When Laura
Chkhetiani was a 19-year-old music student in her
native Tbilisi,Georgia,
in the Former Soviet Union, she began to have severe headaches. After
x-rays revealed a brain tumor
and local doctors wanted to operate,
her father
took her to Moscow for another opinion. But before they left Georgia, they
met a well-known healer, who had reportedly helped former Soviet Premier
Leonid Brezhnev
so much after a stroke paralyzed him on one side, he built an institute
for healers onto the medical school in Moscow.
"She told my father I had healing
energy that if I didn't use to help people, it would make me sick," says
Chkhetiani, who now lives in Barrytown, in Dutchess County.
When Chkhetiani and her father arrived at the
Moscow hospital, a new set of x-rays showed no
tumor. She says Moscow doctors tested her with
equipment which supposedly showed she had "big
energy," and advised her to study healing because
she had a gift. Chkhetiani gave up her musical
career and honed her skills for three years at the
institute for healers. Then she began working as a
healer on the hundreds of patients who came to the
institute from as far away as Ukraine, Siberia and
Poland, making appointments years in advance.
In 1991, a journalist
from New York City who
came to the institute to make a documentary about
"I'm putting in good
energy and taking out
the bad."
_______________________
healers invited Chkhetiani to visit her in New York.
Because their home and all their possessions in
Georgia were burned during a civil war, Chkhetiani
and her husband and children were eventually able
to emigrate to the U.S. as political refugees.
Since moving to the Hudson Valley,
Chkhetiani has diagnosed and treated many people, finding her patients
mostly through word-of-mouth. David Tate, a Loudenville attorney, claimed
in Venture Inward magazine in 1992 that 10 sessions with Chkhetiani helped
open his blocked coronary arteries.
Laura Colan of Woodstock says Chkhetiani got her through pneumonia
and a cancer scare. "I spent $2,000 on doctors and biopsies and Laura
knew it wasn't cancer," Colan says. "She has an ability to almost
diagnose. She feels it in her hands."
Two years ago, Ruth Cook, a Woodstock
sculptor, dragged her architect husband, Cary Cook, to Chkhetiani when he was
suffering from painful bone spurs on the hip. "Disbelieving all the time," says
Ruth Cook. By the fourth session with Chkhetiani, Cook says, her husband
began to feel better. By the fifth, he was walking normally. Ruth Cook herself
goes
to Chkhetiani on a regular basis to get her body into balance and feel more
energetic.
It generally takes five sessions spread over five days for her
to be able to help people, Chkhetiani says. First she diagnoses your problem,
which takes about 15 minutes. Then she will ask you to rest for a short period, "because
too much of my energy at one time isn't good for you," she says.
After the rest comes another 15-minute session, in which she claims
to take out your bad energy and recharge your batteries with her healing energies.
Two healing sessions a day dispense as much of her energy as a person can usually
handle, she says. " Some people feel fantastic after the first sessions,
others feel worse at first, then better," Chkhetiani says.
Recently Chkhetiani
and I were in the Cooks' living room and she was eager to get to work
on me. She tells me to stand up and take off my glasses and watch. "Close
your eyes and think of 'good,'" she says. Then she stands behind
me and runs her hands up and down quickly and lightly a few inches
from the front and back of my torso, my head, hair, eyes.
She
directs me to sit again and takes a seat across from me. Leaning forward,
she tells me that four or five years ago, my body had a "very
big stress. " As a matter of fact, in the fall of 1994, I underwent
a double surgical procedure on an ankle I had badly sprained. The operation
had gone smoothly, but I'd been given an overdose of anesthesia and
ended up with severe neck pain for more than a year. She says I have
low blood pressure, which is true, and assures me my breast area was
clean. "You never have to worry about this area," she says.
She also tells me I need more protein. It's true I haven't been
eating much meat lately. Then she says to remain sitting in the chair but to
close my eyes. As she runs her hands up and down near the front and back of
my torso, this time I hear loud snapping sounds. I ask her what I'm hearing.
"I'm putting in good energy and taking out the bad," she
says. "When you get rid of the bad energy, sometimes there's lots of noise."
Whatever
it is she was doing, I found it to be so relaxing, I might have fallen
asleep in the chair, except for the periodic crackling noises my bad
energy kept on producing.
Chkhetiani
will be holding healing sessions during the week of April 20-24 at
the Cooks'
home. For information or to make an appointment, call 679-6261.
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