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By KIM MULFORD
Courier-Post Staff
Marilee Tolen uncapped a little bottle of frankincense oil and wafted it under her nose.
Its spicy fragrance tickled the air, mingling with the sounds of an Asian instrumental and a trickling water fountain.
Inhaled or applied to the skin, the Biblical substance has healing properties, said Tolen, a former critical care nurse. It stimulates the immune system, fights tumors and is useful as an expectorant and an anti-depressant, she said.
"It's the way God created things," said Tolen, a 45-year- old Cherry Hill resident. "He gave us what we need to heal."
For the last six years, Tolen has hosted holistic healing workshops for health-care professionals and other people interested in alternative therapy. A registered nurse board certified in holistic nursing, Tolen also has a private alternative therapy practice in Mount Laurel.
She has invited a nationally known author and speaker to lead a workshop next week about the use of essential healing oils mentioned in the Bible.
Linda Smith is author of Called into Healing: Reclaiming our Judeo-Christian Legacy of Healing Touch. She wants to teach hands-on healing practiced by the early Christians.
Smith quotes James 5:14: "Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord."
Early Christians would have used the healing oils of their day, Smith said. At least 33 are mentioned in the Bible, including cedarwood, hyssop, myrtle and rose of Sharon.
To heal does not necessarily mean to cure, both women are careful to add. It's about wholeness of body, spirit, soul and mind. It can mean releasing emotions, soothing the soul, easing pain and relieving symptoms and even reversing illness.
Such therapy should be used alongside the treatment of a regular physician, Smith said.
"Laying on of hands is the simplest healing technique in the Christian tradition," Smith said. "It's the one Jesus used the most."
Smith was director of a Georgia hospice when she took a healing touch course in 1991. It changed her life. She quit hospice nursing and went into healing work fulltime.
Since then, she has taught more than 300 workshops in the United States and Europe, opening the Healing Touch Spiritual Ministry program in 1997. Based in Denver, Colo., Smith teaches people from all denominations.
Gail Rountree, a 30-year registered nurse from Mount Laurel, has been using massage and healing touch therapy for the last five years. She is taking the workshop to learn more about biblical oils.
She is already familiar with frankincense. As a hospice nurse at Caring Hospice in Mount Laurel, Rountree used the oil one morning on a dying patient who was short of breath. He was scared and his eyes were wide open and bulging. She put the oil on her hands and waved them over his body.
He relaxed, his breathing eased and his eyes closed halfway. He died quietly a half hour later.
"It really helped to calm him," Rountree said. "It brought him to a place of peacefulness."
Rountree believes people are spiritual beings before they are physical beings.
"We can't look away from that," she said. "It's part of who we are."
Five hundred years ago, Christians forgot how to use such therapy, believing healing was something done only by Jesus and his disciples. Smith believes otherwise.
"We're going back and reclaiming what we as Christians ought to be doing as a ministry," she said.
Reach Kim Mulford at (856) 845-6521 or kmulford@ courierpostonline.com
More information
The Healing Touch Spiritual Ministry workshop, called `Sent to Heal and Anoint,' will be held Nov. 9 and 10 at Rizzieri' s Institute for Massage and Spa Therapy, 6001 Lincoln Drive, Marlton. The cost for the 12-hour class is $150.
To learn more about author and workshop leader Linda Smith, visit www.htspiritualministry.com. To learn more about Marilee Tolen, visit www.healingenergies.com.
To register for the workshop, call Marilee Tolen at (856) 727-8181.
