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.
