Where do all these contradictions and paradoxes leave us? We aren’t left with easy answers, but if we are at least able to start by acknowledging what actually happens with healing rather than believe the spin that gets put on it, we at least have a chance of finding some useful answers.

There is a lot of talk now about transparency in government. We need to know what is actually going on, how things are being done, where they money is being spent and so on if we are going to be able to participate in shaping our futures. I think transparency when it comes to healing is also important. A recent comment on the website really struck me and made me want to address this issue.

Michele wrote:

“Why am I not experiencing Reiki as profoundly as EVERY publication describes, and why is there NOTHING on the internet or in books about Reiki difficulties?” 

You can read Michele’s full comment and my reply here. Discussions about the challenges healers face and the varied outcomes they have do happen in some classes. They sometimes go on between students and their teachers or mentors of healing. But it’s true, you don’t see much about this in books or on the internet. My sense is that this is because most of what you read is by someone who is promoting a particular healing system or their own products and services. Of course, the only testimonials displayed are about the successes, not the “failures”. (Actually I don’t think there are failures in healing, but that’s a discussion for another time.) To some extent, those who make money as healers have an investment in keeping a mystique around healing, the idea that there’s some magic that can work every time. They may even do this unconsciously, selectively remembering the best outcomes and ignoring or explaining away the others. Whether conscious or unconscious, much of what you read about healing has a definite spin.

I feel it would be of great value to have more transparency in holistic and alternative healing. Although I feel the scientific method has its limitations in the realm of healing, it seems like science helps to keep the medical profession more “real”. You don’t see MDs advertising with testimonials to their cures. I think transparency might go a long way in helping us to be more mature and wise in the way we approach healing. That may not mean we subject everything to scientific research, but it would mean that we speak openly and truthfully about the outcomes we have actually observed. It would also mean that we look more deeply at what we mean by healing.

Of course, true transparency would change the face of marketing. Look at what it has done to commercials for drugs. After the lovely promise of a good night’s sleep or pain free joints, comes a long list of possible side effects. Although an ad for Reiki or an energy healer would not really need a list of side effects, it could include information about the different forms healing may take and reference to the inability to predict outcomes. 

Often when people are attracted to becoming healers, it’s with unrealistic expectations. Unfortunately this can lead to disappointment and giving up on a path that could prove really rewarding. Because Michele’s experience didn’t match the descriptions she’d heard, she said:

“This makes me feel like I am not worthy to do Reiki, although I REALLY want to share it with others in a way that is truly helpful to them.”

My feeling is that if someone has the desire and intention to offer healing and does so in the right way, only good can come of it. It can nourish both the healer and the person seeking to be healed. Even the failure to achieve a desired result is a step along the way. Healing is always possible, even when it is not what we had hoped. It may just take a different form. 

In the interests of exploring this more, and creating a place to discuss difficulties with healing and questions, I’ve created a Healers’ Corner page. I’d love to hear from healers about their views, experiences and questions about being a healer.

I continually ask the question — what is healing? At this point, the word has almost lost its meaning, as I see all of life as a process of “becoming whole”. Unless I am using the word in a very narrow way to refer to the healing of an injury or illness, I can’t really say anymore what healing is. This is a very interesting state of affairs for someone who has a website called “Heart of Healing”!

When I first started the work I called Heart of Healing, I was very focused on making things better. I certainly haven’t lost my interest in better physical, psychological and spiritual health, but what I’ve discovered to be the most healing is the growing acceptance of life just as it is. An intensive focus on healing can result in the kind of goal orientation that makes it impossible to relax and enjoy what you have right now. I haven’t in any way abandoned my focus on health and healing — it’s a way of life for me, but I have been learning to let go of the outcome of my efforts. This kind of acceptance, for me, has become the ultimate meaning of healing.

I recently had a phone call from a woman who sees that people are somehow affected by her hands as she works as a hairdresser. Her perception that something is happening on the level of energy has become undeniable and she felt prompted to explore this experience. At the same time, she was apprehensive about it. There is a reluctance to acknowledge this experience and even more reluctance to share it with others. If we acknowledge it to ourselves, we are opening up to a whole new way of perceiving life, to a whole new understanding of what “reality” is. If we share our perceptions, we run the risk of being considered crazy or flakey. And yet opening up to the existence of that which lies beyond the reach of the five senses gives us not only a greatly enriched experience of life and living, but can provide us with useful information and abilities.

How many people can honestly say they’ve never felt someone staring at them from across the room? How many can say they haven’t felt someone approaching them from behind even though they don’t hear them? We feel these things but we ignore the implications of these perceptions. How would you explain them? What actually is happening?

The tendency to ignore what we actually perceive is what causes us to take so long to embrace the latest understandings of physics, as well as the value of many alternative healing approaches such as energy healing. It’s what causes us to ignore one of the most valuable resources we have — our own intuition.

As I explore the field of energy healing more and more, including developing more of my own subtle sense perception, I realize that what I now experience with such clarity and certainty is something I had always experienced. It had always been there in the background, but I had learned to ignore it. When I’ve taught inroductory energy healing classes, it was never a matter of teaching anyone how to do anything. It was always about holding a space for them to acknowledge and own what they were already experiencing.

So, how do you sense energy? Do you see it, hear it, feel it? Is it simply a “knowingness”? Do you have a sense of what others are feeling or thinking? Energy can be experienced in so many different ways. The skeptical part of you that asks “am I making this up?” is useful in keeping an overactive imagination in check, but it’s usually working overtime. My rule of thumb in my classes is “if you sense something, it’s real”. Then the task is to understand what it is and how it can be useful.