| David Cunningham's gift for spiritual healing has benefitted the likes of Demi Moore, Bruce Willis ... and now Jane Pikett |
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| Shown: David Cunningham |
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A teenage boy from Yarm, who we will call Simon, recently enjoyed a Bonfire Night party. As his father watched him laughing and enjoying the night with his friends, he sent up a silent prayer of thanks to David Cunningham, the man he credits with bringing his son back to health from the depths of anorexia - a condition which saw the boy shrink to five and a half stone. "Circumstance forces you into situations not considered before," Simon's father says. "All I know is that the day David walked into our lives our family crisis became more controlled. A lovely man, a man who genuinely cares, I call him the human mechanic. He looks at the engine and re-tunes it. I looked at my son on Bonfire Night, running around and laughing and had a thoughtful moment; 'good old David'." 'Good old David' is a spiritual healer who has helped many, many people over the last decade or so - people including Hollywood film stars Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, who he treated when he lived in the US until recently, people like the actress Hayley Mills, who was a patient when he was at London's celebrated Hale Clinic; the centre for complementary health attended by Princess Diana. Susan, another patient here in David's native North East, where he has returned after almost four decades abroad, says her severe asthma simply disappeared after one treatment. "I was taking my inhaler on a daily basis and during the night," she says, "yet since our meeting I have rarely had to take it. Not only that, but David helped me with my thoughts, which were deep rooted, and helped me to understand that not everything that had gone wrong was my fault." Inspirational stories of the power of spiritual healing or airy fairy poppycock? You will have your own opinion, but my experience of David's healing power and the experiences movingly outlined in the many testimonials published on his website, are certainly persuasive. David, who was born with his healing powers but was not driven to use them to the full until he survived three months as one of Saddam Hussein's human shields in the 1990 Iraq/Kuwait conflict, promises nothing, but delivers much. "I would never promise to be able to cure anyone of anything," he says. "I would never tell anyone I could cure them. But I have treated people who had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, who then survived. I have also had some patients who died but for whom spiritual healing soothed them as they faced death." David would never ask anyone to give up conventional medicine in favour of his treatment. All he promises is that he is able - not by training, but by a God-given ability - to transmit healing energy through his hands. "I can feel the energy when I put my hands on a person," he says. "I don't try to explain it. It has its own intelligence and it knows what it is do it is not religions, but it requires of me a total trust and faith in god and I use it to treat the mind, the body, and the soul. It is difficult to take on isn't it? So I asked David to treat me and - wait for it – my dog Yes he can work with animals too. I have been suffering for some months now with pain in my right hand, wrist and forearm; it is typical of someone who spends her entire working life either typing, with her hand on a computer mouse, or taking shorthand. After three sessions with David, I have no pain. My dog, ten year old Scout, has suffered all her life with chronic ear infections. She is on steroids permanently yet remains in constant discomfort, shaking her head, holding it to one side and scratching at her ears until they bleed. The only cure is to remove the ear canal, leaving her deaf. After three sessions with David, she is much, much, improved and off steroids. My friends and colleagues think I've gone new agey and a bit mad’ but they are swayed by my experience. Several of them have now been treated by David with startling results. To treat you David simply applies his hand to the affected area. There is no pressure, but you can feel a pulsing. During my first half hour treatment the pain in my arm became intense, shooting up and down my arm as if, in some way, it was trying to get out. In the two sessions since, the pain has not been so intense, but it has certainly moved around, as if it is being released, which it now has been. Right, let's assume I've simply convinced myself it works because I want it to. What of the dog? Well, Scout will plonk her head on anyone's lap and allow her ears to be caressed for hours on end. Yet, during her first two treatments, she became extremely agitated. It appeared as if, like me, her pain was coming to the surface. It took a good half hour of David's work in both instances before she suddenly flopped to the floor, totally relaxed, and lay quietly as he worked further. She showed great improvement after those initial sessions and on the third, her agitation was far less. Her reaction to the sessions as they took place was obvious, her improvement since tangible. So, how do you persuade a dog to do that? David has an air of great kindness and a spiritual aura you can almost touch. He believes that physical illness comes from within. "When you are not at peace and do not have harmony inside," he says, "this can filter through from the soul to affect the physical body." He is enormously intuitive, able to detect what people need. When we first met, he unlocked my 'chakras' - the eight fields of light connecting mind, body and soul through which our life force energy flows, grounding us in life. If this life force energy becomes blocked and cannot flow throughout the chakra points or if it begins to flow in an anticlockwise manner, an imbalance can result and the person can become ill. Mine which were all blocked, David said, were unlocked simply by him putting his hands on my shoulders, head and feet, and by hovering his hands over my body. Afterwards, quite involuntarily I burst into tears. I was mortified. Here I was, come to Interview the man and I end up crying. Yet he says this is a normal and natural response because the opening of those blocked chakras is a release. David was first told in the late 60s that his destiny lay in healing. He had left his home on Tyneside to study at the College of Psychic Science in London, which was founded by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. There, his teacher, the renowned Don Galloway, told him he would heal others. Nothing happened for a while, but a couple of years later he went to visit a friend and found her in bed suffering from severe stomach pains. "As I sat by her bed waiting for the doctor to come, a voice above me told me to lay my hands on the pain area," David says. "I knew it sounded stupid, but she agreed and within a short time the pain had gone. I was in shock. It was completely intuitive." For the next 20 years, until 1990, David worked his way round the world, managing five star hotels and restaurants and using his gift little. He was also aware he possessed some psychic powers (his paternal grandmother was psychic) and always felt during those years that his path was set for him. He worked in some amazing places, rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous, but says it all just happened to him, as if his path were set. But a change came after his experiences in 1990. Held as a human shield by Saddam, he found companionship both with his fellow hostages and their guards. “The experience gave me the opportunity to show unconditional love and respect for my fellow man, including the Iraqi soldiers," he says. "They would confide In me and using love rather than hatred brought friendship to a delicate situation. During those weeks I made a pact with God that when I got home I would start using my healing gift. I asked in prayer one day when I might get home to do that and was told, 'after October 18'. I went home on the 20th." Since then, a sense of destiny has continued to forge David's path through life. An example: in India in 2000, he met a lady at a workshop with the guru Deepak Chopra. The lady, it turns out, lived in the former home of an old friend of David's, the Hollywood artistic director Peter Howard, in a tiny village in Malta. They kept in touch, then in January this year (2003) this lady was diagnosed with breast cancer. David went to Malta and worked with her most days, showing her how to see her surgery and chemotherapy as a positive force. By July, the cancer was gone. "I knew then," he says, "that was why we had met in India." While he was in Malta, he also bumped into his old friend Peter by chance, after some 30 years. He also held a workshop which no less than 120 people attended, which is incredible for such a staunchly Roman Catholic community. All this, David says, is about synchronicity, life leading you on the right path, because it helped his resolve to practise in the North East where, he says, people are far more open to alternative and complementary therapies than you might suppose. "The UK is far ahead of so many countries in its acceptance of this type of work," he says. "I feel honoured, humbled and privileged to do it. It's a great joy to me" |
| Source: The Sunday People ('Stepping Stones' Section - May 1998) |
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