Dear Soul Arcanum:
I am curious about energy healing. I want to try it by getting a session with an energy healer, but I have no idea what to look for or what to expect. Can you offer some background on the whole energy healing topic?
– P.
Dear P.:
First, I encourage you to explore everything you feel drawn to, for that is your inner being guiding you. At the same time, don’t go looking for problems. If you are healthy and happy but still feel drawn to energy healing, it’s probably more because you’d make a good healer than because you need healing yourself.
For those who are unfamiliar, energy healing is the use of spiritual energy to affect the energy field surrounding and interpenetrating the body, from which all experiences (physical, emotional, mental and spiritual) arise. This approach may be called energy healing, healing touch, therapeutic touch, Reiki, etc. They’re all basically the same thing.
While most Westerners are familiar with stories of Jesus’ miraculous healing powers, energy healing can be traced back thousands of years before the Bible. The basic concept of energy as the foundation of life can be found in most cultures around the world throughout history. In ancient India, life force energy was called prana; in ancient China, it was called Chi. Even modern science is recognizing that mental observation affects the object being observed, which validates the premise of mind/body medicine central to theories of energy healing.
If you’ve never experienced energy healing, I can see why you might be a bit uncertain, for it really is vastly different from a visit to a conventional doctor’s office. With energy healing, usually someone who is suffering some kind of issue (which could be a physical ailment, but could also be an emotional, psychological, or even spiritual problem) will go to see a healer, who may or may not dialogue with them about the problem. It doesn’t matter really, for the healer is not going to diagnose or even “cure” it; she will just connect with pure positive energy and then channel that “healing” energy to the one in need.
In most cases, patients will sit or lie down and relax while the healer passes her hands through the energy field surrounding their body. Some healers do a lot of tuning in to try to find hot spots and cold spots or figure out what is wrong. I do none of that, because I don’t believe in focusing on problems. Instead, I just connect with Divine energy, let it flow, and radiate faith that all is well.
Spirit always shows me an image of the person I’m “healing” at a time when they experienced perfect well-being on every level. For many people, this is when they were a child. In any case, I just bask in that feeling and image of perfect well-being, and I love the person before me in all their divine beauty. The goal here is to help them reconnect with a feeling of great well-being that they have known before; the best they have ever felt. I move through their aura as I do this, but that is usually mainly for their benefit. In truth, we could just sit together (or at a distance) and bask in that wonderful light and get the same results.
So what kind of results are we talking about? As you can imagine, energy healing has been studied in depth, and many very positive results confirmed. Those who receive healing touch have been shown to heal from wounds faster, recover from illnesses faster, and even experience “miracle cures.”
There is more research available on the Internet than you could possibly ever wade through. There are also many wonderful books on energy healing available. There are too many to even begin a list here, but one classic I always recommend is Hands of Light by Barbara Brennan, a pioneer in the field of energy healing who also happens to be a former NASA research scientist.
I have also personally heard from people who have enjoyed spontaneous remission of cancer as a result of energy healing work, and heard from healers who have witnessed similar miracles. One story in particular I’ll never forget.
Some friends of mine were new to healing work when they happened to meet a woman pacing a hospital corridor one evening. (They were there for an ailing elderly relative, and this woman was there because her husband was scheduled to have a large brain tumor removed the next morning).
They got to talking to her about all they had learned about healing, and she became very excited and hopeful, for her husband’s prognosis was dire. She asked them if they would talk to him, and of course they agreed. They explained to him about his power to heal himself with his own mind by simply visualizing perfect health. He also got very excited, as he was desperate for a cure, and thus far, his doctors hadn’t given him much hope.
The next morning they took him for a CAT scan and x-rays to finalize the details of the surgery, and to the great surprise of everyone in the room, found the tumor had entirely disappeared. The man explained that he had lain awake all night long, visualizing the tumor shrinking, and then visualizing his brain perfectly healthy. The doctors weren’t too open to his theory about what had happened, but they didn’t have a better explanation for how a tumor had literally disappeared overnight. He didn’t care what they thought of course – he was too busy jumping for joy.
While amazing miracles like this aren’t commonplace, they do happen EVERY DAY. It’s relatively easy to heal things like headaches and muscle tension, and easier yet to heal non-physical issues like emotional upsets. The less entrenched in the physical dimension an issue is, the easier it is to affect it with energy. I heal my kids and myself spontaneously all the time by simply aligning with perfect well-being and letting that energy flow.
Perhaps the best introduction to energy healing can be found at any Spiritualist church service. Not only will it be free, but it will be very straightforward and sincere. In my experience, one doesn’t need fancy secret symbols or crystals or any other elaborate mumbo jumbo to align with healing. As all healing is ultimately self-healing, all one really needs is someone who is sincere in her desire to connect with greater well-being. If you add a healer who can align with a very high vibration and just let that energy flow with faith, miracles can happen!
– Soul Arcanum
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