The Opening Bud of Spiritual Blossoming
by Ask a Healer, and Spiritual Journey Woman
Featured Resources:
Abundance: The New Way
Spiritual Growth Program
Cosmic Ordering Program
The Spiritual Woman
How to function as a clear energetic channel in your healing work
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I first wrote this article (decades ago) to assist new healing facilitators by answering some of the frequent challenges faced as one begins energetic work. Over time, it became apparent that it could serve equally well as a reminder for more seasoned facilitators as well. Integrity in the work is not necessarily automatic for most, due to ego interference and simple ignorance of energetic law, but something to be worked at and maintained. Often, lapses in spiritual integrity in a healer happen as a result of either personality self interference or a misguided attempt to help.
Personally, when I first began to work as a healer, I had such a fire and desire to help that I unconsciously tried to force healing sometimes. I would see something in the etheric template of a person's body, in their emotional field, or in the actual cells of the body that was out of balance or damaged. I would also see how that cellular memory or emotional suppression was hurting the person. I would see how it could be released and I would unconsciously vibrate that suppressed area with my own energy, rather than waiting patiently to see if Godforce energy would be allowed into that area.
One of the most important lessons I learned is that we are not always called into service to help someone heal. Becoming a healer means we stand in support of whatever is needed and that isn't always a physical healing. Sometimes, we are called because the person needs to have their imbalance inflamed. They may even need their own blockages and resistances inflamed to the point where it becomes unbearable not to shift.
I've had people walk away from my table in more pain than when they lay down. Resistance causes the body more pain than actual injury. I am not sure why so many of us have to be in almost unbearable pain before we will surrender but I have seen it in my own life and I've certainly seen it over and over again, on the healing table. Having the grace to let a person set the pace of their own healing requires a high level of spiritual integrity as a healer
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Tips for the new energetic healer:
1. Learn to recognize resistance and respect it One of the reasons a person may be drawn to becoming a healer is that they have true compassion for the suffering of others. They want to be of service. They want to help. However, a common challenge is knowing the difference between helping and pushing energy. You only have authority over one person and that is yourself. Whether or not another is truly ready for healing will be revealed when the energy is introduced and the healing facilitator cannot control that decision. Although you may clearly see resistance and blockage, and know that it needs to be resolved, the rate at which that occurs is not yours to set. Sometimes, a person is not able to trust enough, initially, to allow the supportive energy offered by the healer to penetrate fully into those resistant areas. Those are personal boundaries and a healer with integrity will honor them, even if that means no apparent healing appears to have occurred. Those who walk away still holding their pain are doing exactly what they should be doing at this point in their healing journey. Let them have their experience.
This is of particular significance for healers who work in the area of healing childhood trauma and reclaiming the inner child. Since a violation of trust is often at the base of the abused psyche, it may take many healing sesions before that wounded person feels safe enough to let the energy enter those areas of cellular memory. How does cellular resistance feel? For me, the energy stops penetrating. There is a flow that I can feel and when that stops but energy is still present on my end, in my body, I recognize that I've come up against a cellular memory that is not ready to shift. I ask, wait, and then move on if the energy does not shift easily and without my pushing any energy toward it.
2. Avoid letting ego run your show A new healer, seeing the obvious cellular blockage that may have caused a person great pain, will desire to have it shift and for healing to happen. Of course. But the height of true compassion is to fully allow each person their own experience, even if that experience means more pain and suffering. When the person we are working with tells us that nothing happened, they don't feel better, or that they actually feel worse, the ego can flame up and want to prove it isn't our fault. This is a subtle thing. Most new healers go through it. They push. They don't want to fail. What is important to realize is that we are not doing anything. We are making ourselves available as a supportive conduit for healing energy but it is up to the person on the table to receive that energy or not.
I remember working with one woman, early in my career, and feeling so desperately sad for her that I pushed the energy. I wanted so for her to heal the horrible, horrible trauma of her past so that she could live freely again, with the great joy and creative genius that I also saw within her. She also wanted things to shift, desperately, and encouraged me to push. Put up against her own resistance so strongly spiraled her into some pretty hard days, and up until now, she has chosen to stay shut down rather than go there again.
3. Stop putting on bandaids Every healer eventually gets a client like this.....they come, they feel better, but no real change occurs. They just keep coming back, over and over. What they are doing is getting a quick fix of energy but it isn't being followed up with the spiritual work that would allow them to shift their lives. I consider this putting bandaids on gaping wounds. I won't do it because genuine healing is more than just the temporary balancing a healer can provide, or a clearing of the etheric field. A healer will start with that because balancing the energy and clearing the etheric field of psychic debris helps to create breathing space for the client, so that they can begin to look at their life choices and see the patterns of behavior that need to shift.
Even though many people seek a healer for physical pain, healing on the physical level is not usually the most important thing. That's symptomatic relief, but the core is spiritual, mental and emotional. The body is a marvelous diagnostic machine for the Spirit. One of the best ways we have of knowing a core issue is surfacing is because the body responds with pain of some kind. Every illness, accident, and emotional disturbance is an alarm within the body human. If we, as healing facilitators, take away the symptoms without generating awareness of the cause, the person will most likely experience only temporary relief and the condition will reappear. Avoid repetitive energy clearing unless you want to see the same people over and over, for years, and perhaps never assist them in any permanent healing or progressive growth.
4. Enable your client to complete the circle of life with you Many new healers want to help people heal so desperately that the thought of asking for any type of monetary renumeration is awkward for them but experience has taught me that people need to feel enabled. One way we, as healers, can help them is to present opportunity for exchange. It can feel more noble to have so open and giving a nature that you want to do all your healing work free but it is not usually the most empowering way to offer your gifts.
I do not know a single healer who always charges. I know when God is directing me to help someone who, in that moment, needs the power of a free gift of healing. Sometimes, the giving freely is what a person needs to restore their faith. Most other times, I find I can be of better service if I get my ego out of the way and allow a person to give back. Like the ebb and flow of the ocean or the in and out of our breath, the universe is steeped in flow. It is the natural way of the universe and making an exchange for healing facilitation work completes the flow. It doesn't have to be money either, but most of us do need a certain amount of that green stuff so it's not a bad exchange at all.
If a person doesn't have money, perhaps they have some service or skill they can offer. Maybe they make the best homemade bread you ever tasted, or they know how to create beautiful flower arrangements. Maybe they are just the best hugger ever.
When working with Medicine Men, tobacco is a traditional offering but, in my mind, a gift of money should also be offered. Most Medicine Men and Women I know could use it, because they travel and do ceremony to an extent most other healers would not be willing to do.
I've heard people say that there should be no charge for healing because it's really a gift from God. True. But what of the time expended by the healing facilitator? Is that worth nothing? I think not. Jesus told his disciples to leave places where they were not respected. He literally told them to just shake the dust from their feet. He also said that a pig cannot appreciate pearls so why try to feed them pearls?
There was a time when the importance of the healer and the medicine worker was recognized and supported. They were provided with lodging, food and other needs by the community at large, because everyone appreciated the service given and considered it vital. Today, healer's must make their own way much as the doctor does, but without the doctor's salary.
5. Exercise caution when facing a kundalini awakening -- Most healers eventually work with someone who is sexually repressed and there comes a point in healing repression where kundalini energies can be stirred. Yet, even though often associated with sexual feelings, the real purpose of kundalini is to ignite passion for living. Even though awakening the serpent is vital for full-out expression of life, it can be a delicate type of energy work and requires a very clear, focused, and conscious healing facilitator to avoid transferring of feelings that muddy the waters of what is really occurring in the healing session.
When someone has been sexually repressed or creatively repressed (actually, the two usually go hand in hand) there is the real potential for mistaking a kundalini awakening for an attraction to the healer. Depending on the degree of sexual shut-down, and any attending emotional imbalances, it can even seem to that person for who kundalini energies are stirring as if the healer themselves is causing it.
Just as a psychologist must be alert to transference of inappropriate feelings, so much the healing facilitator. Encouraging the healthy awakening of kundalini energies without that feeling being misinterpreted by the client is vital for a clear experience of awakening.
Learn how to ground and keep yourself energetically clear
When first beginning to work with energy, a new healer can commonly be challenged by the realization that they find themselves taking on the feelings, pain or symptoms of the person with whom they are working or with someone they with whom they have recently facilitated healing. As an example, if a healer works with someone suffering with depression and then, either during the session itself or shortly thereafter, they become suddenly and inexplicably depressed themselves, this can be due to energy transfer during the session. I used to have this phenomenon all the time when I first started out as a healer. This type of experience can occur for any number of reasons:
The healer may have a similar blockage within them as that being stimulated in the client On energetic levels, like attracts like. That's what the law of attraction is all about.
If you find energetic attachments occurring during your healing sessions, it can typically mean that you have some sort of resonance with the blockage or resistance of your client on the table. Walking completely in balance all the time is a bit challenging on earth, to say the least, so it is always possible for the healer to be out of balance in some aspect, that it is not possible to allow full and effortless flow and release of energies through the physical frame without those energies affecting the physical body and magnifying some aspect of a similar struggle within you.
I've had healers say they can't work with a certain person because they drain them or dump their negativity on them but I maintain that such an energy partnership is never the other person's fault. It is the responsibility of the healer to work through personal resistance that gets inflamed in a session and it's a good idea to check your state of balance before every session.
Working in an ungrounded state Mother Earth has a specific vibrational energy that helps to connect us to her grounding and clearing field. When healers speak of grounding, we literally mean to ground the energies into Mother Earth, so that nothing negative attaches in the body. Sometimes necessary to make conscious effort, to maintain that grounding connection that is so helpful when working as a healer. When walking in and operating from the higher energy fields, you must remember that you still have a third-dimensional form to consider. If you don't ground the energies, they can stay in your body.
Burdens lifted for another -- As healing facilitators, we can concsiously choose to lift and carry the burden of others for a time, within our own bodies. This differs from taking on cellular imbalance in an unhealthy, draining way, because it is a conscious act of compassion if consciously and with integrity. This type of conscious burden sharing reminds me of when Jesus was carrying the cross through the streets, and he suddenly could not bear the weight of it. He needed help to complete his work at that point and someone from the thronging crowd was sent forth to carry the cross for Jesus.
It was still Jesus who hung there, who suffered and died there. It was still his cross.
When we as healers, lift the burden of one who has fallen under the weight of their own pain, it is important to remember that we cannot walk that last mile nor take the journey from them. It is still their cross.
Absence of Source connection This is another area where ego causes problems. Odd as it seems, you may forget that you have access to unlimited Godforce energy. The nervous personality self may feel as if it's all up to you. If you attempt to heal another, utilizing only your mind or your own devices, you will exhaust yourself within three days.
Always remember that you are not alone. Set your intent to give yourself over to Spirit, being guided moment to moment and trusting the guidance implicitly. For those who are overly analytical (I fit this category and speak from personal experience), it may be difficult to act without knowing exactly what is being done. Sometimes, you will have no idea what is happening at a cellular level, with the partner-in-healing on your table. You'll be asked to work by faith, and some of the things you are prompted to say may make no sense to your logical mind. Yet, they will be the words the other person most needs to hear. Let the energy flow through, without editing or control.
Simple Grounding Exercise
I learned a wonderful grounding exercise, years ago. I learned it from a reflexologist and have used it ever since. I start by visualizing thick, strong wooden roots extending out of the soles of my feet. These roots journey down into the earth and I experience them going down, down, down til they reach earth's middle. In my inner hearing, there is a sound....a thud, as the roots connect into the core of the Mother. I then use my breath to help me visualize a drawing inward and upward of that healing, grounding Earth Mother energy, up through my body, all through every cell, and upward out through my crown, skyward. Next, I surge the energy forward, often lifting my hands, as I image the energy going upward to Father Sky. As with reaching the core of the earth, I feel the moment when I have made energetic connection with the Divine Male aspects of Godness. Using my breath once more, I draw that energy downward into my body, into every cell, all the way down to my toes. At that point, I have energetically balanced, grounded and received both the Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine energies through every cell. I'm ready to be of service.
