Healing Alliance℠ sessions are two-way sessions. Participants meet typically for two hours. For the first hour, one person takes the role of ally and the other is the speaker. At the end the pair takes a break for a few minutes and then they switch roles for the second hour, so that both people experience the benefits of being the person receiving the assistance and of being the person offering the assistance. This work in healing partnerships is the core of the Healing Alliance℠ system.
Participants begin by receiving six full days of extensive training (generally taught as three weekend retreats over a period of months). This course trains you in:
- How to be an effective ally and facilitator of healing
- How to be successful in pursuing your own healing and recovery
- Skills for becoming a caring and empowering listener
- Techniques to help each other have deep and cathartic emotional experiences through laughter, crying, healthful and safe raging, and other cleansing releases
- Approaches to relieving isolation, sadness, anxiety, and hopelessness
- Strategies for reclaiming power and taking charge of your life
- Ways to connect individual healing to activism for justice and social change
Trained Healing Allies learn a large array of techniques that lead to powerful sessions. Underlying these skills is a commitment to the transformation that grows out of love, compassion, thinking well about each other, and tapping into the power of deep emotional releases.
The power of the Healing Alliance does not come just from our one-on-one sessions, however. Much of what makes this healing system work so well is participation with other trained Healing Allies in monthly support groups on various topics, healing networks, newsletters, and other cooperative healing activities based on our fundamental principles. When you take our training course, you will also learn how to draw from these wider forms of involvement in the Healing Alliance.