Heal Yourself with Energy Work
Two practitioners share energy healing practices to help improve health and wellbeing.
Everything is energy — including the human body.
In fact, our bodies produce electrical energy which is measurable. Our energy field is the sum total of that.
We’ve been studying the human body’s energy centers for thousands of years — a knowledge that is applied to popular Eastern-born treatments such as acupuncture and reflexology.
So when we talk about “energy work” and “energy healing” — as woo-woo as it sounds to skeptics — we are referring to holistic healing practices that are based on scientific principles.
Energy work is founded on the basis that in our bodies, everything is connected. The mind, body, and soul connection is seen as a continuum.
We asked two energy practitioners to contribute to this piece to find out more about energy healing:
- Ruth Best is a healer. She uses a combination of shamanic healing, Reiki, Theta Healing, herbal tinctures, and Mayan Light Language, depending on the clients’ particular needs.
- Abigail Pankhurst is a massage therapist and level specializing in a variety of different holistic massage treatments including Thai yoga massage and Kobido. She has a background in child psychology and counseling. She is a level 1 and 2 attuned Reiki practitioner.
What is Energy Healing and how Does it Help?
Energy work entails using specific processes and actions to shift our own energy field and restore balance. It works on the mind, body, and soul connection.
So let’s say you are feeling stressed, tired, or anxious. Energetically, you are “out of alignment”.
According to energy work practitioners, when the flow of energy between our chakras is blocked or misaligned, it can show up as physical or emotional ailments in our bodies.
An energy healing session’s goal is to restore the energy flow in your body — making you feel less stressed and improving your overall wellbeing.
As Ruth Best explains: “It’s a deeply relaxing treatment where the practitioner channels healing energy to the recipient.
It can do one or all of the following: give the recipient a sense of wellbeing, relieve pain, stress, and anxiety, release emotional or subconscious blockages, and realign subtle energy bodies, as well as accelerate healing. The practitioner is often ‘digesting’ emotions that the client is unable to process.”
In the short term, you’ll find a feeling of wellness and relaxation. In the long term, the effects go even deeper. Since energy healing affects our energetic body, it also impacts the energies we come into contact with in our day-to-day life. We might start reacting differently to creating situations — from food and substances to environments and people.
What types of energy healing are there?
Often rooted in ancient tradition but with a contemporary twist, energy healing comes in many shapes and forms. Techniques vary.
Below is an overview of some popular types of energy work, some of which we’ll also be covering in this introductory piece:
- Theta Healing: It identifies the causes of blockages to the natural functioning of the person, like belief systems, repressed emotions, fears, and traumas. The healing connects the receiver to the highest source to release the subconscious core beliefs and blocks on all four levels — core, genetic, past life, and soul.
- Reiki: Based on the theory of chakras, the seven centers of spiritual energy in our body, which run along the length of the spine, from the pelvic floor to the crown of the head. The practitioner uses the universal life force energy to heal blockages in the receiver by placing their hands on or above different chakras in need of attention.
- Massage: That’s right — all forms of massage can be considered energy work, which helps to release tension in the muscles and improve relaxation.
- Reflexology and cranial sacral therapies: By stimulating pressure points on the feet, hands, and ears, they work with the peripheral and central nervous system to remove blockages and aid communication in our electrical circuitry.
- Acupuncture: It uses small needles to stimulate the flow of energy in the body.
- Holistic Kinesiology: Kinetics is the study of movement, and ‘kinesiology’ was originally used as a term to describe the study of movement dynamics of the human body. Encompassing both Western and traditional medicine, in holistic kinesiology, virtually every area of complementary medicine is used, including acupressure, nutrition, chiropractic, blood and lymph reflexes, various forms of counseling, homeopathy, traditional Tibetan and Indian medicine, reflexology, and aromatherapy. What is unique to kinesiology is the use of manual muscle-monitoring feedback to provide the understanding and an appropriate solution to the client’s issue.
How do we know it’s working?
A key thing to note is that being open to receiving healing is necessary for any of these energy practices to be effective.
We must willing to receive, to not interfere, or block the flow of energy. Since our thoughts create our reality, if we have an open mind instead of resisting the healing, we will benefit from each session more.
Take Abigail Pankhurst. She is a massage therapist and Reiki practitioner who uses it as a daily self-care tool, as well as using this treatment on her clients.
However, she was initially skeptical about reiki’s efficacy until experiencing the transformational effects in her own body.
She shares:
I had stereotyped Reiki as a ‘fashionable’ treatment and would scoff at it calling ‘Reiki Schmeiki’. I never realized what a powerful tool Reiki would become in my day to day life.
When I had my first attunement (the initiation to reiki. There are three attunements in Reiki — from level one to three, ndr.) with my Reiki Tutor, I instantly felt something start to shift significantly within me. After that, I have never felt so connected with my surroundings and the universe! The next day I was on a “super-high” and felt a lot of energy rushing through me as if my body had purged what no longer served me. I felt lighter.
My intuition has grown also stronger with Reiki. I’ve also found it easier to cut out addictions that impacted me negatively, like alcohol and lowering my dose of coffee intake.”
Ruth Best also found her way to energy healing via Reiki. But her first experience was wildly different from Abigail’s.
She said:
I went to a circle and the practitioner laid hands on my head for 5 minutes. I left feeling deeply calm and peaceful. However the next day, I had such a release of emotion and rage! It was incredible that such a small amount of touch could create such a deep shift. I knew that was something I needed to explore more.
Now a fully-fledged energy healer, she credits energy healing for bringing a deep sense of peace to her and her clients’ lives. She explains:
“An old friend told me something recently that really resonated with me: ‘You’re like the same person but deeply calm. Things don’t bother you as much.’ I like this, because energy healing doesn’t take away the obstacles in your life, it just means that you can navigate them with much more ease and grace. Perhaps not even seeing them as obstacles anymore, but as learning opportunities.”
How do we know which practice is right for us?
Both Abigail and Ruth’s curiosity led them to try energy healing. Through experimentation, they found what worked best for them.
More often than not, I find that it’s the case with most people — each one might be more inclined to try one treatment over the other through an innate, intuitive knowing.
Your humble narrator started her energy healing journey with Reiki too, before dabbling in other forms of that including Kundalini Yoga, Theta Healing, Kinesiology, and Ancestral Clearing.
We all have different energetic make-up, so if you’re curious, it might be worth trying different forms of energy healing and see which one sticks.
In my own experience, a personal recommendation by a trusted person is the best way to find an effective practitioner in these fields that can assist you on your healing journey.
Energy work is not an overnight process, so leave the expectation that it’s a quick fix at the door.
With dedication and constancy, you will feel a shift in your life and in your wellbeing.
However, when embarking in this work, one must be ready to get uncomfortable too.
While the effects of an energy session can be relaxing, energy healing can stir up a lot of stuff up. You might be faced with unpleasant emotions and old traumas coming to the surface.
Things come up so that they can be processed, worked through, and released. This is an entirely normal part of the process as the energy begins to shift.
In the long run, don’t be surprised if you find yourself cutting ties with environments or people that no longer “gel” with you. Removing unhealthy attachments from your life is also part of the healing process.
This article is the first article in our series on holistic healing.
Stay tuned for upcoming content, including interviews with Abigail and Ruth.
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