An Uncommon Healing Touch

Yet after a client whom Judge had seen 16 years earlier for alcoholism returned looking for her to redo some magic that she knew she didn't have for him, she turned back to those pamphlets. Since deciding to refer that client to The Lenair Healing Center and having an opportunity to observe Rhonda Lenair's work, Judge has sent to Lenair a total of four individuals whom the social worker was ready to label “treatment failures.”

Lenair, who sees clients at her Benson, Vermont, home with a meadow view, has been doing her healing work since the mid-1980s and attracts individuals with a variety of health complaints. But as her work has evolved she has seen a growing percentage of people with substance addictions or at least problem use; the tagline for the center on its Web site (https://www.lenair.com) reads “Addiction and Medical Intuitive Services.”

Her work would appear to turn on its ear the average field professional's notion of what addiction treatment is, in that the Lenair technique does not involve medical detoxification, medication treatments to combat craving, or extensive counseling with a detailed rehash of a client's history. As a medical intuitive, Lenair uses a highly developed sense of intuition to “read” the client's true self. She says she does not “figure something out” about the client, but is simply able to speak the person's knowing self via the one-on-one encounter.

She says this type of work found her, as opposed to the reverse. During her youth she thought she would become a ballerina, but she fell ill as a teenager during a tryout with a company in England. After her recovery, a physician in a chance meeting told her she had a strong electromagnetic field, and she soon began to study energy healing and medical intuition.

Based on interviews with clients, professionals, and Lenair herself, her clients generally leave a three-day treatment schedule with no cravings for the substance that has created problems in their lives. “They usually feel very affected, or somehow different but they don't know why,” explains Barry Chalfin Lenair, Rhonda Lenair's husband and the administrator of the center's day-to-day operations. “It is a subtle change that takes place through their entire being.”

As part of Lenair's treatment, carried out in three sessions over four days, clients also receive detailed advice from her on a tailored regimen of natural products and other remedies to improve their well-being. “When we empty ourselves of that which we do not need, we're clear to achieve what we can profit by,” Lenair says.

While Lenair's work has been featured in regional newspapers, some general medical publications, and a detailed article in Elle magazine in 2001, her efforts have not captured the attention of organizations in the addiction field. This is perhaps not surprising as the field continues to align with science-based strategies confirmed through large controlled trials—something Lenair cannot generate at present. Yet Lenair certainly has encouraged more awareness among healthcare professionals. She says she treated mostly health professionals in the early years of her work, and she routinely urges clients to ask their doctor or therapist to accompany them to the center.

Judge has done this for a client, and even though she did not sit in on that client's one-on-one sessions with Lenair, she concluded from other discussions with Lenair and her client that this healer has a special way of accessing aspects of her clients' consciousness.

“All four clients whom I've sent haven't had a drink since they returned,” Judge says. “I recognize that something different from normal is happening here. This somehow is another piece of the continuum.”

Clients' unusual experience

Dan McKeon, a 47-year-old electrician, saw Lenair for an alcohol problem in 2000. He described himself at the time as the person whose impending arrival at a party would make other guests cringe. He had tried to stop drinking on his own several times, but managed only short periods of success. A counselor recommended that he attend Alcoholics Anonymous, but he believed the 12-Step approach didn't fit for him. He once was offered a chance to take the medication Antabuse, but he realized he simply would stop using the aversive medication if he decided he needed to drink.

Then a friend with a background in nutrition mentioned the Lenair center to him. “The only reason I was skeptical is I didn't know anything about it, but I was desperate,” McKeon says.

As is the case with most of Lenair's clients, McKeon has difficulty explaining what he actually experienced in the sessions with her. “She was sort of reading my energy; she said my body was coming up short of various nutrients. She described to me things to avoid in my diet,” he says.

The typical client describes a setting in which he/she lies on a couch and Lenair sits behind the client in a chair. She will touch the client's head and will talk about various health issues; the client usually says little or nothing during the session, which is not of a set length of time. Lenair begins discussing specific health concerns with no more than minimal background information about the client; Barry Chalfin Lenair explains that when the client arrives for the first treatment session, he/she completes a simple form asking basic information such as name, occupation, reason for visit, and past attempts at treatment. Much of the time, his wife doesn't even look at the information sheet, he says.

What amazes clients and professionals is Lenair's accuracy in discussing current health concerns and even predicting future issues. When Judge accompanied a client to the center and sat in on a post-session wrapup in which Barry Chalfin Lenair took notes about the session, she says she was “thunderstruck by the things [Rhonda] said about the patient.” The details were so dead-on that she could conclude: “This wasn't Madame Zorba at the county fair.”

McKeon, who says Lenair talked to him about a long-standing knee problem that she would not have been able to detect by observation, has not used alcohol since his visit in 2000. He says he didn't walk out of the center feeling six inches taller or 30 pounds lighter, but simply knows he hasn't had to look back at a much darker life before. Other clients express similarly vague but grateful sentiments.

“I think she is a special person; it's almost like she's not a person like you and me,” says Elaine Caskey, who traveled to New England from Texas to accompany her alcoholic sister to Lenair's center. Caskey says she and her daughters also were helped by Lenair. “My drinking was getting to be a problem,” she says. “From the first day with Rhonda, I felt incredible, with lots of energy. It gave me a new lease on life.”

Word traveling

The center Web site states that Rhonda Lenair has helped more than 30,000 clients with a variety of health issues since 1987. As word has gotten out about her services, the Lenairs have had to schedule some appointments on weekends and usually work long days to meet demand. The private-pay service costs about $1,800.

“The wait time for a visit varies from one to three months,” Barry Chalfin Lenair says. “But we try to intercept someone and get them in sooner if we hear the family say that they're going to have to go through the pain of detox.”

In that respect, it is likely that some addiction field experts would find this approach potentially damaging to the client. Margaret Ruksatlis, MD, an addiction specialist at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, was quoted in the Elle magazine article as saying that effective treatment should include a medically supervised detox, psychological evaluation, and long-term follow-up. Lenair clients such as 39-year-old Massachusetts resident Michelle McClennen explain that her follow-up care generally consisted of an affirming technique that Lenair tells the client to use if any urges to use return. McClennen keeps a card with information on the technique in her wallet, but says she has not had to use it in the year since her visit to the center.

Asked about whether the majority of clients who visit the center would be considered clinically substance-dependent or would not meet those criteria, Barry Chalfin Lenair says the minimal amount of background information sought from clients makes that difficult to evaluate. And this is not the type of topic in which Rhonda Lenair shows much interest, as standard discussion of diagnoses and treatment modalities doesn't seem relevant to her work.

“I don't subscribe or unsubscribe to anything,” she says. “To be completely open is to be aware.”

But Barry believes that Rhonda has seen individuals with a full range of substance-related problems, and the testimonials from clients and their families indicate the seriousness of some of the situations prior to a visit.

“My sister had gone through three treatment centers and had had two DWIs,” Caskey says. “Her marriage broke up and her two sons had to go live with their father…. My sister would have been dead by now.”

But it may be the words of other professionals that could carry the most weight in allowing addiction professionals to look at alternatives that on the surface appear unconventional at best. Tree Borden, a Massachusetts clinical social worker who has worked in addictions and trauma for more than 25 years, accompanied a family friend to the center and was struck by Lenair's energy and unusual ability to “scan” the client accurately.

“She is maximizing the intuition and empathy that allows [a professional] to get a sense of where the client is,” Borden says.

Judge says she will recommend that a client consider visiting Lenair when three conditions apply: The person is responsive or at least neutral to alternative interventions' potential; the individual in her opinion would not suffer psychological harm if the treatment did not work; and the cost does not pose a major barrier.

Judge does not consider her interest in this option for some of her clients to be an abandonment of conventional therapy or the field's ideals. “I think research and measurable outcomes have an important place in the field,” she says. But she quickly adds, “I absolutely do not believe for one second that they are the sum total of anything.”