Being an Energy Healer

Being an energy healer is as much about being our true self as about synergizing our earthly and spiritual natures. It asks that we remember our own divine origins.

When I enrolled in a level-one Reiki course I remember I felt hopeful... curious and hopeful. I so wanted to believe in it - in the healing energy, and in something greater than or other than. I craved it.

And when the Reiki master teacher who attuned me placed her hands on my head, drew the symbols, breathed the Reiki fire into me... Well, I believed.

It was August of 2009. After over a year and a half of inexplicable yearning, the time came for my attendance at a two-day level-one Reiki certification class.

The six of us taking the class gathered in a secluded great room featuring a vista of vast fields with a forest beyond. It was comfortable. And somehow it was serene, too, in spite of the nervous anticipation vibrating from most if not all of us.

Our teacher joined us at the appointed time, and led us through an opening, and then through the manual she provided. We each took turns reading, I recall. In retrospect, that likely served a dual purpose. It both took strain off the teacher's voice and also gave us an activity that helped lessen our nerves.

And then, the time came for our attunements.

Our teacher queued up some appropriate instrumental music and, one by one, brought us to another part of the room. There, we sat on a straight-backed chair and received the first-level attunement - with which she intentionally included the Reiki master symbol; the choku rei.

Being an energy healer felt... different.

First, the palms of my hands felt weirdly hot; a dry heat. And in my not-knowingness, I took great care with them as I made my way back to the group lest I somehow diminish or - worse - extinguish that heat.

Second, quoting Elphaba from the musical Wicked, I could appropriately have sung, "Something has changed within me. Something is not the same." While I couldn't identify exactly what changed - shifted - I felt different.

The best descriptive that comes to mind for how I felt: quiet. A deep quiet opened within me, and resisting its invitation seemed futile - and silly. Because that quiet contained a sense of peace I never dreamed possible. And sitting back in my chair with the group, I accepted the quiet's invitation and surrendered to its energy.

Practice, practice, practice

Our teacher asked that we practice Reiki on ourselves, first and foremost. She walked us through hand placements supporting self-practice, and asked that we commit to this practice daily for 21 days. For me, that self-practice equaled a huge game-changer. It offered profound self-care in ways I didn't know I needed.

I learned being an energy healer means practicing on yourself, first. Through practicing on yourself, you reveal layers of dis-ease that perhaps hid themselves so well you didn't know they existed. And every day of self-practice increased the level of peace I felt. Truly amazing.

In class, we also learned the art of practicing Reiki on others. In level one, the practice is in person. We learned hand placements that began with the top of the head and ended with the bottom of the feet. And we learned the Byosen scan, which knocked down another wall inside me.

Through practicing Reiki on myself and others, what I believed possible - and impossible - received a systematic overhaul. It felt as though the worlds of possible and impossible merged into something else entirely.

And on the purely practical level, we learned what treatment table might best serve our own professional practice.

The next level...

Two months later, I sat in the same classroom with some of the same faces I met back in August. We gathered this time for a two-day level-two Reiki certification course - quite literally the next level. The reading of the manual and the Reiki-two attunement added to the feeling of familiarity.

After that, familiarity gave way to unfamiliarity as we navigated the waters of distance Reiki.

Our homework after the level-two certification included practicing 24 distance Reiki sessions. Always one who completed homework assignments, I sourced mostly strangers on Facebook for receiving complimentary distance Reiki. I easily filled my schedule for two weeks worth of distance sessions, and dove in.

And with that, there went yet another wall. Because the feedback from people who volunteered, after receiving the treatment and my written explanation of what I felt, noticed, etc., blew me away. Stuff came up in those sessions that seemed apart from the actual intention of distance Reiki, and yet bore a clear relation to the base theme: healing.

I saw visions of the spaces people I worked on inhabited. I saw colors and designs and symbols. And I felt heat, cold, discomfort in various parts of my body that clearly came from the volunteers. And I heard music, sounds, words - except not with my ears. Turns out, being an energy healer might offer more than you bargain for - in the coolest way possible.

And the next, and the next...

Originally, the class I registered for in January 2010 included the full Reiki master teacher certification. The teacher informed us of a change about a month prior to the class. We would receive a Reiki master certification. The teacher certification became a separate class with no foreseeable schedule offered. While somewhat disappointed in that development, the class itself exceeded all expectations.

We read the manual and received the master attunement. And then, we practiced. This time, though, we learned and practiced more than Reiki. In addition to Reiki, we learned and practiced a shamanic technique our teacher called psychic surgery.

It involved clairvoyantly identifying dis-ease in the energy field/aura and/or energy body and then removing the dis-ease as though performing "surgery." The caveat: The tools we used mostly took the shape of everyday household items - vacuums, brooms - rather than, for example, a scalpel and sutures.

We also used ourselves as tools, by envisioning shrinking ourselves down until we reached the ideal size for the task at hand, and then completed the task. (Boom. Another wall fell.)

Finally, in October of 2010, I traveled to Waynesboro, Pennsylvania for Reiki master teacher certification. The two-day class gifted me with the teacher attunement, as well as training in attuning others to Reiki.

Since then...

Being an energy healer continues developing, which I believe is in my - and every other energy healer's - best interest. The development comes from doing the work; from practicing on myself and others; from staying open to new ways of approaching the healing process itself.

Becoming an energy healer engaged a deep knowing within me that turned out to be a well of intuitive abilities. And while at first they revolved solely around the Reiki table, they soon "leaked" into other areas, leading me to where I am today; who I am today.

Back at the beginning...

...of this post, I mentioned belief in something greater or other as well as belief in energy healing. What I intentionally left out of the belief pool at that point was a deep desire for belief in myself. And that's where the next phrase of Elphaba's song from Wicked comes in: "I'm through with playing by the rules of someone else's game."

First, I since learned that while a certification in Reiki or another healing modality seems important - even necessary - that isn't true. Just as we're all psychic, we all harbor within us the capacity for energy healing.

No attunements or expensive certification courses required. It requires only that we believe in and tap into our capacity for healing with energy.

Second, based on my upbringing, and what I learned from church and from school, I believed the human life existed within a certain set of rules. Those rules most certainly didn't include energy healing, clairvoyance, psychic surgery, etc.

And so those rules - others' rules - I lived by for so long dissolved into nothingness, allowing me further expansion as an energy healer and an intuitive - and as an ensouled human.

For that, I'm deeply grateful.

Perhaps you'll explore being an energy healer, too, and finding your way home to you.

Blessed be.