Energy healers have healed their trauma
Many who have healed from trauma in their own lives now serve as energy healing practitioners to support others to evolve beyond their trauma. A noble and understandable choice. Yet, trauma is complicated. There is no single measure of how bad someone’s trauma is, nor is there any single pathway through which someone might experience and then heal from a difficult or traumatic experience or story.
This series looks at the five stages of trauma recovery and the ways in which energy healing can adjunctively support the healing of trauma throughout each stage of recovery.
The five stages are:
- Safe processing (therapist & energy practitioner)
- Inner safety and embodiment
- Acknowledging and releasing
- Autonomy and sovereignty
- Integration and thriving
Stage 1 — Safe Processing
The client must have a safe haven in which to process the story or experience to find his or her way to it, through it, and beyond it.
Unless an energy healer has certified training and clinical expertise in treating trauma, they should ensure that their client is also working in tandem with a trained expert. Why? Because as a client moves through treatment, symptoms and memories can flare. Without the right therapeutic and clinical approach to supporting the client’s process, reactivation of the trauma can result.
EHI practitioners will tell you that I’m a broken record on this point. Thirty years of client practice and nearly 20 years teaching practitioners how to work with energy has given me the wisdom and insight that well-intentioned practitioners may not be aware of the legal requirements, as well as the appropriate approach for working with clients with a traumatic background.
In fact, I recommend that practitioners studying energy healing build referral networks that include trauma specialists with whom they can collaborate. I also recommend that energy healers avoid being a sole or lead practitioner on a trauma recovery case unless they have the appropriate licensure and training to do so. An adjunctive role is completely appropriate, ensuring the client understands that the licensed, clinical resource is the lead resource for their healing journey.
A safe harbor opens the door for evolution and healing
Once the safe harbor, the core therapeutic relationship is in place for the client, energy healing is a powerful resource for healing and evolution of the client’s experience on their journey to recovery and wholeness.
Feelings of fear, lack of worth or value, anger, grief, shame, mistrust, guilt and other strong emotions are beautifully treated with energy healing. Core patterns that are either workarounds or defensive postures that compensate and manage reactivity can also be unwound and resolved with energy clearing.
Often, in the early stages of recovery, it’s not enough for the client to intellectually know and understand that s/he is no longer at risk. The energetic triggers are still firing, causing jangling emotional reactivity that often reactivate or trigger the traumatic event or story. Clearing energy can diminish and release the triggers and anxieties as the client gains awareness that safety is now assured.
Energy healing practitioners need less ‘story’
The energy healer need not be completely plugged into the details of the trauma story nor are they responsible for unpacking and contextualizing the story. Their work is to help the client move past and release the core patterns. EHI practitioners are trained to clear only those energies and emotions the client has lit up for release. When practitioners work with this awareness and understanding, there is less potential of re-traumatizing. Collaborating with the client’s conscious and unconscious energetic intelligence and knowing forms a beautiful, safe, cohesive bond. The practitioner holds a boundaried, appropriate space for the client to let go, release, and heal with relative ease.
Energy healing that intentionally invites gentle, iterative release of energetic triggers results in gradual decrease of the disruptive emotions, behaviors and patterns. The energy healer holds the space for calm, gentle, unwinding of the energies, infusing peace, ease, calm, clarity, compassion, and other healing frequencies to supplant the triggers and difficult emotions.
Collaborating with the client’s therapeutic team is extraordinary
It is a privilege to be part of a team that supports a person as s/he heals from trauma. Observing the client’s return to balance, hope, self-respect and compassion, trust, autonomy, and self-containment is a beautiful gift. Holding the space for consistent release of the energy behind the story, event, or experience allows the client to find solid ground and begin to discover innate gifts and capacity for thriving.
