Sessions
I offer energy healing sessions in Wellington City and Porirua City, New Zealand. Not near Wellington? Click here for an international list of energy healing graduates.
Here are some typical session themes:
- hands on energy healing
- tension-release massage
- breath repatterning
- inner focus practice
- family pattern exploration
- defence pattern exploration
- process work
hands-on energy healing
The client lies fully clothed on the healing table, and I gently place my hands in different places on or near the client's body while holding a specific intention and energy state. The client's energy system will usually respond by voluntarily coming into alignment - a process called harmonic resonance. Or, energy blocks may become apparent.
The client receives healing while deeply relaxing and becoming attuned to the energy and sensation in his or her body. In everyday life we can become so engrossed with the outside world that we fail to cultivate this inner awareness, or mindfulness. The inner sensations are variously described as releasing, opening, surrendering and grounding.
After clearing and charging the energy system, further procedures may be performed, such as chakra restructuring, astral clearing, hara healing and cord healing (as explained in Barbara Brennan's books). It can take several sessions to get full benefit from this work. There is a limit to how much can be done in one session - the client needs time to integrate changes.
Energy healing is also effective long-distance, which can be helpful if the client is unable to attend a clinic in person for any reason.
tension-release massage
Energy blocks appear in the physical body as tight, knotted or sensitive places. We don't usually feel these blocks because we learn to repress anything we don't want to experience. But when the therapist presses a little more firmly in certain places, and probes beneath the surface level, the client experiences this tension as a sharp pain, and will typically recoil in a startle response.
Releasing tension from muscles and other tissues is not a simple task. Patterns of tension in the body are usually complex and deeply rooted. If ignored they can produce stiffness, restrict breathing, increase proneness to injury (especially in the joints) and cause or sustain spinal misalignment.
I offer a form of deep tissue massage developed by Brandon Raynor. It has the single objective of finding and removing tension from the physical body. It is possible to follow lines of tension out to the toes, fingers or head. After careful and detailed work at these end points it is much easier to unlock and release tension from major muscles and from the central core of the body.
The end result is a loosening over the area that has been worked, and chronic aches often disappear. You will feel fantastic afterwards! For chronic sufferers it's useful to do in conjuction with other energy work.
breath repatterning
A breath is like a snowflake - no two are exactly the same. When the breath is confined to moving only in the chest and shoulders, a state of anxiety and tension is automatically evoked, and the fight-flight-or-freeze reflex takes over. The in-breath is emphasised, and feels like a startled gasp. Some unfortunate people breathe this way much of the time, which produces continual low-level anxiety, difficulty sleeping, indigestion and chronic tiredness - plus pain and tightness around the neck and shoulders.
In a breath repatterning session I show clients how to breathe in a more wholesome way by using the diaphragm muscle. The out-breath is emphasised, as in a deep sigh, and the body easily and quickly becomes deeply relaxed. The stomach, belly and lower back muscles are encouraged to soften and open to receive the in-breath, which becomes longer, deeper and much more satisfying. Once this technique is mastered, even the rib cage and upper back can be gently opened and softened using the diaphragm muscle.
Full body breathing becomes a vital skill for receiving deeper healing work, and is great to use in everyday life to reduce stress and regain composure.
inner focus practice
Focusing is a way of bringing attention to a space inside the body, and learning to listen to and trust it. The felt sense of the body is quite different from the vigorous, shallow chatter of the mind - it tends to be slow, deep and profound in its nature. Many of us forget about our inner wisdom, because we are so busy trying to please or conform to the expectations of parents, spouses, children, employers, neighbours, friends and relatives.
Focusing was developed by Gene Gendlin, who was researching why certain people responded much more quickly to therapy than others. He was looking for something in either the therapies or the practitioners' manner, but he noticed that the strongest determinant was an innate ability of the client to access a felt sense in the body. So he started to train clients to cultivate this ability.
Focusing enables us to access a zone between the conscious and unconscious by bringing attention to the body - and then waiting patiently. It accesses the place where therapeutic movement arises. The felt sense takes some time to arrive (perhaps as long as a full minute), by which time the mind has gone around the block three times and is impatiently drumming its fingers on the tabletop.
I offer focusing sessions to show clients how to access their deepest intuition. It saves a lot of time, and cuts past those interactions which barely scratch the surface. It is another vital skill when receiving deeper healing work.
family pattern exploration
Sometimes the cause of an illness is not found within a client , but lies deep within her or his extended family system. Typically, a child may choose to take on the unresolved issues of an adult, because in the child's magical world this will restore balance and harmony. But the child becomes entangled in a way which is overpowering. When the child becomes an adult this entanglement can manifest as depression, guilt, weariness, anxiety, thoughts of suicide or other mental or emotional disturbance.
A common cause of entanglement is when another family member has been shut out, excluded or forgotten. This could be because they died at birth or very young, or by suicide, or by accident. Or a member could be associated with a criminal or shameful event, or be part of a dreadful family secret, and excluded in that way. This ancestor will often be represented by a person in a later generation, which could have a great impact on that person's health and sense of well-being.
One way of working with energetic entanglement is Family Constellation, a format developed by Bert Hellinger which uses groups in a workshop setting. Another way is to work one-on-one with individuals, using small tags placed on a table to represent the family members involved, which is how I choose to work. Energetic entanglements can be uncovered and resolved by invoking what is called the knowing field - a special kind of intuitive awareness that the client can access when carefully guided.
The end result is often a sense of deep relief - that a repressed family pattern has finally been opened and the dark energy released.
defence pattern exploration
A defence pattern is an instinctive behaviour we use to protect ourselves when we are overloaded. It is not always possible to respond to each moment with our full attention, experience and maturity. By the time we become adults our defence patterns are complex, sophisticated and deeply ingrained, and are often another form of repression of our deepest feelings and insights. Many defences lead to predictable illnesses in the physical body, and others affect our self-image and the way we relate to others.
In these sessions we work to identify, uncover and explore the defence patterns the client employs in everyday life. This can take away their power to ruin our lives. Some simple examples (from Wilhelm Reich) are:
Schizoid Running away, not staying present, vacant, withdrawn
Oral Extreme neediness, clinginess, isn't enough, stuffing
Masochistic Feels guilty for everything, life is painful and unfair
Psychopathic Reacts with aggression, insistence, has to be the star
Rigid Tries to make everything perfect, to maintain control
When someone else is in a defensive state it is possible to learn responses which stop the pattern from escalating. These responses are called healing responses, and can be used consciously to neutralise most defences. Fantastic for use in stuck or tired relationships!
process work
This is intended for practitioners in the healing arts and others with an interest in consciously tracking and bringing to awareness the instinctive reactions and repeating patterns of their own energy-consciousness systems. Health practitioners are frequently exposed to events in their client interactions that trigger unhelpful reactions in themselves (eg counter-transference), and these reactions need to be addressed to maintain the practitioner's professional effectiveness.
In these sessions we work in the 'present moment' with what is currently arising in the body-mind, utilising focusing and breath awareness as fundamental skills. The role of the facilitator is to support and reflect the client's process as it unfolds, and occasionally to interrupt, challenge and offer an observation.
Many automatic reactions of the nervous system are so fast and so subtle that we cannot clearly see what is happening in our own systems, but a facilitator can bring a more objective and less defended perspective. Speculation around possible causes and explanations is carefully avoided - this is not a 'talking through' process. Past events are relevant only insofar as their effects are observed as a disturbance in the energy field in the present moment - and this disturbance is worked with directly.
For the client, the outcome of a process work session may include increased compassion for self and others, the reduction of tension or a feeling of relief in some part of the body, more freedom in the movement of the breath, and further insight into one's deepest, darkest and most challenging life issues. Sessions on Skype or iChat also available.