6 Facts About Energy Healing (And How To Read An Aura!!)
So, Energy Healing. What a controversial topic! When I published my first post prior to the recent (inspiring? life-changing? amazement-inducing?) Hands of Light workshop at Omega Institute, the responses were overwhelming. So many people were interested, with questions ranging from ‘How do I see an aura?’ to ‘Do you really believe in that stuff?’ to ‘So cool…but what is energy healing?’ that I realized I’d do best to introduce the topic by breaking it down into what it is not.
But first, a little summary to introduce the amazing ladies, Priscilla Bright and Anne Hoye, who taught me these tidbits this past weekend at Omega and an explanation on how I ended up at their workshop in the first place. As a woman who’s suffered from (so-called un-curable) migraines for 20+ years before I took healing into my own hands, I’m a strong believer in the power of body and spirit. And when I realized the last piece of the healing puzzle had to do with who I surrounded myself with on a given day, I became interested in human energy. After all, science confirms that we are made up of energy, and that we all have an electromagnetic field, just like a magnet, just like everything else on this planet.
Priscilla Bright and Anne Hoye are the former and current Dean of the Barbara Brennan School of Healing, a school that teaches a hands-on method of energy healing. They explained, very clearly, how energy affects us and how we can utilize this knowledge to make positive life changes. When I set out to list everything I loved about these ladies, I accidentally started my first novel, and so I’ll give you the cliff-notes: these are some of the most professional, well-spoken, and well-intentioned women, speaking about what could be described as a fringe topic, that I have met to date. This is not surprising given that Anne Hoye has lectured at Harvard Medical School’s Research Fellowship in Integrative Medicine and Priscilla Bright, with a Masters in Health Behavior from Boston University School of Medicine, spent her 30+ year career working in both the traditional and non-traditional Western sectors of health. So now, with the pressure on, I can only hope to do their beautiful work some justice:
1. You cannot heal another person.
That’s right. You can only help that person to heal themselves. To re-charge a magnet, you take one with a strong charge and put it next to the one with the weak charge, so that the weaker one can re-align itself. People may be more complex, but we are no different. Everyone is different, and, like animals, when we’re in alignment, our body inherently knows what it needs.
2. You cannot heal yourself alone.
We are communal beings, and we all need love and support. Bottom line, self-healing is more effective when you have help. Back to the magnets…tie a stack of strong ones around the weak one, and you can quickly bring back its power.
3. You cannot help someone to heal if you have not healed yourself.
I’m not gonna go into magnets again, but you get the point. If you have not dealt with your ‘junk’, you run the risk of passing it on to someone else through biased intention or clouded judgement. On the flip side, if you come from a place of well-being, it’s easier to draw someone else a map. Recognizing your own unique gifts helps you see the best in others, plain and simple.
4. Vulnerability is not a weakness, it is the ultimate strength.
Healing yourself doesn’t guarantee ultimate perfection, because we all have our strengths and weaknesses. But being vulnerable and open enough to acknowledge our weaknesses lets us know when we are speaking from a place of past hurt or pain, and we can then manage our actions and reactions accordingly.
5. There is not just one way to help someone heal.
At the Barbara Brennan School of Healing, they recognize everyone is unique. Therefore, healers are encouraged to acknowledge and use their own gifts to help their community and clients. After all, what works for one doesn’t always work for some and there is no reason that we should try to put ourselves in a box. We are stronger, and therefore more effective, when we stand in our own power.
6. You don’t have to be special to read an aura.
We are all reading auras of energy every day, whether we’re aware of it or not. This is how we sense feelings like love, stress and danger. There are many different ways to intuit information. Some people see energy, while others feel it kinesthetically or emotionally, intuitively understand its strength and depth, hear, taste, smell, or just know things without knowing why. Of course, one can learn to strengthen each method of taking in information, but first we must acknowledge how we are already perceiving information through our strongest and most sensitive channels. You can do this simply by paying attention to how your information comes in.
…And because the wonderful people of Omega Institute have created such a rich and inspiring environment in which the principles outlined here are so clearly understood, stay tuned for a separate post on the place with an astounding line-up of great workshops, a place I seriously recommend you visit.
To learn more about the Brennan method of healing and the Barbara Brennan School of Healing, as well as upcoming workshops like this one, including October 8th at the Open Center NYC, please visit their website.
And to learn more about other upcoming workshops at the Omega Institute, please check out their schedule here.
Photo: Greg Rakozy
