The winds along the Central Coast grow warm in May, and with astonishing swiftness the grassy hills become sere, brown, almost desert-like, and so they remain throughout the heat of summer and fall. To a farmer from the Midwest, it would seem the land had sickened and may be dying. Rather, life has folded in upon itself. From the tender blades of grass grow the tiny seeds, which only develop towards their fruition as the grass that gave them birth passes and falls back into the earth. After the exuberance of spring, there must be rest, a time for ripening. When the winter rains come, the energy of life is there, ready to be awakened, ready for rebirth - a regenesis.

Regenesis, as a method of healing, uses an energy first studied in starfish as they regenerated lost arms. This energy is also active during the fetal stage of human development. At the age of five or six months, it becomes dormant. The Regenesis practitioner reawakens this energy in himself and uses it to spark the same awakening in others for accelerated healing.

Karen came for her first Regenesis treatment with scoliosis, fibromyalgia, and neurofibromatosis - fibrotic tumors growing on nerves. For two months she had been largely confined to bed with pain and weakness. She had not worked for three or four months. Even so, it took courage and trust for her to come at all - she was a member of a conservative religious sect that demands total commitment from its members.

The treatment, nearly three hours of it, went well. The scoliosis, present since infancy, straightened out; recent x-rays have confirmed that it is still completely reduced. Speech, which had been difficult, returned to normal, her pain ceased and she felt energized. But the greatest healing was yet to come. She phoned the next morning to say she had watched the most incredible sunrise of her life and had seen the entire universe as circles within circles of energy. A few weeks later, this vision still with her, she saw into the patriarchal nature of her sect, and she left, never to return. Her body had healed - but more importantly, so had her mind.

When I first met Bill, he had been told he had two months to live. Colon cancer had eaten into his liver, his spleen, his kidneys, and most of his small and large intestines. He had received all the chemo- and radiotherapy he could take. He was weak, in great pain and afraid to die.

After two months of treatment, Bill, his former Hospice nurse and I had lunch together at Nepenthe Restaurant in Big Sur. Bill had just bought a bicycle and asked if we might have a chance to go horseback riding sometime soon.

But as good as he now felt, he knew that he had been only given a reprieve. The surgery to stop his cancer had left him with too little intestine to sustain him. Still, as Bill wrote shortly before he transformed, the treatments made him feel more at ease with himself and with others, with the process and that each one felt like a "waterfall shower for the soul."

Gradually he weakened; at the end of a year, he had grown to tired to go on. But this time he was ready - he was no longer frightened. He lapsed quietly into a coma from which he did not waken.

Freda, a Swiss immigrant, is an intensely private person. I knew about the fibromyalgia that made it difficult for her to walk even from one room to the next. What I did not know, and what still only a small handful of people know, is that she also had breast cancer. Two years before she had undergone surgery, chemotherapy and radiation; a few weeks before her first visit she had received the results of a blood test. Her cancer had returned and her oncologist was encouraging her to undergo more chemo. This she refused.

What astonished her about that first Regenesis session was a patch of skin on her chest. It had been numb since her surgery and yet, though I knew nothing of her cancer, sensation returned. She knew then that she wanted to continue receiving treatments.

Within a month, her blood enzyme levels returned to nearly normal and her doctor was no longer considering chemotherapy. In two months, the pain from her fibromyalgia had dramatically decreased; she had resumed her normal activities, including workouts in the gym and singing in her church choir.

Then her best friend had a biopsy for a solid breast tumor. Everyone expected it to be malignant. Freda knew what her friend would be facing and what it was like to face it alone. She wanted to help her friend - but she wanted just as badly for her disease to remain a secret. For a week she agonized, nearly sleepless, over whether she should reveal herself to her friend. Finally she phoned me and asked if, instead of our usual appointment, I would take her hiking at Pinnacles, a place about which I had only told her.

The Pinnacles are the eroded remains of an extinct volcano. It is a rugged hike, with an ascent of 3,500 feet and a mile of trail at the top that requires climbing and descending nearly vertical rock using hand and toe holds carved into spires of ancient lava. Before we were through, Freda had dug in so hard that she eventually lost the nail from the great toe on her right foot.

At the very top, we paused on a small wooden bridge suspended between spires, our feet dangling over the sides as we watched buzzards soar over ridges and steep, pine-filled canyons below. A deep silence settled over us, almost vibrating with vitality, and all at once I saw tears in Freda's eyes. She had received the answer to her dilemma - if her friend had cancer, she would tell her of herself; to do otherwise she now knew would be entirely self-centered. She had not yet spoken to me of this, but I could see the peace in her face, and as we rose to leave she said, "I knew He would be here."

Wild grasses ripen and develop only once in each generation, but we ripen and develop throughout our lives; sometimes in small ways, and sometimes in great. Sometimes we need a little help, a nudge from a friend. Because of the beings that we are, the energy is there within us all. Regenesis can often help release it. It has been my privilege, my blessing, to be a vehicle by which this energy has been quickened in others.