heal

Heal yourself? It can be done, say a group of NJ-based healers. All it takes is energy, love, a group of like-minded souls and some old-fashioned Cartesian philosophy: I think, therefore I am.

mingle energies with the gang in Rita’s New Jersey home.

Westwood, New Jersey—

The soiree had all the makings of a typical ladies’-night-in.

A group of women in sweatpants and jeans circled the Chinese food take-out on the kitchen table as they swayed to The Bee Gees’ More Than a Woman blasting from the stereo. Chatter flowed seamlessly across the usual topics - kids’ report cards, gluten-free cookie recipes, yoga postures and… metaphysics?

“Hey, if anyone’s been feeling out-of-your-body,” pipes up Rita Gigante, the hostess of tonight’s get-together, “it’s because there was an energetic shift in the earth’s plane last week. So it’s extra important for you to ground yourself.  Eating helps,” she adds, eyeing the sweet n’ sour spareribs, “so dig in.”

Okay, so it’s not your typical dinner conversation. But this isn’t your ordinary dinner crowd.

Meet The Collective Healing Network, more than a dozen healing practitioners (mainly women, but a few men, too) who gather four times a year to use energy - theirs, yours, a higher power’s - to help you remedy whatever ails you. They don’t offer medicine or drugs, and they’re not medical doctors.

“We’re conduits,” Rita explains, “for you to find your own power to heal yourself.”

Every three months, the network convenes in a quiet, candlelit venue in their neighborhood to deliver a simple but sacred afternoon routine for the fifty to sixty devoted attendees.

The session begins with Jill Michel, the team’s “energy harmonizer,” running a baton along the rim of her crystal bowls, filling the room with a baritone hum.

After one or two non-denominational prayers and a guided mediation, the group of healers surround the room, raise their hands, and call upon earthly and non-earthly energies - angels, spirit guides, Mother Earth - “whoever can help from the Other Side,” says Rita, “to bring unconditional love into the room.”