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BALANCE Achieving the harmonious interaction of light and dark, masculine and feminine, Yin and Yang and creative and receptive energies in mind, body and emotions is an integral part of meditation, dream work, psychic development or any creative work on personal and professional growth.

Many situations in life can prevent balance in mind, body and emotions. You may be thrown off balance by the people around you, by your environment, by feelings of fear or anger or by psychic information you receive. It is easy to be overwhelmed by these stimuli, both external and internal, and psychics believe that one of the most important aspects of psychic growth is the ability to keep oneself balanced, to stay rooted within yourself whatever is going on around or inside you.

Visualising a golden light or bubble around you to protect yourself from distraction, self doubt or misfortune is a technique often used by psychics to encourage inner balance, as is reconnecting with the earth after psychic work by going for a walk or taking a drink of water to ground yourself again in everyday reality.

In a recent series of seminars this year I talked with members of the group about people or for that matter situations which drain us both physically, mentally as well as emotionally. As a psychotherapist early in my training boundaries both between myself and the person I was working with as well as with aspects of myself such as feeling the need to parent a person or a situation when it was not indicated are uppermost in my mind when considering balance. As our discussion in the group continued the simple, accessible idea of someone as a psychic vampire emerged. I invited members of the group to consider times when a person had acted in this way towards them. I then asked members of the group to consider why this had happened and to become aware, as in the classic Bram Stoker novel entitled 'Dracula' how tradition stated that we had to invite the vampire into our home for them to continue to gain access. In my life I use my intuition when entering a room or when about to talk to a person and I can sense how they will drain and pull me out of balance. If this is what I sense then I disengage so as not to invite them into my life. Prevention being better and easier than cure?

BEHAVIOURAL MEDICINE Behavioural medicine is an approach to healing that acknowledges the effects of behaviour on health, and takes this into account not just the interaction between a human and the environment but the interaction between body, mind and spirit.

Non western healing systems such as traditional Chinese medicine for centuries have based their approach on the interaction between mind and body but it wasn't until the 1960s that western medicine began to acknowledge that mind and body may not be as separate as it had previously been thought. Psychiatrist George Solomon observed that feeling unhappy and depressed increased arthritis symptoms, and in his experiments he found that rats put under stress died more quickly than those who did not experience the same levels of stress. But the real break through came in the 1970s with psychoanalyst Robert Adler, who suspected from experiments with rats that the nervous system played a part in a body's immune system. He coined the term 'psychoneuroimmunology' [PNI]. Later research confirmed that the nervous system does indeed produce reactions that influence brain function and that there is collaboration between the mind, the brain and the immune system.

PNI suggests that emotions have a part to play in physical health, and over the years research has shown that relaxation and positive thinking techniques can produce changes in wellbeing and can be used in the treatment of illness. Relaxation, visualisation and imagery have been used with success to treat a whole range of conditions, from headaches and indigestion to serious conditions such as depression, heart disease and cancer. Studies also show that unhappy feelings, in particular suppressed anger, fear and guilt, low self esteem and lack of loving relationships, can all increase a persons chances of developing heart disease, cancer and infertility.

Many medical experts now acknowledge the important role relaxation; loving relationships and positive outlook play in mental and physical health and wellbeing. Psychic healers have always used the power of the mind to heal physical and emotional problems, believing that if people feel better mentally and emotionally they will improve physically.

BILOCATION The appearance of a person or animal in two places at the same time. What exactly occurs in the phenomenon of bilocation is uncertain, but one theory is that a person's double or doppelganger is somehow projected elsewhere and becomes visible to others either in solid physical form or ghostly form. Generally the double remains silent or acts strangely. In folklore, biolocation sometimes presages or heralds the death of the individual seen.

Bilocation allegedly has been experienced and practiced at will by mystics, ecstatics, saints, monks, holy persons and magical adepts. Several Christian saints and monks were skilled at bilocation.

Reports of bilocation were collected in the nineteenth century by the pioneering psychical researcher Frederick Myers, one of the founders of the Society for Psychical Research in England. Myers published his reports in 1903 in 'Human Personality and Its Survival after Bodily Death', but the phenomenon has received little interest in modern times.

BIOENERGETICS Like acupuncture and acupressure, assumes that existence of a universal life force that affects health and wellbeing, and a capacity for self-healing within everyone. It is a form of psychotherapy that involves a high degree of intuitive awareness on the part of the therapist, and patients have been known to report psychic experiences, such as episodes of clairvoyance, as a result.

Bioenergetics works with the physical, emotional and mental patterns of men and women to reduce emotional stress and help with the challenges of living. It is a way of understanding personality in terms of the body and its energetic processes.

According to bioenergetic theory, repressed emotions and desires affect the body by creating chronic muscle tension and loss of wellbeing and energy. The theory is based on the premise that there is no fundamental separation between the mind and the body: that psychological stress reflects and creates what is happening physically, and physical or somatic events both reflect and create mental and emotional state. Emotional stress from many areas - relationships, family crisis, jobs, health - produce tension in the body. Contractions in the muscular system are often the result of carrying unresolved emotional tension. These contractions can have a direct effect on the energy level of the individual, on the capacity for spontaneous and creative self-expression, and feelings of well-being.
Bioenergetic analysis seeks to bring about the conscious integration of mind and body. Therefore, the focus is on both the psychological issues presented and the manifestation of these issues as shown in the individual's body, energy and movement. Bodywork is combined with psychoanalysis of dreams and childhood experiences.

BIOFEEDBACK Is the measuring of vital bodily functions that are normally unconscious, such as breathing, brain wave rhythms, heart rate and blood pressure, through information provided by electronic devices. This information is then used to help control these processes. Biofeedback is a relatively new field, emerging only during the 1960s. Since that time biofeedback has been used in parapsychology for psi testing.

Originally biofeedback was applied to brain waves. Brain waves were the first discovered in 1924 by Hans Berger, but it wasn't until the 1950s that it was thought possible to control them at will - in 1958, researcher Joe Kamilya was able to help college students control their alpha brain waves. By the early 1970s the attention of researchers turned to how biofeedback could help one achieve altered state of consciousness, such as those achieved in meditation, and how in meditation bodily processes could be changed. Other experiments concentrated on training subjects to alter involuntary processes, such as blood pressure.

To monitor physiological processes, biofeedback electrodes, which look like stickers with wires attached to them, are placed on the clients skin. The client is then instructed to use relaxation, meditation or visualisation to bring about the desired response, whether it is muscle relaxation, a lowered heart rate or lower skin temperature. The biofeedback device reports progress by a change in the speed of beeps or flashes, or pitch or quality of the tome. The results of biofeedback are measured in the following ways:

• Skin temperature
• Electrical conductivity of the skin, called the galvanic skin response
• Muscle tension, with an electromyography [EMG]
• Heart rate, with an electromyography [EMG]
• Brain wave activity with an electroencephalograph [EEG]

Biofeedback demonstrates the connection between mind and body by teaching subjects to use thoughts and relaxation to control bodily processes, and as a result it is typically used as an alternative medicine technique to treat health problems ranging from stress related disorders to raised blood pressure, chronic pain, addiction and asthma. Biofeedback can also teach people how to increase their alpha brain waves. The alpha state is not necessary for psychic experience, but studies have shown it is conducive to it, since subjects who can slip easily into alpha states tend to score high in psi testing.

BLACK MAGIC The use of supernatural and psychic power for evil ends, the opposite of white magic, which is concerned with healing and promoting what is good.

The term 'black magic' has been used with a wide variety of meanings and evokes such a variety of reactions that it has become vague and almost meaningless. It is often synonymous with three other multivocal terms: witchcraft, the occult and sorcery. The only similarity among its various uses is that it refers to human efforts to manipulate the supernatural with negative intent and the selfish use of psychic power for personal gain. Workers of black magic are thought to have but one goal: to satisfy their own desires at whatever cost to others.

Magic, good or evil, is universal, with no ethnic or racial association, and it is unfortunate that not just in the Western civilisation but many cultures around the world, good and evil have for centuries been denoted as white and black. White often designates healing, truth, purity, light and positive energy, while black is darkness, falsehood, evil and negative energy.

In modern times probably the most popular synonym for black magic is the occult. Originally the term meant hidden, hence mysterious, and was routinely used by classical and medieval scholars to refer to 'sciences' such as astrology, alchemy and kabbalah but from the late nineteenth century when magical sects such as the Order of the Golden Dawn emerged, the term began to take on the meaning of evil or satanic. Perhaps best known occultist and black magic practitioner was Aleister Crowley (1875-1947), who dubbed himself the Antichrist. More than any other person Crowley gave the occult an evil connotation.

WILLIAM BLAKE 1757-1827 William Blake was a mystic, poet, artist and engraver whose visionary art was much misunderstood by his contemporaries. He published his first set of poems when he was 26, and six years later, in 1789, be printed the 'Songs of Innocence', which he also engraved and illustrated. In his forties he wrote his more symbolic epic poems, 'Milton and Jerusalem', and his best-known illustrations of the 'Book of Job and' Dante's 'Divine Comedy' were created in the last few years of his life.

Blake lived and died in relative poverty. He received little formal schooling, which makes his visionary interpretations of the Bible and the classics all the more remarkable. From a young age he experienced visions; when he was ten he told his father he had seen hosts of angels in a tree, and when his brother, Robert, died at the age of 20 he saw his soul ascend heavenward clapping its hands for joy. Throughout his life Blake drew his strength from the spirit world. He believed deeply in the human imagination - indeed, that it was the only reality - and he often spoke with apparitions, angels, devils and spirits that he drew and engraved in his work. His interest in the spirit world brought him into contact with many of the visionaries and writers of his time.

MADAME BLAVATSKY 1831-1891 Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, daughter of Russian Aristocrats, was a key figure in the nineteenth century revival of occult and esoteric knowledge. A highly intelligent and energetic woman, she helped to spread Eastern philosophies and mystical ideas to the West and tried to give the study of the occult a scientific and public face.

Blavatsky became aware of her psychic ability at an early age. She travelled through the Middle East and Asia learning psychic and spiritual techniques from various teachers, and she said that it was in Tibet that she met the secret masters or adepts who sent her to carry their message to the world.

In 1873 Helena immigrated to New York, where she impressed everyone with he psychic feats of astral projection, telepathy, clairvoyance, clairsentience and clairaudience. Her powers were never tested scientifically, but her interest was always more in the laws and principles of the psychic world than psychic power itself. In 1874 Helena met and began a life long friendship with Colonel Henry Steel Olcott, a lawyer and journalist who coveted spiritual phenomena, and a year later they founded a society 'to collect and diffuse knowledge of the laws which govern the Universe.' They called this society the Theosophical Society, from theosophy, a Greek term meaning 'divine wisdom' or 'wisdom of the gods'.

Traveling to India, Blavatsky and Olcott established themselves at Adyar, near Madras, and a property they bought there eventually became the world head quarters of the society. They established a nucleus of the movement in Britain and founded no fewer than three Theosophical Societies in Paris.

Throughout her life Blavatsky's powers were dismissed as fraud and trickery, but this do not stop the Theosophical Society from finding a home among intellectuals and progressive thinkers of her day. The society was born at a time when spiritualism was popular and Darwin's theory of evolution was undermining the Church's teachings, so the Society's new thinking flourished. Many people appreciated the alternative it provided both to church and dogma and to a materialistic view of the world.

Blavatsky's two most important books are Isis 'Unveiled' and her magnum opus, 'The Secret Doctrine', published in 1888. She drew her teachings from many religious traditions: Hinduism, Tibetan Buddhism, Platonic thought, Jewish Kabbalah and the occult and scientific knowledge of her time. Although they influenced many people, her books are extremely difficult to read. Nevertheless, her teachings were absorbed by many people and then simplified into a worldview that was taken up by many later New Age groups. This worldview includes a belief in seven planes of existence; the gradual evolution and perfecting of spiritual principles; the existence of nature spirits [divas] and belief in secret spiritual masters or adepts from the Himalayas, or from spiritual planes, who guide the evolution of humanity. All these beliefs are derived from Balvatsky's Theosophy.

BLOCKED ENERGY Energy is believed to be the basis of all matter, and psychics and alternative medicine practitioners believe that a field or energy, called an aura, surrounds your body and a flow of energy [chi] exists within it. If these energy forces are interrupted for some reason the energy becomes blocked and will not flow freely. Charkas are an essential part of this energy flow. If one or more of them is closed, then the energy is blocked at these points.

It is through that blocked energy which is not cleared can lead to serious consequences, affecting your mental, physical and spiritual health, and impeding your spiritual and psychic development.

BODY SCANNING The ability to look psychically into and around a human body in order to determine the person's health and state of mind. Body scanning can be experienced through any of the five senses.

A medical intuitive can psychically read a body and come up with a diagnosis in actual medical terms. Each intuitive works differently; for example, some read auras whiles others read energetically the insides [organs, blood, glands]. Intuited information can then be provide to the clients medical doctor and/or health care professional for further evaluation and discussion of possible treatments. Many medical intuitives work with, or are, medical doctors themselves.

BOOK TEST The book test is a way for the deceased to communicate with the living and provide evidence of their survival after death. It was developed in the early twentieth century by English medium Gladys Osbourne Leonard and her spirit control, Freda.

In the book test the deceased communicates through a medium and provides the title of a book not known to the medium. The deceased gives the books exact location and then specifies a page number, which is supposed to contain a message from the deceased. Leonard's book tests were very successful, and almost always the passage selected contained personal messages.

Paranormal factors may well figure in some books tests, but this does not necessarily imply that there is life after death, as book tests can be easily explained by the idea that the medium himself or herself is picking up psychic information. Another problem with book test as proof of life after death is that on almost any page of a given book some passage may be interpreted as a message.

BRAIN/BRAIN WAVES Although it is possible that psychic power is a bridge that connects your brain to a higher mental or spiritual force, some experts believe that psychic ability should be treated as another aspect of brain function. They regard psi as an additional sense that is somehow located in our brains, and believe that understanding psi can help explain how we perceive and process information.

One of the most amazing discoveries in medicine was made by Roger Sperry in the 1960s, who revealed that the right hemisphere of the brain, responsible for intuition and creativity, makes an equally valuable contribution as the left hemisphere of the brain, responsible for reason and logic and previously thought to reign supreme. Opinions differ on what part of the brain psi function exists in, but many believe that the ability to connect to intuitive information is housed in the right side of the brain and that for optimal brain function both the right and left sides of the brain need to work together.

Some scientists suggest as well that brain waves need to work together. Brain waves are electrical impulses our brains constantly release, and they are measured in hertz, or cycles per second. There are four major stages of brain wave activity, beginning with beta, the shortest and fastest waves, and moving through to delta, the strongest and slowest.

When the brain is emitting beta waves, the individual is active, awake and conscious, with his or her eyes open. Alpha brain waves operate just below waking consciousness, as state that is attained in meditation and relaxation. The average person can maintain awareness in this state. Typically, eyes are closed and the body is relaxed, but alpha waves are also produced during daydreaming with eyes open. The alpha state is not essential to achieve success in psi testing result, but studies show that it is conducive to psi. Theta brain waves are achieved during deep relaxation. The average person cannot maintain awareness in this state, but some mediators claim that they can. The final state, delta, is one of sleep or unconsciousness.

Some scientists maintain that the blending of all four brain waves create a brand new brain wave. Some followers of Eastern philosophy propose that the awakened mind, which occurs when a person is more aware of their spiritual existence, is a state that combines all four brain waves at once.

BURIAL RITES The idea of a journey to the afterlife is evident in every culture and ever age, and it has always been considered a duty of the living to set the dead on their path to the other world. In primitive times symbols were carried to rocks and implements and weapons were buried with the dead to help them in the next life. In Greece a gold coin was buried with the dead to pay the ferryman to take them across the River of Death. The Egyptians had the most elaborate burial rituals which lasted for days. Today the idea of a journey can still be said to exist when we lay flowers on graves to provide beauty and peace in the hope that the spirit will find it on the other side.

As well as preparations for the journey to the afterlife, the other important part of ancient burial rites was to make sure the spirit found peace and did not return to haunt the living. Some ancient cultures maintained contact with the dead, keeping artifacts of the deceased so that communication could take place with the help of a go-between. In many places in the world ancestral spirits and ancestor worship still play an important role and burial rites create a doorway from this world to the next.

Generally burial rites in the West have taken on the idea of paying respect t o the person and his or her family and the ritual has become a way to say good-bye. It is an important time because, according to psychics, the bereaved need to let go of the spirit so it can go on its way, and the spirit needs to let go of the bereaved. Burial rites therefore still represent a bridge between physical life and spiritual life.