From the film

In one of her HEALING interviews, Dorothy W. Cooke speaks about the actual, physical surgeries performed by Medium Joao:

"No one should feel pain. I can't judge an individual and say he's not being truthful when he says he feels a lot of pain. But I know from my personal experiences that people can create their own pain. Of course, when you're having surgery at the Casa, you don't have to be a believer in anything. But some people force their beliefs on themselves and bring about something that would normally not have occurred. They may go into the surgery with the thought that there's no such thing as not feeling pain.

But I noticed that every now and then some person will make a loud noise, but they didn't really feel any pain and as soon as he's finished there's no pain. If you go into a hospital and have surgery, you are going to have pain for days after that surgery. So they don't have that experience, they don't have pain for days after the surgery, and infections and all of those things, they don't have all of that."

Director David Unterberg says, "To me it was surprising that physical surgeries, as opposed to spiritual interventions, didn't take place very often; but when they happened they were performed with unsterilized scalpels, and without anesthesia, but didn't cause pain and the wounds healed in no time. Only patients who specifically asked for physical surgeries received them, but even then, their healing process was far more spiritual."