Are you interested in alternative healing and want to know more about energy healers, what they do, and the kinds of sessions they offer? If so, get answers to your questions before contacting an energy practitioner to book healing sessions.
Maybe you want to become an energy healer; yet, you have questions about whether you can channel, how to become one, and which modality you want to learn. Start your research here.
The Long and Wideranging Incorporation of Energy in Healing Systems
The field of energy healing is diverse. Since the beginning of human time, Shamans and traditional medicine women and men of all cultures spread throughout the globe employed music (vibration), herbalism, and spiritualism for healing, divination, and planning.
For thousands of years, Ayurvedic and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) have been assisting clients to maintain and promote better health and wellness via rebalancing various energies of the body, mind, and spirit. They also incorporate energy healing techniques for the practitioner (e.g., massage, acupressure, and acupuncture) and the client (e.g., respectively, asanas and yoga and Tai Chi and Qigong).
When I say I’m an energy healer, people usually ask: “Oh, you mean like Reiki?” I am a Master Reiki energy healer. But, there are many other excellent modalities, and I practice and teach a number of them as well as nine different forms of Reiki.
You have a lot of modalities to choose from. The focus here is the subset of energy-based modalities that use energy channeling (Reiki and Barbara Brennan) as opposed to manipulation (reflexology and acupuncture). To find an approach that suits you, make sure to do some research. Let’s start by covering a few basics here. (For more detail, see my healing energy modalities page.)
What Is an Energy Healer
An energy healer is a person who focuses on and works with subtle life-force energy to promote health and well-being.
People of all ages, pets, other animals, and plants respond to their subtle treatments.
Subtle Universal Life Force Energy
Unmeasurable subtle life force gives and supports the life of all living beings. Comprised of infinite life-affirming frequencies, it creates and maintains the incredible diversity of life on Earth.
This is the same force that courses through your chakras (energy centers), meridians, and your auric field.
Diversity Within a Unified Force
The infinite range of frequencies bespeaks infinite healing capacities. Although all are life-affirming and restorative in nature, each frequency has its unique vibe and applications.
Even within Reiki, each form (e.g., Western or Traditional Usui, Karuna, or Sechem-Seichim Reiki (SSR) draws upon some unique yet overlapping array of frequencies. The variation makes each type of Reiki feel a bit different. Karuna is palpably more vibrational than the others. SSR is more intense and cooler. The range of their healing attributes can be different as well.
Integrated Energy Therapy (IET works with higher (angelic) frequencies. The experience of IET tends to be notably more floaty, spacious, or numinous.
Channeling Subtle Energy
Most energy-based modalities channel strictly universal life force and not the energy of another person or being. The practitioner acts as a hollow channel, allowing the subtle energies to flow freely through them unaltered to their client and from the client to the universal source.
In this way, channeling is a form of receivership both for the practitioner and the client. However, channeling sessions are not passive once intentions are introduced because energy follows intention.
Is There Such a Thing as Bad Energy?
First and foremost, life force energy supports life and well-being and thus can not create harm.
Although some say energy can be used for evil purposes, I haven’t experienced this in the past 30 years as a Master practitioner and instructor.
You can, however, experience bad energy when it is unbalanced, weak, overactive, blocked, or clinging to you from another source (e.g., someone you recently argued with). In other words, negativity or toxicity is associated with energy that does not serve you in its present state or form.
What An Energy Healer Can Do
Holistic Approach
Energy practitioners’ work is holistic because energy is present in everything everywhere, and it’s all interconnected. The energetic forces within you, your internal organs, and all of your bodily system as well as the aura surrounding you are all interconnected as well. Therefore, a healer will typically work with all of the subtle energy flowing within your body and through your auric energy.
For example, they can unblock and balance your chakras, and extract energy that’s not in your best and highest interest. They can address physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, and energetic issues that underlie more perceptible symptoms. Essentially, they can address any problem.
Distance Healing
Energy practitioners can send healing anywhere, and “program” it to occur at any designated time because life-force energy is not constrained by time and space. Practitioners call this distance, absent, or virtual healing. A distance session is as effective as an in-person session and more convenient to arrange.
While some people find virtual treatments hard to grasp or accept, I can assure you they work. I have some clients I only treat virtually and regularly offer virtual sessions to people from other states and countries.
Distance healing is particularly useful in treating animals. They too possess a life force, which acts as a common language between the two species.
Energy Practitioners’ Tools
Healers work prominently with their skills. Some rely heavily on their intuition or psychic abilities. Some will co-create with other light beings (guides, power animals, ascended masters, or angelic beings). It depends on their approach and particular skill set.
Many practitioners incorporate other vibrational energy healing practices such as music, drumming, crystal bowls, healing crystals, and subtle properties of aromatic herbs. These complementary practices can expand and deepen the healing as well as embellish the experience.
Your Role in Your Healing
One key caveat is you, the client, must be open to change. This is because all healing is self-healing. The practitioner can only create the conditions for you to change and restore your health and well-being. This is true for all forms of energetic work, and conventional (allopathic) medicine.
In addition, your openness and commitment during and after your treatment enhance its depth and effectiveness. Similarly, you can adopt appropriate follow-on behavior modifications to support the sustainability and progression of the healing or change process.
How to Become an Energy Healer
Can Anyone Channel Subtle Energy?
Absolutely! You and everyone else channel subtle life force energy. Otherwise, you won’t be alive.
I’ve taught a few students who were energy channelers for as long as they could remember. In their case, no class was necessary. However, by enrolling in a class, they learned a framework: the practice of discernment, session format, energy hygiene, practitioner ethics, and the formation and validation of their self-identity as a healer.
However, most people need to relearn sensing. And, some find it challenging to sense their subtle energy or the specific frequencies germain to different modalities. Fortunately, the discernment required for sensing and channeling improves with practice and experience.
Choosing an Instructor and Class
Considerations for choosing a particular instructor, modality, or class include the pragmatic, experiential, and spiritual.
1. Prerequisites
Some energy healing modalities have requirements, mostly governed by laws. For example, some states require reflexologists to a licensed massage therapists (e.g., District of Columbia (DC), Nevada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Tennessee, and Washington). Other states, such as Maryland eliminated similar restrictions for both energy healers and reflexologists. Know the laws for where you live and practice.
2. What You Need to Learn and Know
Most energy-based healing systems comprise multiple levels of training. For example, most types of Reiki energy healing have standard Reiki classes: levels I, II, and III (Masters). However, SSR has seven facets (levels). Cranealsacral, reflexology, IET, Barbara Brennon, Donna Eden, Healing Touch, and Quantum Touch also have multiple levels. Nonetheless, you can establish a practice or incorporate most of these approaches after completing just one level of training.
3. Duration of the Training
The time required for training varies widely. Some teachers offer highly condensed courses. But oftentimes, the quality of teaching and practices suffers.
4. Cost
Widely varies among modalities and instructors of the same modality. Shop around.
5. Periodic Recertification
Some healing systems require recertification, e.g., reflexology and subtle aromatherapy. In most of these cases, additional or repetitive training will likely be required.
6. What the practice is like for the practitioner
As a practitioner, how you execute and experience the session you give can differ significantly depending on the modality you choose to learn.
For example, some modalities are protocol-based, e.g., Healing Touch. These methods tend to appeal to those who like process, structure, and systems. In the case of Healing Touch, it aligns with conventional medicine. Interestingly, nurses developed this approach.
As a comparison, for many Reiki practitioners, the session is an in-the-moment experience and flows from the engagement with a client. The format is completely open-ended.
Thus, research on how you’ll need to practice a modality.
7. Philosophy or Spiritual Background
Be aware of the underlying philosophy and spiritual beliefs underlying energy and healing. For the most part, you’ll want them to align with your philosophic and spiritual frameworks.
Two Key Resources For Selecting Your Class and Teacher
I’ve written two blog posts that cover what to look for in the best Reiki Master/teacher, and what content and format to look for in a Reiki class. These two blogs serve as a guide to the best energy healing training in general.
Whatever criteria you employ to select an instructor and class, don’t downplay the importance of time dedicated to practice and how much opportunity you’ll have to receive direct guidance and feedback from your instructor. Class size and duration directly impact your learning success and gaining confidence in your new skill.
