Barbara Ann Brennan (February 19, 1939 – October 3, 2022) was an American author, spiritual healer, businesswoman and teacher working in the field of energy healing. In 2011, she was listed by the Watkins Review as the 94th most spiritually influential person in the world.
Education and early career
Brennan received a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics in 1962 from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and two years later received her Masters in Atmospheric Physics from the same institution. She then went on to spend six years working at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. From 1970, she participated in courses at a number of unaccredited institutions, offering courses in the "human energy field". She completed a two–year program in Therapeutic Counselling at the Community of the Whole Person in Washington, D.C., followed by a three-year program in Core Energetics at the Institute for Core Energetics in New York City in 1978 and a five-year program in Spiritual Healership at the Phoenicia Pathwork Center in Phoenicia, New York in 1979. She was strongly influenced by Eva and John Pierrakos, who founded a system for self-transformation called the Pathwork, drawing on the ideas of Wilhelm Reich and Alexander Lowen. Brennan worked with the Pierrakos, and became a Pathwork Helper and Core Energetics therapist. Brennan also took seminars with and was influenced by Rev. Rosalyn L. Bruyere. She developed her own private healing practice in 1977 and then established a training programme to teach others. Brennan had a PhD in philosophy from Greenwich University in Australia and DTh in theology from Holos University, both earned in 2001. These universities are unaccredited.
Ideas and theories
Her first book, Hands of Light: A Guide to Healing Through the Human Energy Field, is considered a "classic" in the field of spiritual healing, with reputedly over one million copies in print in 22 languages. Brennan claimed to receive intuitive information about her clients during sessions, and to see repetitive patterns in the energy fields of her clients indicating common roots underlying their difficulties. Brennan's books contain drawings of auras and energy fields, and descriptions of how human energy fields interact with each other. She popularized a seven-layer model of the energy field, each layer being structured of differing frequencies and kinds of energy and performing different functions. Brennan viewed the chakras as transformers that receive and process universal energy, as well as enabling expression and healthy functioning of the individual's own consciousness and psycho-physical make-up. She was best known for taking a methodical approach to energy healing.
Brennan created a type of energy healing techniques that she called "full spectrum healing" to work on the seven layers of the human energy field or auras. Brennan claimed that the technique she called spiritual surgery works on the fifth level of the human energy field using the power of a spirit surgeon.
Brennan's concept of "hara" In her second book, Light Emerging, Brennan expanded her model of human subtle energies by adding the dimension of "intentionality" called "hara". Hara holds the human body in material manifestation until the life purpose is fulfilled. When the hara is healthy, the individual acts naturally and effortlessly to fulfill his or her life purpose. The hara is the foundation for the human energy field (HEF), or aura. Because of this relationship, healing hara is considered especially powerful for healing the auric field and, thereby, the physical body.
She also talked about the corestar. Our individual divinity, one with the universal divinity.