The energy treatment techniques that I use in my own practice are based on ancient traditions you’ll find in almost all cultures.
Guided Imagery or Guided Meditation
Guided meditations seek to improve mood and health by allowing you to experience your power and your own ability to recharge positive energy and release that which doesn’t serve you. I use these visualizations in my own practice and to keep myself healthy and calm.
The stories you experience through guided meditation help your subconscious mind adjust your reality. Here’s a short but lovely cleansing and healing guided meditation to try:
Qigong
Qigong is a series of postures and movements that draw up and use the energies of the earth. It uses slow and controlled movements to open up blocked meridians, the routes by which qi or energy flows. It is an ancient Chinese technique that is similar in some ways to Yoga or Tai Chi, in that it uses body postures, breathing, and repetitive motion. Even the prestigious Harvard School of Medicine has endorsed the health benefits of Qigong to help ease hypertension (high blood pressure) and depression.
Tai Chi and Qigong use the same fundamental principles. “Chi” and “Qi” both mean “life energy”. Qigong translates as “life energy work”. Qigong is used both for medical treatment and for meditation and relaxation. A Qigong practitioner can help re-align your energy through form and motion. It helps improve not only your physical health through exercise, balance, and breathing, but also your mental and spiritual health by releasing negative energies.
Other Energy Healing Techniques
Here’s a summary of some of the other energy healing techniques I’ve encountered in both Eastern and Western therapies. For any of these energy treatment techniques, the power of intention is important. Your healer or energy medicine doctor will hold focus, and/or help you hold focus on the desire to heal and the highest good for you and your health.
Scanning Your Field or Aura or Chakras
Many energy healers will begin, after setting their intention, with a scan of your energy. Some look for colors, others feel thicknesses or blockages, and some notice emotions in different areas, but the intention is simply to notice areas which feel abnormal or out of alignment. This isn’t really about diagnosis – it’s mainly about noticing and getting the healer’s intuition focused on you. Some healers will need to do this step in person, perhaps passing their hands over your body, but others can perform this scan from a remote location.
This process can reveal unbalanced or undercharged chakras. Disharmonies in the chakras give the healer a sense of where to start looking.
Laying on Hands, or Still Hands, or Therapeutic Touch
A well-known form of energy healing is to simply place a hand or hands over the area where the energy is disturbed. Some healers visualize white light or energy coming from their hands. Others simply hold their hands still, or move them very slightly over the area. Some pray. Their intention is to call the energy in the hurt or disordered area back into alignment.
This doesn’t involve direct physical contact. Instead, it lets the healer reach into the energy in the afflicted area, gently manipulating it to smooth out disharmonies. This technique dates back
Smoothing Hands or Sweeping Hands
This is similar to the Still Hands technique above, except that in this case, the energy practitioner uses sweeping motions, intended to clear blockages or disruption in the energy flow. The intention is to renew the flow of your body’s energy and remove obstructions, to allow it to heal itself. A healer often begins with sweeping hands, then alternates with Laying on Hands in particular areas that resist allowing energy to flow.
And like Still Hands, no physical contact is necessary. Energy flows like water and can be drawn to and fro, allowing it to pour where it’s needed. The healer works to move the energy to where it is needed and to clear disharmonies within your energy field. Movements help to disrupt any resistance to the flow.
Magnetic Attraction or Magnetizing
This form of energy healing seeks to draw out disharmonious energy, using the healer’s hands or a device such as a magnet attached to a healing stone. The unhelpful energy siphoned out in this way will be released back into the earth to be cleansed.
The healing properties of magnets have long been known in traditional medicine circles. It’s only in recent years that conventional medicine researchers have begun to realize the awesome power of magnets.
Healing stones can be amethyst, jade, hematite, or any of a thousand other gemstones. (In fact, hematite itself is magnetic.) These give the energy drawn out by the magnet a connection to the earth, so the energy has a place to go. Depending on your needs, your healer may use any of a variety of stones coupled with magnets.
Meditation
Although you may not think of meditation as an energy healing technique, in fact, it is one of the most basic ones. Daily meditation, particularly grounding meditation, helps calm and smooth your energy and is a powerful treatment for anxiety, depression, and other mental disturbances. It also calms yet energizes the body, helping the immune system fight off illness.
Research shows that even just a few minutes of medication each day can have a profound effect on our health and well-being. It boosts immunity, reduces inflammation, decreases depression and anxiety, and reduces stress. If you’re not familiar with meditation, let your healer show you how to get started. Even just a few minutes each day can help remove dissonant energy and improve your sense of well-being.
Reiki
Reiki, like therapeutic touch, Qigong and other energy healing therapies mentioned here, is a type of biofield therapy. In 1992, the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) described the biofield as “a massless field, not necessarily electromagnetic, that surrounds and permeates living bodies and affects the body”, although they are currently not offering a definition. Reiki practitioners manipulate this subtle vibrational field with a focus on allowing self-healing.
Reiki dates back to the early twentieth century, and its popularity has only grown. It has become an invaluable tool in your healer’s toolkit. Reiki encourages balance and harmony, and boosts the body’s natural self-healing abilities.
There are many more energy treatment techniques out there, so I’ll add to this list at a future date.