The Healer's Toolbox: Perceptive Awareness and Trusting the Process

Often I get the question of, "How do you know where to put your hands in a healing session?" Or, "How can working on one area affect another?"

The answer can be understood when we recognize the meta-scientific perspective that we live in a reality of matter, space and vibrating particles that are all connected. Through the power of the mind and setting intention, we guide energy to flow through a medium and reestablish balance in a system in order for optimum functioning to occur. 

In other words, I'm opening my awareness to what's already occurring and guiding a process while leaving the final result to higher intelligence beyond me. 

The body is a highly intricate machine. We eat a meal, the food gets digested and its components are distributed correctly. We don't consciously think, "Protein particles of chickpeas, go rebuild my muscles. Fiber, sweep through my intestines and exit my elimination organs." We don't stare at a flower bud and will it to open its petals in a mathematically beautiful and symmetric spiral. Life happens. Intelligence unfolds. 

So it is with energy. 

A person comes to me with a headache. We set the intention to clear the headache. I lay my hands on the person's forehead and there's enhanced energy flowing through this area. But there's also energy flowing elsewhere. I feel energy in the forehead erratic and buzzing. I sense a stream of energy connected to this down through the Solar Plexus area. I sweep my hands down to this energy, following the pulsating that I feel, centralized as a dense, heavy energy ball. I continue to move my hands and clear this area until the heaviness, the buzzing, eventually relaxes and dissipates. In that moment, even though I'm not even working on their head, the person reports that their head feels so much better! In addition, the sense of nervousness they'd been feeling in the "pit of their stomach," that they didn't even realize they'd been carrying, is gone. 

So while we set an intention, working on one area of the body or energetic system can clear another area. 

We trust that wherever the energy needs to flow for the client's highest good, it does. Could I have cleared the headache directly by working in the head area? Perhaps, yes. But was that the core of the problem? Where did the disturbance originate, their thought process, or in the energetic area of the body connected to our values, sense of self, and sometimes emotions? Or did one affect the other? 

Yet perhaps more importantly, how would I have known?

Part of this is the mystery that requires the flexibility and openness of healing work versus the diagnostic and prescriptive science of traditional medicine. 

So, as healing practitioners, while we trust the process of healing and energy to go where it's needed, we can more effectively assist the process by using our tools of perception. 

I read a quote that went something like, "How do we fill up a swimming pool? Sure, we can turn on the hose in the backyard, and eventually it will fill up the pool. But we can be more effective by putting the hose directly into the swimming pool." 

That is the role of a healing practitioner.  Opening to a process unfolding, and with awareness and intent, guiding it along. 

Ending with a quote from Albert Einstein:

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.

What You Don’t Know About Your Healer

So, you think all health and holistic practitioners are wishy-washy, carefree spirits twirling in sunshine and rainbows of our own glorious auric fields?

(Well, maybe some are, and to them I say… grrrr!!!!!!!!) 

No, seriously. I think it’s good to share some things that many of us in the healing community go through to dissuade anyone thinking we’re disconnected from the full spectrum of human experience. If any practitioner ever has come off as flighty or down-right ridiculous, maybe there’s a reason for it, or, perhaps if you knew the things that often plague and bewilder us, maybe you’ll  forgive us a little. 

Dirty Secret #1

Let me let you in on a dirty secret: health practitioners have hang-ups, too.

 Since we tend to be a lot more sensitive, this can lead to a lot of self-criticism, self-judgment, and insecurity about our self-worth. I can’t tell you how many practitioners I’ve met who have gone through these same growth points on the way to developing their craft: 

- recognizing we have certain talents, much of which are intangible, yet nonetheless valuable to human experience (caring, compassion, empathy, listening, nurturing … I’ll hold off of any extra-sensory perceptive skills for now)
- seeing where there is need, and where we are drawn to help: the elderly, veterans, children, spiritual life coaching, cancer community, women’s issues, abuse, trauma, etc
- feeling worthy to accept payment for our services, period! (a reflection of self-worth and confidence)
- being able to brand and market ourselves, and charge more for our time and credentials

Dirty Secret #2: 

We’re constantly tottering on the line of our heart’s desire and what the rest of society actually wants from us. 

We feel spiritually called into our vocation. It is a sense of duty to humanity, the world, divinity, whatever you want to call it. There’s this progression of trepidation to accepting our path, elation when we’ve claimed it, and then frustration when the rest of the world doesn’t seem to understand or want our gifts. 

Example: We want to witness miracles of people breaking through limitations and emotional bondage through massage and bodywork and end up over-worked and underpaid in a corporate structure that doesn’t resonate with our ideals. The quality and depth of the work that can be done is unforgivably diluted. Yet we need to pay the bills. 

I’ll reiterate: we’re sensitive! It takes SO MUCH STRENGTH to actually claim our identity as healers. After so much inner reflection, refraction, sometimes dissolution and tedious rebuilding of ourselves, to only face rejection can be soulfully crushing. 

So what do we do?

We keep going. We improvise. We sometimes forcefully push our noses back to the grindstone and make ourselves finish that certification or class or grit our teeth through our daily jobs as a stepping stone to getting where we want to be… which isn’t always clear. 

We also come together in community support. Sometimes we just need to know we’re not alone in this journey. Or that we haven’t completely lost our minds. Yet… (see below for #3). 

Most of all, we keep searching within for inspiration and answers. It’s a never-ending journey. 

Dirty Secret #3

We crave community and don’t always know how to ask for it. 

You’d think the people touting how much we need deeper connection would be able to tack this one on the wall no problem, but not always. This goes back to our sense of self-worth and self-acceptance. Or feeling like we have to shoulder the burdens of the world and therefore do our own healing alone so as not to unload on anyone else. Oddly enough, sometimes it’s our clients that remind us to seek help and support when we need it. 

Dirty Secret #4

We have inner demons, too. We have our shadow side.

We just get more practice with how to release and express these sides of ourselves. We understand the ebb and flow. All things come to pass. There’s always something brighter and sweeter past the painful spots. 

And no, unless we attain Buddhahood, I don’ think this ever goes away. Like anything else, the process and pattern just gets more fine-tuned, our responses more precise. 

Dirty Secret #5

We are always driven by something greater than ourselves.

Even if it makes you cringe, inevitably, most health and healing practitioners subscribe to some higher source, authority, or power, even if it’s simply within ourselves, or a sense of universality and connectedness. 

It might annoy the crap out of you, you might think we’re hopeless idealists… but it’s what we witness day after day, and it’s what keeps us going. 

On that note…

Dirty Secret #6

We like to use the word “God,” but shy away from it publicly. 

Unfortunately. Don’t want to offend anyone else out there. So we keep it for private use. We’re okay with it. 


One more thing. We will never, ever stop trying to be better for ourselves and others, no matter how crazy our rituals and appearance and vernacular become. If it betters the whole, then it’s worth it. We’ve done our duty.