Incorporating Elemental Energies Into Your Energy Healing

Looking at how adding elemental energies into your energy work in general and energy healing specifically gives you more options and improves your levels of success.

Transcript

Incorporating Elemental Energies Into Your Energy Healing

One of the things experienced energy healers kvetch about is the way energy is taught to the general public. Whether it's the concept of getting yourself out of the way and just letting your hands do the work, inviting angels to use your hands, letting your/their guides direct the work, or any other of dozens of methods, the message reduces down to "point and shoot". You are the conduit, but the work of how to use the energy, why, how much and so on is left to someone or something other.

This suggests as long as you can generate more life force energy than you need to run your own body, and you can release it out of you, usually through your hands, then the energy is healing and will help whatever situation is going on with the one needing healing. So, all you have to do is point the energy in the right direction and things will improve if not heal completely.

The reality of the situation occurs to most people relatively quickly. Sometimes there's no measurable change for the client. Other times there's a change, but it doesn't last long. Or there might be a change, but something else becomes exacerbated. Sometimes the client becomes habituated to the energy work and starts a cycle of regular treatments which are comforting but not making any progress. In the worst case, things get worse.

It's not unusual for general practice healers to see any or all of this as their own fault. They review the process to see if they have the necessary skills, if they did something wrong, if something in the moment was off, if something interfered and so on. Rarely do they look towards the client and/or the injury/illness to try and further diagnose the problem. Situations like this can cause the healer, especially if they are just starting out, to have a crisis of faith about what they are doing and whether or not they are meant to do it.

The Point and Shoot perspective of energy work sets it apart from most of the other holistic healing traditions, such as Ayurveda and Chinese Medicine, let alone the medical professions more broadly. If you're training to be a phlebotomist and you're having difficulty hitting a vein, you don't automatically question whether or not you're cut out to be on this path, you try to problem solve the issue. Are you using enough pressure to pump up the veins? Has the patient hydrated enough? Are you using the right size needle? Is there some technique you're unaware of which might make this more successful? 

Working through these options is expected for any and all medical students and student healers as well as something which is incorporated into a regular healing practice. Because one size does not fit all, circumstances matter, and there's always something you may have missed or can learn in any given situation.

This subject comes up for me when students and clients ask me about what to study or how to improve their energy healing skills. The first thing I talk to them about is the Penicillin example. It's an amazing medicine which has saved millions of lives since being discovered and produced in its current form. Most of us have taken it at one time or another and so have maintained our health. However, it's not good for a headache nor a replacement for aspirin. 

Using the right tool or technique for the right situation is key to success as a healer. 

Another thing I point out is Reiki, as it is traditionally taught, if one of the best foundations I've found for energy work. It's readily available pretty much everywhere, anyone can do it, it's great for learning how energy runs through your own body and how you produce it and introduces you to working within another person's energy field. Personally, I recommend choosing a training which isn't a few hours workshop on a weekend since energy work is a skill and needs practice with oversight and feedback from the instructor. Also, it's good to get into a Reiki circle so you have an entire roster of willing victims...ahem...clients to practice on.

However, it's important to note Reiki, as it's taught to the general public, is not a full healing system. It's a form of healing which has had aspects removed in order to make it safe for anyone to use. 

Energy is information, just like light is both a particle and a wave, and having your hands or body in someone else's energy field means you're getting a tremendous amount of information in every millisecond. The problem with this is most people do not have the skills, training, or natural aptitude to interpret this information or even receive it clearly. Being able to receive clear message, understand it's meaning in context, how it's relevant to the healing process (if it is at all, which isn't necessarily the case) and then deciding what to do with it are more advanced skills which take additional training and longer than one weekend to be proficient at. Which is why they aren't taught to the general public, but doesn't mean they aren't necessary for a professional healer. 

What I recommend for those who want to flesh out the information side of their healing practice is to delve into dream interpretation, human anatomy, Qi as described in detail via Chinese Medicine, and nervous system work like Craniosacral therapy.

Elemental Energy Work

Another kvetch of experienced energy workers is spiritual community is focused on energy as being like electricity. They look for places where the circuits are blocked, and things need to get rewired or the breaker is flipped. Once they correct this the lights come back on, and things flow again. Or the batteries need to get recharged like a cell phone on the last 5%. Or the problem just needs a jump start like a car battery. Put the cables on the terminal, wait for a bit, then turn the key.

The problem isn't that these analogies are wrong. They aren't. But they over generalize what energy work is while narrowly focusing what healing energy is capable of doing.

Almost all energy work taught to general public today is utilizing life force energy or fire. The stuff which gets us up in the morning, helps us get through our day, gives us hope things will get better, heals our wounds, and makes us excited for what's to come. It is great for enhancing our natural healing ability, shifting our mood, giving us the additional resources we need to push illness out of our bodies and much more.

However, it's not good for dealing with swelling, which is too much fire in the affected area. Or for fevers, for the same reason. It's also not good for times like the immediate aftermath of a traumatic event. These are times when we're adrenalized (liquid fire) and our nervous system is firing on more than all cylinders to keep us safe. Adding more fire energy at this time will either cause overwhelm and possible damage or get a defensive response because we're adding to the problem rather than subtracting.

Life force energy, fire, is one type of energy used by and helpful to humans and animals but there are many more.

Air

Reiki and other energy modalities which use symbols are utilizing air energy. Words, incantations, written symbols and so on are formed by air. Like blowing on an ember, they can fire us up, but they aren't adding fire in, just encouraging it to become more robust.

Sound healing done in person, where the instruments are vibrating the client, are also using air energy. Like wind, sound moves things out of old or even stagnant patterns, vibrates things into new forms, shuffles things around, and lightens things up. Think of this a bit like making a meringue or aerating the soil so plants grow more robustly. Adding air allows things to more easily shift into new forms.

Air energy can also be applied directly to the client via the hands, like life force. For the healer, this requires a subtle shift in how they are generating energy. Rather than tuning into themselves, drawing down any universal energies, or asking for energies to come in, they access the air energies flowing within them. This will naturally feel lighter and cooler than general Reiki energy and may be more noticeable in the fingers than the palms of the hands. It can help to access a feeling of flying like a bird and feeling the air under your wings and through your feathers. Some use actual feathers or a physical bird wing as a fan to stimulate this shift in the energy they will be producing.

Once you have this running through you, it can be used in the same manner as normal Reiki.

Earth

Earth energy is something healers utilize most often for grounding a client once a session is done. Often they don't know they are doing it, but instead focus on touching the client's feet and even putting pressure on the tops of their feet in order to ground them back into their bodies and the now of the situation. However, if they were to check in with what their hands and/or body are producing in the moment, they would feel the energy had shifted to an earth form.

Earth energy is what healers are using when they utilize herbs, oils, tinctures, essential oils, aromatherapy and even incense. So too with river rocks, petrified wood, and other stones which are used for grounding. The radiant earth energies of these infuse whatever else is happening in the session to activate our ability to manifest here, physically, in a healthy form.

Earth energy can be run through the hands intentionally for more than grounding. Gentle pressure put on the body, like from a weighted blanket, soothes the nervous system allowing it to stop generating biochemicals which tighten muscles, disturb digestion, bring on anxiety, foster insomnia and much more. Using earth energy allows the healer to put this calming, weighted, mellowing energy directly into the client's energy system.

Water

Water energy is the one form most general practice healers avoid instinctively and yet it is one of the easiest to produce. Because most of our emotions are directly connected to water, using water requires us to be in alignment emotionally and to hold space for the emotions of others. This is something our culture actively seeks to prevent us from doing and which we therefore we can end up incompetent at.

However, water energy does so much more than trigger feelings. It is wonderful for fevers, swelling, burns, and stiff joints. It's amazing for arthritis and issues around lymph. If a client needs to have stagnant energy moved or flushed out, like a lymph drain, then water energy will do the trick. Water flushes out what no longer serves, helps everything to flow easily and with enough pressure to keep things moving, and finds ways to connect bits of us which have been knocked loose over time. It can also fill in gaps so we can see the whole picture of what is going on and why. Water levels things, rehydrates them, and allows us to float rather than having to trudge through a situation.

When working with water energy it can help to pour some over your hands to get things started. Having a bowl of water in the room can not only support you in changing your energy to that element but also cleanse the room as water attracts and cleans negative energy out of spaces. Running water over your hands, whether from the tap or water bottle, will do the trick as well and allow you to connect into your client's water energy.

No matter what modality of energy work you practice, once you have the foundational skills well established it's helpful to begin adding things such as the various elements and the modes in which they are most readily applied. This not only improves the healing work you can provide, but gives you tools with which to problem solve any given injury/illness rather than continually looking to problem solve your abilities.