Q. Dear Donna: Like you, I have been sensitive all my life to subtle energies. This has been a great gift because it makes my life so much richer, but it has also been a curse because I am vulnerable to all kinds of influences that other people hardly notice. I have taken great inspiration from your personal story. I’ve also both overcome serious illness and found that I have a bit of a healing touch. I am, in fact, considering pursuing energy healing as a career. I’ve had some real successes applying the techniques with friends and family, but sometimes I am simply overwhelmed by another person’s energies and illnesses, particularly when I am attempting to help them using energy techniques. What do you do to protect yourself?

A. Early on in my practice of energy medicine, way back in the 70s, I tried hard to do what I was taught as the "correct" ways of protecting myself. Most popular was to put a white light around yourself. These techniques all separated the healer from the client and induced fear about what could happen. I found, however, that most all of the tools and techniques taught to me got in my way and interfered with the really joyful experience of feeling someone’s energy.

I organically figured out what worked best for me. If I "took on" negative energy, I learned how to imagine I had a faucet at the bottom of my spinal column, and I would rush it out into the ground. I would turn the faucet on and release it. I found that doing "Separating Heaven from Earth" before and in-between clients helped to move out anything that I had taken into my body. The "Hook-up" became invaluable because the hook-up has more than one benefit. Yes, it keeps central meridian zipped up, which is very important in not having the person’s energies spiral into your own chakras, but it also activates the strange flows which know full well how to dance with someone else’s energies. So, what my friend Jean Houston calls "leaky boundaries," can be a positive thing. Energy exchanges can be highly creative interchanges.

I think there is way too much fear about picking up someone else’s energy, and the fear itself more readily allows for the transmission of negative energies into your body and creates an atmosphere that prevents them from easily moving through.

One exercise that proves uniquely beneficial is the Celtic weave. Weaving your own field tightly around you allows the boundaries between you and another to be more lax. The aura becomes a powerful bridge of giving and receiving, but at the same time you are continually pulsing back to yourself – moving into the other person’s field and moving out, in rhythm.

Of course some people are very sensitive. I am actually one of them. There is no substitute for having enough rest, having the proper diet, and making sure that your own energies are balanced, using a daily energy routine, etc. Integrity insists that if you don’t feel good, you don’t do the work. That is when you are most vulnerable as well as least competent. Healer, heal thyself.

I found that at the beginning and the end of every session, without planning to, I would take a deep breath that would make me very conscious of my own self and my own space. It simply made me feel strong. And I was. But that same breath, taken at the end of a session, was also information for me that the session was over, it was through. My body could go off duty.