Everything in the universe is made up of energy. Everything has a distinct energy field, including people, which scientists are increasingly able to measure. The human energy field supports our health and well-being and connects us to the universal source of energy. Energetic Healing restores the energy field’s strength, and allows emotional and physical symptoms to dissipate.

Because energy is the common medium that cuts across so many disciplines and has been studied and written about for so long, we have developed literally hundreds of ways to describe what energy is and how it works. Until the introduction of modern medicine,
energy was the basis for all the traditional healing arts from Chinese medicine to homeopathy to shamanism. Even modern western medicine bases diagnoses and treatment on your body’s energy using an electrocardiogram to determine how you’re your heart is functioning or and electroencephalogram to determine brain function, to name only a few examples.

From the theological point of view, energy is spirit. The Chinese term synonymous with energy flow or life force is chi. The Hindus refer to energy as prana or breath of life. From the scientific point of view, energy is an electromagnetic field and the
foundational form for air/gas, liquid and matter. From the psychological viewpoint, energy is thought form. The work of energy psychology draws from all of these traditions to transform thought form into healing.

The characteristic of energy is that it moves. When we think about energy we think about movement, force, vitality. Energy is mostly invisible. Most people cannot see energy, which makes many skeptical about what energy is and how it can influence their lives. People are naturally more likely to trust what they can see, but what we usually can see is the effect of energy rather than energy itself. For example, if you stand on a bridge and drop a rock into the water, you would see it fall, splash, and make ripples in the water. What you don’t see is the force of gravity, which is a form of energy, bringing the rock down and then spreading out into ripples. The most scientific evidence of energy is heat. Pause for a moment and hold your hands together about _ or _ inch apart. Move them slightly away and towards each other. Notice that you begin to feel a buildup of warmth between them and an invisible pressure pushing them apart. This is energy; and evidence of your own energy field.

Chinese Medicine discovered that they could move energy/chi, by administering needles or pressure to specific points on the body, balance the energy and facilitate healing of illness. In energy psychology, we use the pressure points or meridian points from Chinese medicine and the energy centers, or charkas from the Hindu tradition to balance the energy of memories, thoughts and emotions. Your body and your energy field work together to protect you and keep you emotionally, physically and spiritually healthy. Your body and energy field can remember when it was injured, lost, stuck, hurt, traumatized. The body is a huge living biological computer, with a huge memory bank of thoughts, experiences, and emotions that are stored in the cellular tissues of the body. Bring up an old memory of a particular time when you felt embarrassed or humiliated or a time when you remember feeling a lot of grief and pain. As soon as that memory is brought forward, your body will react with the same, or nearly the same, physical feelings it experienced during the event. Your stomach may feel queasy or upset, your heart may feel heavy and a feeling of crying may appear, as if you were still at the same space in time as when the even happened. It is your reminder that even though we may not notice, on a daily basis, that we are carrying around a lot of old “body memory” that may be contributing to our ill health or negative emotions, we almost always are and may need to do some specific work to help our bodies shed itself of that baggage. The good news is, that the energy field can also remember when there was healing and wellness. The body has an innate intelligence that knows exactly what it needs to heal itself. If we can tap into that body memory, we have the potential for even greater and more permanent healing.

Energetic Healing was born from energy psychology. Energetic Healing is a very practical method for accessing the body’s wisdom, unlocking the body’s hidden messages and obtaining insightful answers to problems you may have been carrying around with you your entire life. In Energetic Healing, the physical body is the central vehicle for much of the work. It includes using the arms for manual muscle testing as well as holding or tapping on the various acupoints or charkas to effect change at multiple levels.

In Energetic Healing, the method for diagnosing what you body wants to prioritize for healing, is to use manual muscle testing in combination with holding intentional thought. The client holds in their mind and body a particular set of goals or intentions that they specifically want to work on and heal. The clinician then asks questions regarding which issue is in the client’s highest and best interest to begin healing work on. While asking these questions, the clinician use manual muscle testing to ascertain positive or negative answers to those questions. Once the goal/intention is established, work begins on ascertaining what is keeping the client from achieving that goal, what emotions, conflicts or limiting belief systems may be getting in the way of healing and whether or not there is an energetic origin or root cause to the problem. Energetic Origins may be events or experiences that the client has encountered earlier in this current life. This could include messages or feelings they picked up on while still in utero. They may also include events that have happened previous to this lifetime. These experiences (often times, but not always, traumatic events) can develop into symptoms that emerge as energetic patterns that the individual holds onto subconsciously and frequently permeates through time (even lifetimes).

By assessing those energetic origins and bringing them into current conscious thought, the held energy (or emotional baggage) can then be released for good, thereby freeing up the body to heal itself more rapidly. The releasing protocols vary and are determined via manual muscle testing. They can include having the client tap on certain meridian points or hold a charka point while holding the intention for that energy to be released. Other interventions might include the use of vibrational sound such as a bell, chimes, a singing bowl to release held energy. The use of crystals or smudge for clearing negative energies may also be used.

Energetic Healing can help you to understand the old or subconscious beliefs associated with an individual’s current conflicts. Energetic Healing can help discover, heal and release the cellular memories and negative patterns that contribute to unhealthy behaviors, emotions and illness. Energetic Healing explores past or other life memories that are linked energetically to present life difficulties, and can help to heal unresolved early memories and experiences that often create faulty belief systems, distorted self-image and repetitive behaviors that persist simply to keep the problem state in place.

Shamanic Healing

Shamanism is a system of healing based on spiritual practices that originated in tribal cultures. The shaman is a healer who acquires knowledge, wisdom, and spiritual power from personal helping spirits whom the shaman encounters on journeys into other realities that are normally invisible and undetectable to people whose conscious awareness is usually focused on the ordinary reality of daily life. The Shamanic practitioner is able to see and enter realms intentionally that most people encounter only in dreams and myth, and from these realms, the Shamanic practitioner brings back vital information for the healing of individuals, communities and the Earth itself. Shamanic healing may involve extraction of harmful intrusion that cause sickness or bad luck, soul retrieval to bring back lost parts of one’s soul, power animal retrieval to bring back helping spirits to aid the person in daily life and divination work to retrieve answers to questions a person may need spiritual help with.

I studied under a shaman for over 5 years learning about and healing wounds to the soul of an individual. In modern times, when a person feels as if they have left their body because they are experiencing pain that feels too scary or too intense to handle, we call that dissociation. In shamanic cultures they refer to that as Soul Loss. Soul Loss can happen to anyone at anytime during their lifetime. It doesn’t have to be classical traumas such as abuse, neglect, addiction, etc. A person can experience soul loss from anything from teasing, shame, isolation, rejection, poor self image, etc. Working together to explore those past trauma’s, the lasting negative story or belief we created from that trauma and the behaviors that are driven by those limiting beliefs and healing once and for all from them is the work of shamanic healing that I practice. Getting those lost soul parts back is essential to long lasting healing.

Healing the body’s energy centers

In addition to energy that flows around your body, there are energy systems that flow through your body. These seven basic energy systems are arranged up and down the center of our bodies and are intimately connected with specific parts of the endocrine system. Each chakra has a different energy frequency and are associated with the colors of those frequencies. Additionally each chakra also represents a particular spiritual or life lesson. If our chakras or energy centers are blocked, we lose our connection to the universal life force and we eventually succumb to disease and death. When our chakras are blocked, we also have distorted perceptions of life, and our emotional and intellectual health suffers. In order to maintain optimal physical, emotional and spiritual health, these energy centers must be open and able to receive and return energy.

Here are the chakras, their color and location in the body, the endocrine glands and body organs associated with each and the life lesson or issues they represent:

Base or Root chakra:  Located at the base of the spine. Associated with the adrenal glands, kidneys, bladder, rectum, spine, legs, feet and hips. Lessons are related to the material world, basic security needs, and a sense of belonging. Imbalances may result in a person feeling ungrounded or not present, limited views of self, excessive concern for material stability, status, prestige and power, depression, immune-related disorders, constipation, sciatica, hemorrhoids, varicose veins, obesity.

Sacral chakra: Located in the lower abdomen below the belly button. Associated with the ovaries/testes (reproductive hormones), the uterus, large intestine, and prostate. Lessons are related to sexuality, relationships, dependency/independence and nurturing. Imbalances may result in the inability to play or have a healthy sexual relationship, low self-esteem, fear of losing control or being controlled, ob/gyn problems, urinary problems, sexual potency.

Solar plexus chakra: Located over the stomach. Associated with the pancreas (insulin), liver, spleen, stomach, small intestine, digestive system. Lessons are related to personal power, ego, storing of emotion, desires, and self-esteem. Imbalance may result in a sense of powerlessness, not knowing who you are, feeling lost, low self-esteem, depression, difficulty in accepting, inability to adapt, ulcers, diabetes, eating disorders, problems with digestive system.

Heart chakra: Located in the center of the chest. Associated with the thymus grand, heart, lungs and breasts. Lessons are about forgiveness, compassion and unconditional love. Imbalances may result in sudden burst of emotion, insecurity, nervousness, anxiety, anger, impatience, fanaticism, an overly critical nature, withdrawn, or the inability to have close relationships, asthma, blood pressure, heart and lung disease, and breast cancer. Having too large of a heart chakra can also be detrimental and out of balance as the person may over-identify with other people’s pain and suffering.

Throat chakra (blue): Located at the throat. Associate with the thyroid, lungs, throat, and intestines. Lessons are about will, logic, self-expression, and creativity, addiction, judgment, criticism and decision-making. Imbalance may result in being unable to speak up or unable to shut up, sore throat, swollen glands, colds, thyroid problems, gum problems, mouth ulcers, and scoliosis.

Third eye chakra: Located at the forehead between the eyebrows. Associated with pituitary gland, eyes, ears, lower head, nervous system, and sinuses. Lessons are about intuition, wisdom, insight, self-evaluation and self-responsibility. Imbalances may result in doubt, lack of clarity, indecision, confusion, feelings of inadequacy, inability to trust instinct, headaches, nightmares, defects of vision, seizures, learning disabilities, blindness, deafness, neurological problems, brain tumors, stroke.

Crown chakra: Located at the top of the head. Associated with the pineal gland (melatonin) and the brain. Lessons are about spirituality, purpose, and global consciousness. Imbalances may result in a sense of alienation, fears of spiritual abandonment, loss of identity and loss of connection with life and people around us, mystical depression, chronic exhaustion not linked to physical disorder, extreme sensitivity to light, sound or other factors.

From an energetic perspective, health problems and loss of well-being are directly related to interferences or blocks in the energy field. Restoring the integrity of the energy body, thereby restoring the basic foundation of our health and well-being, brings about healing.

Energy Therapy techniques for weight loss

Energy medicine is the perfect tool to use with achieving weight loss. It doesn’t require medications, diet pills, surgery or expensive diets. As millions of dieters have discovered all too well, if the psychological reasons for overeating are not addressed, no diet in the world will keep the weight off. Using energetic healing, and specifically EFT, to address weight loss, one can reduce food cravings that seem irresistible, can help manage daily stress that leads to comfort eating, can loosen unconscious irrational beliefs about food, can eliminate negative or distorted body images that reinforce weight problems, can neutralize issues from the past that lead to overeating or hanging on to weight for emotional self-protection, and can help clients heal conflicts in their life that interfere with achieving their goals.

Guided Visualization: Guided visualization is a tool that can be used to aid in helping a person open up and allow for cognitive communication between the conscious and subconscious mind. Using guided visualization, a person is able to recall scenes, events or memories, often not consciously apparent. The person is able to gather information from deep in the subconscious mind using all five senses that can then be used for self-healing. Once the subconscious material is identified and brought in consciousness, healing of that material can happen.