c. 2004 Religion News Service

PITTSBURGH _ Meeting with Brazilian healer Edemir Rossi is like entering an inner sanctum, peaceful and calm. New Age music plays softly in the background as he extends a warm hand.

He speaks gently with each client before guiding him or her into meditation. Then he directs the person to lay fully clothed on a massage table.

Placing his hands at different points along the body, he prepares the person to reconnect with God.

“God is always here, but the person has his eyes closed and is disconnected with the energy of God,” Rossi says. “If the sun is there, you close your eyes and can’t see it, but the sun is still there.”

“He’s healer, counselor and mentor all wrapped up into one,” said Gina Hillier, Pittsburgh-based author of “The Highest and the Best,” a resource book that explains concepts of alternative medicine and metaphysical philosophy.

“People crave this kind of nonjudgmental attention in their lives. No matter what’s happening, when someone comes to his door and he greets them, time stands still for a minute, and he is fully wrapped in that person, making them feel special, wanted and accepted.”

For 15 years Hillier has been reading, researching and writing about intuitive healers and alternative medicine.

“I’ve met with and experienced the work of a number of different healers,” said Hillier. She considers Rossi to be “the best of the best” of the healers who have emerged amid a national trend to seek a more holistic, spiritual form of health care.

“His love is so pure, and his intention to help is so strong,” she says.

A native of Curitiba, Brazil, Rossi first came to the United States in 1994, when he attended a seminar in New York given by nationally known healer Barbara Brennan. Rossi sat next to Kathleen Pasley, a marketing professional.

“In talking to him during those four days, I could tell that he was every bit as good as the teacher,” recalled Pasley, who took healing sessions with Rossi for the next three months. The sessions affected Pasley in a way that caused her to quit her corporate job and move to Washington, D.C., to work in the nonprofit sector, “applying my marketing skills to something that connected my head and heart better.” The move also caused her to lose touch with the healer.

Then Sept. 11 put Pasley into such an agitated state she felt it was time to reconnect with Rossi, so she tracked him down in Brazil. “I asked him to come for a visit to work with me and some of my friends, all of whom were feeling very anxious and traumatized,” she says.

Since then, Rossi has been making regular visits to the United States, including Pittsburgh. He has garnered the reputation of being an extraordinary healer.

“(Society) is awakening to more open thoughts and searching for new sources of therapy and technology,” Rossi said, pointing out that spiritual methods of healing have become more well-known and acceptable, even in some major universities. “Today there’s acupuncture and Chinese medicine, shamanism and old traditional therapies being used. Now what we want is to help heal people, to heal their universe.”

When performing his healings, Rossi says he considers a person’s entire being _ the aura, or energy field around the body; the chakras points on the body, of which there are seven, aligning with the spine; and past and future lives.

“There is a field of energy around people,” he explains in accented English. “The angels are very connected with us, and God is always present.”

A life-long desire to help people and connect them to God has sent Rossi, 52, on an quest for knowledge about the workings of the universe. A mechanical engineer by trade, Rossi says he has studied wide-ranging disciplines from Zen Buddhism to core energetics, psychotherapy, hands-on spiritual healing, neurolinguistic programming, past-life regression and metaphysics in Brazil, Japan, Russia, Sweden and the United States.

As an acupuncturist, Daniel Ebaugh of Silver Spring, Md., began seeing the healer several months ago, after hearing about Rossi’s work from one of his clients.

“Edemir basically resolved a whole historical piece for this woman, and I also saw the dramatic effect of his work on her acupuncture pulse, which inspired me to take my first appointment with him,” said Ebaugh.

“I feel like my (experiences) with Edemir have really melted away the remaining core issues that keep me from being able to open my heart to people close to me, issues that keep me from manifesting myself fully and completely in the world,” said Ebaugh.

“My first impression of him was of a very pure man of tremendous heart who’s obviously done his own personal work so that he can be a very clear channel. I’ve worked with psychic healers before, and not all of them have this same pure quality about them. His work is not contaminated by his own personality, and when I’m in his presence I have my own experience of purity, of being open to the pure love in my heart. He’s absolutely changed my life.”

Said Hillier: “You feel released from a burden you may not have even been aware of. You leave the session very calm, yet energized.”

DEA/PH END COHEN