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.

Blessed!

I almost feel like another Hello and Welcome is needed! It's been quite a while since my last post. Why? you may ask... or not... anyway. I've been so BLESSED and busy doing healing sessions, working towards completing requirements for Level 5 Healing Touch and certification. 

Really, I feel like I am the luckiest person in the world when I'm working with other people during healing sessions. It is a huge bond of trust established between healer and recipient. Even more than traditional massage, energywork truly delves deep into the energetic layers of a person, revealing the stories written in their aura. I can feel energetic flow throughout the chakras and energetic bodies, sensing where spaces are stronger and weaker, how this translates into the way a person processes every day experiences, emotions, stresses, and how connected a person is to themself and sense of divinity. Every person is different, every session is different, and to be allowed into one's energetic space is such a sacred act. I am so grateful each and every time. 

As an energy worker, I can raise my vibrational level in order to channel energy for healing. Just as one can experience gentle, soothing strokes in massage versus intense pressure in deep tissue massage, energy work can function the same way, I find. Sometimes gentle releasing held for a longer period of time is needed. Sometimes an intense burst of energy is needed to open a blockage or to seal a weak area. Many times a problem area manifested in the physical body cannot be worked on until another area is released or cleared. The ideal from any session is to clear tension, congestion, or heaviness in order to produce flow and movement. Sometimes all that's needed is for me to hold space while a person's energy does all the work. Even then, to be witness to this healing is amazing. 

To hear afterwards, "I feel so relaxed!" and accounts of never being able to slow down the thinking until having a session, and a sense of being more centered, grounded, connected... it's so gratifying. And all that's needed is an opening, willing heart to serve. And trust me, this giving builds and multiplies, spilling forth so that you want to give more and more. I can't possibly contain all this love for myself!!! Everyone needs to do this! At least, everyone needs to give, to serve, in some way or another for someone else's well-being. Even if it's as simple as putting aside everything and giving your undivided attention listening to a loved one speak for a few minutes, or volunteering time and effort towards a cause. It's the most beautiful thing we can offer to others. So in whatever way you can, please serve! Give of yourself purely to others and feel blessed. 

Living From the Hara

Summer Solstice occurred last Friday. As the sun set on the shortest night of the year, I reflected on what I’ve been experiencing. Gratefully, it is fulfillment and manifestation -- this blog being one example. And not to talk too much about dreams, but in fact the night before the Solstice, I dreamed about being in my backyard tending three separate fires. Fire represents expansion. How fitting to be dreaming of fire also as the sun’s light was the longest of the year.

Manifesting means expanding beyond any fears, limitations or preconceived notions about what we believe is possible. It means utilizing qualities we have built in ourselves, igniting these with the creativity of our minds, and pushing outward with our will and personal power – our Hara.

I recently had my first Zen Shiatsu experience (also on the Solstice). The session begins and ends with assessing the Hara. In martial arts and Japanese healing arts like Zen Shiatsu, the Hara refers to the area of our lower belly and more. (More specifically, the tan tien or tan den is a point in the Hara and on the Haric Line resting below the navel.) All of the meridians of the body flow through here. It is our power center. 

In Healing Touch, we learn that when one is aligned with their Hara Line, they are grounded and strong in the intention of their soul's purpose. From Barbara Ann Brennan's book Light Emerging it states, “When our personal wants and desires are aligned with our spiritual longing or higher desires, our purposes are aligned and the creative principle in the universe can function unhindered” (288).

Yes! This is it, this is what I want -- to live from intentionality.

 "... to align the aspects of thinking, feeling, and willing. When thought, feeling and will to action are in harmony, they hold a synchronistic vibration (or harmonic resonance) that creates the possibility for a powerful and significant shift in health and wholeness” (Healing Touch Level 3 Workbook, 46). When aligned with the Hara, we bring the energy of intentionality into physical manifestation. It is quite possibly our most potent creative power.

At the apex of this year's light, I hope you too are manifesting your desires. Pour your light into your creations and relish their fulfillment. This is your power.