History of Healing Key Way

The founders of Healing Key Way are William (Bill) Phipps, M.S. of Chewelah, Washington and Karen Kuenning, M.S. of Portland, Oregon. They have written: "It is our intention to honor the ancestors of Healing Key Way. We stand on the great work and contributions they made. These are teachers of significance whom we admire and love. We bless them as they continue in their healing work and teaching."

In 1993, Andrew Hahn, Psy.D., a clinical psychologist in private practice in Boston, was attending a Noetic Science meeting. At that meeting, he heard about a woman in New Jersey by the name of Judith Swack, Ph.D., who was reportedly having success in working with people who were considered incurable.

Swack's background was as a research immunologist. Being curious and skeptical at the same time, Hahn attended one of her workshops and was impressed. She was using a system called Applied Kinesiology (muscle testing). She had integrated knowledge and techniques from Cranial Sacral Therapy, Brain Gym, Three in One and Neuro-Linguistic Programming, as well as new techniques for addressing trauma. From this she created Healing from the Body Level Up (HBLU). Hahn and Swack began a collaboration and worked together in refining HBLU.

Andrew Hahn's specialty was as a transpersonal and energetic therapist. He thought this new material was effective, and to this he added depth psychology, regression work, Buddhist psychology, systems therapy and variations of trans-personal therapies as well as his own "Essence Process." He put them all together in one framework. This led him to a separation from Healing from the Body Level Up, and in 1998, his work became known as Guided Self-Healing.

Bill Phipps and Karen Kuenning met when they attended the first Guided Self-Healing training Andrew Hahn conducted on the West coast. At the time, Bill was clinical director of a community mental health facility in Washington state, and Karen was a licensed therapist in private practice in Oregon. They became close friends and colleagues. After three years of training, they were both certified as practitioners and instructors in Guided Self-Healing. Concurrently, two or three times a year they attended Native American workshops with Yaki and Apache medicine women who taught energy work, personal protection and the creation of sacred space. Bill and Karen were given permission to incorporate valuable techniques into their work.

After taking Guided Self-Healing into his private practice, Bill noticed a shift in the Guided Self-Healing work, a natural series of changes in the protocols. These included changes in major energetic patterns and the kinds of interventions that were used. These changes presented themselves through muscle testing. New categories began to show up in the testing, and entire categories dropped away. Bill began to see that the healing processes were adapting and evolving into more precise, simplified and streamlined protocols. Karen was seeing similar shifts in her practice as well, and they came to realize that none of the separate systems they had studied constituted a comprehensive approach to healing. They began integrating parts of many of the systems they'd used into their body of work and saw profound results for themselves and their clients.

They decided to collaborate and develop what became known as the Healing Way Method. The name was changed in 2010 to Healing Key Way.

Healing Key Way no longer looks like any other body of work, though certain key parts are taken from other teachings. Throughout the training materials, credit is given for all parts of the protocol that were taken from other sources. Most of Healing Key Way's root parts have been modified and the system has developed its own pattern for living, being and self-discovery. As stated in the Description of Healing Key Way, this system incorporates ancient knowledge of energy- and spirit-based healing found in Ancient Mystical Christianity, Eastern Healing and the practices of indigenous peoples.

Much of the emphasis in Healing Key Way is on the evolution of the healing process itself and the ongoing adaptation to evolution in the protocols. Healing Key Way expanded to an eight-part process or protocol, which incorporates the practitioner's training in the human energy system. It places critical emphasis on creating the same sacred and protected healing space found in Native American and other indigenous healing traditions. Other changes followed, strengthening the emphasis on intuitive skills, internal protective practices, grounding practices and holding space for the client or group.

Bill and Karen intentionally developed Healing Key Way within Sacred Space, seeking answers from their own Deepest Wisdom and Highest Guidance. This is an evolving, organic system and adapts itself to the practitioner as well as the client. It has shifted from being primarily a therapeutic system to primarily a system for spiritual healing.

Bill and Karen are both personally committed to spiritual connection and healing. They have relied on their inner guidance and wisdom to allow the evolution of Healing Key Way into a unique system with techniques woven together in a cohesive, elegant system for spiritual evolution and healing.

For more information about Bill and Karen, see page 2 of the 2012-2013 Class for Training in the Healing Key Way.

You may also want to read the Description of Healing Key Way.

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