Though the hyper-rationality of modern medicine splits the world into ever smaller fragments in an attempt to understand and control it, on another level, we are all part of a larger whole, and this wholeness is the key to healing. In fact, healing means to "make whole." Our unrecognized unity underlies the connection between your individual illness as an expression of the illness of the whole. Said differently, your symptoms are manifesting one aspect of the planetary sickness. For this reason, your healing is a small, but very significant contribution to the healing of the planet. Reconnection is the essential feature of healing illness and a gradual process is no longer feasible. For the explosive shift that is required to occur, it is not enough for people to work alone or in dyads. Circles of healing must appear -- circles that engender other circles. With this idea in mind, Dr. Ballentine has decided that rather than seeing patients exclusively on a one-to-one basis, he will work with 5 or 6 people (and a co-healer) in a group. In this context, everyone participates in everyone else's healing and everyone learns what a healing space is, and begins to grasp how it can be created.

What is the structure of a Radical Healing Circle?

The Radical Healing Circles begin with a three-hour session. The same circle of people meets regularly for five additional hour and a half sessions, one per month. The Circles require a six-month commitment to your health and your transformation. These sessions are grounded in the use of homeopathic remedies, flower essences and other natural medicinals that can activate and intensify the transformative process. As well, there is a focus in the sessions on practical issues such as diet, exercise and detoxification -- not topics traditionally dealt with in a group therapy situation. In fact, we've chosen to avoid the word "group", and instead call these gatherings Radical Healing Circles. Group therapy is likely to be equated with confrontation, while the circle concept is more about creating a space in which transformation can occur. We also prefer to use the term Radical Healing Circles because they are based on transformational principles that are set forth in Dr. Ballentine's recently published book, Radical Healing.

Who should participate in a Radical Healing Circle?

These circles are for you if you want to learn to be a healer, if you want to develop your intuition, if you want to learn what it means to function comfortably in community, or if you want to learn to deal with your health issues in a way that moves you into personal transformation and into greater empowerment as a creative individual.

What makes Radical Healing Circles unique?

When we talk about coming into the power of who you are by shedding old belief systems and old paradigms, we are talking about restructuring the group mind. Belief systems are a collective phenomenon. For this reason, the community is a powerful healing tool. The synergy of a circle of people makes transformation possible in a way that goes beyond what individual effort can accomplish.

In the circles, you get to see other people go through similar process to what you are going through in your own life. You begin to realize that you are not alone in this process of transformation. We all tend to enter illness with the feeling that there is something wrong with us. As therapists, we sometimes even foster that notion in an effort to motivate people to change. In contrast, the dynamic of the circle validates our struggle, honors the contribution our individual situations may be offering to our lives, and values what each individual offers to the rest of the group. These qualities help us embrace change, so that we do not feel the need to be coerced. Our challenges begin to seem desirable -- the means to opening up and blossoming, individually and collectively. The circle experience helps shift our perspective from one of pathology and being wrong to that of being right on track with our soul's purpose and the path to achieving that purpose.

How will Radical Healing Circles contribute to my personal transformation?

Within a Radical Healing Circle you will be developing the following qualities:

• the ability to clearly identify and redirect your personal patterns and programs as well as your habitual reactions to them,
• an understanding of what your illness is trying to communicate to you,
• the deep-felt empowerment that comes with truly knowing the difference between holistic and conventional medicine and how each has affected your life,
• an inner knowledge of which remedies are best for you,
• how to move from a place of feeling victimized to one in which you feel empowered.

• There is more time than in a typical one-on-one session with a physician or practitioner. In our setting, one has a session that is three times as long.
• You get to see that other people are going through similar changes, leading to the realization that there is nothing wrong with you, but that transformation is the order of the day!
• You have group support. The community of "healers" that is formed can offer encouragement and understanding to each member.
• You watch how the work is done and contribute to the feedback given to each person, thus participating in their healing. In this way, you are becoming a healer yourself.
• Simply by stepping into the healing circle, you have taken one giant step out of the splitting and isolation that is at the root of our suffering; to heal is to reconnect with what has been split off.