More About Jason

I'd like to introduce myself, my name is Jason Elias and I have spent most of my life in search of healing, both for myself and especially in order to discover its roots. Ever since I was a youngster in Brooklyn, New York, I have been enamored of all subjects connected to health and healing.

I graduated from Long Island University in 1969 with a BA in psychology and began work at South Oaks Psychiatric Hospital as I began graduate school in psychology at the New School for Social Research in New York City. Being uninspired by traditional psychiatric care, I was drawn to what was then a new psychiatric unit at Long Island Jewish Hospital Center which was innovative in the treatment of psychiatric disorders, and had more of an intimate and therapeutic bent. The white coat and locked doors were gone, and we specialized in short term intensive therapy, both group and individual, to support the patients in their efforts to heal. It was while working here that I read the book "In and Out of the Garbage Pail" by Fritz Perls, the originator of Gestalt therapy. He was doing a training program at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur California, and the Hospital agreed to help pay the tab, and I was on my way.

Fritz passed away, so I trained with Frank Rubenfeld and spent the summer not only learning Gestalt therapy, but being 'rolfed', learning about the Alexander technique, meeting such luminaries as Alan Watts, Joseph Campbell, Al Huang and countless other innovators the the field of humanistic psychology and spirituality.

I stayed on and did some training with Ida Rolf, who was there teaching that summer, but my perspective on healing had been radically changed. When I was being rolfed and encouraged to allow sounds to emerge as the bodyworker manually went deep into my muscles to release blockages (what the rolfers call fascial adhesions) feelings and old memories surfaced. My shoulder, when released, revealed the trauma of an old bicycle injury when I was seven years old; the back of my thigh released anger (which I apparently had been sitting on), and my jaw held on to sadness and grief. Seeing the connection of the emotions and the physical body was very exciting and was the motivation to stay on to learn to be a rolfer.

Back in New York, I began massage school, quit my job at the Hospital and started a private psychotherapy practice while still attending graduate school. The massage license was a prerequisite in order to practice rolfing; but while at the Swedish Institute, I worked with Ilana Rubenfelf, who had created a practice integrating the Alexander Technique and Gestalt therapy; I assisted her in some of her groups and began training at the American Center for the Alexander Technique in New York. Ilana's work grew into what is widely known today as the Rubenfeld Synery Method.

Obviously my psychotherapeutic practice began to change as I encorporated more and more of the bodywork techniques I had learned into my practice. Now rather than the bodywork being adjunctive to the psychotherapy, the psychotherapy was becoming adjunctive to the bodywork. The work kept pulling me deeper into the realms of healing, and beyond the psyche (emotions) and the soma (physical symptoms) there existed a unifying metaphor which brought it all together for me; energy.

Having completed my Masters degree and enrolled in the Ph.D program at the New School, my obsession with studying the roots of healing was driving me on. During this period I went into bio-energetic therapy with John Pierakos and began training in this therapy with its founders, Al Lowen and John Pierakos; Bio energetic therapy was based on the work of Wilhelm Reich, a student and colleague of Sigmond Freud (as was Fritz Perls), but acknowledged the importance of the body in the psychoanalytic practice. Bio -energetics felt that by freeing the body of its emotional holdings, one could free the life force energy which was being trapped by the emotional holdings due to traumas of the past. Creating techniques (often painful) which forced energy and breath through these areas emotions would surface which could then be addressed and worked with. I never finished this training (doing it simultaneously with the Alexander work), but all of these exposures and trainings were adding to my skills as a therapist.

All of this has evolved my work to where it is today, as an acupuncturist, and herbalist and a teacher of nutrition.

After several years of private practice in New York City as a psychotherapist/bodyworker, I decided to use part of a small inheritance which my father had left to me, in order to travel around the world and study various indiginous healing traditions. I was particularly interested in the age-old concept of energy healing, for every major world culture ( except ours) practices a variation of the ancient art of laying on of hands, using invisible sources of spiritual energy to guide and invigorate the healing process. In my own practice I had witnessed the astonishing effects of the mind and spirit on the body's ability to fight illness and disease, but because the Western medical world remained stubbornly skeptical about healing methods that involved the spirit, I knew I had to look elsewhere for answers to my questions.

In Japan, I continued my studies of Aikido, the art of using your opponent's energy (ki) to defeat him. Like the Chinese martial art Tai Chi, Aikido taps into the quintessentially "female" power of receptivity and yeilding. The Aikido master feels the negative energy approaching him, and moves out of its way before it can harm him, and then uses his inner strength to turn the energy back against his attacker, rendering him powerless. Aikido and Tai Chi seek to emulate the power of water, which is fluid and yielding but over time is capable of wearing down even the highest mountains. The ancient Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu described the nature of water's soft power in his beautiful collection of poems titled 'Tao te Ching':

In the Philippines, I studied psychic surgery, a bizarre healing art that finds its roots in the unlikely mixture of fervent Catholicism and tribal superstition. I watched psychic surgeons reach into patients' bodies, using their hands as instruments to remove blood clots and tumors. Although no anesthetic was used, the patients appeared to feel no pain whatsoever and, after the procedure, would pronounce themselves cured, walking home in their blood stained clothing with rapturous looks on their faces. While psychic surgury is unmistakably aggressive and invasive, the healers believe that they are merely the receptacles for the healing powers of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and the ancient tribal spirits. Their faith guides them into the spirit world, where they claim to tap into a powerful healing energy capable of restoring health and vitality to the sick and wounded.

After six months in the Philippines, I traveled to Hong Kong, where I apprenticed with a Chinese acupuncturist and herbalist and witnessed firsthand the dramatic effects of these ancient healing arts on disorders ranging from ovarian cysts to arthritis to migraines. The Chinese believe that the human body is covered with a matrix of energy channels flowing along specific meridians; by intervening in the energy system through the use of acupuncture needles, massage, herbs, and various lifestyle changes, imbalances in the chi (energy) are corrected, and health is restored.

My final stop was India, where I lived in a spiritual community known as an ashram, and studied Ayurveda, the ancient art of Indian medicine in which the energy of the mind and spirit is thought to balance the life force (prana), which flows through numerous invisable channels in the body. Ayurveda employs diagnostic techniques similar to those used by the Chinese, such as pulse and tongue analysis, and relies on the healing action of herbs, yoga, breathing exercises, various ritual purgings, diet, meditation, and prayer to keep the prana in balance and harmony.

In all these cultures and healing traditions, the underlying themes are the same. The body, mind and spirit are considered essential parts of the whole, and thus an imbalance in one area necessarily affects the entire system. If the disharmony is not corrected, pain and discomfort result, and if these symptoms are not adequately addressed, illness and disease may occur. Balance is created by living in harmony with nature and with other human beings, remaining flexible and adaptable, and opening the mind and the spirit to the healing energies that flow in, through, and around our being. All the healers with whom I studied and trained with approached their patients with humility, openly acknowledging that they were merely a vehicle to assist the body, mind, and spirit in the healing process and using as their primary interventions the archtypically feminine traits of tender care, gentle touch, or massage, close attention to behavior and temperament, sensitivity to the individual's emotional needs and spiritual longings, and the deep-rooted belief that health and happiness cannot be sustained without a reverence for nature and a willingness to live in harmony with nature.

When I returned to the United States in 1974, I established a private practice using a combination of psychotherapy, acupressure, massage, and the basic philosophical tenets of energy healing. As time went on, I was increasingly drawn to the philosophy and practice of Traditional Chinese Medicine, which I believed captured most eloquently and effectively the wisdom of the ancient healing arts. In 1980, I enrolled in a three year college for training in Traditional Chinese Acupuncture. After completing three years at the Tri-State Institute for Traditional Chinese Acupuncture, I taught at their clinic and began an intensive training program with master herbalist Simon Mills. After studying Western herbal medicine with Simon here, I spent three summers with him apprenticing in England. The herbs were becoming an essential part of my practice.

After getting my certification and licensure in Acupuncture and certification in herbal medicine, I did a two year program in Chinese herbal medicine with Ted Kaptchuk OMD and gradually integrated both systems into my work. Of course over many years and taking many courses in nutrition and diet I felt that I finally had a truly wholistic practice which dealt with the whole person, their physical,emotional and spiritual well being. My role as a participant in the healing process was to guide without interfering, helping my patients to become whole by locating, reclaiming, and reintegrating the lost and broken parts of the self. I even began to dislike the word 'healer', because it implied that I was responsible for restoring health when I was, in fact, only contributing to the powerful process of self-healing. However, this process of self healing can only happen effectively when an individual is nourished both physically and spiritual, hence the use of nutrition and herbs.