Energy Work

When you grow up working class in the Italian section of Williamsburg, you work for one trade union or another.

Joe Rubino worked as a plumber for 20 years. He liked it and made good money but knew that something was missing from his life. He'd take summers off and travel the country on a motorcycle. He did Primal Scream therapy for a while. He began studying martial arts and energy.

Ten years ago, he quit plumbing and began teaching Tai Chi at senior-citizen centers. His income dropped and the workers at his old shop laughed at him, the plumber with a screw loose.

I recently met with Rubino, who's 54 but looks a decade younger.

Rubino is the last guy you'd think would get into energy work. He is a street guy. A gentleman but not one to threaten.

In the early '90s, he saw a cop being attacked by a huge homeless man. The giant had a hand on the cop's gun. Rubino walked over, applied a pressure point, and the giant let go of the gun. City Hall wanted to give him a medal but he never bothered showing up.

Rubino was there, though, to tell me about Gin Shin Jitsu energy work. I am a skeptic-a rough massage and I am good. But cleaning out my energy aura? I had my doubts.

I lay fully clothed on Rubino's table and closed my eyes. He walked around my body with his hands circling over it. I got a strange warm feeling and closed my eyes.

"Now I am going to check your meridians-centers of the body that hold energy-and see how your blood is flowing and where your energy is blocked.?A hard pulse will usually tell me that energy is screaming to be released. A weak pulse may need a different kind of help. I just intuit what your body tells me."

He grabbed each of my fingers and held them. My body felt like it was loosening up, and he hadn't done a thing yet. But something was going on.

He pronounced me fairly healthy but said my heart and head where a little stressed. He touched a pressure point on the side of my knee and my whole body felt like it stretched out.

"That's a chiropractor point, and it helps the spine. Some people feel nothing when I do the work, while others really feel it."

I could feel energy moving around my body and out my head. "You think a lot, and it is cleansing out a lot of blocked energy leaving your head," he told me.

As he said this, I closed my eyes and saw demonic faces rushing out of my body.

After he was done I was so relaxed and hungry. I felt like I had slept for a week.

Rubino went on to tell me that he protects himself from the energy of others by washing his hands. He once worked on a client, and after he was done, she showed him an acupressure point on his back. For two hours, he could feel his body shaking.

"That was terrible. I let her bad energy in. I didn't protect myself. Two days later, she died."

Joe Rubino can be reached at 917-304-5796.