Their headquarters are humble. Long windows frame the corner of the building where revolutionary breakthroughs in mind/body communications are made. “Body Talk sessions between 12 and 4,” is announced in purple marker on the door. Walking in, you immediately get the feel of a grass-roots church combined with a holistic medical facility (though there is a noticeable lack of crystals, beads, or incense.) Just inside, there is a folding table littered with pamphlets and brochures full of information on the Body Talk System. The cozy cots which line the side wall are populated with reclining, docile patients. There is a practitioner at the bedside of each person. They speak softly to their dependent while holding the person’s wrist and lightly rapping their fingertips on the person’s chest or head, as though they were performing an ancient ritual. At first, this inexplicable scene is bizarrely shaman-like. However, just as prayer and meditation affect the operator, this unorthodox exercise has abundant potential.
When the articulate, fashionably bespectacled blonde begins the lecture, she introduces the system as an “astonishingly simple form of energy medicine” which helps to synchronize the body to function as nature intended. “Body Talk stimulates the body’s own innate healing abilities,” she assures her rapt audience. Her name is Elzabieta Kosmicki. She is a practitioner and, originally, a patient of Body Talk. She calls Body Talk a “consciousness-based medicine.” She stresses the futility of utilizing pills and medications, referring to the use of prescription medicine as a temporary band-aid being applied to a symptom. A symptom – or medical diagnosis, such as asthma – is merely the tip of the iceberg, according to Elzabieta. Beneath the surface, there is much more to see and to address. She then reveals Body Talk’s more thorough approach, which includes identifying the primary catalyst for the condition. The idea is essentially this: they believe that your body heals itself via self-communication. This is a scientifically sound statement. When you get a cut, your body sends signals to itself which results in the clotting and healing of the wound. Without this self-communication, your body would be incapable of healing. According to Elzabieta, things go wrong physically and emotionally due to a breakdown in communication within your body. Their method of restoring communication within your body involves touching various areas of your anatomy and attempting to link the information stored within individual body parts by tapping on your head (to cause the brain’s awareness of a communication attempt) and then tapping the chest (in order to cause the heart to retain the information which was sent.) This method is used to “ask” the body what its “priorities” are, and that is the foundation of their technique which is used for the restoration of internal communication. Confused? Yeah… me too.
But…
I am neither a scientist nor a physician. I cannot attest to the accuracy, nor to the inaccuracy, of their concepts. Just because my personal experience lacked intensity – and just because I was less than inspired by their homemade, misspelled, marker-drawn posters – I don’t hold the last word on the effectiveness of this method and I refuse to denounce it entirely. The atmosphere was that of hope and comfort. It was positive and spiritual though not overly kooky and mystical. There were no chimes and no bells, but merely a mysterious, semi-confusing dogma entrenched in energy-related symbiosis. I was intrigued by their ability to maintain a professional and medicinal feel while stimulating an emotional response from their clientele. Whatever this is, it is first and foremost a clinic of hope. There are many testimonials of miraculous inductions of monumental healings to be heard in this place. If you need hope and if you seek peace, this very well might be the place that you find it. If your symptoms are stress-related or psychosomatic, you might find yourself instantly cured for little to no cost… but if you have diabetes, my advice is to take your insulin.