Matthew Manning and Spiritual Healing

This photo is from One Foot in the Stars: "Doctors told the parents of brain-damaged Anja Kowalska that she would never speak or walk.  After six healing sessions she did."  In Germany there were media reports about Anja's case of spiritual healing facilitated by Matthew Manning.  (photographer: Eberhard Fuchs)

 
 

In the fourth among seven chapters of his 1999 autobiography One Foot in the Stars written with Tessa Rose, Matthew Manning described an evolutionary incident in his life that occurred while he was living in the English village of Linton.  A stranger visited and introduced himself as an Italian doctor whose mother was seriously ill with cancer.  He had heard about the cancer cell experiment Matthew had done with John Kmetz in Texas.  Matthew agreed to go and treat the woman in a nearby hospital.  Matthew recalled: "I let my intuition guide me and did what I felt what was right, very gently placing my hands on her . . ."  Returning to the woman's hospital room in the evening, Matthew was gratified by signs of improvement.  The next morning, however, he received a phone call from her son who said she had died during the night.  Matthew later was able to place what happened in perspective.

My first 'failure' had taught me not to get carried away with the idea that I could make healing work every time.  That power is simply not in my gift.  It has not always been easy telling people that I cannot be sure how the healing will go.

Matthew began to introduce healing demonstrations into his public appearances and eventually began to give healing on a one-to-one basis in Leicestershire, Britain.  One of his first successes was with a woman suffering from bone cancer.  Matthew commented about a series of lectures and healing demonstrations around Britain during this period in his life:

For the first half of the evening I would talk about what I called one-ness and its relevance to our lives.  The second half of the evening would be taken up with my giving direct healing to people in the audience.  This idea of connectedness, and our responsibilities to each other and the planet as a whole, remains a central theme of my work.

 

Matthew contemplated protests about his work and commented during a radio interview: ". . . merely to condemn without paying me the courtesy of listening to my ideas and experiencing one of my demonstrations is neither intelligent or sensible."

In 1980 Matthew continued to participate in scientific testing and after working with eight patients at a pain clinic commented:

I expect the people I treat to be active partners.  When I first began to give healing, this was a novel idea that took some grasping.  Many people who came to me were used to being the passive recipients of 'health care.'  One of my earliest 'messages' was, 'You are your own best healer,' and this was the theme of many of my talks and demonstrations.  I would teach simple meditation and visualization techniques to get people used to this way of working.

Matthew's new healing occupation was reported in a 1982 program entitled "The Healers": "I was presented with two people and asked to give them both healing.  The first, a publishing executive with a painful knee, did not benefit from my treatment.  The second was a woman with an infection of the hip joint . . . At the end of about 20 minutes of healing the woman (who insisted on remaining anonymous) said that the pain — which had been with her constantly for two years — had gone.  A year later, the pain had still not returned.  The woman, who professed to being completely skeptical about 'faith healing,' said: 'It can't happen — but it has!'"

Throughout One Foot in the Stars, details are provided about many cases where Matthew successfully facilitated healing and there are reflections about his life.  He married Christine in 1982 and they would eventually have two children, Henrietta born in 1984 and Jethro born in 1991.  In 1983, Matthew began using his office in Bury St Edmunds as a healing center to accommodate the increasing number of people wanting to receive one-to-one treatment.

The philosophy I projected in my workshops and demonstrations, and in the tapes, underpinned the principles of the practice.  Anyone who came to me, I decided, must be prepared to work at mental and physical exercises to help their illness.  This was spelt out to people enquiring about treatment — and put quite a number of them off!

In 1985 and 1986, a half-hour BBC television documentary publicized Matthew's spiritual healing.  Matthew described what happened during the making of the program.

When the film was eventually viewed by producer Mike Purton's superiors, it was rejected for being 'too pro-Matthew Manning,' and a further day's filming was insisted upon to redress the perceived imbalance.  I suspect that many television executives regard controversy as being synonymous with interesting viewing.  The counter-balancing the studio bosses had in mind consisted of trying to make something out of the fact that I charge for treatment.

Matthew explained that he devised "a system which ensures that those who can afford to pay for treatment are supporting those who can not."  Matthew recalled that when the documentary was broadcast nationally his "fortunes had dipped to their lowest point."  Then there was an "avalanche of interest."

One of the benefits of this exposure was that it finally imprinted on people's minds my identity as a healer.  Several people were confused by my evolution from teenage psychic, believing that my father had been the centre of the poltergeist activity and that I had taken up healing independently.  Explaining was a small price to pay for the shift of consciousness I had been trying so hard to bring about.  The 'Poltergeist Boy' image was happily laid to rest by the media, too, now that they had an exciting 'new' label for me, and they began reporting in my healing work with refreshing seriousness.

Healing techniques used by Matthew were said to have "evolved through trial and error, and leaps of imagination."  'Healing circles' became a part of his work during the 1990s as he "used this idea of connecting energies" during workshops.

It is almost impossible to tell who will benefit from my healing.  When I choose someone for a demonstration, I go purely on intuition — that little inner voice.  The set-up with healing circles is different.  I will give my energy to each person in the circle and rely on each of them to tune in as best they can.  The energy generated by 50 or more people can be immensely powerful.

Matthew divulged how he continuously facilitated healing although he engaged in unhealthy consumption of alcoholic beverages and occasionally even illegal drugs.  He mentioned an unpleasant experience with an illegal downer called Mandrax and acknowledged that he had been introduced to cannabis.  He explained: 

For years I had been trying to elude the straitjacket people were trying to wedge me into.  I was a healer, therefore I was expected to wear open-toed sandals, flowing robes and live as an ascetic.  The longer this image had persisted the more ways I had found of tarnishing it: stylish clothes, fast cars, attractive women, cigarettes, and latterly alcohol and dope.  I wanted to make it clear that the excesses binding me were not those of the archetypal holy man.

Increasingly the material I was presenting in my workshops was reflecting my situation with myself.  The healing of relationships and the emotional self became the focus of my workshops.

Matthew discovered that he was "not invulnerable" on the night of his thirty-eighth birthday.  He had been drinking for hours and suddenly keeled over and was violently sick.  He could not stop vomiting and lost consciousness.  He awakened at two in the morning in the pub and six hours later went home.  He remembered: "When I stripped off to shower I found bruises, some of them the size of dinner plates, all over my body, signs that my much put upon liver had started to fail."

After separating from his first wife in 1994, a new relationship with Gig—the woman who he later married—helped motivate him to begin a new lifestyle of sobriety.

David Frost—who had interviewed Matthew on an episode of his television show "The David Frost Interview" in 1974—collaborated with him and Uri Geller on the UK television special "Beyond Belief" in 1995.  Matthew presented a mind/body exercise and healing demonstration on the telecast.  In the mind/body exercise he wanted to show "how different kinds of thought can affect the body and, most importantly, our ability to resist" and "anyone can be humbled by negative thoughts — even somebody who has a body that is in peak physical condition . . ."

The exercise was one I had used many times in public demonstrations, as a 'step one' of healing.  The impressively bronzed and muscled Panther, from the television show "Gladiators," was there to assist me.  After ascertaining that the right side of her body was stronger than the left, I asked her to think  for about 15 seconds of something that made her feel very happy, inspired and positive.  When she felt she had absorbed this idea, she was to put out her left arm and when I said the word 'Resist,' she as to use every ounce of her strength to prevent me pushing her arm down.  I was virtually jumping on her arm, but could not bring it down to the side of her body.  We repeated the exercise on her right side, only this time I asked her to change her frame of mind and think of something that made her feel angry, hostile, jealous and negative.  Being on her stronger side, her right arm looked even more formidable than her left, and yet it collapsed as soon as I exerted pressure on it.

The healing demonstration involved four people with immobility.  He took them to a room near the studio and arranged them in a circle, linking hands.

I had ten minutes to make a difference, or not, half the time I usually allow for a demonstration.  At the end of it we returned to the main studio.

I did not hold out much hope for the healing helping the disability of one of the women, whose neck bones had been fused by surgery.  Her immobility was as fixed as before, although she did report feeling more relaxed and being free of the headache she had had before the session.  The other woman also said she felt more relaxed.  The most striking result was with the two men.  Peter was suffering with an arthritic shoulder which prevented him making lateral or vertical movements with his arm.  He said he had felt the energy passing round the circle and could now demonstrate considerably more mobility than previously.

But the most striking improvement was seen in Keith.  He described the healing as an "incredible experience" and said he had felt the pain leaving his body.  He could now raise his arms above his head, and his ability to bend over at the waist was much improved because the pain in his lower spine had lessened.

There were two more "Beyond Belief" specials in following years with Matthew appraising after the final telecast, ". . . for all its shortcomings, 'Beyond Belief' did not succeed in trivializing what I do.  The awareness it raised in the majority may have been temporary, but if there is a significant minority in whom the idea of healing remains, the experience will have been worthwhile."

While the second "Beyond Belief" was in production, Matthew was asked to do a half-hour video diary of his work for BBC telecast.  The resulting "Order from Chaos" was part of the BBC series "Secrets of the Paranormal."  Matthew wrote that the film attracted some criticism and in his book he responded to what he viewed to be a "misconceived diatribe" by Professor Lewis Wolpert, chairman of COPUS (the Committee on the Public Understanding of Science), in a piece published in a column of the Independent on Sunday.

It seemed to miss the point entirely, deliberately I suspect, for how many men of Wolpert's undoubted intellect  can bear to admit that they are at a loss to explain something?  They have an argument which the facts have to be made to fit, and will even resort to distorting the truth to ensure it prevails.  Wolpert stated that I claimed to be able to make medical diagnoses.  I have never used this ability in my professional work as a healer and indeed will not accept patients for one-to-one healing if their condition had not been identified by a qualified medical practitioner.

Some of the cases profiled by Matthew in the book reminded me of how relative are individual perceptions of health and healing.  As is known from other case studies of spiritual healers, there are some bodily conditions that cannot be repaired.  In other cases, healing may not be immediate.  Effects of spiritual healing may be difficult to ascertain in relation to rates of disease progression and alleviation.  Matthew commented about 'Thomas Penn' automatic writing diagnoses in "Beyond Belief 3": "Both diagnoses fell flat, although I sensed that one of them was accurate and the person concerned was not telling the truth."

Matthew and Gig married in 1998 and soon thereafter Gig was diagnosed as having a rare cancer.  Matthew wrote about the course of the illness following the "bombshell" that hit him when the diagnosis was given.  Gig received treatment at the Hammersmith Hospital.

There are about 200 kinds of cancer, all of them different.  Like most people for whom cancer becomes a reality, the word does not reflect such distinctions, and so one goes through a nightmare phase of being prey to one's worst fears.

In addition to the conventional treatment, Gig took full advantage of the complementary therapies on offer at the hospital, especially reflexology, which she found very effective in helping her to relax. 

One of my patients passed on a vital piece of knowledge concerning a product called bromelin, a pineapple extract whose positive benefits in the treatment of cancer — especially in conjunction with the drug 5FU — have been reported in over 200 medical journals around the world.

Healing does not cure every ill and when I began to give Gig treatment — shortly after the appearance of the mystery lesion — I could no more guarantee her a successful outcome — on whatever level that might take place — than I could any of my other patients.

My efforts intensified once cancer was diagnosed.  I gave her healing every day until she began to experience the side-effects of the radiotherapy treatment.

Matthew described at times reaching an ecstatic state while giving healing.

 

On the numerous occasions I have reached this ecstatic state, I have seen a figure.  He has the build and look of a gigantic Sumo wrestler, although one that is stark naked, covered with hair and  — perhaps rather incongruously — exudes joy, love and freedom.  He came as a blinding vision on the first occasion, executing back flips, somersaults and other amazing acrobatics.  I wondered how anyone so fat and unathletic could perform such movements.  He said, as if to answer my unspoken question, "The only reason I am so fat is because I am so full of love."  He does not always speak, and when he does he limits himself to one, usually cryptic, phrase.

 
Matthew reported two appearances of this figure while he was facilitating healing to Gig.  On the first occasion, Matthew saw him dancing with what looked like a Samurai sword and heard him say, "When you are strong you don't need the sword."  On the second occasion —

This time he was standing on a rock at the mouth of a huge subterranean cave which opened into a vast shimmering lake.  He was in contemplative mood, the object of his attention the sword he held in his hand, point upwards, the same sword which previously he had shown off as a plaything.

The next day in April 1999, Gig was told by an oncologist that she was now an ex-cancer patient.  In 2003 the cancer returned and she made her transition on February 2, 2004 at age 47 with some details provided by an East Anglican Daily Times article: "Healer pays tribute to his brave wife".

In the final chapter of One Foot in the Stars, Matthew offered concluding observations, among them —

I regard healing energy as an unconditional universal force for good.

Wherever the energy which I use comes from, it is not from me directly.

Matthew Manning is also the author of The Healing Journey (2001).  His website is matthewmanning.net.