Healing Intensive Course - Level 1
with Sir Martin Brofman
Article by BBC journalist and author Anna Parkinson taken from from The Telegraph newspaper, 5/11/2007
'Did my father cause my brain tumour?'
On September 12, 2002, I cleared my desk at BBC Television Centre to pursue my dream
– writing a biography of a pioneering, but forgotten, ancestor. I thought I was taking a brief spell
of leave. But within weeks, I was to discover that the quest to unearth my family history was deeply linked to my own wellbeing.
Five years before, when my father died, I took home one of his most precious possessions:
a gardening book published in 1629 by Charles I's herbalist, John Parkinson. I had always been fascinated by it,
especially because my father assured me that its author was our direct ancestor.
I had never lived with my father, as he and my mother separated after
I was born, so he was an intriguing mystery to me – as was Parkinson's Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris,
the first gardening book in English, complete with lavish woodblock illustrations of hundreds of plants.
I wanted to bring it, and its author, to life, so it was a nuisance when, a couple of weeks
after I began work on the biography, my local hospital wrote to make an immediate appointment with a neurologist.
Admittedly, I'd been having problems. A series of crippling headaches had arrived out of the blue,
like a chopper hitting the back of my skull. I would be delivered to A&E, immobile with pain, which gradually
diminished over three weeks.
But although I'd had every sort of scan,
no one ever got close to a diagnosis, apart from migraine.
I also had bouts of double vision: an intermittent problem that I'd been following up for two years.
The neurologist at my local hospital was direct.
"You've got a brain tumour," he said, "and it's going to have to come out." "How?" "Well,
they can cut open your face along the length of your nose, and get at it that way.
It doesn't leave much of a scar when they sew you back up. Or they can cut open the top
of your head and lift your brain aside." I shrank into my chair, speechless.
I went home and ploughed on with my book, while I waited for the hospital
to get in touch. But my fear emerged in nightmares, and my days were punctuated by pushing for more information
from the NHS; wading through a confusing plethora of medical terms from the internet; and filtering
advice offered by friends and family from all over the world.
I was now in the capable hands of Michael Powell, a surgeon at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery
in London, and a renowned expert on pituitary tumours, which is what I had. However, even he was puzzled:
"About 95 per cent of pituitary tumours are just that, on the pituitary," he explained.
"Then there are about four per cent which are of another kind. The remaining one per
cent are made up of 150 different types, and yours is one of those.
We're not sure which." The tumour was growing with one branch
of my carotid artery wrapped around it. So, despite all the tests,
it was deemed unwise to operate on a lump that was undiagnosable and unpredictable.
I found myself trying to unravel a historical mystery while being wrapped
up in a medical one at the same time. I was cross-eyed by now, as the tumour was pressing on a nerve.
My right eye had gone beyond the point where it could be corrected with a prism lens, and I wore a patch so that I could see.
Meanwhile, the harder I tried to make sense of my condition, the more confused I became.
The hospital lost my notes and scans three times.
Friends obtained expert views from as far afield as Los Angeles and Paris, but they contradicted one another,
so it seemed wisest to stick to Mr Powell's wait-and-see approach.
A serious diagnosis has the effect of detaching you from responsibility for your own body.
You become completely dependent on what your doctors think.
However, my case became so confusing that my view of it began to shift: I came to feel that the circumstances
I was facing were not accidental, but had been generated by me. The tumour had emerged from my body,
so it would be me who would solve it.
Earlier in my treatment, my sister had taken me to a talk by an American healer called Martin Brofman. Martin,
a former computer expert, healed himself of a tumour on his spine 30 years ago, and believes that illness arises
out of emotional tension in the psyche. Once you recognise the source of the tension, he claims, you can release it,
and make the choice to be well.
Eventually, I went to Martin, who practises in Switzerland, for a healing.
I don't know what took me so long. When you are seriously ill, it is hard to trust
something apparently irrational like healing, but I had nothing to lose.
Martin placed his hands above my head and held them over parts of my body.
I felt a charge course through my head, and after about 30 minutes I stood up,
feeling like Alice in Wonderland, a very long way from my feet.
"We start from the perspective that the body is a form of consciousness," he explained.
"During the healing, you allow me to enter your consciousness, and I can tell by the colour of the energy
in your 'chakras', your body's centres of energy, where there is tension."
He said a brain tumour arises from tension in the crown chakra, which relates
to difficulties in relationships with fathers, and consequently with all forms of authority.
This struck a chord with me, but it was when I turned back to my book that I had the real shock.
The very first line I had written leapt out: "I never lived with my father." I felt it was a summary
of everything that was wrong with our relationship.
I was astonished to realise that my fascination with John Parkinson,
my putative ancestor, had begun at the moment of my father's death: my book had started
as an exploration of the secrets between my father and me.
Unearthing Parkinson's story helped me overcome the sense of inadequacy and isolation
that I carried around because of my separation from my father: the tension that, I believe, caused my tumour in the first place.
Once I had understood the connection between my body and my feelings, I carried on healing with a daily routine,
as taught by Martin. I imagined my tumour dissolving and my health fully restored.
Two years later, this is a reality. The tumour has receded without medical intervention.
My eyes are now straight again, thanks to a clever operation at London's Moorfields Eye Hospital,
possible only once the tumour stabilised.
I have also learned Martin's Body Mirror Healing system, so I can use it to help others,
and I now also have what I regard as my real family legacy – John Parkinson's treasure trove
of information about healing herbs and plants.
Her Doctor's advice
Michael Powell, the consultant neurosurgeon who treated Anna Parkinson, says:
"For me, Anna's tumour is another fascinating case in a speciality that has more than its share of extraordinary stories.
I learnt very early on in my 25-year career to listen to the patient's wishes:
if they want to do something unconventional, we would encourage it, always assuming it is not positively harmful.
Patients who are calm, happy and contented seem to do better than the more anxious ones.
Part of our job as doctors is to dispel anxiety, so if an alternative healer is involved,
so much the better. That said, such treatment should always be used alongside, rather than instead of, conventional diagnosis."