“In October I was in the Czech Republic, people were standing outside the conference room and crying because they couldn't get in… Over here no one has ever heard of me I have no idea why. Normally news travels like wildfire.” Brandon Bays seems genuinely puzzled.
Author of The Journey: An Extraordinary Guide for Healing Your Life and Setting Yourself Free , Bays is the creator of a self-healing process that's spreading all over the world with startling speed. Her book is in 38 countries and has been translated into 23 languages. Her method, ‘The Journey' currently has 13,000 certified practitioners around a globe: a number that's steadily growing.
I'm determinedly sceptical. The New Age self-help section with its Hollywood smiles and billowing incense seems rather twee. So when Bays clasps my hand with the infectious enthusiasm of charismatic crowd-pullers, I just smile and eyeball her inevitable incense stick. When she pours me ginger tea, I quiz her about The Journey Method, a trademarked set of seven courses. “So people pay, right?” “Of course they do,” she smiles, “And then many of them go on to use those skills professionally.”
Bays astutely begins with her credentials. “I work with medical doctors and psychologists. She talks of working with the ministry of education in Israel, which led her to the president's house to do a programme with the staff. “I was the key note speaker at the United Nations on International Peace Day. People are finally getting it. Peace is not going to happen because of governments. It starts with individuals.” She adds, “The method's used in hospitals, thousands of schools. We're reaching ghettos, tribal communities. We work on getting to the emotional root cause of people's problems. Emotion promotes physical healing.”
She's in Chennai to speak at Crossword, and in India to conduct workshops, despite the fact that this country has been fairly impervious to the Bays effect. “I've been coming to India since 1980. This is the spiritual head of the world.” Her work is influenced by Deepak Chopra's ideas on Neuro Linguistic Programming and Cellular memories. “I started The Journey here to support my work with five Indian orphanages. One of the directors came to me and said, ‘We need skills not money to help these children. Rescued from railway stations, they have seen and heard such terrible things that they can't close their eyes at night'.”
Bays' path began when she was diagnosed with a “basketball-sized tumour.” She says she cured herself by taking a path of alternative healing, with herbs, massage and guided visualisation. And most importantly, by letting go emotionally.
“The Journey was born out of my journey.” Her method involves dealing with ‘cell memories'. “It's a fact of modern medicine — when you feel a strong emotion, and repress it, you block cell receptors. That leads to illness. Allow yourself to feel those emotions and the cell reception opens. Even the Centre for Disease Control in America, which is one of the country's most powerful bodies in the field of medicine, says 85 per cent of all illness appear to have an emotional element.”
Still sceptical? “Have you heard of the Roger Bannister effect?” she asks. “He was the first to run a mile under four minutes. It was believed to be physically and anatomically impossible. When he broke the barrier, others were able to do it too. It opened a door.” She says, “You need to have faith that your body is capable of healing anything. Get to the emotional cause and ignore the arrogance of the mind. Come to a place of forgiveness.”
If this is sounding too much like a John Lennon song, perhaps it's useful to point out here that Bays doesn't claim this is a one-stop miracle shop. “I tell people to work with their doctors. I never say do The Journey instead. I say do it along with your chosen path, whether it's chemotherapy or surgery. It's not the way. It's a way.”
The Journey, she insists, is not band-aid therapy. “It's not all ra ra nicey nicey. We work with people who are willing to get real. I have no answers. Healing is about uncovering them for yourself.”
