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Hands-on soul healer who remembers his past life as the disciple Judas is a regular in Orange
By Peter Holmes
People who book a private healing session with long-time soul healer Simon Hay - who was in Orange last weekend - may have an out of body experience; feel a full bladder; sob uncontrollably; gasp and scream; or have an erection or an orgasm, according to Hay's website.
They may also experience sensations of heat, cold, tingling, pressure and needle-point pain.
And most of them will fall asleep as they lay on a massage table.
The New Zealand-born Hay, a former plumber who lives in Queensland, was in Orange doing a show last Friday at Orange City Bowling Club, and conducting private "healings and readings" on Saturday and Sunday.
Hay, who wrote in his 2013 biography The Disciple that he was the disciple Judas in a previous life - is set to return in the coming months.
“I love visiting Orange and always feel welcome here,” a note on Hay’s Facebook page stated on February 26. “My private sessions are fully booked this weekend … Will be back in approx 2 months to do private sessions.”
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“Grateful to have been fully booked with a large waiting list in Orange,” a post stated the following day. “It's been a pleasure to meet beautiful people and a privilege to have their and spirit's trust.”
Ticket holders for the bowling club event with Hay - who describes himself as an “accomplished healer, medical intuitive and evidential medium” - were advised to read a disclaimer on Hay's website "in its entirety" before attending the event.
"Simon Hay is not a medical doctor or other licensed health care professional, and cannot and will not provide you with any kind of medical care, treatment, or diagnosis in relation to the physical health or wellbeing of your body," the disclaimer states.
"Soul healing is not a substitute for medical or psychological treatment from licensed and registered healthcare professionals. You should seek professional medical advice before making any health decision."
Hay maintains a website and a blog.
On the website, under the heading “What to expect during a healing”, Hay states that more than 80 percent of his clients come for a reading.
Of those that come for a healing session, he writes that more than 80 percent “have experienced sexual trauma and violence”.
“Many times,” he writes, “I’m the only other person who knows or has been told. Detailed information shared honestly, respectfully and compassionately assists with healing.
"I acknowledge, for some, it’s confronting to hear detailed personal information, but I do so respectfully and honestly. During healings and readings I repeatedly describe the process and ask if clients are okay with what’s occurring."
He says that as well as “getting information from spirit I also have conversations, in my mind, with client’s subconscious minds, body systems and energy fields. I describe this process at the start of and during sessions”.
During these conversations, he says, he hears and “intuit(s) information about a wide range of topics: client’s, and other people known by clients, past, present and future events, family, friends, relationships, mental and physical health issues, addictions, sexual abuse, violence, sexuality, sexual practices, gender …”
The majority of his clients choose to lay on a massage table during a healing, he writes. Hay states that he reminds clients during their session that he has no medical accreditation: “Although I’m able to identify major organs and body systems, I often don’t know what the magnified anatomical and cellular images I see during healings are.
“I travel into organs, fluids and cells, experience 360° vision, hear popping and gurgling sounds, smell odours, and experience client’s pain and trauma.”
Before a private session begins Hay writes that he asks the client why they have come to see him, and describes how he will be communicating.
“If you’re on the massage table I'll describe where my hands will be placed and where I'll be positioned. If at any stage during the session, I place my hands somewhere that makes you feel uncomfortable, please tell me. I’ll reposition.”
The PR for Hay’s self-published 2013 biography The Disciple states: “Simon Hay, after a life-altering encounter with spirit, revisits and remembers his past life as the disciple, Judas, and his role in Jesus’ life.
“Simon’s story will amaze and challenge 2000 years of belief … 2000 years ago, Simon was the disciple, Judas. Today, he’s a plumber, and the past has caught up to him.”
In an excerpt from the book on Amazon, Hay writes that his mother was a "gifted psychic" who participated in séances. She also suffered from anxiety. By the time Hay was in his teens, he writes, she was spending her nights drinking.
He writes about his parents' separation, their relationships with other people: "It hurt, and I buried the pain deep inside". Later, he writes about his estrangement from his daughter, and his brother.
According to the book, a family trait seemed to be the ability to sense the presence of ghosts.
After his mother moved to Australia when he was in his late teens, Hay writes that he felt "homeless, betrayed".
He fell in love at 18, had a child at 19 and was separated by 21. "The pain I'd buried for so long spilled out of me."
Upon moving to Australia he became obsessed with karate: "I loved the brotherhood of sweat and blood and hated myself ... the rage I'd buried for so long drove me to seek solace in physical exhaustion."
Over time Hay became interested in the spirit world and began to attend spiritual churches and experience strange occurrences such as an orb of sunlight hovering near a ceiling, an ornament and a shelf falling, and the footsteps of child ghosts on wooden floors.
He writes in The Disciple that meditation led him to his guide, a Buddhist monk named Gegu, with whom he has shared several lives, including in Southern China in the 12th century.
Diane, the woman who had introduced Hay to meditation, told him she believed he was Mark, one of Jesus' disciples, in a previous life.
"I knew immediately that she was wrong," Hay writes.
But in his meditations Hay was visiting with "bearded old men and wise men with shepherd's crooks". One, with a long flowing beard, "watched me intently".
"When he finally spoke he introduced himself as Elijah and addressed me as 'the betrayer'."
On another occasion he writes that he met Moses. During these experiences Hay spent his evenings "not only with biblical figures, but also with shamans and witch doctors, chieftains and kings, knights and barbarians, and spirits of children, and they all called me 'the betrayer'".
"Then Jesus arrived and called me Judas,” he writes. “From that moment my subsequent meditations were spent with Jesus and his family. Now, I was not only seeing Jesus in my meditations, he was also appearing in my physical life.
"I continued to work long hours and Jesus sat cross-legged on the ground and talked to me while I measured, cut, and glued PVC pipes together."
Hay writes that Jesus was "curious about every day things" such as household bills, and "turned his head and looked at the excavator operator, building supervisor, and plumbing inspector when they spoke to me".
He says that Jesus described him as his "half-brother and the bravest man I knew". In every past life he has revisited during meditation, Hay writes, "I was a warrior".
"I fought for Khans, Emperors, Kings, and tribal Chieftains in every country and period of time. I have led men into battle and to safety, after generals and warlords had fallen.
"I have guided caravans of refugees from danger, and walked away from, or lost, my families and lovers to war. Loyalty, service, brotherhood, loss and betrayal were common themes. I killed men. I was good at it."
"This story is true," he writes in The Disciple, "and is the reason I'm now able to heal illness and injury with physical contact and intention."
Although he conducts “distant healing” for people who are unable to see him in person, Hay writes online, “I believe contact close to the injury, pain, tumour etc. accelerates the healing”.
Hay describes "soul healing" as an "alternative hands-on healing method” and says that "although there is evidence that soul healing is effective treating physical, mental, and spiritual conditions, the method is considered alternative or complementary by Western health care professionals".
Hay says in the disclaimer on his website that ticket holders to his shows are advised to read that "this healing method can bring up personal and or challenging discussions about intimate topics and issues, including deep-seated trauma, which may be necessary to address for the healing process.
"As a hands-on healing method, hands may be placed on different areas of your body. If you do not consent to being touched or at any time feel uncomfortable, please let Simon know immediately.
"By engaging with spirit, energy fields, and systems natural to each person and the Universe, Simon Hay is connecting to the subtle energy fields or spiritual bodies of the client, not the physical body which is the domain of the medical field and other allied health care professionals."
On a section of his blog titled “How do you do healings and readings?” Hay states: “For positive healing outcomes, my faith, mind and partnership with spirit healers are contributing factors. Also influential are the client’s mental attitude, behaviour and the interpersonal relationship between the client and myself.”
Under the heading “What to expect during a healing” on his website Hay states: “Spirit healers — psychologists, surgeons, doctors, midwives, specialist health practitioners, Indigenous healers, people of faith… - assist to create positive healing outcomes; provide information about life events and generational/cultural patterns that are the causes of physical and mental health issues and support clients.”
Hay writes that on numerous occasions “spirit have informed about unknown serious health issues, have directed me to tell clients to see doctors and health specialists. Clients have later confirmed that the information spirit provided was accurate. To clarify, I don’t diagnose illness or offer medical advice. I encourage clients to see accredited health specialists”.
The majority of private sessions with clients “are done with clients lying on a massage table”, Hay writes. “Most people prefer to lie on their back, but you can also lie face down or on your side. Or be seated”.
“During the session,” he writes, “I’ll continue to notify about hand placements and ask if you’re comfortable.
“Usually, my hands hover over you until I place them somewhere on your body. Often my hands rock slowly back and forward, move in a slow circular motion, squeeze gently, and my fingers twitch or tap sporadically.
“At some stage during the session, I may hold your hand, rest a hand on your shoulder, chest, navel, hip, thigh, forehead or side of head.”
Hay, who writes that people are allowed to record their session with him, says that clients may also “experience physical contact from spirit and spirit healers. Many clients have described feeling spirit’s hands placed on them and physical sensations throughout their bodies”.
During a session Hay writes that it is possible to experience “calm, joy, love, ecstasy, grief, anger, fear, depression, etc”.
He says his “intention is to heal physical and mental health issues, be respectful and compassionate”.
“My role in the healing process is that of facilitator,” he writes.
Hay lists a series of possible reactions to one of his healing sessions.
They include physical sensations such as heat, cold, tingling, pressure and needle point pain; sleep (“it’s rare for clients not to relax enough to fall asleep”); out of body experience; crying (“At some time, most clients cry during healings. Some cry silently, others sob uncontrollably”); floating; full bladder; involuntary gasping or screaming; loss of feeling and “an aroused sexual response”.
Hay says it took more than four months and more than 100 healings at the start of his career before he became aware “clients were experiencing” the aroused sexual response.
“In some healings, men have gotten erections and women have orgasmed,” he writes on his blog. “Be reassured, it’s not intentional. During healing sessions, I can’t make any healing response occur. All healing responses happen automatically.”
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He said this occurs less now, “mostly because I talk more during healings … this holds clients in conscious-attention states”.
“I’m sharing this for transparency,” he writes, “to allow clients to make an informed decision about booking a session. During healings, if I sense this response may occur, I talk about it with clients.”
According to Hay’s website an aroused sexual response “occurs with clients who have low libido, low self-esteem, repressed sexuality, known and unknown incidences of sexual abuse and violence, and who feel unhappy, unfulfilled, disrespected, and threatened in current and historic relationships”.
This response occurred, in some instances but not all, “because the healing vibration stimulates the vagus nerve, the longest cranial nerve in the body. There’s a lot of recognised medical research to support this. Google, for information”.
Hay asks readers to “please understand that I’m not clinically trained, I have no medical training, and even though I’m able to see into and [seemingly] ‘travel’ through your body, often I’m unaware of what I’m seeing, or why I’m there.”
Among the testimonials on his website is a video from 2018 by a Brisbane woman named Debbie. In her early-40s at the time, she said she suffered from fibromyalgia.
“Fibromyalgia is a common condition that causes widespread pain and tenderness in the body,” states a Victorian government health website. “Each person with fibromyalgia will have their own set of symptoms. There is no cure for fibromyalgia, but symptoms can be managed.”
Debbie stated in the video that she had seen a “heap of doctors and specialists and they had me on a huge amount of medications, antidepressants, fish oil, Panadol Osteo, all sorts of pain relieving medications. They weren’t working very well, but they were better than nothing at all.
“They told me to rest, sleep, exercise, change my diet. Did everything that I was told. And the pain was just getting worse and worse and worse.”
After googling “healers in Brisbane, Simon’s details came up; I rang him, made an appointment, and went and [saw] him.”
Debbie states in the video that she “wasn’t expecting much at all”, but that after the appointment “I drove home, and I had no pain driving. I went to bed that night, had a good night’s sleep, woke up pain free in the morning, and I have been pain-free ever since”.
In offering general advice not specific to Simon Hay, Orange clinical psychologist Megan Haire told The Orange News Examiner: “When treating people who have experienced trauma, whether in the past or recently, it is important to first create a high degree of safety.
“Good preparation before exploring and treating the trauma is essential, as is planning for ongoing after care. Not to do so invites serious problems.”
Haire said people “may be re-traumatised by having their vulnerabilities suddenly exposed, while being left without support or skills to manage the emotional turmoil that may arise after the session is over".
“Trauma work is necessarily careful,” she said, “requiring patience and an ability to pace the treatment to the tolerance level of the person concerned. The process of change is slow and may take weeks, months or years.”
The ability to “recognise, establish and maintain good personal boundaries may be compromised” in people who have experienced sexual and other forms of abuse in childhood, the clinical psychologist said.
Haire says that for vulnerable people who had high levels of distress, "It is extremely tempting to hope for a quick solution, but this wish adds to their vulnerability … It is therefore essential that they seek help for their trauma from people who have recognised qualifications with one of the accredited bodies, whose members conform to high ethical standards.
“The Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency oversees the high ethical and professional standards of training and practice provided by Australian health practitioners, including medical practitioners, dentists, psychologists, pharmacists, nurses and midwives, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, medical radiation practitioners and social workers.
“These professions have in common the training to understand the evidence base on which best practice is founded, and the ability to distinguish between what is credible and what is merely pseudoscience,” Haire said.
She said people seeking help for trauma can ask their GP for a recommendation, or research their options via the Australian Clinical Psychology Association or Australian Psychological Society websites.
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