Say The Journey and many thousands of people around the world will immediately visualise healer Brandon Bays. Here, she speaks with Nicola Silva about her latest release, Freedom Is.

Australia is undeniably one of the most free countries in the world. We can worship at any church or temple, or not; we can vote for any
political party; we can go about our daily lives without fear of war or bombs. Forget the prophets of doom - the reality is we live in a
land of peace. And yet, most of us know what it is to be imprisoned by ill health, negative emotions or life circumstances.

The poet Hartley Coleridge wrote, "But what is Freedom? Rightly understood/ A universal licence to be good".

In her latest book, inspirational spiritual teacher Brandon Bays proposes that freedom really is a universal licence to feel good.
"Each moment you have an invitation from life to stop - just stop, breathe and open.

Everything will slow down and you can allow what's here to be here. In the beginning you choose freedom, and it's a conscious choice. After a while freedom falls in love with you, it chooses you," Brandon says in her soft, measured voice.

Brandon is in the UK where her day is just beginning, the same day that is ending for me in Sydney. Yet it's as if intercontinental distance is nothing as she conveys her ideas, truth and inner peace graciously and effortlessly. She has the rare gift of focusing her entire attention on whomever is before her in the moment, even this humble interviewer half a world away, and making them feel valued.

Brandon is most famous for her first book, The Journey. An international bestseller, it tells the miraculous story of how Brandon cured herself of a football-sized tumour, without surgery or conventional medicine, in six and a half weeks. Since then, she has developed a healing process called "Journeywork" which has helped tens of thousands to recover from cancer, arthritis, asthma, allergies, acne, Crohn's disease and more. It has also been successful in healing from grief, loss, trauma, depression, anxiety and addiction."

I always say that what this work really does is take the lampshade off the light," Brandon explains. "You already are this pure joy, light and freedom. All the Journey does is steal away the veils and obscuration. It takes the lampshade off so that the natural potential of love and joy can shine through."

Her latest book, and one that's certain to follow the same bestseller path, Freedom Is, presents practical ways of living and healing with guided meditations for opening into awareness and gratitude for what each moment brings."The book teaches us in a very real way to notice how we effort, how we struggle, how we uselessly strive. It teaches us how our unforgiveness holds us back, how our lack of honouring of life keeps us from experiencing the gifts of life," she says. "When we have a heart that's full of resentment instead of gratitude, we get a cup that's half full. The book is very simple but has very deep process work you could do to meet the normal issues all of us face."

This is not an airy-fairy notion because Brandon is abundantly aware of the challenges life brings. She has experienced, in addition to her life-threatening illness, the loss of her home in a bushfire and the ending of a cherished 20 year marriage. Most recently, she broke her ankle in Africa. Her foot is in a cast as we speak, and healing naturally, Brandon assures me. She tells me the story of this injury to illustrate how we can stay in present-moment awareness even during a crisis. She was at a Journey accreditation program in Africa, attended by people from all walks of life including doctors, teachers, alternative practitioners, lawyers and bankers. It was night time and Brandon was moving around greeting people."I was swimming in a bath of joy and peace," she recalls. A friend called out to her from a distance and Brandon stepped out to meet her and "stepped into air". She landed heavily and, hearing a crack, knew instantly that her ankle had been broken."There's a situation that you'd imagine would be stressful," she says, laughing, if rather ruefully. "But I've spent my life being very present. So when I hit (the ground) I was fully aware that this had happened. I don't say it wasn't painful, but I didn't shut it down.

I didn't start making up a story about what had happened, I just allowed and quietly called for a doctor."The doctor confirmed that, yes, indeed, her ankle was broken, but Brandon nevertheless wanted to carry on with the program."I was in pain but not so much pain that I couldn't get to satsang. I said I would like to begin the seminar session. It would give me the chance to pray, to meditate, and to open together." She was carried into the seminar where she told everyone what had happened and invited healing from the audience.

"While we were praying I could feel the bone realign itself; it twitched inside my leg." Later on at the hospital the doctor commented that although the foot was fractured, it was lined up perfectly.
Remarkably, (or perhaps not considering her past self healing) she managed to carry on with her teaching schedule. When the pain became too much she would rest. "In a way it's like acknowledging the truth - okay, fear is here, pain is here, anger's here - the sheer recognition that it's a natural part of life and being present to it."

Freedom Is affirms throughout that allowing ourselves to feel our emotions naturally, as children do, is the gateway to health and healing. Many of us, though, have been taught to present a stiff upper lip and carry on as if our sadness, anger, frustration or any other emotion perceived as negative simply does not exist."Not only are we afraid of (our emotions) we fight them, don't we?" says Brandon.  "We see something horrible and don't know how to deal with it so we shut it down. We run from ourselves and usually, when strong emotions happen, we run into activity."

I agree, thinking of all the times I've begun cleaning madly in order to avoid facing some unpleasant emotion.This denial, Brandon explains, may have lasting consequences on our health and wellbeing. "Science has found that when you feel strong emotions and you repress them, it releases a quantifiable biochemistry into the bloodstream that goes to the cell receptors and blocks them. The cells literally become unable to communicate with the rest of the body. If over time the cells remain blocked, and if disease is going to happen, it usually happens to a part of the body where the cells are blocked."

Equally, scientists have observed that when emotions are felt openly our cell receptors stay open. Brandon explains it further: "If you stay still at the core of an emotion and really go into the very cell core, you will start going down through layers - deeper and deeper emotions - and ultimately you will open into vast peace beyond your wildest imagination."

While a transformative book such as Freedom Is helps you to experience this peace, deeper healing usually comes from accessing and releasing suppressed memories. The enormous international success of her own Journeywork process bears testimony to her suggestion that it "allows you to get in touch with your soul and clear the emotional blocks of your body and be healed".While individuals have benefited greatly from the process, quite phenomenal results have been achieved in the outreach work that is taking place worldwide, including a schools' program in Newcastle and another involving Aboriginal children and adults in Ceduna,South Australia.

But it's in South Africa that the Journeywork has achieved shining success.  The process has been introduced in 232 schools in the Eastern Cape - and it all began with a schoolteacher named Jaysheree Mannie. She had been diagnosed with adult acne and had tried both conventional medicine and alternative treatments without success."

It was so bad it was eating up her face. You might think it's not a big thing but to her it was a big issue. She's Hindu and in the Hindu tradition the woman is the embodiment of the goddess. She felt shewas a shame to her own family."Jaysheree read The Journey and used the process to free the exact cell memory that had contributed to her illness. She went back to the time when her father had died suddenly, leaving her in charge of a big family."She didn't have time to grieve and she did what many of us do - just shut down - and took care of her family. She had so much suppressed grief and rage. The Journey process gives you the ability to free the memory, come to understanding, come to forgiveness, and she did. Her acne cleared up."

Brandon tells me that Jaysheree began using Journeywork with her students, some of whom had attention deficit disorders, with fantastic results. She then got in touch with the organisation's Australian offices, and Brandon sponsored her through the year-long accreditation program."At the end of it I said to her, 'Jaysheree, I want you to go to Africa and give this work away.' She took me at my word."At the end of a year's work, the average pass rate of the children who were offered Journeywork every week was 91-93 per cent. The children who received it occasionally were averaging a pass rate of 76 per cent and those who and no involvement were averaging 66 per cent.

Today, the Journeywork operates under the auspices of the Kwa-Zulu Natal Education Department and is being monitored by the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal.But the best part, says Brandon, is that this work has brought healing into individual lives. When the Journey team visited one of the pilot schools, the deputy principal introduced them to some of the children. 'This boy watched his dad being shot dead in front of him,' he said, 'This girl was raped when she was nine,' 'These twins are homeless'.

Wherever she goes, whether it's Australia, Southern Ireland or Botswana, says Brandon, people turn up in their hundreds. She explains the work's apparently universal appeal as, "the world is longing to find something true and real inside."Although Brandon is awed and humbled by the worldwide appeal of her work, she attributes it all to surrendering to grace."Prayers go out daily that people find awakening, find wholeness, and find healing. If you're attached to the result, everything starts closing down. It's only the ego that's desperate to see results. But if you'resurrendered, in truth, life guides you.

At the end when results happen, you realise you didn't do anything - you showed up and you've been blessed with grace."

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