jews in the d

‘Heal
Your
Brain’

Local author
outlines her
methods to
recover after
concussions.

JOYCE WISWELL
CONTRIBUTING WRITER

A

s she struggled to recover
from traumatic brain injury,
Susana Stoica made herself
a promise: Once she was well, she’d
write a book to help others facing the
same challenges. She has completed
that mission with Heal Your Brain,
Reclaim Your Life — How to Recover
and Thrive After Concussion, and she
spoke at Harvard Medical School in
July to share her expertise at a con-
ference.
Fifteen years ago, Stoica slipped on
ice twice in the same day, banging
her head hard enough to suffer fron-
tal brain injury.
“It was a sunny day, but I saw a
starry night,” she said of her twin
falls in two different parking lots,
which left her with tunnel vision,
headaches, muddled thinking and a
host of other ailments.
“I had unbearable pain. I couldn’t
concentrate or figure things out, and
my senses of smell and taste were
completely gone,” she said. “I kept
falling asleep uncontrollably, and I
was very afraid I would be commit-
ted to a mental hospital.”
Desperate to recover her full men-
tal capabilities, Stoica tried just about
everything in her quest for relief.
“Whatever people told me to try I
would, but it was a ton of money and
most was not useful.”

A SURPRISING DISCOVERY
It was a dramatic comedown for
Stoica, now 72, who’d earned her
Ph.D. with a thesis in building com-
puters with circuits modeling brain
cell functionality and was at the top
of her game as an auto engineer.

Born in Romania, she moved to the
United States in 1985 and enjoyed
a successful 35-year career, retiring
from Ford in 2004 as a senior techni-
cal specialist.
All the while, Stoica was also
working as an energy healer, a tal-
ent she discovered in 1982 while
researching ways to help her hus-
band with his back problems. She
was practicing on a partner at a
workshop on a Chinese technique
called polarity therapy when her
hands started moving spontaneously
above the woman’s body.
“My hands took off and started
moving by themselves,” she recalled.
“I couldn’t stop them.”
The woman reported instant relief
from her chronic breathing prob-
lems, “which really scared me,” Stoica
said. “I was in shock.”
It took her a few years to come to
terms with the fact she was a natural
healer. Her family was not exactly
supportive.
“Once you discover you are a heal-
er, you cannot stop — and I tried to
stop many times. My family saw me
as so successful as an engineer, why
give it up for ‘voodoo?’” said Stoica
of West Bloomfield. “I have literally
had people tell me they fear I will
hex them. I tell them, ‘I can assure
you I have no intention of being the
devil.’ But I understand perfectly
because I had a real problem when
I discovered I was capable of doing
healing.”
She wrote her first book about the
experience, Reluctant Healer, in 1996
and expanded it in 2016. “It’s a very
easy introduction to energy healing

continued on page 36

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October 25 • 2018

jn