Energy Part 1 - What is it and how to sense it!

Explaining Energy Healing

Part One – What is Energy and Sensing Energy

 In my effort to gradually demystify the whole concept of healing I promised an explanation for this in my last post. How foolhardy of me! It requires a book at the very least, but little by little I will attempt to offer very simple explanations for what is a vast subject, so here goes with part one:

I am sure that everyone understands the concept that everything in our physical awareness is made up of atoms, whether it is a living being, such as ourselves, or animals, plants, rocks, water, the air we breathe and the objects around us and in our homes. For anyone like me with a very rusty and basic understanding of physics, I like to keep things really simple, so this is my very basic explanation of atoms and energy. (Apologies to any scientists and I stand to be corrected!)

• All physical matter has mass and mass is made up of atoms.

• Each atom is made up of subatomic particles (protons, neutrons, electrons and of course the nucleus.)

• Subatomic particles hold an electrical charge or energy (protons have a positive charge, electrons have a negative charge and neutrons have no charge.)

• 99.9% of an atom is currently believed to be empty space. (Some call that empty space, dark matter - I would call it invisible light, but that is just me – I may go back to that subject of empty space another time.)

• Atoms are invisible and can only be viewed by seeing the effects of them via powerful electron microscopes or powerful x-rays that can reveal their properties by measuring miniscule shifts in their positions.

So, presumably we can assume that everything is made up of energy.

We all believe in the energy we see, or invisible energy explained to us by scientists. We believe in the energy that is dense enough to form mass, or the invisible energy we use everyday to power our devices, we can see the effect of that invisible energy, so we know it exists. We even accept the existence of invisible wireless energy around us connecting our devices, the existence of infra-red and ultraviolet light, radiation, microwaves, radio signals and so on. But as we get into the realms of subtle energy, it is harder to measure, we simply don’t have apparatus advanced or sensitive enough yet.

But what if you can learn to feel or sense the subtle energy that is even finer than all the invisible background energy around us?

That particular energy has been known about for thousands of years. Some people call it universal energy or prana, which is a Sanskrit word meaning Life Force. Other cultures may call it Chi, Qi, vital energy, breath of life etc.

My first experience of feeling this energy was during a dowsing course many years ago. At one time I had only ever heard of farmers dowsing their fields to find water, and once a railway worker told me that he dowsed to find hidden electrical cables and I had no idea how it worked. I soon learned that you can use dowsing to sense or find anything if your intent is good, because it is not about sensing the material presence of things such as water or electricity, it is about sensing its energy by using our own intuition to do so. The only thing that makes dowsing rods or a dowsing pendulum move is our own very subtle muscle movements, movements that we are normally completely unaware of. If you have heard of kinesiology, you will probably understand how these movements happen. It is a type of biofeedback from our own energy system, which our intuition is a part of. (We might need to chat about intuition and demystify that at some stage as well!)

During that dowsing course many years ago, I learned that it is possible to find and measure the energy field around anything, humans, animals, trees, rocks. The more I practiced, the more complex this energy seemed to be. I discovered that we have an effect on the energy around us and in turn, that energy has an effect on us. I learned that energy responded to my thoughts. What a life changing moment that was! Have you ever questioned why going outside in nature makes you feel better?

I love teaching others to feel this energy as well and was thrilled to even teach a physicist who was determined to catch me out (in a nice way!) and ended up being shocked at herself for going out to buy some dowsing rods to learn more after working with me. Some are lucky enough to see subtle energy too. Most people can see an outline of energy around humans or animals with a bit of practice, and I will tell you how in a moment. You have probably heard this being called an aura, but there is so much mixed information about what an aura actually is, so I will simply refer to it as an energy field. I like to dispel anything that sounds vaguely mystical, because I regard anything to do with healing and subtle energy to be very normal and something that everyone should learn about in school.

Let’s start with how to feel this subtle energy:

Developing Hand Sensitivity

Sit comfortably with your back straight and tall. Allow your mind to quieten down. Spend a minute or two breathing deeply and comfortably into your belly. When your breath has become slow and even, then you are ready to go on.

1.      Rub the palms of your hands briskly together for 15-30 seconds.

2.      Hold your hands out in front of you, palms facing each other.

3.      Slowly bring your hands together, as close as you can without touching. Pay attention to any sensations you feel in your hands.

4.      Slowly bring your hands apart again, so that they are separated by 6-12 inches.

5.      Repeat this process several times, bringing your hands together and apart. Be slow and steady.

6.      As you do it, pay close attention to your palms. You may experience a sense of pressure between your palms, warmth, buzzing, tickling, tingling, pulsing, or other sensations. You may even feel as though you can bounce your hands against this invisible energy, a bit like the feeling you get when you hold two magnets and try to push their opposing poles together. You're feeling energy!

Don't worry if you feel something different or if you still don't feel anything at all. If the experience is new for you, it can take a bit of practice. Just keep an open mind and keep working on developing hand sensitivity by repeating this exercise at later times. Eventually you will be able to feel this instantly, with no rubbing of hands or concentrating and you will feel it with your hands further and further apart.

If you have a willing friend, you can even place your hands a few inches away from them and see if you can feel their energy field too. It is especially strong around the head and shoulders.

How to see the human energy field

You can either practice on yourself in front of a mirror or ask an obliging friend to work with you.

1.      Either sit yourself or your friend in a place with soft light and a plain background behind them, you can experiment with dark or light backgrounds, but make sure that no strong shadows are around yourself or your friend.

2.      Just relax yourself, breathe deeply and close your eyes.

3.      When you open your eyes again, try softening your focus slightly, look past your image or your friend, staring at a point just past them, possibly around their head or shoulder.

4.      Allow your eyes to feel soft and restful as you continue to gaze beyond yourself or your friend.

5.      You may first of all start to notice a brighter outline, around 1-2cm around the body – it may have a grey or blue tinge to it, but it will certainly look like a light heat haze.

6.      If you or your friend slowly sway from side to side, you may notice that light a bit more clearly, you may even notice a very slight time lapse as the outline of light moves to catch up with you or your friend.

7.      Some people really have the knack of this and can even see a wider band of faint colour. (The colour is not so important; this will change all the time.)

Alternatively, you can also practice using the same technique when you hold your hand out in front of you, by softening your gaze and looking past your hand you may see a light haze around your fingers or even tiny sparks passing between your fingers.

Eventually you may even start to notice this energy haze around presenters on TV, a pet or colleagues at work and then trees and plants.

As you begin to recognise, feel, see or sense subtle energy around you, you may realise that you have always felt ‘energy’. Our bodies are like a wonderful antenna at picking up subtle signals, which is no surprise when we are actually like magnets ourselves. You will realise that you have probably always had that strange ‘shudder’ or chill feeling going through you at times, you may get unexplained goose bumps, a feeling is though hair is standing up on the back of your neck. It might happen when you walk in a particular building or when you are talking about someone who has just died, or when you feel a particularly strong emotion, listening to beautiful music. You may even say “Oooh, someone just walked over my grave!” That magnet we call our body, is constantly picking up amazing information all around us, we just need to learn how to interpret it with that other amazing sense we all have, our intuition.

Hmm, maybe that magnet we call our body is the next subject to explore!

Don’t forget, question everything, question me, question your own beliefs and also question currently known science, there is more to learn than what science already knows. Be humble enough to change your mind as your experience grows. (I still do!)