Energy work such as Reiki, Healing Touch or Cranio-Sacral isn’t something that needs to stay on the massage table.

Working with energy and using it for healing can easily become an everyday activity if we just let it.

All that this opportunity to bring energy healing tricks into our daily lives asks of us is to open our hearts and minds to see new ways to relate to ourselves and the world around us.

Below are stories from two professional energy workers and elephant journal writers about how they came to be involved in energy healing, the shift in perspective it has brought to their lives, and some suggestions for how anyone can incorporate this kind of healing into their daily lives.

Ruth:

I was 20 years old when I had my first experience with any type of energy healing work. I was heading out for a month-long kayaking trip in Alaska and I had this throbbing pain in my wrists that I wanted gone before I left. So I went to see a Cranio-Sacral practitioner I had heard great things about and in three sessions the pain was gone.

Forever.

I never thought I would do anything like that.

At 28 years old, I went to see a popular local Osteopath who energetically separated me from my parents and told me that life was easy—which had never even crossed my mind before.

This experience brought an incredible amount of bliss into my life.

But I never thought I would do anything like that.

And then about four years ago all of my friends starting taking these healing touch courses and raving about how much they were learning, so I followed along and signed up for Healing Touch level 1. My mind was blown.

Within hours I was feeling energy and healing people by manipulating energy. I thought that this was the most amazing investment of my life.

I saw that it was like investing in a first aid kit but in my hands. Suddenly, I could help with headaches and stress and tummy pains and all the bumps and scrapes that my family and friends are always having.

I still didn’t think this would become my career but it has and this is great. But what is more interesting to me is how we can bring this type of energy awareness into our daily lives.

Here are five things that I do on a regular basis:

1. Increase my personal vibration.

I draw energy from the center of the Earth through my body. This visualization generates a kind of tingling or humming sensation in the body which in turn helps decrease stress and increase health in all situations.

2. I become aware of how other people’s energy fields are affecting me.

I notice if I suddenly feel anxious when I’m around a certain person or suddenly feel like I need to get away from a person. I don’t judge that other person. I just stay aware about how I am being energetically affected.

3. I place my hands on someone who is stressed or sad and raise my energy.

This is great for spouses, kids and close loved ones. It’s a practical way we can help them when they are down.

4. Send love and light wherever it seems needed.

This is a great tool when we see pain and suffering and feel helpless. We can imagine the person or situation surrounded in light while simultaneously paying attention to our personal vibration and giving it a little boost.

Will it cure everything? Probably not (if it does please let me know!) but it is something.

It really is something.

5. Being playful and experimental.

This morning I went for a walk in the woods. While walking I brought attention to my energy field, making it bigger and smaller while I walked (it felt amazing when it was big, intertwined with the entire forest).

Was I trying to get a certain result? Nope. I was just having an experience.

Life is an experience, not a cognitive construct. That is why energy awareness can be a daily practice, a daily, experiential practice.

Tammy:

I love what Ruth wrote about being told that life is easy. This has also been a profound realization for me, as someone who tends to overthink and overcomplicate things.

I came to energy healing by being introduced to Reiki twice, almost my chance. The first time, a friend pointed the way, saying, “I didn’t get much out of this, but it seems like your kind of thing.” It was! The practitioner told me almost on sight that my energy field was depleted.

I knew I felt like I had absolutely nothing left to give, but was amazed by her recognition of this.

The second time was during my travels in Southeast Asia, when a friend of mine suggested I get a Reiki treatment from a local healer. I felt soothed by her gentle touch, but was astounded when I started to have great trouble breathing and felt like I was going to have a panic attack.

I knew immediately there was something going on here.

When we talked afterward, one of the things I was told was that I was someone for whom life seems complicated, but that this was only my perspective; life does not have to be experienced that way.

I was hooked, and spent the next several months learning and practicing Reiki, along with several other healing modalities. Learning to be in the world with a sense of oneness and not solely through the filter of my ever-active mind, and being able to work with others to bring about healing and a sense of balance has been an enormously rewarding path.

We might over-dramatize what “healing” means, and reserve blocks of time to see therapists and the like, to “work on healing.” I believe that healing is, at a basic level, a commitment to being fully alive in the world, and this is an ongoing, daily practice of awakening to our energy. As Ruth suggests above, there are things we can do everyday to remain vibrant and strong in the present moment, so that we can also be a light for others.

Here are five things I enjoy doing to work with energy:

1. Ground myself.

Be a tree! Stand with your feet planted on the ground, and feel your legs firmly rooted to the ground, and the Earth’s energy filtering up through the body.

2. Protect myself.

There is a lot of “noise” out there, and it’s hard to have a clear mind and heart when there’s so much external traffic running through us. We can visualize a protective shield of sparkly white light around us, so that we can stay balanced throughout the day.

3. Breathe.

This is self-explanatory. Breath is life, and pausing during the day to allow long, deep breaths to run up and down the energy channels of the body is rejuvenating and essential.

4. Practice “Give and Take” meditation.

Here, we visualize someone in need, and breathe in their suffering, and and breathe out love, compassion and light to them. It can take as little as a few seconds, and make a huge difference.

5. Walk.

We instinctively know that being in nature is healing. For me, being barefoot and taking long walks is the best way to get out of my head and find my natural rhythm with the world around me.

Relephant: 

10 Signs Your Energy Field & Chakras are Out of Whack.

10 Unexpected Ways to Find Your Inner Creative.

Reiki: An Empowering Tool.

Authors: Ruth Lera & Tammy T. Stone

Editor: Renée Picard

Image: dazsmithpics at Flickr