'HOW DO YOU think it works?' Neil, a friend and Druid, asked me.

'I'm not sure.'

'Oh, you must have some idea,' he smiled as if to say, I know you know the answer.

'Yes, well, but I'm not exactly sure. It has something to do with being able to move outside of Space and Time.'

'Yes? And?'

'Well, we're all connected at the Source. We're all one, so it's like moving beyond the barriers that separate us, the illusion of separateness. It's a combination of all those things.'

'Yes, I think it's something like that as well.'

I remember the gist of this conversation we had some seven years ago because it occurred not long after I had been initiated in the reiki second degree, and Neil was one of the first people, outside of myself and my family, that I experimented on. I'd been using it to work on my own past, and my relationships with individual members of my family, with, I thought, interesting results; insights into my mother's grief and pain which, in turn, had caused me to gather pain and grief inside myself. It was an inheritance of sorrow, regret and anger experienced empathically through the medium of distance healing. It certainly helped me to understand the 'why' of her behaviour, and, consequentially, my own patterns.

At the time I was still unsure about the claims made for distant healing by reiki masters. I was more certain that 'hands on' worked effectively having had plenty of practice with that. So, I asked Neil if I could try it on him. He agreed, and we set a time for it. This was the first time I had worked without a photograph of the person, so I felt even less sure of what I was doing. Nevertheless, I followed what I had been taught, and believed, as far as I could then, that it would work.

Visualising him between my hands, the reiki symbols drawn over my palms, I closed my eyes and let go of my thoughts. For the process, I used, and still use, a technique of making my mind a blank screen. Gradually I sensed a shift in my physical shape, then my body sensations, and then I saw Neil in his room. He was sitting quietly. I could see him, and feel him, in the sense that I could feel his emotions and what his body was feeling, too.

'Hey,' I yelled down the phone afterwards, 'I could see you. Actually, it was like I was you, but could see you at the same time.' He confirmed what I had seen and felt. We were both surprised, although it seemed I was more amazed than he was.

However, this experience wasn't quite enough to convince me. My reasoning went something like this; Neil and I had a strong telepathic connection wrapped up in a package of sexual chemistry. Being around him seemed to trigger psychic experiences for me. At the time, I thought that might be an explanation for what I had experienced while sending him healing.

Then my son got chickenpox. I'd never had it. I convinced myself that with reiki I could wing this one. At the time I was working in a local hospital. A doctor overheard me talking about the fact Kyle had had chickenpox over Christmas. He popped his head round my office door.

'We won't be seeing you next week then.'

'What do you mean?'

'Your son has just had chickenpox, and you've never had it?'

'No, I haven't, but I don't think I'll get it.'

'OK, we'll see,' he laughed.

A week later I developed a blinding headache that was bad enough to make me turn green (so I am told). It was flu, I thought. Well, no, the doctor was right, it was chickenpox, and as everyone knows if you get it as an adult, it's serious. I gave myself reiki every hour, and, although I felt like death warmed up, I didn't have many spots and I never once itched. Consequently, I don't have any scars, which, in a moment of vanity, became more of a concern than anything else. The only problem was that I was supposed to be organising a workshop in London for a reiki master from Bombay. I couldn't write the brochures or make the phone calls to prospective participants. It would just have to wait. Unfortunately, time was running out.

Into my third week of chickenpox, Naren called me.

'How is everything going?'

'It isn't, because I have chickenpox.'

'You should have called me. Never mind, I'll send you reiki for the next three nights. Don't worry.' So, I try to work out the time difference between London and Bombay, wanting to figure out when this healing energy is going to descend on me. I have to say I wasn't very positive about it.

The next night, just as I was falling asleep, I felt an intense, hot, pain in my kidneys. I could hardly bear to lie down, but I didn't really have the strength to get up. The next night was the same. On the third night it was even more intense, but I somehow fell asleep. When I woke up I felt as if I could run around the block several times instead of stumbling to the sofa which is what I had been doing for the last three weeks. I definitely didn't have chickenpox anymore. From that moment I was convinced about the power of distance healing.

Since then, I have used distance healing extensively, always with excellent results. In fact, I would now say that in many instances it has proved more effective than a 'hands on' treatment. Working pre and post surgery with the mother of a friend of mine speeded up her recovery; she needed less pain relief and there were no problems with the wound. Similarly, when my friend, her daughter, had a Caesarean, the nurse who visited her at home to check the incision couldn't believe how quickly she had healed up. Distance healing was perfect on these occasions, especially as one woman was in Philadelphia and the other in London.

On another occasion, a woman asked me to work with her son, Justin, who had received a violent blow to the head from an attacker on his way home from school. The result was that he had become withdrawn and depressed. This was all the information I had about him, apart from his name and age. The first few times I sent him healing I had a sense of him drowning in water, unable to get to the surface because he didn't know how to do it by himself. I could see him staying in his room all day, not knowing what to do. Then, one day I saw him get out of bed and sit down at a desk with sheets of manuscript paper. He was composing a piece of music. After that his mood changed completely to one of optimism. He was able to find his way to the surface.

I phoned Justin's mother straight afterwards because I was puzzled by what I had seen. I asked her, 'Does Justin have any interest in music, because I've just seen him compose something?' I didn't know if he did, so I was aware it might sound a bit bizarre. Then I told her that it appeared music was his cure, his passage through to being healed. She got very excited about this, because as it turned out Justin was a very talented musician and his teacher had told her he was also a very gifted composer. In this case, the distance healing led me and Justin to discover that music was his path to wholeness.

I'm very grateful that distance healing found its way into my life through reiki. This is, of course, just one way of sending healing over distance. There are many others, all equally effective. I don't think I can answer Neil's question today about how it works any more precisely than I did seven years ago. Perhaps, that is because I don't feel the need to. I know that it works, and that it works because we are all one. I am happy for the mystery of 'how' to remain a mystery. I am content to enjoy the fact that I can be with, and help anyone, anytime, anywhere. ++