What IS Energy Work?
Mar 20th, 2008 by Rachel
When I first heard of energy healing, I said to the woman who practiced it, “Okay, but what do you do?” She attempted to explain about moving energy around and channeling spirit. And then I said, “Yeah, but what do you DO?”
It’s nearly impossible to explain what energy work is to someone who has never experienced it. Much like gravity, which must have been hard to explain in the 1600s, body-related energy is something we experience but have little awareness of, or language for.
When I had my first energy work session, I was really skeptical, torn between trying not to laugh and hoping that something would have an effect on the pain I was experiencing. In my experience, it doesn’t “look” like or feel like much of anything is happening. But after that session, I felt good enough to think that it was worth trying again. I saw my energy healer for several months and had some very powerful results, including the release of pain from some early childhood memories.
Even after those experiences, though, when someone tried to tell me that I was an energy healer, I thought, “yeah, right!” I still had difficulty believing in the concept of energy work—I’d accepted that maybe it existed for others and it might’ve helped me, but not that it was so real that I would be a practitioner of it.
Embracing my path toward becoming a healer was not an easy one, but after a year, now I’m the one trying to help others understand what energy healing is. And I sympathize with those who tried to explain it to me.
Energy healing is not something that is done with words or with the mind, so it’s nearly impossible to translate it into words that the mind can comprehend. I can say it’s very metaphorical work, non-linear, and incredibly powerful. My clients can feel pain or heat or chills moving through the parts of their body that I put my hands over.
And I can’t tell you why. I can give you my guesses—that I am connected to Spirit (as we all are, but often forget), that I hold infinite love and compassion in my heart for myself and everyone I work with, that I know that whatever happens is bigger than me and my client.
The best metaphor I can come up with is that I am not the water that is cleansing my client’s energy; I am merely the garden hose.
The idea that we are influenced, hindered, and helped by things we haven’t yet been able to understand is a very ancient one. It’s an idea we’re not always comfortable with in this age of heart transplants, quantum physics, and nanotechnology. But the uncomfortable, ultimately comforting truth remains:
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
I help people struggling with self-esteem and body image issues. 
Sounds interesting and you sound like a geniunely sincere person. Does this energy healing have a name?
Hi Peter,
Thanks for the comment. I AM genuinely sincere about what I do.
I\’m not sure I understand your question. Are you asking if I practice a particular technique or brand of healing?
If so, the answer is no. What I do is a form of hands-over healing, similar in some ways to Reiki, but my particular way of learning and practicing has come without a specific structure. Simply put, I am channeling information and energy from Spirit (or the universe or God or whatever higher power makes sense to you) and funneling that energy into my client\’s physical and etheric system.
Ok, that\’s not really simple, but does it answer your question?
You answered that question. Thanks.
I know Reiki works (first hand experience), I just haven’t had the time to explore. I don’t understand how this can be so fluid, how channeling information and energy from Spirit, universe, God or whatever else makes sense… why is it so “universal” how can it be accepted by all types of beliefs? How does it differ than prayer?
So Peter, it sounds like you’ve experienced Reiki as a healing modality, but you can’t reconcile how or why it works. Is that what you’re pondering?
Boy, that’s a huge question, and one that I’m not sure how to answer for you. It was one that I struggled with for months…and I think probably something everyone has to answer for his or herself.
As for how it’s accepted by all beliefs…I don’t know that it is. But I do believe that energy healing taps into what’s at the core of most all religions: that we are One life, One heart, all trying to be reconnected.
How it differs than prayer? Well, to me, prayer is me talking to Spirit. My chance to express gratitude and desires.
And energy healing is Spirit talking back, I guess. Using me as a tool to get reconnected with other people, helping me to bring up awareness of the Love and Light that is in all of us.
I’m definitely don’t understand how or why it works. Thank you for your thoughtful responses. I’m going to continue to dig and search around for answers to this.
What I discovered is that it doesn’t matter to me that I can’t really KNOW how it works.
Robert Fulghum had a great story about the nature of the universe, Spirit and everything. In it, he uses a metaphor of ants, going along their daily lives and suddenly, the ground shakes, fire starts in the middle of the air, and the noise is unfathomable. What the ants don’t know is that their anthill is built next to a train track.
The ants will never be able to comprehend the train…but that doesn’t in any way limit the train or its effect.
All I know is that energy healing does work. And when there’s so much healing possible, the *why* stops seeming important to me.
That being said, I wish you the best of luck in your search, Peter. If you ever find a meaningful answer, I hope you stop back by here to tell us about it.
I love this story Rachel. I also love that you said, “I am not the water that is cleansing my client’s energy; I am merely the garden hose.” So powerful! If someone told me that I was going to read books, believe in things and speak a language that sounds woo-woo to many other people I would’ve laughed at them. In fact I used to look down on those woo-woo people myself!
I appreciate your openness about your process of embracing your gifts. 