Russian folk healer Laura Chehktiani
works on discharging author David Tate's
"bad" energy.

By David A. Tate
Since suffering from a heart attack in 1986, I had been avoiding an angiogram, an invasive procedure in which a small catheter or tube the size of a piece of spaghetti is injected into an artery of the arm or leg and snaked into the heart in order to perform various tests. A dye is released into the arteries and motion pictures of its movement show the extent of atherosclerotic disease (or the lack of it) in each coronary artery.

Instead of this procedure, which has a small mortality risk (one in a thousand), I had thallium stress tests annually. The thallium test is not invasive, has no risk, and is generally accurate. It showed some permanent damage to a small but significant portion of my heart (the estimate was that 15 to 20 percent of my heart muscle had died). In the past two years, my tests have indicated that I had some ischemia or narrowing in a section of my right coronary artery (RCA).

Last summer, five years after my attack, I gave the keynote address at the 25th Silva Convention in Laredo, Texas. Afterward I stopped in Houston to have a PET scan of my heart, a procedure I had read about in Dr. Dean Omish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease. The PET scan is also non-invasive, but its proponents believe it gives more accurate information than the thallium. The test was administered on August 13 by Dr. K. Lance Gould, an authority in the use of this procedure.

The results were devastating. Dr. Gould explained that I had three-vessel disease. In addition to the blockage in my left anterior artery (LAD) where the attack had occurred, my RCA was totally blocked, and I had serious stenosis (narrowing) in my left circumflex artery and another major branch of my LAD. The extent of my disease was life-threatening, and most cardiologists would probably recommend quadruple bypass surgery. An alternative to consider would be to lower my cholesterol from its present 145 to 110 by aggressive drug therapy and a low-fat diet. Dr. Gould's report was sent to my cardiologist, and we agreed it was time for me to undergo the dreaded angiogram.

Meanwhile, on September 5, I was a guest on a TV talk show to discuss my first book. Health, Hope & Healing, and my latest. In the Matter of Billy K. After the show, a staff member told me about a Russian folk healer, Laura, who had been on the show a few weeks before. She had accurately diagnosed his condition. After 10 sessions with her, his health had improved enormously. I called Laura immediately and had my first appointment with her the next afternoon.

Laura, an attractive woman of about 30, was staying in the New York City apartment of Mary Houston, a journalist who had discovered her in Moscow and arranged for her to visit the United States. Laura asked why I had come, and I explained about my heart condition. She then had me stand up. Her hands explored the area about a foot away from my physical body. She told me that I had calcium in my chest area and in my back and that I suffered from fatigue, a fact I had not bothered to tell her. Since my heart attack, I had suffered such severe fatigue that by late afternoon my mind often became foggy. A nap of at least an hour was an absolute necessity if I were to function in the evenings. My doctors could find no medical reason for the fatigue. I had experimented with a number of holistic regimens, and sometimes my condition would improve for a few days or a week. But I had found no lasting cure. Laura said that my immune system was a little low, and she could help.

Over the next two weeks, I had nine more sessions with her. Her treatments lasted less than five minutes. She would first move her right hand through my aura, apparently scooping up energy and discharging it with a flick of her wrist. When she snapped her wrist, I heard a crackling sound, sometimes loud, sometimes soft, but always distinct. After a few minutes of this gathering-discharge process, she would place her hands on various parts of my body—head, chest, back, stomach, face—sometimes while I sat, other times while I stood. During my two-week healing period, Laura told me to refrain from caffeine and alcohol.

The night after my third session with Laura, I awoke with strange pains in both thighs, achy, as if I were coming down with flu. I was finally able to get back to sleep and felt fine in the morning. l had similar discomforting and unusual pain in my feet, legs, chest, and shoulders on several other nights. I was also struck with unusual fatigue. I sometimes felt as if I were walking through sludge. Laura explained that these were signs that the healing was working. I was able to accept her explanation because my sister. Pat, who was also going to see Laura, had similar symptoms.

Laura feels that in most cases 10 sessions are necessary for optimal healing. By my last session with her on September 17, the unusual side-effects had abated but I didn't feel any better. I was still burdened by daily periods of fatigue. On September 26, the fatigue went away. This was four days before I was scheduled to have the angiogram.

While I was seeing Laura, I contacted friends in the Silva community to ask them to pray and send healing energies my way when I was scheduled for the angiogram, September 30. I felt better knowing that Silva instructors in various cities were helping, and my fear of the angiogram began to dissipate. I also became acutely aware of how important it was for me to become, in all aspects of my life, more spiritually focused. I understood that the PET scan results were, for me, a transformational trigger. I was being forced, once again, to reexamine my values and to ask myself to what extent I was manifesting those values in the world.

Silva graduates are taught how to turn problems into projects, and the project I worked hard on after my PET scan was getting what I "saw" as calcium deposits out of my arteries. I imagined myself inside my arteries, particularfy the ones that Dr. Gould found had severe narrowing or total blockage, and literally mining the calcium deposits. I carefully removed them from the artery walls and then put the rock-like pieces of calcium into an imaginary grinding machine, which reduced the deposits to powder to be flushed out of my system through my coursing blood flow. I began to "see" the calcium deposits softening, becoming like wet sand, and with another "machine," I vacuumed this debris out of my arteries. At different times, I went back and checked my results. I saw all my arteries open. The walls did not contain plaque, just clean tissue.

Before going to sleep on the night be fore the angiogram, I did a final check of my arteries. My LAD and left circumflex were remarkably clean, but I noticed, for the first time, that the top of my RCA had some ringlets of fatty tissue. I became annoyed and tried to imagine the fatty tissue disappearing. At first it did, but then it reappeared. I tried a few more times to make it disappear but was unsuccessful. I finally fell off to sleep.

The physician I had selected, Dr. Julio Sosa, had performed over 20,000 angiograms. I was awake while he opened an artery in my right arm.

(I was given a local anesthesia), inserted the catheter, moved it into my heart, and performed the tests. He then released the dye, and took the films which he viewed on a TV screen while continuing the procedure.“I’ll give you the full results later,” Dr. Sosa said as he stitched me up “but I’ll tell you this right now. Your left coronary artery is completely open, so is your left circumflex. Your right coronary is blocked at the top. The only other disease is in a branch of the left coronary and, because of its location, it's not important.”I felt enormous relief. Later, Dr. Sosa verified his initial findings and told me that I had no damage to my heart muscle as the result of the heart attack. Moreover, my EKG, taken after my sessions with Laura, was normal. (All my previous EKGs had been abnormal, which is expected after a moderate-to-severe heart attack.) A scientist might say that my previous tests were "false positives"—that because of the peculiar anatomy of my heart, the information supplied by the thallium tests and the PET scan was inaccurate. I make no claims. I feel as if a miracle has occurred. I thank God. I thank Dr. Sosa who performed the angiogram so expertly that I had no discomfort whatsoever. I thank Laura. I thank Jose Silva and my Silva friends. My life is no longer threatened by my heart's condition.

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Mr. Tate is an attorney and author, most recently, of  In the Matter of Billy K, a novel about the right of parents to choose alternative medical care for their child. He lives in Loudonville, New York.

A Russian folk healer at work

When Laura Chehktiani was 20, she began suffering severe headaches. Doctors thought she might have a brain tumor. However, a neurologist in Moscow thought she might have "big energy" and tested her with some type of machine. The test confirmed that excess energy was her problem. The solution was for her to become a healer so that she could discharge this energy into patients who needed it. She trained under the neurologist at the Moscow Neurological Clinic and began working as a professional healer about nine years ago. Later, she received a certificate to work as a folk healer—in Russia they are called " extra sense."

Laura reports that if she stops healing for two months, she becomes ill herself—very tired, lethargic. She works every other month in Moscow, seeing between 50 and 60 patients daily, seven days a week. On alternative months, she returns to her home in the Republic of Georgia to rest, but people there often call upon her for help.

Laura reports that she diagnoses a person by feeling a physical sensation in the center of the palm of her right hand as she passes it over that person's aura about a foot away from the body. Sometimes when she feels that sensation, described as a light tapping, her intuition will give her a word—ulcer, for example. When she feels extreme cold in her hand as it passes it over a person, she diagnoses cancer.

She says she heals by discharging with her hand the "bad" energy that is emitted from a person's body. She says she takes this bad energy into her body and destroys it. Then she puts good energy into the person's body by placing her hands on the person. People who experience her healing often find her hands very warm, even hot. Laura also explains that illness often comes when one or more of a person's energy centers or chakras are closed. When she feels this, her task is to open these centers.

Mary Houston, a New York journalist who brought Laura to America and lived with her for six months, said, "She is the most consistently peaceful and even person I've ever met." Houston added, "Her experience of life is trusting and joyfu! She is enormously generous and innocent."

There are times when she is unable to work on people, reports Houston, but she is aware of those occasions and lets them know.

Although Laura feels that everyone can leam to heal to help others, she believes some people are bom with the strong energy that makes them powerful healers.

— David Tate