The Beginnings

The Healing and Peace Group

A Personal Story

Diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 1978 and given a year to live, I was totally dependent on others for everything. Depressed, confined to a chair and without any energy, I was more than ready to give up the ghost.

As I write, more than thirty years later, it’s hard to recognise this person as me.

Living in Manchester, I was very lucky to have a wonderful consultant, famous in the field of neurology, compassionate and supportive – but unable to alleviate my symptoms since I was allergic to most of the medication then available.

My mother, a committed Christian, had always “received messages”, but my father, a sceptical intellectual and always a doubter, was very wary of anything he regarded as the mystic con. So when my mum picked up a national Sunday paper with an article about the miracles being worked by John Cain in Birkenhead his scepticism only minimally outweighed my own. But my mother, bless her, was sure that this was the answer, and so when after much debate I agreed to go see this man, I said to my dad (who was needed to move me) “I know it won’t work and you know it won’t work, but mum believes and it might just help her cope. It’s donation only so let’s go see – just please don’t stand up and shout!”

A retired blacksmith, the late John Cain was an extraordinary man and an exceptional Healer. 350 people, some extremely ill, were gathered in Bromborough Civic Centre that Wednesday evening, but far from being glum and serious the room was full of life and laughter. When John emerged it was his ordinariness that struck me most.

When it was my turn, one of his Helpers laid hands on me and I knew for absolute certain that something was happening, something remarkable,

By the end of the evening I knew I would get better – maybe not cured - but better, and that I wanted to be able to do this for others. “Hope had conquered grim despair” as my father later wrote, and I felt so different that people told me I was barely recognisable; after months of virtual silence you couldn’t shut me up!

It took about six months before I was standing up, and almost a year before John decided I could lay hands myself – under his supervision of course.

I use my personal story in grateful humility because it showed me that miracles can happen – with no faith needed.

The Healing and Peace Group was formed in 1983 from this background by eight friends in Manchester and my parents, all trained by John. Realising how lucky we were, and wanting to make Healing available to everyone in Manchester, we opened a public Healing Hall in 1985 under the auspices of The John Cain Healing Centre.

When I moved here in 1990 I was not expecting to open another. However, with the support of the late and lovely Henry Keyte (originator of Shaman Magazine and Network News), Margaret Shakespeare and I focussed the Pyramid Complementary Medicine tent at the Gwynedd GreenFayre. We were given a Green Initiative Award - a small grant which allowed us to set up the first Healing Well in Penygroes, opened by Dafydd Wigley, our then M.P. in 1993.

Healing Wells in Pentrefelin and Dolgellau have followed and we just opened our first afternoon venue at the Age Concern building in Caernarfon. (for details please see HPG ad elsewhere in this issue.)

Obviously none of this could have happened without training volunteers. Many ordinary people of good intent who wanted to help others, not as a career but in service to the community – and to the Source.

All HPG halls are open to everyone, financed entirely by donation and are served by volunteer healers trained to professional standards.

While Healing is not an academic subject, Healers are necessarily governed by ethics and regulations, as well as the Law of the Land.

Many questions arise; “How does it work?” “What is Absent Healing?” “What about Karma, the Chakra system, Guidance, Group Consciousness?” “How do I keep my own energy system safe and balanced?”

Teaching Circle - the Group training course – evolved in response to this need, and has been recognised by The British Alliance of Healing Associations (BAHA) as one of the best they’ve seen.

We support individuals in developing their own capacities to channel Healing Energy from the Source in accordance with need. The safety of both patient and Healer is our first priority.

Costs are kept as low as possible and printed notes are provided for each module.

A safe space is provided where trainee healers can practise before treating at any Healing Well.

We welcome, and have special provisions in place for Healers who have trained elsewhere and wish to join us in service.

Healers cannot promise any results, but 80% of patients report some betterment.

Valerie Wooding, Chairman HPG

This article was written for Network News. www.network-news.org

The Healing and Peace Group are members of BAHA, ECHO and UK Healers: Applying For A Miracle

The Healing and Peace Group has always been committed to making what it has learned about Healing, Holistic Wellbeing and Peace accessible to all.

For this reason we have chosen to publish, unchanged, large parts of ‘Applying for a Miracle’, our BAHA (British Alliance of Healing Associations) approved training course for Healers on this website.

Where We Come From

The Group formed in 1983 from a collection of people who had been "Conditioned to Treat" by John Cain Snr. Initially the eight founder members had been drawn to John out of their own need for treatment. We had all resonated strongly with the Healing work, and had become Helpers at John Cain’s Public Halls in Bromborough, Poynton, Blackrod, and occasionally at the Sanctuary in North Rd., Birkenhead.

By spring 1983, John was already referring to us as "The Manchester Group", and so we became The John Cain Healing Centre - Manchester Healing and Peace Group, working with a Social Services MS Group and individual patients as part of the JCHC Registered Charity.

The Group was made up of young writers, musicians, and theatre people; we had substantially different belief systems and consequent understanding of how the Healing works. The only thing we agreed on was that it had been a great help to each of us – and that Manchester needed a public access point. We invited John to Focus the first public Healing Meeting in Manchester, which we organised and hosted on October the 30th. 1983, at the University Theatre, where Clive Hopwood, one of the MHPG Members, was Stage Manager. We called the one-day event “A Festival of Healing and Peace”.

We adopted the blue and white Dove-Hands Symbol, and Peace, Hexagram 11 of The I Ching as our hallmarks, and invited many of the Manchester groups involved in promoting Peace, ecology and spiritual growth to join with us, taking a table in the foyer for the day. We had already “seen” “The Incandescent Web” and understood that part of our “job” was to support Networking, and encourage unity, peace, balance and harmony among all the individuals who each in their own way served the Greater Whole.

The exercise of organisation needed for eight people to produce a whole day event – with publicity, food, and a thirty page printed booklet, bonded our organically formed unit together, and we recognised that the Healing Energy could and would use all our individual gifts (music, art, writing, publishing, cooking etc.), as well as our Channelling ability.

It was then, and still is, our intention to serve the Healing in whatever way seems appropriate or necessary - from fund raising or publicity to performance, though the latter did not ripen until the benefit gig in May 1986.

It took a substantial period of our own development as Healers before we were ready to open our own Public Hall in Manchester. This is reflected in the structure of the Healing & Peace Group, with particular reference to Core Group Membership (after two years) and the Nucleus, along with the development of any new Branch.

Up until this point the Group had operated a structure that was completely organic, which is to say that procedures were not written down or rigidly adhered to, but appropriate to the moment. We operated by the principle of Tripartite Guidance. John had simply said “It’s all in the Grey Book”, and answered our questions, guiding us to Naomi Long (N.F.S.H.) for further "academic" information. She passed over in October 1985, a month after John, whose death on September 25th had greatly saddened patients and Healers alike.

The JOHN CAIN HEALING GUIDE: Valerie Wooding, Published in December 198O by Van Duren Contract Publications Ltd. ISBN: O-9O5715-19-5

We had already planned and booked a hall, which John was to occasionally visit, but he died before the idea could be made manifest. We had planned an "All Persons Present" meeting on that Saturday afternoon of Sept 25th to discuss the details of the forthcoming Hall opening night and the Benefit Gig

Having received the shocking telephone call there was, as you can imagine, a great deal of grief when we (the now 11 Members) met together.

Together with my parents (themselves JCHC Healers who had made the Group possible by taking us to Halls) we discussed the situation that our very great loss had left us in. Having sat for Guidance, we decided that John would not want the Work to stop, and wrote down the "We Believes" as fundamental, agreed principles we had learned through our relationship with this exceptional man.

Having received specific Guidance to continue the work through our own Public Hall, we asked the Source for help and went it alone, whilst retaining our partnership with, and service of the JCHC North Road Sanctuary which was to continue with John’s son as Focus.

So, in November 1985, we began in Withington Town Hall, one evening per week, advertised by word of mouth only - this being the most we felt we could manage with the handpower available.

One of the first results of the Public Hall was that we attracted a significant number of people who wanted to become Healers.

We could not take the responsibility for training people as John had, where he took total responsibility; gave no information but conditioned his Helpers through his own Connection and supervision.

There were too many potential Group Members to deal with on a one-to-one basis, so, after seeking Guidance, we began the first Teaching Circle, which I focussed, in January 1986.

The Teaching Circle Notes we now use are merely an expansion of that first course. Although I “brought them through” and wrote them down, they were approved and authorised by all the Original MHPG Members before going into what could roughly be called “print”.

“Applying for a Miracle” evolved out of “The We Believes” in three major stages:

Jan 86-mid 87, in Manchester. First printing courtesy of two computer designers.

Very welcome, but very basic and un-proofed.

1992/3/4 in Gwynedd, thanks to my acquiring a second-hand Amstrad, and to the many hours put in by Margaret Shakespeare, as editor, proof-reader and illustrator.

1999-2002, Thanks to my mother for providing me with a PC, once I had learned to use it, the first master copy is prepared for publication, although as with other aspects of the HPG it has continued to evolve in accordance with need.

Many individuals have helped in the evolutionary process that has resulted in these notes. I would like to express my thanks to all of them, particularly to Bryn Price Jones, who from 1998 has taken responsibility for all technical support.

As the Group grew in numbers through Teaching Circles, our organic method of organisation became impractical, since some new Members found it difficult to operate within a system so seemingly nebulous. A system of Working Regulations was adopted by agreement to provide the framework and discipline necessary to keep the Healing & Peace Group clean and our patients safe.

The present Structure of the Group, with its formal Constitution, (first drafted here in 1992) has evolved from its original form through a combination of Guidance and practical necessity, still attempting to make the best use of all available talents and abilities in order to make Healing accessible to the greatest possible number, regardless of belief or social circumstance.

The Tapes

Most of the tapes we use in Teaching Circles pre-date John's death. Copyright of most of this material remains with the Broadcasting authorities who produced them, we simply borrow them for use within the context of Teaching Circle.

On this understanding, we will, where possible, provide Probationary members with a copy of the edited radio tape to listen to at their own convenience, bearing in mind that the quality of the recording is not wonderful.

The tape includes:

The tapes speak for themselves. We have chosen not to provide the typed transcripts because we feel the energy transference is different when aurally received as recorded in the moment.

Relax and listen to them not with your objective mind but with your receptive self - it is part of opening your Connection to the Group, its history, and its energetic roots.

(The Val Jones referred to on tape and video is Valerie Price Jones.)

We understand that the people attending Teaching Circle now will probably never have met John Cain, but feel it important to allow him to represent himself in the only ways now physically possible.

Without John's work there would never have been a Healing and Peace Group - in Manchester, Gwynedd or elsewhere, and it will be some time, I guess, before we achieve results comparable to his.

We have been told that we are not to expect the development of individual Healers of John's calibre (the time of the individual is, they say, esoterically past), but that the Group as a whole has inherited the same potential capabilities.

"The ancestors were invited to these divine services as guests of the Ruler of Heaven and so representatives of humanity in the higher regions. This uniting of the human past with the divinity established the bond between God and Man. The Ruler who revered the Divinity in revering his ancestors became thereby the Son of Heaven, in whom the Heavenly and Earthly world met in mystical contact".

[Hex. 16, I CHING. Richard Wilhelm Translation]

Notes On Tapes For Teaching Circle - "Where We Come From".

The aural material has been edited to include everything relevant to Teaching Circle.

I would like to point out that, as well as donations, John received many personal gifts from patients - including all the things which 'decorate' his Sanctuary and waiting rooms. The portrait was given, unsolicited, by a recovered 'terminal' patient, who painted it whilst recuperating. John accepted the gifts because of the love and gratitude which they carried - although his originally very simple space quickly became visually rather busy, as you can see in the video!

John worked for donation only, contributions mostly small but sometimes exceptional - £5O,OOO on one occasion from a visiting oil mogul who was successfully treated whilst awaiting a life or death operation in London. His cars were provided by a local garage owner whose daughter had been helped.

On more than one occasion, however, I have seen John giving elderly patients who had travelled to an evening session the money to return home by taxi.

When John makes reference to having been tested by some of the world's best doctors and scientists, he is referring to his visit to Japan. I have some of the documentation, which he brought back. However, after John's death, his wife Audrey locked away all the material relating to his career and we assume this included a complete copy of the BBC Scotland video, which I saw when it came out.

Unfortunately, Audrey herself passed away in the early nineties, and John Cain Jnr, who had inherited The John Cain Healing Centre at the age of twenty-seven, closed up and went on to lead a different life. This we were told by John Cain Senior’s niece, who “coincidentally” attended a round of HPG Teaching Circle in 1994, travelling from Flint to Penygroes in order to do so.

The Healing and Peace Group was birthed in 1983, in Manchester, out of The John Cain Healing Centre, Birkenhead. We still respectfully acknowledge the work of John Cain Senior and Naomi Long NFSH without which our work would not have been possible.

All Group Members gift the Group with a strand of the tapestry, a facet of the crystal. We retain our individuality whilst meeting together in Service, mutual trust and respect.

The Healing and Peace Group is on a path of Evolution in Service where the now moment is an organic part of a timeline, a Group life which was birthed in Manchester and “married” and “reproduced” in North Wales.

The Healing and Peace Group is always guided by the same influence, embodied in the Dove-Hands symbol.

Chronology:

1978     Valerie Wooding goes as a patient to The John Cain Healing Centre.

1983     The Healing and Peace Group is formed in Manchester.
            October the 30th: we host a Festival of Healing and Peace in The University Theatre,                               Manchester. Focussed by John Cain. First use of the Dove-Hands Symbol.

1985     John Cain passes over on September 25th
            October: Naomi Long passes over.
        November: The Manchester Healing and Peace Group opens its first Public Hall, as planned and booked with John.

1986    The Manchester Healing and Peace Group holds its first Teaching Circle.
               Sunday 7th September, The Manchester HPG opens at Ladybarn Community Centre.

(Interview on TC tape).

1991 Valerie Wooding moves to Talysarn.

1992 Valerie and Margaret Shakespeare Focus the Greenfayre Complementary Medicine Tent.
Dafydd Wigley MP and Mrs Hilda Davison focus the Timeshift on July the twenty fourth.

In October, the first Teaching Circle is held in Gwynedd. Sixteen people attend, and become The Healing and Peace Group, Gwynedd.

1993 May 15th: Dafydd Wigley MP officially opens The Well in Penygroes.

1995 September: the first Teaching Circle in Porthmadog.

1997 June 14th: Eleanor Wigley (Bennett) opens the Healing Well at Pentrefelin.

1998 March and June: HPG and The Well Projects adopt The Healing Well Contract.

August: The Healing and Peace Group gains Insurance.

1999 January 28th: the first Teaching Circle at Dolgellau.

2000 October: The Healing & Peace Group (Cadair Idris) was Constituted.

October 19th: The first Healing Well at Dolgellau

2001 April 7th: AGM: Integration & Evolution, a new Constitution.

2005: HPG becomes a member of BAHA - the British Alliance of Healing Associations.

2007 March 7th: The Well Projects Ltd. changes name to The Healing and Peace Group Ltd. with
rainbow dove-hands as symbol.

2010: “Chair Healing” for Healers with limited mobility leads to opening of our first afternoon venue
at Age Concern building in Caernarfon.

2011: June: Healing and Peace Website goes live.

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Anyone can channel Healing Energy

Anywhere Anytime

We believe that Healing is a natural capacity for everyone and is not reserved for the special few.

We believe that Healing can help any individual on all levels, physical, mental, emotional or spiritual.

We believe that Healing should be accessible to all, regardless of belief system or social circumstances.

We believe that miracles are possible.

The Healing and Peace Group has always been committed to making what it has learned about Healing, Holistic Wellbeing and Peace accessible to all.

John Cain (1931-1985)

The John Cain Healing Centre, 20 North Road, Birkenhead, Merseyside

Play Tape Now

BBC Scotland Video 1979

Radio Merseyside 1985

MHPG interview with JOHN CAIN 1983.

Play Tape Now