Energy healing sessions can stir things up, physically, emotionally and psycho-spiritually, in the person receiving them. Sometimes, this is apparent immediately when your partner has a strong reaction. Other times, you need time for a session to reveal its nature. There is a subtle or not-so-subtle "trajectory of effects" in the aftermath of any treatment and it pays to learn how to track them and become conversant with the kinds of things that can come up. This is important for you as a practitioner and for your client.
With this in mind, I have put together a few ideas on how to get the most out of an energy healing session by paying attention to what happens immediately afterward.
In my healing practice, I work predominately hands-on. While I think of myself as "non-modality-bound," that's just my own personal conceit. I blend strategies from a number of therapies and disciplines. What they all have in common is that they all work at the "physical/etheric interface." That is, I use touch in such a way that I can simultaneously put my attention on both the structure of my partner's body and the energy moving through it. With a little practice, intentionally and consciously touching at the cusp of structure and energy, can apply to all your touchwork and transform it into something bigger than touching only with your awareness on tissue.
I have recognized a number of advantages with working this way. For starters, it invites an integration of your partner's body and energy field. This interface of structure and energy seems to be where the action is when it comes to a person's current process of healing and growth.
Cultivating touch at the cusp of structure and energy allows you, in a non-forcing way, to get a "physical handle" on bigger, more multi-dimensional processes. It seems to address physical and intra-psychic processes at a place where these intersect. This intersection of structure and energy is a place where, as in the "Hobbit Walking Song"** in The Lord of the Rings, "many paths and errands meet." Here are some of those meetings:
Physical Body and Energy Field;
Body and Mind;
Conscious and Subconscious;
Memory and Consciousness;
Your inner and outer world.
Working this way, I notice that a lot comes up in people who come for treatments, whether or not they are aware of it at the time. What comes up might well relate to the specific issue they have come with, of course. Quite often, though, it relates also to the larger process at work within them, processes that aren't just physical or just emotional, for example, but processes involving how these different aspects interact.
As I delved more into deliberately touching at the cusp of structure and energy, I began to look around for ways to work with the kinds of processes that came up in those sessions, and learn from them. I consulted what was available to me in therapeutic forms I was familiar with, such as Craniosacral Therapy, Zero Balancing, classical homeopathy and acupuncture, as well as the energy healing I have pieced together, based on my study with Bob Moore. All of them shed some light on what happens in work at the interface of bodily structure and energy movement, to see how they handle this question.
The most elegant distillation of these ideas—this amounts to a list of "lenses" through which to look at what happens in a session—came from German homeopath Jürgen Becker. Here is my adaptation of Jürgen's list:
Dreams can be very accessible. Freud called dreams the “royal road to the subconscious” and in the period immediately following an energy healing session they can suddenly be quite active, vivid and peculiarly instructive about your process. Whether you are aware of them or not, dreams are always part of the interplay between your conscious and non-conscious worlds, and in the aftermath of treatments, it’s not uncommon for this important function of dreams to be stepped up. Keeping a dream journal is an excellent way to help this side of your life become more conscious;
Similarly, long forgotten memories can come into the foreground. Energywork affects the etheric storehouse of the subconscious. Energywork that integrates your physical body with your energy field will bring forward held memories. Include a section of your journal for this;
Physical body reorganization: Acute and chronic conditions are likely to shift: for example, a pain might come suddenly and then leave; a sleep pattern might change;
Emotional release is not uncommon during this period, as excess build-ups of energy discharge from your body and psyche;
You might suddenly connect some previously unconnected dots in the form of insights and outer events, in the form of synchronicities, might trigger some significant inner process.
To which I add,
7. "A-ha's" insights and inspirations. Energy healing increases the communication between the various dimensions of your make up. This extends to your intuition and your ability to receive guidance. A healing session may be a time when input from higher dimensions connects with your awareness in all the various ways those dimensions speak to us, from symbols and images to trains of thought, streams of consciousness and even revelations.
Getting the Most Out of a Session
In sessions with clients, my usual modus operandi is to complete my hands-on work and invite my partner to stay on the table and simply “simmer,” relax and feel what is moving within her. I leave the room for a few minutes, wash my hands, check my schedule, anything to give my partner some space and a bit of time alone. This is part of the session. I frequently come back to find that her process has taken a step in my absence in the form of insights, memories, tears and reflections. It is often in this short interlude that the arc of the treatment comes full circle.
I alert my partner to the fact that she will be in a slightly altered state for a while after the treatment and that this is perfectly normal when energetic techniques have been applied. In addition, I often give my partner a bit of homework for the time immediately following an energy treatment as a way for her to integrate her experience and attend to the heightened energetic and psycho-spiritual activity. In my experience, this window is particularly open for about thirty-six hours, a day and a half. I call my partner's attention to the above list of areas in which they might be especially active after a treatment. It helps them get the most out of the treatment.
In Conclusion
With experience, I believe you will come to see that your involvement with energywork delivers a healthier, more grounded, centered, expanded and spiritually aligned person to the world. Sending your partner out the door in a bit better shape to face her personal challenges contributes positively to her family, society and the world. The same applies to each of us in our personal practice. The steps we take raise our collective consciousness and makes us more ready to step more fully into our deepest calling in a place where "many paths and errands meet." It is no small thing.
**The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.
—J.R.R. Tolkien