In the May Healing Touch Program Community Newsletter there is a brilliant letter by Cynthia Hutchison DNSc, RN, MSN, HTCP/I, that synchronistically describes my own recent insights. When I first read it I checked to make sure it had not been addressed directly to me. It’s another example of how my Healing Touch community supports my practice.
Cynthia Hutchison is the Program Director for the Healing Touch Program™ and has been studying holistic healing and energy therapies since the early 80’s. One of her many credentials includes a doctoral degree in nursing science. She has maintained a private Healing Touch practice for over 20 years and teaches all levels of the Healing Touch curriculum.
In her letter Cynthia describes how after 30 years of doing energy work she rarely feels kinesthetic sensations and gathers most of her session feedback through common sense, intuition and listening to her clients. Near the end of her letter she has a brilliant quote by Omraam MIkhael Aivanhov:
“…True initiates do not seek to develop mediumistic faculties. They work only to purify themselves, to grow in wisdom, love and self-mastery, so that they can project themselves as high as possible inwardly. Once they reach this peak, the substance of their being is so refined it is imbued with the very quintessence of the universal Soul. This quintessence, in which everything is recorded, enables them to see and feel whatever they wish to know. And so their work allows them to acquire not only power but clairvoyance as well.” – Omraam MIkhael Aivanhov
If I had read this quote a year ago, would I have comprehended the deep significance it has for me? Would Cynthia’s letter have had such a deep impact?
Last year I really thought that the more of my clients aura I could see the better healer I would be. About a month ago in a previous post I describe the realization that this was not true, that seeing auras was not the path to becoming a better healer. Then, before I went on vacation I realized that the one thing I had been basing the validity of my healing practice on – my own tangible common sense experience of doing a healing – was not as tangible and certainly not objective as I thought.
I often feel energy as heat when I give a healing. During a session I had my hands on a client’s knee and I became distinctly aware that I could not tell if my hands were hot or if his knee was just really cold. It was not so much the actual sensation that shocked me, but the distinct shift and instantaneous certainly in my awareness that there was no objective reality in my perception.
This was a huge and profound insight for me. It was also not pleasant. I felt like the rug had been pulled out from underneath me. It was so disorienting that I felt lost. Right after this realization I went to England for my Mother-in-law’s funeral and then took my vacation. I was out of my routine and distracted by the details of travel. I didn’t have to process the ramifications of this new awareness right away. Funny how things work out.
I understand now that my healing journey is not a process of becoming a better healer by developing extrasensory perception. Cynthia stated it so well in her letter. It’s about just being, about letting go and staying clear.
What does this mean?
I’m not really sure, but I have about five half-written posts that I am never going to publish because they are now irrelevant. So many questions feel answered. I have also felt a shift in my sessions. Healings feel even more effortless for me, and still very effective for my clients. There is an absence of striving. I also feel so relaxed. I mean a new kind of relaxed that I would describe as a deeper peace.
So I will just continue with my healing practice and stay open to what happens next. It all feels really, really good.
Jeri Lawson is a Healing Touch Practitioner and Clarity Breathworker in the Temescal Area of Oakland, California.
Wow Jeri that is so profound. I can’t articulate it… but I feel the same way about even being a medium if that makes sense.
I’m laughing because I have the same trouble–only in reverse! I come from such a scientific, “I-need-proof” background that when I do Healing Touch and I feel a static sensation as I pass my hands over someone, I start to look to see if I’ve bent my wrist back too far and constricted circulation in my hand and THAT is the reason for the tingling sensation. If I feel a sudden coolness over a body area, I immediately check to see if a breeze has passed through the window before I start to trust maybe the sensation is coming from the client. I too found Cynthia’s words comforting because I don’t often have kinesthetic sensations when I do Healing Touch and I was relieved to know Cynthia STILL doesn’t, after all these years. My biggest issue is letting go of the need to “figure it out” and, after all the years of managing patient care in order to fix someone’s problem, to let go of the perception that I’m not doing a good job as a healer, if I’m not fixing a problem. Ahh, the Ego!
Nanette. Yes! It’s the “figuring it out” part. Thank you for your comment!
Yes. We have nothing to do with it! I have had so many experiences where the energy (for me, Reiki) sets things up perfectly. For instance, although I usually feel heat or tingling when an area is pulling in the healing energy, sometimes I don’t feel much of anything – and just as I’m about to move my hands, the client says, “Boy! Your hands are really hot!” So I stay a while longer. It makes me chuckle to notice how things happen totally beyond my control or understanding – and it’s always perfect.
Siddheshwari,
Thank you for sharing. You have such a wealth of healing and teaching experience!
Jeri
So long as the client is helped, it doesn’t matter whether the practitioner feels anything. On the other hand I sure enjoy the illusion of having “feedback” from the client’s energy field. It makes the session more interesting and it gives me guidance on where to put my hands.
Judith,
Yes, I still feel my client’s energy field during the healing and use that information if I am guided. I think I was just too attached to the feedback and felt like I had to become “better” . I also realize that the client can be “healed” in ways I have no perception for. I really never know how the session has helped my client. Do you have sessions in which the issue the client came to the healing with was not “healed” but later found out something else in their life was positively changed?
Thanks for your comment!
Jeri
Yes. I worked with a young man who had had a stroke when he was a child. The treatment did create a change in his paralyzed arm, but he did not wish to have more treatments to find out how much more change there could be. Two weeks later, however, his job situation, which had been a chronic worry to him, suddenly and inexplicably resolved when a dream job landed in his lap. I believe he also met a girl shortly thereafter. His life turned around in a dramatic way.
I too always want to become “better” — not at sensing the energy field but at facilitating healing. I’ve been at this since 1998 or 1999 but did not begin to sense the field (which is what I call doing “spontaneous” healing) until after a dramatic kundalini experience in 2003. Now feeling the field is second nature and I would be puzzled and feel “blind” if I couldn’t. I guess I would then have to revert to my original training with hand positions and to trusting the process.
On the other side of the equation I would say that in my experience clients who don’t feel anything when I treat them receive fewer (physical) benefits from the treatment than those who do. I don’t know why; that just seems to be the way it happens.
Wow, thanks Judith, that is really interesting.