The Energy Healing Blog

Where Do You Focus Your Attention? (It Matters)

How A Beginning Energy Healer Can Overcome Self-Doubt

--by Nancy Hausauer

This is from the new book I'm working on, tentatively titled, "So You Want To Be An Energy Healer: Insight, Tools And Encouragement For The New Practitioner."Although it's aimed specifically at new and aspiring healers, I think it'll have a lot for practitioners at any stage. I hope to get it done by spring 2019. --Nancy

Doubt. It sometimes afflicts every energy worker I know, experienced healers as well as beginners. Sorry.

For me--yes, it still happens to me sometimes--it's a nagging, mean little voice inside my head, saying, "Who do you think you are? What do you think you're doing?"

I've developed a fairly effective response to this nagging, mean little voice. I say silently to myself, "Just do the work." I say it as often, as long and as firmly as necessary. And then I just do the work. Before long, I'm over it. I highly recommend this method.

Tips For Your First Few Sessions

Don't let that stop you. There's probably no help for it! It's like starting anything new--you just have to do it. But here are some tips that may make it easier:

• Start by working with people you're very comfortable with, who are open to energy work and who are supportive of your doing it.
• Let them know you're new and still feeling your way around.
• Tell them whether or not you want feedback, and if so, what kind.
• Give yourself permission to be awkward and to make what you might perceive as mistakes (while knowing there are no real mistakes).
• Really lean into practicing non-attachment to outcomes. Don't expect anything in particular to happen. Don't worry if you don't "feel" anything. Just go into the session with an open heart and mind, practice your "Basic Energy Healing Toolkit" and do whatever else occurs to you.
• Also, remember if something that feels like an energetic disharmony will not resolve in a reasonable length of time, it may be that the disharmony is a necessary part of a larger process of healing. Just set an intention to support the healing process without feeling the need to fix it. Being humble and having a perennial "beginner's mind" is as important as any specific energy healing technique you can use.
• It's OK to feel like you don't know what you're doing. Just re-ground, re-center and "do the work."
• Know that sessions will become smoother as you do more of them. You'll learn through experience how to sequence your session, how best to communicate certain things, how to set people at ease and so on.

Above all, try not to take things too seriously. Sometimes energy work can be serious, but often it's a lot of fun.

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Image by Mike's Birds from Riverside, CA, US - House Wrens Fledging, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=63824042

You Don't Know What You're Missing--Until You Do

A Meditation For Re-Setting Your Energy

--by Nancy Hausauer

Here's an ultra-simple meditation to help you witness your own awareness.

Why is witnessing your own awareness important? It's a sixth and seventh chakra experience that takes you out of the ordinary stream of mental chatter, sensory phenomena and knee-jerk responses. While awareness of awareness--also called meta-awareness--isn't something that most of us can sustain for very long at a stretch, even short experiences of it are profoundly healing.

Experiences of witnessing our own awareness help us live more freely, feel more peaceful, feel interconnected with everything and evolve spiritually. They're a powerful way to "reset" our energy.

It's easier to experience it than to describe it, so here's a mediation to give you a taste of meta-awareness.

1. Find a comfortable place to sit.

2. Belly breathe for a while to help you relax. (Or whatever works for you.)

3. Visualize something simple and pleasant, like a rose or a candle.

4. Hold it in your mind lightly, not using a lot of mental force to maintain it. In a very short period of time (probably less than a minute), it will naturally begin to fade (unless you have visualizing superpowers, in which case you may need to actively release it).

5. What remains after the object has faded is just awareness itself, without an object. This is a highly restorative energetic state.

6. Remain in this state for as long as you can without trying. (There's no judgment here about how long you can hold the meta-awareness state. Even a couple of seconds is beneficial.) When the state of awareness-without-an-object fades or is replaced by thoughts, repeat the process: Visualize your chosen image, let it fade and let your awareness rest lightly on what remains after the image disappears.

7. Do this as many times as you like, opening your eyes and returning to regular awareness when you feel ready.

There are many ways to reach this state of awareness of awareness, when only awareness remains. If this meditation works for you, I encourage you to do it often. It reboots your energy and is especially beneficial:

1) to clear your energy field of worry, fear or rumination v

2) to open awareness so that intuitive information can be more readily accessed

3) to prepare yourself for giving an energy healing treatment.

And perhaps most importantly, the state of meta-awareness allows you to experience yourself as you truly are: as spirit/consciousness/awareness/energy discovering itself through human incarnation. This understanding is critical to well-being on all levels, including the physical.

I attended a lecture by Deepak Chopra in April and the meditation above was inspired by an exercise he led. He's been a huge influence for me and I'm grateful for his teachings.

Namaste, Nancy

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Would You Like To Be An Energy Healer? Some Questions For You

--by Nancy Hausauer

This is adapted from the new book I'm working on, tentatively titled, "So You Want To Be An Energy Healer: Insight, Tools And Encouragement For New Practitioners." I'm hoping to finish it by the end of the year. --Nancy

I encourage new and aspiring energy healers to start from the assumption that "being a healer" is mostly about:

1. hearing a calling and
2. answering it.

You've Already Heard The Call. How Do You Answer It?

How do you answer the call? The most important way is just to "do the work." Find ways to practice energy work and integrate it into your life. It's in actually doing energy work that we grow into our role.

Some Questions To Help You Grow As An Energy Healer

• Why do I want to be a healer?
• When did I first feel this desire?
• Are there ways in which I have already been a healer?
• What are some of the things that the people who know me well would say are unique or distinctive about me? Some of the things I like about myself? Some of the things I most love to do? Can I incorporate any of these into my healing work?
• What is my relationship with my ego? Am I aware of it? Can I set it aside when necessary? If not, am I willing to practice doing that?
• When I look at my life, do I see a pattern of liking to "save" others? Do I like others to think of me as wise or as having special powers? Would I still want to do energy healing if no one ever knew I was doing it?
• What is my general sense of the balance of my life? What parts of it feel balanced? Out of balance? In particular, what is the balance between giving and receiving in my life? Am I willing to address any imbalances?
• How do I handle personal boundaries? Can I set and maintain them with most people?
• What are my ongoing self-care practices?
• Do I have a community of like-minded people with whom I can talk about energy healing, spiritual evolution and other deep concerns and values?
• What are my ongoing practices to cultivate personal or spiritual growth and evolution?

I hope these questions help further your journey along the energy healing path. --Nancy

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The Body Is An Energy Form

How To Cultivate Beginner's Mind And Reap The Benefits

--by Nancy Hausauer

This is from the new book I'm working on, tentatively titled, "So You Want To Be An Energy Healer: Insight, Tools And Encouragement For The New Practitioner." Although it's aimed specifically at new and aspiring healers, I think it'll have a lot for practitioners at any stage. I'm hoping to get it done by the end of the year. --Nancy

"Beginner's mind" is a valuable concept from Zen Buddhism that means maintaining an attitude of openness, eagerness, relative egolessness and lack of preconceptions. It's useful for energy healers at all stages.

When you're new to energy healing, it comes naturally. But it's easy to feel bad about being a beginner and look forward to the time when you no longer feel like one. Our egos like to feel smart and in charge, not vulnerable and non-knowing, like we were when we were children.

So if you're a new energy healer, I hope it's reassuring to know that beginner's mind is a good thing.

What Beginner's Mind Does For Us

• helps us tap into intuition/Source/higher sources of wisdom
• allays performance anxieties
• keeps us open to potential and possibility
• keeps our work fresh, spontaneous and enjoyable
• makes room for miracles, laughter, fun and play —the juice of life
• gets us out of mental ruts
• empties the mind and helps us stay receptive to new approaches
• lets us tap into our enormous creative powers
• enables us see things from fresh perspectives
• helps us see connections between things
• lets us rest our busy mindsrelieves stress.

How Can We Cultivate Beginner's Mind?

• Be aware that there are no formulas, and that each person and even each session is unlike any other you have ever or will ever encountered.
• Be ever-willing to say "I don't know!" With enthusiasm!
• Embrace uncertainty. With enthusiasm!
• Allow your client to be the expert for her or himself.
• Practice non-attachment to outcome. Do not judge yourself on the presence or absence of any expected or hoped for results.
• Go into sessions without a plan. Just be present with and deeply listen to your client and respond out of that.
• Break up routines sometimes, just for the heck of it.
• Practice presence, stillness and silence, both in and out of sessions.
• In your life (outside of the session room), cultivate the right side of your brain.

As we gain experience, beginner's mind is harder to maintain. It requires discipline and devotion. And yet, it yields such rich gifts, it's worth the effort.

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Presence Is Enough

Do Your Beliefs Support Freedom and Expansion?

--by Nancy Hausauer

Beliefs are energy forms that can propel us forward or hold us back. How can we work with this energetic phenomenon to make our lives freer, larger, richer and more conscious?

Let's start with a not-uncommon situation.

Say Mark and Sally are talking at a party. Sally replies gruffly to something Mark says, mutters and turns away. Soon after, she leaves. Mark starts wondering if he offended her. He ruminates. Before the evening is over, he's miserable, convinced she thinks he's a worm and wondering if maybe he IS.

But it's not the only conclusion he could have drawn. Maybe she had a headache, had a rough day or … But Mark chose a conclusion that caused him suffering.

Most of us have done some variation on this. Why do we do it?

An Energetic Interpretation

Those forces are beliefs, many of which we aren't conscious of, probably created when we were children. Self-generated suffering is a red alert to such unconscious, adverse beliefs, examples of which might be "I'm unworthy of love," "I'm powerless," and the like.

What Are Beliefs? An Energy Perspective

Any time we can achieve more consciousness about those forces--especially when they're hidden, causing us suffering or limiting our potential--we gain power and control over our lives.

We also expand our lives. Because beliefs create containers for our life experiences. Containers aren't necessarily a bad thing. They can act as tools for concentrating and directing energy. Think deadlines or river banks.

But they can also limit us in negative ways, restricting movement, potential and growth. Think cages or outgrown clothing.

We want to be sure that our beliefs support freedom and expansion, that the containers they create act as concentrating tools rather than shackles. We want to CHOOSE beliefs that empower us and release those that don't. How do we do this?

Because beliefs are energy forms, it takes energy to expose them and disperse them. Questions--also a form of energy--work well for this.

Questions To Expose and Disperse Underlying Beliefs

• Is there another conclusion that can be drawn? (It's often helpful to get an outside perspective on this.)

• What underlying belief might be steering me toward this unnecessary, suffering-causing conclusion?

If you can't see what the belief might be, try reverse-engineering it with questions like:

• What hidden belief might cause someone to come up with a conclusion like that?

• If I were looking at another person in my situation, what beliefs might I surmise were at the root of this dynamic?

Therapists can help with this process, but sometimes consciousness alone is enough.

Wishing you more consciousness, less suffering--Nancy

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