Bruce MacManaway, Sir George Trevelyan, ?, David Spangler Photo www.sirgeorgetrevelyan.org

Bruce MacManaway was a remarkable healer and set up the Westbank Natural Health Centre in Strathmiglo in 1959. This is where Peter Caddy visited him in 1965 and Eileen came to for treatments for her back. Bruce referred to Peter at times with a sense of competitiveness, perhaps a feeling that ‘Findhorn was blowing its trumpet too much’ or that ‘Peter had an edge on him’. But it was clear that the two centres had a lot in common and at times there was quite a bit of coming and going between them. I was one of those in the early 1980s, and so were others who lived at Findhorn and came down to Strathmiglo to offer workshops. I remember in particular Harley and Cally Miller with his ‘Paint Your Dragon’ workshops, Gary Samer and Peter König teaching Touch for Health and Gaston Saint-Pierre teaching Reflexology Metamorphic technique. On one occasion, Sir George Trevelyan came for several days of healing, having crashed his car when he fell asleep whilst driving up the motorway and broke some ribs.

My own connection with Findhorn started in early Summer 1976 when Peter and Eileen Caddy were on a tour of British Sacred Sites with community members François Duquesne and Helen Rubin. I met them by chance at the Dove Centre near Glastonbury one Sunday when the centre was normally closed. Unusually for a Sunday I had come in to my stained glass studio as I had to complete a commission. I loved that studio which had a glorious view towards the Tor. I had stained glass panels hanging in the windows and designs for commissions up on the walls. Friends who were running a ‘spiritual B&B’ in Glastonbury brought Peter and Eileen out to visit the various craft studios. During that visit Peter quizzed me in great detail about stained glass work and told me about the Hall they were building at Findhorn with proposed stained glass windows around the main entrance. He got out his notebook to take my details, saying he might need to call on me to help. It actually took several years but seven years later I was involved with making the big stained glass windows in the Universal Hall. But that’s another story.

This is my story with Bruce.

I first heard about Bruce MacManaway from Theo Gimbel, a pioneer in colour healing who had set up his healing centre, Hygeia Studios, near Tetbury in Gloucestershire. I was then working as a stained glass artist with a group of craftspeople at the Dove Centre near Glastonbury. I attended Theo Gimbel’s training because I was intrigued to learn about the vibrations of colour since working with coloured glass of course was my craft. During a training I met someone who worked with Bruce and from that time on his name popped up in different places. Theo, who also had a connection with Findhorn as he had designed the lighting system of the Universal Hall, respected Bruce greatly as another pioneer in the healing field. He told an amazing story: One day he had a very painful back and thought, I have to write to Bruce to ask for some distant healing. So he sat down and did just that. He then went out into the hallway to leave the letter for the postman to pick up. On turning to go back, there was an almighty crack and his pain ceased instantly. Bruce would often say “The first step towards healing is to ask for help.”

In the work with Theo I discovered that I had ‘healing hands’ and I learned some of the basics of healing from him. I experienced that I could make a difference for both people and animals with laying on of hands.

Bruce MacManaway, Sir George Trevelyan. Photo www.sirgeorgetrevelyan.org

From 1977 I regularly visited the Findhorn Community, especially NewBold House where I was accepted as a member and planned to move up in early 1981. A few months before the move, I took part in a Wrekin Trust workshop by Bruce and Patricia MacManaway as I was ready for learning a practical method to use my healing skills. That introductory course was a revelation for me, so I promptly asked Bruce for a longer training. The next one was scheduled for the Summer 1981 but when Bruce heard that I would move up to Findhorn soon, he invited me to drop by in Strathmiglo on the way up. Lunch turned into staying for a bit to ‘look and learn’. But soon this turned into ‘doing’ where he asked me to do some massage on a patient, and he just walked out of the room. I felt I was thrown in at the deep end but I passed the ‘test’ and was invited to stay for a month. Easter came and I was looking after the house by myself when again I felt thrown in at the deep end as Patricia’s sister-in-law, as well as the local blacksmith came by, both with a sore back and I had to treat them as best as I could. I obviously passed the test and had proved myself as I was invited to stay on and to become one of his young apprentices. Thus I didn’t move to NewBold and stayed with the MacManaways until November 1982.

Bruce was a remarkable healer. From early childhood he had had some concept of healing and the continuation of the spirit after death as his mother and her sister were spiritualists. As a 21 year old officer during the Second World War, his unit was cut off for three days and he spontaneously put his hands on his wounded men as a means of comfort whilst issuing orders and carrying on the battle as best he could. Eventually medical help came in and none of his wounded men had died or had wounds turn septic. It was quite a different story in the Units either side of his. He realised at that point that he was being used as a channel for healing energy. He had noticed that severe bleeding stopped quickly and his men said their pain eased when he put his hands on them. He combined his great sensitivity with a very practical approach to experimenting with his skills. He became so precise in his diagnosis that the field doctors used him as a ‘human X-ray machine’ because he could pinpoint by scanning with his hands where to find a bullet or shrapnel that needed to be removed by surgery. He gained a very good reputation amongst them and many others over the years. Bruce stayed in the army after the war whilst honing his healing skills at every opportunity until in 1959, whilst stationed at Perth, he decided he could probably earn a living that way. He moved with his wife Patricia to a farm cottage in Strathmiglo in 1959 which they developed and expanded into their Natural Health Centre.

Bruce travelled to London every month for a few days to see patients. He also offered workshops in various places. One of the most spectacular things I personally witnessed was after such a workshop in Lincoln when he offered private sessions. A very elderly lady was brought in by her carer, basically bent over double, only able to look at the floor, and walking very slowly on sticks. Bruce, realising that this lady was too fragile to be treated directly, told her to sit in the corner and asked her carer to act as surrogate. He asked us apprentices to help by visualising the transfer of his work to the lady. As he treated the carer’s neck and back with some gentle massage and manipulation the old lady visibly straightened, sat more and more upright and even lifted her head to look straight ahead. At the end he asked her to get up and take a few steps which she did unaided.

He also warned his students that not all patients were grateful by recounting the story of one lady with a humpback so severe that she had to have tailored clothing and was on disability benefits. After the treatment with Bruce her spine straightened significantly but she reacted very ungratefully. So Bruce concluded: They don’t always thank you!

He also shared another example to explain that healing not always meant getting ‘all better’. A father brought his son with terminal cancer in the hope for a cure. Throughout a series of treatments the son continued to get weaker but more at peace. Also the father came to accept the son’s dying. So Bruce concluded that healing can also be to just accept what’s happening and finding peace.

Bruce MacManaway Book cover

I worked with Bruce also in other ways. When he wrote his book Healing: The Energy That Can Restore Health, I took most of the photographs for it.

The family was spending holidays on Iona as they were looking after a friend’s house there and I was given the chance to come along for a week both in summer 1981 and 1982. As was his wont, Bruce treated many of the fishermen and crofters, and even an arthritic bull. Payment was always in kind – a bottle of whisky, a fresh lobster or fish.
During that first stay I revisited the Isle of Erraid as I had met Holger during a stay in Cluny previouly and taught him to make stained glass pieces to sell locally as the Erraid family wanted to complement their candle studio with a stained glass studio to make the island community more financially sustainable. In Summer 1982 Holger had left and I offered to train his successor by moving to Erraid myself in November 1982. So Bruce told all his Iona patients that they didn’t need to travel all the way to Strathmiglo or wait for his next visit, as they now had their own resident healer nearby! It was through my healing work that I was able to make friendships with many people on Mull and Iona and contribute in a meaningful way to the local community. It was not uncommon for local fishermen to moor up their boats by the Erraid jetty and come to find me for a treatment. I will forever be grateful to Bruce MacManaway for sharing his skills with such generosity and enthusiasm.

I stayed on Erraid for over 7 years before moving to the Findhorn area in 1990 to start a new chapter in my life.

We give thanks to Sir George Trevelyan’s archive for the permission to use images from their archive on this website.

Janet Banks

Born in South of England in an artistic family. Art college and teacher training. Volunteer in Kenya. Stained glass artist, painter, healer. Mother and veteran of community living.