Tag Archive for: energy hygiene

Removing Blocks in Your Energy Field

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Removing Blocks in Your Energy | True Radiance Healing ArtsIf you’ve ever taken a yoga class, you’re probably familiar with the idea that you have an energetic system in addition to your physical body, your mental and your emotional aspects.

One classic way to learn to feel energy is to rub your hands together for a few moments, then hold them about a foot apart. Your hands will probably tingle a little. As you slowly bring your hands together, at a certain point you will feel a sort of bubble between your hands. You can play with it by slowly bringing your hands further apart and then closer together again.

Here’s another experiment you can try right now. While you’re sitting down, try lifting one of your legs and get a sense of how heavy it is. Now put it down and try lifting your other leg. Often you will notice that one leg seems heavier than the other.

Why is this? For most of us, it’s not that one leg is fatter than the other or anything like that – it’s more likely to be the case that energy isn’t flowing as well through the heavier leg.

You can test this, too. This is a technique for moving stuck energy called, “thought stripping.” Begin with the heavier leg. Take your hands and wrap them around your upper thigh. Slide your hands down your leg, down your foot and all the way off the tips of your toes. Now you’ve collected some of that built up energy in your hands. Dispense with this old energy by throwing it someplace safe like into a lamp, a candle, a fire, a bowl of salt water, or something like that.

Do this same process – wrapping your hands around your upper thigh and sliding them all the way down and off your toes, and responsibly disposing of the old energy – about 10 times.

Now try lifting each leg again. I think you’ll find that the leg that started off heavier is now the lighter leg. You can do the same process with the second leg.

Now you’ve experienced what it’s like to free up stuck energy, and how that made a difference in your legs. This is just one way of moving energy.

Your energy naturally has a movement or flow to it and when it’s not moving, it can feel heavier. Another sign that your energy may not be flowing in a particular area is if you find it’s harder to bring your awareness into a certain part of your body, or maybe it feels numb.

You can experience stuck energy on a mental level as not being able to accept something or having a hard time letting it go. On an emotional level, stuck energy can show up as either having a hard time connecting with your emotions or as a feeling that doesn’t shift.

In your physical body, energy that isn’t moving or that doesn’t belong in your field can cause uncomfortable symptoms or illness.

As you go about your life, your energy can become stuck or blocked for a variety of reasons. Often it’s an emotion or even a thought that has an energetic form and gets caught in the body. This could be your own emotion or even someone else’s.

You may have noticed that sometimes when someone is mad at you or jealous of you, you can feel it. We have the expression that someone “stared daggers at you.”

Some years back I was having a conversation with someone who misunderstood a comment I made and got angry. A couple of moments after this I felt a sensation like hundreds of darts landing in my upper body and arms. This was energy coming from her into my field.

If you were listening to our radio show a couple of weeks ago, you heard that shamanism is a thousands-of-years-old set of practices for healing and guidance with the help of spirit allies. In shamanic terms, energy that doesn’t belong in your field is called an “intrusion” and the process of removing it is called “extraction.”

You can do some kinds of extraction work for yourself, such as the thought stripping technique I described earlier. You can also enlist the help of a practitioner and their spirit allies. There are instances where your guides, angels, or other spirit allies will step in to assist with this work – typically at your request and with your permission.

You can always ask the Divine, your angels, and your other spirit helpers for assistance with this. Specify in your request that this extraction or clearing happen in Divine timing, in the perfect way, and in accordance with Divine will, if it serves your Highest Good. This is important because sometimes you are learning something or benefiting on some level from having the block in your field.

When your energy is flowing freely again you will likely feel lighter, more energized, and “more yourself.”

With love and best wishes for your well-being,

Susan

Better than a Magic Force-field: Dealing with a Difficult Family Member

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In a couple of hours I’ll be taking my aunt to a doctor appointment. This is something we do quite frequently given that she has Alzheimer’s Disease and I am her Power of Attorney for Health-care.

My aunt can be quite an intense person — very judgmental, self-centered and with a strong temper. I still remember the dents in her car which she herself put there by beating it with her briefcase when she got angry one day. That was many years ago, when she still had all her faculties.

A couple of years ago, before each visit I would call in every kind of psychic protection I could think of. I did my best to let her rage and lashing words bounce off of me, but maintaining that level of vigilance could be exhausting.

My interactions with her became so difficult for me that my doctor told me he was concerned I’d have a stroke. And yet, while I could hire help with some things, I couldn’t simply opt out of my relationship or duty as Power of Attorney. I needed to find a better way to handle it.

One day I received this guidance: “be more like a beach and less like a wall.” In my mind I could see the waves rolling onto the beach and then rolling back out again. I understood the message. If I don’t resist her negativity, it can pass just as easily as it came to me. If I argue against it or try to block it then that’s when I feel damaged.

I imagine the martial arts masters who avoid an oncoming attack just by turning to one side and letting the attack pass by them. When there is no place for the attack to land, when I don’t try to block it or attack back, then it simply falls flat.

Here are the secrets I’ve discovered to surviving our encounters:

  1. Limit my time with her. This includes giving myself permission to leave, even if I’ve only been there a few minutes. Granted, sometimes we have to go to an appointment and, as much as I might want to, I can’t leave her on the curb to get home on her own. A certain amount of time together may be required. That’s when the rest of this list becomes really helpful.
  2. Don’t take things personally. This is the one thing that, when I forget it, creates the most grief for me. If (ok, I’ll be honest, WHEN) she says something that really gets under my skin, I can usually trace it to something I’ve taken personally that wasn’t really about me. For example, at our last appointment the doctor asked her how often I come to visit. She replied, “3 or 4 times a year.” In fact I had just seen her two days earlier. I have the option of taking this personally and getting wound up about it, feeling defensive or insulted…or I can remind myself that her sense of time and the words she uses about time (months, days, years, hours) are very loose concepts at best. Truthfully it has nothing to do with me.
  3. Give it a “pass.” I think of many of my aunt’s comments as invitations. They are invitations for me to engage in an argument or an opportunity to allow my feelings to be hurt. Most of the time I’m able to let these invitations go by without responding to them. Sometimes in my mind I imagine stepping aside and watching her words fall on the ground beside me.
  4. Aftercare. It helps me to talk about our visits. Usually I can just tell the story once or twice and be done with it. If I feel compelled to keep re-telling it, I refer myself to #2 on this list. When I get home I like to shift my attention by going for a walk or watching a clip of kittens on Facebook. A good shower or smudging can help, washing away any residue from our interaction that I might have brought home with me.

My aunt is only in her sixties, so I expect I’ll have time to further refine my approach. In the meantime, I hope this is helpful to those of you who, like me, have family members whose welfare is your responsibility but who can take a toll on your own well-being.

If you have thoughts or comments, I’d love to hear from you. You can reach me through the Contact page.
With love,
Susan