This interview of Ajayan by Dr. Henry Pedack was first published in 1993 in The New Times, Seattle, Washington, USA. Healing Awareness was a form of meditation Ajayan taught at that time, which later evolved into effortless mind™.
A vague sadness had been nagging at me for several months. I wasn’t sure of the complete cause, though I knew it related to some problems that had insidiously developed between the employees in my office. Back-biting, manipulation, power-grabbing, and gossip were at an all-time high. The morale in my office seemed at an all-time low. I was the boss and was supposed to handle this, but I had tried and nothing was working. I felt paralyzed, insecure, and depressed. Every day I dreaded going into work. I knew that my own emotional state held the key to solving this, but I just couldn’t seem to get a handle on it by myself.
I turned to the horoscope section of the local newspaper and looked under Virgo. “Today you will have an enduring emotional healing.” Right, I thought skeptically. Well, at least I need someone to talk to. I had attended a relationship workshop given by Ajayan Borys several weeks before, so I decided to call him and make an appointment for personal counseling. As it turned out, he was about to go on vacation and the only time he could see me over the next several weeks was that same night. I took the appointment.
After a half-hour of listening to what I was going through, Ajayan suggested we try a process of emotional self-healing he called Healing Awareness. My newspaper horoscope echoing mysteriously in the back of my mind, I agreed. As Ajayan led me through an incredibly simple and gentle process, I felt layer after layer of emotional constriction in my chest and stomach open and release. Gradually, I felt the clouds of sadness and depression dissolve. A gentle warmth and peace began to fill me. This peace and sense of coming back into wholeness, balance, and openness deepened throughout the process. By the time I opened my eyes at the conclusion of the session, I felt peaceful, relaxed, happy, confident, and centered in myself. Even more so, I felt like I had reawakened to what it means to be alive.
I have long been interested in healing. I have been meditating for twenty years, and before my career as an optometrist, I had been a massage therapist, with training in polarity therapy. Yet I’d never experienced anything so gently, directly healing as this. This is what meditation was always supposed to be; as I later exclaimed to Ajayan, this is the quintessence of what it means to be a Doctor.
Since that session, I have continued to practice Healing Awareness on my own at home. The benefits I’ve felt have been many: the dread of going to work every day is gone; the problems at work are dissolving; I feel a new aliveness, confidence, and connection with myself; a long-term stomach problem has disappeared, and since that first session with Ajayan I haven’t used the ulcer medication that has been my constant companion for years. I asked Ajayan if I could interview him regarding the mechanics of Healing Awareness.
Dr. Pedack: What is Healing Awareness?
Ajayan: Healing Awareness is a gentle, innocent process of emotional self-healing. None of us want to feel sadness, depression, insecurity, anxiety, or fear. So when such negative feelings arise, our natural tendency is to ignore them, repress them, go over the top of them, or enter into a subtle tug-of-war with them in the name of “working through” them. Even if we do try to simply be in touch with our negative feelings, we may find ourselves adrift in an endless sea of them. No one ever told us how to experience our feelings in a way that allows them to naturally release and heal. Healing Awareness is just that: a simple way to experience our feelings, as they manifest both emotionally and physically, so as to create an internal healing chemistry, one that allows negative feelings, and the wounds that underlie them, to heal.
DR. P: You speak of Healing Awareness in terms of emotional healing. Yet from my first session, I felt a tremendous release of constriction in my chest and stomach. I haven’t used my ulcer medication since. Am I imagining things, or does healing awareness also apply to physical healing?
Ajayan: You’re not imagining things. The emotional body underlies the physical body. Healing the emotional body definitely has profound implications for physical healing. In fact, a state of health means the state of smooth and natural coordination between body, mind, emotions, and spirit. This is precisely what healing awareness creates. It applies awareness, in a loving, healing mode (spirit), to release and heal wounds that obstruct the smooth coordination between the body, mind, and emotions. In this way, it brings us back into a state of natural balance. When we are in a state of natural balance, our bodies heal much more quickly. We allow the body’s natural healing mechanisms to function without resistance.
I would not, however, suggest that Healing Awareness is a panacea. Healing Awareness is first and foremost an emotional healing process; if it results in physical healing, great. But many physical problems may require additional support to be healed. In such cases, I see Healing Awareness as an important complement to other healing avenues. When emotionally we are held in negative patterns, we will be less receptive to healing physically no matter what the modality. If freeing ourselves emotionally does not in itself result in a cure, at least it should increase our receptivity to physical healing. It should also improve overall health, by keeping us in a state of balance and emotional health.
DR. P: How does Healing Awareness compare with say, hypnotherapy or for that matter, with meditation?
Ajayan: Well, Healing Awareness is not really related to hypnotherapy because there is no suggestion made. It is an innocent, healing process; the influx of grace, peace, and bliss comes naturally, without suggestion of any kind—it permeates a person’s whole mental, emotional, and physical being. Healing Awareness is a form of meditation in which there is the sense of grace coming in. I have heard that the word “therapy” comes from the Greek “therapia,” which means, “work of the gods.” This is the experience in Healing Awareness: Grace healing. In this sense, Healing Awareness is an extremely elegant form of true therapy.
