The Healer Development Series: Starting, Growing and Sustaining Your Healing Practice

Last month I was on a Healing Touch panel on the benefits of having a healing business.

The panel is part of a long series of videos by the Healing Touch Professional Association (HTPA). These discussions are recorded and available online for HTPA members.

The panels cover issues and conditions such as brain injuries, addiction, spinal issues, anxiety, and Chronic Fatigue. The videos of these panels are excellent resources, and I have found them extremely helpful. I have learned a great deal by discovering how other practitioners have addressed the same issues that I have encountered in my practice over the years.

In preparing for this panel, two thoughts occurred to me that I would like to share.

The first point I really want to emphasize is that the world needs more Healing Touch Practitioners. Practitioners must be readily available to those who need them. I hope this panel inspires everyone to consider starting a healing practice if they are interested.

The second point is that I have always felt that when we assign financial value to our healing work, it makes it more credible. This elevates its worth in our medical and mainstream culture. This makes it possible for many people to schedule that first session.

After that first session, the work speaks for itself.

Shout out to Christine Salas, the Healing Touch Professional Association Community Director. She has really made this series the incredible resource it is.

Jeri Lawson has a full-time healing practice in Oakland, California. She is available Monday through Friday for Healing Touch, Reiki, and Clarity Breathwork.  

510-601-9632   jerilawson@mac.com

A Healing Question

A client once asked me, “What do you experience during a healing session?”

That short question inspired a very long answer. An answer which is very fluid and is constantly evolving with every session.

Before I begin, it might be helpful to first describe what I do as a healer and how the energy is showing up for my clients. 

My job as a healer is to hold the energetic space my client needs to self-heal. All healing is self-healing.

In my sessions at this time, I find myself doing long, slow Chakra Connections as taught in the Healing Touch Program. A Chakra Connection is a full-body technique that starts at the feet and ends above the head. It facilitates connecting, opening, and balancing all energy systems with a series of hand placements over the major energy centers of the body. I usually start at the feet and end at the top of the head.

I am primarily kinesthetic in my perception of energy. I feel color, energy moving, and blocks in the human aura with my hands. Sometimes I also see light, as well as feel and hear vibrations, tones, and other sounds. At times I may feel things in my own body that give me information about what is happening in my client’s body—like my throat will feel scratchy for about thirty seconds, or I will be aware of my ankle throbbing for a minute.

Every session is different; no two sessions have ever been alike. Clients I see every week have a different experience each time. I still find this remarkable, even after twenty-five years of having a healing practice. 

When I first started healing work, I often perceived energies moving through me and through the room. Like a stream of grounding honey/yellow energy for one client, or a wave of cooling, clear blue for another. Every so often I still perceive energy like that, but for the last eight years there has usually been a specific frequency or space that fills the whole room for each client. In this space, everything that my client needs in that moment unfolds for them. This healing space can be deeply still, yet, is never stagnant. It morphs and evolves throughout the session.

I am generally mentally clear and noting what I am experiencing during the treatment, as well as tracking how my client is doing. Yet, there are healing states that are so encompassing that I can’t find where “I” end and “they” begin. 

There are times when it feels like the whole room is underwater and my arms can only move slowly and heavily from one hand position to another. In this state, the energy feels like waves flowing through both me and the client in this weighted, fluid space. It’s like we are deep under the ocean where everything is water, and everything is connected. Even my thoughts are slow, and it feels like they take a long time to form and then dissolve.

Some sessions are so ethereal that I feel like I am healing a cloud, not another human body. I can feel the bright translucent light and once in a while see it in the room. I do not have, or have not yet opened up to the ability to communicate directly with guides and angels, yet I almost always sense other distinct healing presences in the room. These presences have always been extremely helpful. Many of my clients tell me after the healing who or what they saw, or how many sets of hands they felt.

Some healings create a very sparkly light in the room. In others, I am kinesthetically aware of a very low tone or vibration permeating everything. Occasionally I may suddenly feel intensely sleepy. That is an energetic frequency that may last most of the session, or only a few minutes. When that happens, I have to focus on my breath, sit even more upright, and stay balanced until it passes. The sleepy energy has proven to be greatly beneficial for my clients, especially when I stopped resisting it.

Sometimes the healing is mostly about balancing my client’s physical body, and I am experiencing the healing energy with my hands. I might sense the energy gently unwinding in circular patterns under my palms at each hand position. Sometimes I am very aware of my client’s cranial pulse, and that is the prominent guiding sensation for me during the session.

Once in a while the energy feels electric—like a pulse between my palms. Sometimes there is a magnetic pull throughout the session in one direction, as if through the session I am pushing my client to the right or left. Often there is a sense of expansion—like the area between my hands is filling up as if bread is rising. I have felt my hands merge with the client’s body, like there are no hands and no body, just this space where my hands should be.

I have become aware of my client’s energy field as a collection of frequencies that are subtly harmonizing. Like all the individual musicians in an orchestra tuning up before a concert. Every time I change my hand position, I sense a different tone. It’s like I am feeling sound. My clients are tuning themselves in the sacred space.

Almost all sessions move through several different energetic states in the same treatment. 

Time is usually not linear in a healing. I have to periodically check the clock, which is right by the healing table, so I know how much time I have left in the session. My subjective experience of time is not reliable at all. I can’t tell you how many times I have looked at the clock after what feels like only ten minutes and find thirty minutes have gone by.

Time can also “jump.” I will just realize one moment that I wasn’t there. That maybe both the client and I skipped out for a split second or a few minutes. I can’t be sure, since I was not there to experience it. I am still uncomfortable with suddenly not being in my healing session, even if only for a moment, but after a few years of this occurring I decided to just go with it. It appears when this kind of energy shift happens it is very, very healing for my client. 

A few times, I have sensed my client entraining with my energy field—the synchronization of their body rhythm to mine. This has only happened a handful of times and it is more of a physical connection, rather than an energetic one.

I would say energy is like water. During a session it may be hard, like ice, or misty like a fog. Sometimes it’s heavy like a milkshake, and other times it’s clear and clean like water from a spring. The energy of the session can be totally encompassing, like when the healing space suddenly feels like I am at the bottom of the ocean. Sometimes it’s moving like a large river, or even a waterfall. Then sometimes it can feel totally still. 

I could go on and on, but I think this gives you an idea of what I may be experiencing when holding a healing space for my client. Everything I have described always feels perfect during the treatment and makes so much sense in the moment—like I knew it all beforehand, or I am just remembering it as it arises. I almost always feel peaceful and grateful after each session.

Chapter One from the book “A Business Of Healing; The Direct Experience of An Energetic Practitioner.”

Jeri Lawson has a full-time healing practice in Oakland, California. She is available Monday through Friday for Healing Touch, Reiki, and Clarity Breathwork. 

510-601-9632   jerilawson@mac.com

Interview with Christine Salas From The Healing Touch Professional Association

The Healing Touch Professional Association is building a great resource of interviews of their members. Each interview focuses on how the individual practitioner is bringing Healing Touch into their healing profession, community, and life.  I was very honored to be included.

Jeri Lawson has a full-time healing practice in Oakland, California. She is available for Healing Touch, Reiki, and Clarity Breathwork  Monday through Friday. 

510-601-9632   jerilawson@mac.com

Trust Is A Superpower

“It took me over twenty years to develop the ability to completely trust the energy. To understand that whatever happens during a healing is, and will always be, perfect. This trust has become an embodied skill. Now fully embedded in my muscle memory, this healing skill is my superpower.”

Jeri Lawson has a full-time healing practice in Oakland, California. She is available for Healing Touch, Reiki, and Clarity Breathwork  Monday through Friday.  510-601-9632

jerilawson@mac.com

Click here to buy the book.

Healing In Hospitals

A quote from the book: A Business Of Healing

“Many of the “miracle sessions” I have experienced with my clients have been in hospitals. Getting energetic healing modalities such as Reiki and Healing Touch into our medical institutions would eliminate so much suffering and promote vital self-healing. If there is one way this book may influence the world may it be to encourage energetic healing in hospitals. Even one healing session in a hospital can create enough energetic support to turn a patient’s healing process around. Energy healing in hospitals would greatly shift our medical culture.”

“I also want to say that everyone can hold space in the hospital for themselves or a loved one. Prayer, meditation, or pujas are all so helpful. Even when it does not feel like you are doing anything, let me assure you that you are. You will feel it, experience it, and know it on a deep level the more you do it.

One grounded centered person can shift the energy of an entire room.

We. Are. More. Powerful. Than. We. Have. Ever. Imagined.

Jeri Lawson has a full-time healing practice in the Temescal Area of Oakland, California. She is available for Healing Touch, Reiki, and Clarity Breathwork Monday through Friday.

510-601-9632  jerilawson@mac.com

Feeling Sleepy In Healing Sessions

My Mom began reading my book.

When we talked yesterday, the first question she asked me was, “I was surprised to read that you fall asleep in your healing sessions.”

I think there are going to be a lot of things in this book that may be surprising.

Below is a short quote from the chapter called The Question, where I attempt to describe all the things that I may experience in a healing session:

“…Occasionally I may suddenly feel intensely sleepy. That is an energetic frequency that may last most of the session, or only a few minutes. When that happens, I have to focus on my breath, sit even more upright, and stay balanced until it passes. The sleepy energy has proven to be greatly beneficial for my clients, especially when I stopped resisting it.”

Early in my practice, I felt the sleepy energy much more than I do now. I can’t tell you how upset I used to get when it happened. I totally resisted it and physically tightened up when I felt it. It made me feel like I lacked the stamina, ability, and focus I should have as an Energetic Practitioner. I believed the thought that “This is happening because I am not a better healer; only losers feel sleepy when they are healing.”

One day I realized this sleepy energy was a healing vibration, just like all the more obvious high energy and sparkly frequencies. That day I was tired because I had been up most of the night before, so when the sleepy energy came in, I didn’t fight it. I didn’t resist or contract my body against it. I kind of surrendered into it because I was really tired. It lasted most of the session. It was a little intense holding that space for almost fifty minutes, but I did it.

It was a great healing for my client—one of those profoundly off-the-chart sessions. I realized  ‘sleepy’ energy is a powerful healing energy. Now when it comes, I relax my body into it, deepen my breath to stay focused, and hold it for as long as needed for my client.

I  also realized I spent the first five years of my healing practice resisting an energy that my clients may have needed to rebalance and heal. If I had not been so judgemental, I could have been learning how to hold it as efficiently as possible, rather than trying to get over it.

That being said, I am also always open to the information that I might need more sleep, that I might be run down, or need a few days off.  I always check my grounding before, during, and after the session. My focus is to stay as open to all information that arises in my healings. That information may tell me I need more rest.

I hope that by sharing my experiences in this book, other practitioners will not waste so much time resisting any of the beautiful, restorative, and rebalancing healing energy available to us.

Jeri Lawson has a full-time Healing and Breathwork practice in Oakland, California. She is available Monday through Friday for distance healings as we shelter in place. 

510-601-9632

 jerilawson@mac.com

An Interview About A Business Of Healing

My incredible writing coach Beth Barany asked me to do this interview. Here is her website: http://bethbarany.com/

Click below to buy my book A Business Of Healing: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1735545309/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Jeri Lawson has a full-time Healing and Breathwork practice in Oakland, California. She is available Monday through Friday for distance healing as we shelter in place. 

510-601-9632

 jerilawson@mac.com