My Reiki Journey - Part 4 Observing Outside Energy

Once I felt like I had mastered my own energy better, and had a better sense of what was and wasn't "mine", it became easier to recognize when things happening in my body were coming from an outside influence.  This is truly the most challenging part of energy work- really recognizing and understanding what energy is originating from within or just visiting during certain circumstances.
(Did you already read Part 3 - Managing My Own Energy?)

The big question that everyone asks about Reiki is "HOW does it work?!"



While science doesn't have a definitive answer to this question yet, I think the answer lies somewhere in the research behind these kinds of questions...

• How do hugs improve blood pressure?
• How does staring into a dog's eyes increase oxytocin levels in the blood?
• How do women who live in the same house sync their menstrual cycles?
• How does quantum entanglement work?

At a scientific level, we know that these things are observable, measurable, and related even though we still do not understand exactly "why" or "how" they happen.  This is a lot like Reiki- we can observe certain changes in bio-energy over time, but I can't tell you exactly why those shifts happened or what exactly caused the movement.



It wasn't until I started doing Distance Reiki while studying Reiki 2 that I really started to experience the many different ways we can be energetically linked, and what kind of information can be transferred during those energetic exchanges.  Likewise, the amount and type of information I receive can be as varied and unique as the person I'm working with.

With hands-on Reiki, most of the sensations and information I receive tend to be physical in nature: heat, pulsing, density, pressure, coldness, tingling, pain, etc.  When I work hand-off in the energetic field or with Distance Reiki, I tend to get more mental impressions like images, colors, elements, phrases, words, or even a song that seems to be unique to the person I'm working on.  Many Reiki practitioners adopt a practice of silence and not mentioning the sensations they experience, because often the next question might be "what does that mean?"  Usually those are the questions that clients need to continue investigating on their own, because the answer is somewhere in their own body or lived experiences.



Unfortunately, energetic sensations don't come with reasons attached.  I don't know "why" someone's left knee feels like it's on fire, and they might not even know why, but if we both sense an unusual level of heat, than we both know that "something" is happening there.  Experiences and feelings can be deceptive as well because we may not experience the same sensations.  There have been times when a client experienced a lot of energetic movement in the form of tingling, while I felt nothing, and vice versa.  What we do know, is that Reiki is "working" for the highest good of the client, even when we don't exactly understand what's happening.  Just as scientists still don't understand exactly how gravity works, but it doesn't mean that gravity isn't working or is any less a force of nature.

... Have you ever stepped into a place and felt a "bad vibe" even though everything looked beautiful and perfectly fine on the surface?  Have you ever had a "gut feeling" about someone that you didn't have any explanation for?  Do you trust those feelings or do you write them off?

(Continue to My Reiki Journey Part 5: Reiki 1 Case Studies)

My Reiki Journey - Part 3 Managing My Own Energy

Once Reiki training helped me better manage my own energy and energetic sensitivity, it became much easier for me to distinguish between what energy was actually mine and when I was sensing something from other people.  It's all so confusing at first, because the way energetic sensitivity works (in my body) is that I feel things happening inside my own body even when they have nothing to do with my condition.  So, until we have a very firm grasp on what energy originates in our body and what is actually affecting our body from the outside - it can feel like all energies happening inside our body also completely originate from us.  (Curious about Part 1 & Part 2 of My Reiki Journey?)



For someone who is energetically sensitive, "all the feels" can be happening "all the time."  All the icky feelings, all the romantic feelings, all the hurtful feelings, all the health feelings- it's all there, all the time.  Just learning how to manage our own "feels" is hard enough.  Learning how to separate our internal feelings from outside feelings that might find their way inside our body is an entirely different task that's much easier to accomplish after we've learned how to better master our own feelings and health choices.  I do not say that lightly, because this journey hasn't been short or easy by any means.  It didn't happen after one meditation or reiki class.  It has been a lifelong process of learning, experimenting, failing, and trying over again in order to get closer to a place of recognizing and repairing my own "holes" so that I can personally better understand that feeling of being "whole".

Here's a common example of how outside energy can get inside and affect us- and I think most people who have driven a car can identify with the transference of energy in this situation...
You're at a stoplight and someone honks their horn incessantly behind you.  It's a red light, no turn on red, and you can't legally make any moves.  You're stuck and they're stuck, yet they keep laying on their horn out of frustration.  Up until this point, you were perfectly happy going about your normal day.  However, after you hear their blaring horn, you now feel upset and agitated by the person behind you.  Suddenly, instead of happily going about your day, you're now feeling anger and frustration at the sound of their horn, even though it has absolutely nothing to do with you and the situation isn't one you can change. Sound familiar?  Now think about how someone's anger at home or on TV might affect you as well.  We are surrounded by opportunities to be "affected" by outside energy, and living in a bubble isn't a sustainable option, so we need strategies to manage it all.

Before I understood how to manage my own energy better - I would take on that outside energy and get mad and upset at the inconsiderate person who was triggering me.  It might take me a good hour or more to shake off that feeling and get back to my happy place.  Other people that I rode in cars with would take that reaction to another level by flipping the person off out the window, or speeding out of the stoplight in anger, or any other number of angered reactions- all of which were triggered by someone else's problems that we couldn't do anything about.  We weren't yet self-aware enough to realize that we had the ability to not react and not spread the anger onto others.



Now, rather than taking on that destructive energy and multiplying it back out into the world, I might shake my head and feel sorry for the person who is spewing their problems on everyone around them.  They are literally making the world around them a more hateful and hurtful place.  So now, rather than stepping into that energy and participating in that anger, I choose to consciously step back and remember that someone else's problems do not necessitate an action or reaction from me.  At first, this is not easy AT ALL- it takes a LOT of practice before it becomes natural to separate the mind-body reaction and make it a choice to not respond to energetic triggers and emotional projections.

To a naturally empathetic person, it may seem cold and uncaring to let someone else's problems go by without joining them in those feelings (or in that cloud of energy which may have actually traveled from much further before them), but over time it becomes easier to hold a place of compassion for someone else's anger, hurt, sadness, or frustration, without actually internalizing it and multiplying it through our own feelings and reactions.  It's also important to recognize that there is nothing "wrong" with having negative feelings in the first place- those feelings are great energetic lessons about where we may be stuck ourselves or need healing in our lives.  If we ignore negative feelings, and we ignore facing them as energetic lessons, we are also ignoring the opportunities we have to heal ourselves.
 


Reiki is just one of many things that has helped me master holding that space for someone else without taking it on personally.  Now that I've experienced many different solutions for dealing with "all the feels", I know which ones are most effective for different purposes in my body.  Here's a little breakdown of practices that regularly help me master all of the feelings I can sense from others, as well as understanding my own energy better:

• Meditation - helps me find my mental/emotional balancing point of peace and gives me a centered mental place to return to, which helps me with a lot of mind-body connections and flight/fight responses
• Tapping (EFT) - helps me deal with sudden surges of anxiety and fearful thought patterns that seem to come out of nowhere and get in the way of returning to my emotional center
• Yoga - helps me release tension, stress, and worry that accumulate in various areas of my body, and it tunes me into exactly what feelings I physically store in certain parts of my body
• Reiki self-care - helps restore my vitality and stamina in a way that feels twice as rejuvenating as taking a nap, and just as centering as meditation.  I also use Reiki to help me with pain relief in certain nerve, organ, and joint centers of the body that aren't as easily reached with yoga.  After Reiki self-care, I feel more energetically protected in a way that allows me to enter situations I previously would have avoided due to my sensitivity.

Do I do all of these practices every day?  No way.  That would be a bit of overkill for my daily routine.  I use the "take as needed" approach.  Also, please remember that I'm not a medical doctor and this isn't to be taken as medical advice.  I am only one example of sharing my story and what works well for me and my body.

If my muscles are stiff - I know I need to make time for Yoga.  If I'm feeling mentally unfocused and scattered, I know I need to make time to Meditate.  If I'm feeling energetically exhausted and drained, I know I need to make time for Reiki.  If none of these practices are helping me, I know it's time to seek outside medical help.



After I started doing Reiki self-care daily, I found that I was using meditation and tapping much less than before I practiced Reiki regularly.  The more I practiced Reiki (along with every other healthy habit I could incorporate into my life), the less I felt energetically off-balance or triggered by negative energy around me.  Reiki has become like a type of energetic forcefield to help me better manage living in a hyper-energetic environment like New York City.  Thank goodness I already had some meditation and yoga practice under my belt before I got here- because this city can be relentless and consuming.

If I haven't done Reiki in a while, I usually begin to notice certain destructive feelings and triggers creeping back into my body in unexpected ways.  This city is overflowing with all kinds of energetic triggers, and I've learned that a lack of self-care can do some serious damage to a highly sensitive person living here.  Even with all the work I've done on myself, I'm still human.  I don't have solutions for everything - but I'm always willing to keep learning, exploring, practicing.

.... Do you have a regular practice of emotional, mental, and physical self-care?  What helps you better manage your feelings and reactions to the people and situations around you?

(Next.... My Reiki Journey Part 4: Observing Outside Energy) 

My Reiki Journey - Part 2: Living As A Highly Sensitive Person

When I signed up for a Reiki 1 class in April 2015, I had no idea what to expect or how I'd be using Reiki in my life.  I felt "called" to be there based on several things that happened to me, even though I didn't exactly know "why."  (If you're interested in Part 1 of My Reiki Journey - Click Here - )



I've always had some interest in how energy works because I've always felt sensitive to energy.  For a long time, I didn't know how to deal with that sensitivity.  Occasionally, my sensitivity to certain places, people, or situations would get the best of me and I'd have a hard time moving through that sensitivity.  Meditation helped me deal at a mental level, and sometimes physically- by at least carving more space out of my life to "recenter"- but there were still periods of time when my sensitivity was so strong that even the most subtle changes in space weather could completely drain my energy during a geomagnetic storm or ramp me up with anxiety during a solar flux.  (That's a story for an entirely different post.)

While living in Australia, my sensitivity reached a level I'd never experienced before.  I was eating many more local fruits and vegetables, and almost no high fructose corn syrup or partially hydrogenated oils, as well as experiencing lower air pollution.  I shed 30 lbs of weight without even trying.  I noticed that as I was eating cleaner foods and breathing cleaner air, I also started becoming even more sensitive, which meant feeling even more energetic "stuff" all at once.  Much like being blinded by the sun after being in a dark movie theatre for 2 hours, or standing right next to an ear-shattering siren.  Until I learned how to manage my increased sensitivity and adjust to it, it was overwhelming and at times even emotionally unsettling.



I don't remember when I first realized that I was highly sensitive to certain energies- but once I started paying attention, I could better analyze how my own energy was affected by both external and internal factors.  Since Reiki is an energy healing practice, I figured that at the very least, learning more about Reiki healing could help me understand more about my own energetic sensitivity and perhaps give me a few more ways of dealing with it beyond meditation.

Before I even signed up for Reiki training, I'd already started investigating energetic self-care by reading Energy Healing by Ann Marie Chiasson, MD.  Little did I know at the time, this book outlined a lot of what I'd be learning in Reiki 1 - which included different methods of practicing energetic self-care, but the book also included several other energy healing methods, like meditation and tapping.  This book also helped me realize that I'd already started using some basic energy healing techniques and Reiki hand positions on myself before I even knew what I was doing... my hands would just naturally fall into certain places as I'd fall asleep, or I'd notice their interesting arrangement and position when I woke up.



For me, a full weekend of Reiki 1 training felt like a big warm hug from the universe.  It gave me a community of people who understood my sensitivity to energy- people who had similar experiences in their lives, including the experience of friends and family occasionally labeling these sensitivities as "imagining things".  Even just having one or two other people who could really identify with my sensitivity was a huge source of comfort.  It can be frustrating and slightly maddening when you feel things that other people don't feel, because what's real to you isn't real to them.

The best explanation I've come up with for how I feel energy, is similar to how everyone can feel wind, cold, heat, humidity, and pressure changes- which are widely accepted as very observable and measurable energetic changes that no one questions or attributes to ancient Gods anymore just because they can't "see" them.  Now that we have scientific tools for measuring these large changes in atmospheric occurrences, people have a way of "seeing" them when before they could only "feel" them.  An energetically sensitive person can pick up on more subtle changes in bio-energy that we don't have the best scientific tools for yet, kind of like the way that dogs can smell and hear certain things that humans cannot.  Just because everyone can't observe it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.



It's awesome that we're entering into a medical age of understanding some energy movements in the brain with EEGs and in the heart with ECGs, and I'm confident that some day we'll have the tools to better understand how Reiki (or life energy) moves from the environment and through all of the major organs and systems of the body- helping Western medicine better understand Eastern medicine.  Until then- the human body actually has a pretty fantastic capacity for sensing things which cannot yet be scientifically measured.  Granted, the human body is also not a perfect or infallible tool for measurement, because not everyone has equal sensitivity- just as everyone doesn't have equally keen eyesight, hearing, or sense of smell.  However, the more people we have who are aware of things we cannot yet measure scientifically helps us get closer to being able to measure them.

... Have you noticed how your own energy fluctuates after eating different types of foods or drinks?  Have you noticed how changes in temperature, light, humidity, and air pressure affect your personal energy levels?

(Next... My Reiki Journey Part 3: Managing My Own Energy)