BERMUDIANS Karen Simons and Larry Trott find themselves on the cutting edge of a major movement in alternative healing techniques.

This serene couple, married last year, are directors and practitioners at HealingWorks Bermuda, where they help clients combat stress and find wellness through the application of a range of traditional Chinese techniques, massage therapies, and regenerative healing which emphasises mind and body connections.

What would have been dismissed as pseudo-spiritual wishful thinking less than a generation ago is being increasingly accepted in recent years, perhaps grudgingly, by traditional medicine.

No less a mainstream publication than recently published a segment describing the current views of Herbert Benson, MD, the Mind/Body Medical Institute Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

"That thoughts and feelings can affect our health is hardly news," wrote Dr.Benson. "In the space of a few decades, mind-body medicine has evolved from heresy into something approaching clich?. The challenge is to map the pathways linking mental states to medical ones, and learn how to travel them at will."

Karen and Larry undertook training to better understand the mind-body relationship and they opened HealingWorks almost two years ago, but they had been journeying in that direction for a number of years. Karen's first encounter with non-traditional beliefs was influenced by her father Vernon.

"Although he was a practising Catholic," remembered Karen, "he always had lots of books around the house about Eastern mysticism. As a child, I would pick up these books on Buddhism, and yoga and Zen, and I would ask him questions, because I had a natural curiosity about them.

"Then he embarked on martial arts ? Shotokan karate ? and at around 14, watching him practising, I decided I wanted to do it too. I spent a few decades practising karate and a couple of years doing kung fu."

Karen attended Seton Hall University in New Jersey, earning a BSc in Physical Education, Health and Recreation, then travelled to the University of Florida for a master's in Special Education, with an emphasis on working with children with physical and mental challenges.

"So, I was always dealing with health issues," said Karen. "At the same time, in my personal life, I was a martial artist and a meditator. I came back to Bermuda and taught Special Education, at Devon Lane and Friendship Vale schools, for about five years, until 1993. Then I went to the Department of Education, and worked as a Special Education Officer."

During these years, Karen used most of her vacation time to attend different "healing schools", taking metaphysical courses, in shamanism and esoteric healing. She sees her move away from physiological healing as a personal evolution.

"I believe that nothing happens without a reason," said Karen, "and I believe that we are guided where we need to go for the healing that we need. I was blessed, in that friends would tell me about different programmes, and help lead me where I needed to go, and that would lead on to further steps, until I found Delphi, a metaphysical university about two hours from Atlanta."

Larry, her partner in business and in life, had attended Delphi before Karen, and she learned from watching "the personal transformations he went through". She had intended only to take a course or two, but then she "fell in love" with the programme.

"I knew that's where I needed to go next," explained Karen, "not because of what I could do for other people, but because of the work I needed myself. The first degree I explored was in Metaphysical Healing, which goes beyond the physiological to the mind and body sources of physical problems.

"We look for the psychological and emotional sources of physical issues. We go within, to things that might be hidden. Traditional medicine may deal with the symptom, but the problem will recur if the root cause is not dealt with. We are able to travel that journey with people, in ways that physicians have not been trained to do.

"It's a wonderful link between eastern and western medicine. We serve as an alternative to traditional physical medicine, but also in a complementary r?le, where we can work along with western medicine, if that is the client's choice.

"I learned a lot of different skills and steps to helping other people. You learn a lot of different healing modalities, like 'colour and sound' healing, and different bodywork techniques. We do get referrals from physicians, which is a really wonderful thing, and medical schools are putting more of this kind of healing into their curriculums. Of course, we sometimes refer to traditional physicians. This is not superficial work; it's a kind of calling."

usually visit Karen and Larry when physical or emotional problems are already apparent. It is Karen's fond wish that people contemplate alternative healing programmes on a preventative basis.

"That's our dream, that more people use us as prevention," she confessed, "as opposed to waiting until they have tried everything else, and their situation is chronic. But people have evolved, and moved a lot.

"There was a time when most of the people looking for alternative healing would be expatriates, because they had been exposed to it at home. Now, most of our client?le is local. It's a generational thing, and it's just time. People are willing to go deeper."

Harvard's Benson said "the relationship between emotion and health is more important and more interesting than most of us could have believed, and that experts now believe that 60 to 90 per cent of all doctor visits involve stress-related complaints". HealingWorks does not have a typical client, and every day is different because it holds different classes in the evening: Tai Chi and Qigong (for groups numbering between seven and 17), ancient systems of Chinese exercises incorporating the mind, breathing, and gentle movements that can encompass exercise, relaxation, martial arts, healing and enlightenment, and Inner Sanctuary Training, a more intimate group of six, "designed to enrich your life through the love and wisdom of your own spirit".

"We have clients from every walk of life," said Karen, "every racial and religious background, and they come for help for everything from marriage counselling, because we are both ordained ministers of a non-denominational church, to cancer.

"In addition, I'm a transpersonal psychotherapist, which again suggests going further, to a psychotherapy of the soul, beyond just listening to a person and analysing. We do Yandhi Therapy, which deals with inner child issues, unresolved childhood traumas, and RoHun Therapy, which is extremely deep, and is only for the brave!

"The key is that the client has to be willing to be part of the healing process, as opposed to just taking a pill. That way, you are getting something for yourself that's going to last. We have people who come in once a month, just to tap into the energy again and feel their centre. To me, it's a real honour to work with people at this level. It's worth everything; it's a beautiful journey."

It's also an expanding journey for Karen and Larry, because they have been retained by Cambridge Beaches, running a new wellness programme for its spa visitors, two days a week, doing treatments and workshops for guests. Both partners exude an aura of calm, and speak softly in the candlelight and subtle aromas of their treatment rooms. Larry's road to alternative healing also started in childhood. His gentle baritone might remind you of a younger James Earl Jones.

"When I was in primary school, I used to get weak and pass out," Larry reminisced. "I would get chronic pains in my abdomen, and I had my appendix removed, but I still had the pain. I decided to learn more about my body, and I took up martial arts and yoga around 19, and became a vegetarian, and then a vegan, and did a lot of reading and studying about spirituality, from traditional and metaphysical perspectives.

"The pains went away, and never returned. I prayed, and I believe in a higher power, but I believe that I helped myself with my change of diet and exercise. I began weight training and bodybuilding, also a result of my father's influence, and running and kayaking."

began to develop massage techniques and experience in his teenage years, when he massaged his father after his work-outs, and being a sportsman, Larry benefited from massage and acupuncture.

"That led me to an art called Qigong (pronounced Chi-kung) the healing art, and when I travelled to New Orleans to learn massage therapy, I met a Qigong grand master, and I studied with Tai Peter Hom for seven years: traditional Chinese medicine, from the Tui-Na medical massage to acupuncture, Qigong therapy, and Tai Chi, and I graduated from the Blue Cliff School of Therapy and Massage in Kenner, Louisiana, just outside New Orleans."

Larry returned to Bermuda and set up Integrated Healing Arts in 1997, teaching these Chinese therapies, and Healing Touch, "an energy-based modality", along with basic massage therapies, and shiatsu and reflexology. He decided to study Metaphysical Healing at Delphi University, because he was conscious that his interest in healing went beyond physical massage therapies.

"Qigong is beyond the physical, in that it works with the energy meridians, the body and energy pathways, and the energy centres of the body called chakras. I was invited to a workshop in Atlanta, where I met Dr. Candace Pert, the neuroscientist who wrote and proved that emotions directly affect your body through the release or repression of peptides, the carriers of the body's biochemical information system. I also met the people from Delphi, and after some thought, I decided I really needed that retreat, and I took the course and learned so much from it."

"HealingWorks is evolving, as holistic medicine has in Bermuda over the last seven years. There has been a lot of media coverage of this evolution, and that has been very positive, letting people know that it is clear that scientifically, these energy modalities are working. Now you can use scans, and find the acupuncture points and energy pathways that the Chinese drew nearly 5,000 years ago."

Most of HealingWorks' clients learn about the centre by word of mouth, but there are some who arrive at last resort, having exhausted the traditional ministrations of doctors, physiotherapists or chiropractors.

"The increased stress that is sending people to all of the different types of medical professionals is sending people to us too, but what matters to Karen and me is that people come to learn about themselves.

"We don't believe in the revolving door, where people come back over and over again, which is why we offer the classes: meditation, exercise, Qigong. Things that help people lift themselves up; to empower them is the goal.

"Our clients learn that they are the principal architects of their well-being. What matters is not the stress, but how people react to the stress. It's about finding inner space and peace."

HealingWorks is on the third floor of Washington Mall, at 22 Church Street, call 292-2513 or e-mail pw3ibl.bm

The charges for the various therapies range from $45 for a 30-minute massage, $85 for the traditional Chinese therapies, and $100 or more for Rohun, Regression and Yandhi Therapy. The classes are of varied size, but the six-person Inner Sanctuary workshop costs $375 for five sessions plus the workbook.

Harvard's Dr. Benson wrote that "mounting evidence suggests that any number of soothing emotional experiences can improve our physical health. Stress-related illness often defies conventional remedies, and when we persist with high-tech pills and procedures, the costs of treatment can easily outweigh the benefits. Mind-Body medicine could reduce medical costs while improving our health and our lives. And whatever its limitations, it has the advantage of doing no harm."