially come here,” Gretchen continues, “because of persistent physical problems, but after a while and not a very long while, they go deeper if you like and I don’t mean that in a self indulgent way of being fascinated by their own emotional state – they realise that the things that are more important and more affecting to them are not really physical. Very often they find there are whole unresolved areas in their life.

“One of the things that I find interesting is people’s huge gallantry in the face of terrible circumstances. You would never know passing them on the street, yet they are so brave and so wonderful really. I’m touched by it. What I find astonishing is that we have such a huge capacity for renewal and for self-healing. Usually when we cut ourselves we will heal. When we break a leg, medics will sort it out for us, but it’s still the leg that heals the leg, not the doctor. But how do we instruct our bodies to heal? The knowledge is there but it’s subconscious. I think that healing goes under the radar of the conscious mind and taps into older knowledge. Irrespective of the condition, what I see after treatment is a general pattern: people usually sleep better, have more energy, less pain, a better quality of life.

“It’s also about release from fear. The opposite of love, I believe, is not hate but fear. We all experience fear, but unless we can go beyond it, fear paralyses. I see many people who are terminally ill. For all of us, there is a point of no return. With the healing, fear drops away, and while that may not extend life, it helps towards really living the life that is there; that year or however long it happens to be.”

Gretchen Stevens and her team help people of all ages and from all walks of life, providing treatment for the relief of sickness, pain, fear and sorrow. To my mind it is significant that the Centre prides itself on its relaxed and resolutely down to earth attitude.

“The most common sound issuing from behind the treatment room door is that of laughter,” says Gretchen.

While that is vastly encouraging and to be welcomed in any organisation, with the possible exception of an undertakers, I suppose we should expect nothing less from a registered charity which was the first in the UK to provide healing with a gentle touch on the NHS, and that has Harry Enfield as a patron.

In fact, I cannot help but wonder what Gretchen Stevens would make of Kevin?

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