History of The Healing Way Method

The founders of the Healing Way Method are William (Bill) Phipps, M.S. of Chewalah, Washington and Karen Kuenning, M.S. of Portland, Oregon.  They have written:  “It is our intention to honor the ancestors of Healing 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 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.

Being curious and skeptical at the same time, Hahn decided to attend one of her workshops to learn what she did.  He was impressed.  She was using a system called Applied Kinesiology. A lady by the name of Mary Louise Mueller had wed kinesiology (muscle testing) with Cranial Sacral therapy, a process she called Three in One and Brain Gym.  To this, Judith Swack had added Neuro-Linguistic Programming and work on addressing trauma.  Her background was as a research immunologist.  Andrew Hahn and Judith Swack began a collaboration that resulted in them working together in her healing approach, which was called Healing from the Body Level Up.

Andrew Hahn’s specialty was as a transpersonal and energetic therapist, with an original background as a clinical psychologist.  He thought this new material was great and decided he could take what these other people had done and add to it.  He added depth psychology, regression work, Buddhist psychology, systems therapy and variations of trans-personal therapies as well as his own “Essence Process” and put them together in one framework.  This led him to a separation from Healing from the Body Level Up, and his work became Guided Self-Healing in 1998.

Bill Phipps and Karen Kuenning attended the very 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 and Karen was a licensed therapist in private practice.  After three years of training, they were both certified as practitioners and instructors in Guided Self-Healing. They also attended the same Native American workshops with Yaki and Apache medicine women who did energy work, teaching personal protection and the creation of sacred space.  They attended these workshops two to three times a year and gathered valuable techniques which they were given permission to incorporate in their work.

After going into private practice using Guided Self-Healing, Bill noticed a shift in the work, a natural evolution of changes in the protocols.  These included changes in major energetic patterns and the kinds of interventions that were used.  These changes presented themselves via muscle testing.  New categories began to show up in the testing, and entire categories dropped away.  He began to see that the healing processes were adapting and evolving into more precise, simplified and streamlined protocols.  Over many occasions of comparing notes and integrating their new knowledge into their work as therapists, Bill and Karen were seeing similar shifts in both of their practices, and they came to realize that none of the separate systems they had studied constituted as comprehensive an approach to healing.  They began integrating parts of many of these systems into their body of work and saw profound results for themselves and their clients.
They decided to collaborate and develop what has become The Healing Way Method.

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

Much of the emphasis in this new method is on the evolution of the healing process itself and the ongoing adaptation to these changes, including changes in the Healing Way Method protocols.  Healing Way Method 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 shamanic traditions.  It includes significant and expanded training on working with non-material realm energies in very different ways than its predecessors.  Non-Material Realm (NMR) work is a very big part of the Healing Way Method. 

Although both Guided Self-Healing and Healing from the Body Level Up had protocols for addressing non-material realm energies in various ways, the scope and process of the protocol have been significantly expanded.  Bill’s knowledge of more comprehensive releasement therapy, based on the work of William Baldwin, began to test as useful for his clients.  Then, guided by muscle testing the system evolved. Non-Material Realm releasements became more frequent, requiring encapsulation before release.  The releasements were safer and more efficient, with less interaction between the client and the entities removed.  It is believed that Healing Way Method has the most expanded non-material realm releasement practice of any healing system known, outside of shamanism.

Healing Way Method dropped the Guided Self-Healing emphasis on the Enneagram (a nine-part personality system, believed by some to be based on Sufi tradition) as a basis for personality description and relationship change and adopted the Victim Triangle as a model for teaching internal and external relationship dynamics and change.  (The concept of the Victim Triangle is taken from Transactional Analysis, as developed by Stephen Karpman and described by Thomas Harris in his book I’m Okay, You’re Okay.) Many other changes followed, leading to evolution in all aspects of the protocol.  Healing Way emphasizes intuitive skills, internal protective practices, grounding practices and holding space for the client or group.
 
Seeking Deepest Wisdom and Highest Guidance as a means of personal growth and spiritual evolution, the Healing Way Method was intentionally developed within Sacred Space.  It 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 a spiritual system for healing.

It is important to note that all healing systems evolve from other systems, taking parts of existing systems and adding new elements, whether obtained from other teachers or guided by divine inspiration, or both.  Healing from the Body Level Up and Guided Self-Healing were based on previous bodies of work.  Healing Way continues this natural evolution of teachers and healers expanding their work in the directions they are guided to.  

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 Way Method into a system that is now unique and does not closely resemble any one of the systems from which its roots are taken. Although many of the various techniques used in Healing Way Method have roots in different teachings, they are woven together in a cohesive, elegant system for spiritual evolution and healing. 

For additional information about Bill and Karen, go to Join Our Team.

You may want to read a Description of the Healing Way Method.