My Time in the Chair: Access Consciousness with Rob Gegner

Conventional wisdom dictates that it’s a bad idea to take a stranger up on their offer to go over to their house and allow them to touch 32 points on your head in the name of “clearing away energy.”

As a journalist, I laugh in the face of conventional wisdom, following up with witty comebacks like “your MOM says it’s a bad idea to let a stranger touch your head!”

And that's how I wound up in the living room of Rob Gegner, a Windsor Terrace resident who practices a healing art called Access Consciousness, a “set of tools, processes and modalities to help change everything in someone’s life.”

Gegner, who is training to become a health coach and also works part time at Brooklyn Commune, has been practicing Access Consciousness since June. He stumbled upon the concept while manning a booth at the New Life Expo, where he got to talking to the folks in the booth next door. They were representatives from Access Consciousness, and asked if he'd like to try a session.

“I was like, ‘What is this weird thing?' I didn’t understand it, and I didn’t know what it was,” Gegner said.

Nevertheless, he sat down in the chair and let the practitioners get to work—and was stunned by the results.

“It felt like something shifted in me—I can’t even explain it,” he said. “It was really relaxing; it felt like I was falling asleep. It was awesome.”

Gegner decided to incorporate Access Consciousness into his own health practice. He took the 8-hour course required to become a Certified Facilitator, and is working on building a list of clients around the community.

Gegner explained that the sessions are designed to relieve one's self of limiting thoughts and ideas, leaving in their place greater levels of awareness. 

I’ve never been very good at sitting still, but fortunately this is not an exercise in meditation.  Gegner ushered me into a comically large reclining chair that was part dentist chair, part mesh beach chair. I kicked off my shoes, and Gegner handed me a blanket in case I got cold.

During my time in the chair, Gegner and I talked sporadically on topics ranging from veganism to Matthew McConaughey. Every so often, he would move his fingers to a different part of my skull, explaining the particular area of my brain from which negative energy and judgment was being released. More often than not though, we lapsed into silence.

Gegner said everyone has a different reaction to the practice—some people laugh, some enter a dream state, and some simply fall asleep. One of his clients, he said, even saw fairies.

While I saw exactly zero fairies (and believe me, I looked), here’s the shortlist of things I thought about in the chair, in order of duration:

1. Pancakes

2. The maximum size bear Arnold Schwarzenegger could beat in hand-to-paw combat.

3. Carl Sagan’s haircut

4. Pancakes…or Mexican food?

5. “I should floss more,” x 20

Time passed quickly, though toward the end my limbs were getting stiff and I was overcome with hunger. Even so, I was proud of myself that I’d sat, unmoving in a chair, for a whole session.

I stretched, put on my shoes, and thanked Gegner for his work—what was that, 30 minutes?

He smiled. "It's been two hours," he said.

Want to book a session? Email Gegner at heroholistics@gmail.com, or check out his blog at heroholistics.blogspot.com.

Get local stories like this delivered to your inbox or smartphone every day with our e-mail newsletter. And don't forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.