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Feeling Subtle Energy:
What Do the Sensations Mean?

Someone recently asked why an energy healer might feel cold chills.

Some energy healers interpret a feeling of cold on/in their hands as a leak in the client's energy field. So it could mean that.

But it could also mean that some aspect of the client/healee's energy needs cooling. Or, it could mean something else entirely.

Feeling Subtle Energy: No Big Book of Meanings and Correlations

But the truth is, I believe, that only the healer or the client/healee is truly in a position to determine what a particular sense or sensation means--or whether it is even important to know what it means.

Because there isn't a set of objective correlations between what a healer feels and what it "means."

The energetics of consensus reality aren't yet built up enough around most kinds of energy healing for that. (Although there are well-established exceptions such as acupuncture.)

So there's no book or website or even person who you can turn to for a definitive answer.

There's not even any assurance that you and another healer would feel the same thing when you're feeling subtle energy.

That's because we are each so individual. We're not diagnostic machines, where a reading of such-and-such means thus-and-so. We are complex beings with unique sensing apparatuses (our bodies), unique interpretive systems (our nervous systems), unique filters (our past experiences), unique environmental contexts (our cultures, communities, teachers, etc.), and unique clients.

So what we feel when we're feeling subtle energy and how we interpret it might well differ from someone else's experience. It doesn't mean either of us is wrong.

We will each receive information in a unique language of sensations and impressions. And in the end, only we can learn to understand the language that is being spoken to us. And many long-time healers do learn that when they feel or see or hear this, then their client is usually experiencing that.

Perceiving Subtle Energy: Is It Necessary to Know What It Means?

But does it even matter if we can interpret what we're feeling when we're feeling subtle energy? Whether we've found an energetic "leak," or an area of energetic "congestion," or a sick gall bladder or.....? Personally, I don't think so.

Because I work more from a spiritual model than a medical model, I don't believe that it's strictly necessary to be able to interpret what we're sensing.

If I check my ego at the door, and hold the highest intention I can for supporting and assisting my client's health and healing, and believe that it is my client doing his or her own self-healing -- then I can trust that my client's physical body and energy system will use my healing work however and where-ever it is needed.

And if that is the case, then I don't need to know the meaning of cold or hot or tingling in my hands--or images or sounds or words or however I'm sensing subtle energy.

I trust my client's deep wisdom and ability to self-heal. I trust that they will use my work in the highest way possible. I try to act as a witness, and let the work move through me.

Because if I muck around trying to direct it too much, I may limit the work. I may try to heal a gall bladder, when it's really a broken heart that needs to be mended, or a spiritual path that has been abandoned and needs to be resumed. It's not for me to say how the healing energy should be used. I'm not that wise.

Of course, if something comes to me intuitively or if my client says something to me that points to an interpretation, I don't ignore it.

And if something really jumps out at me, I may wonder and pose a question to the universe, asking what it means, or what I should do with it, and then softly wait for an answer.

But I don't put a lot of energy into interpreting what it means when I'm feeling subtle energy.

Mainly I try to just do the work, and try not get my mental body too involved.

That was hard for me when I was new to energy work. But now it feels like a relief not to have to figure everything out--to trust that there is a higher wisdom at work, and that my job is tap into that and then try to stay out of the way as much as possible.

But this is just one woman's opinion.

Links to Other Pages on Sensing Subtle Energy

This page teaches you two exercises for developing hand sensitivity to subtle energy.

You can learn about seeing auras here.

You can how to develop your ability to sense chakras here.

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