Life is a constant exchange of energy. You acquire energy from, and give energy to, others in your life—both on the earth plane and on the higher side. Sometimes this is intentional, as when you focus on sending healing energy to a loved one who is ill, or aiding someone you love in crossing over to the other side, or when you call on a friend to support you in a time of need.

But sometimes these energy exchanges are unintentional and unbalanced. You might give too much of yourself, literally, to others, leaving little for your own needs and growth. In such situations, energy healers can help restore your personal balance of energy.

Every contact you have with other people, with other living things, is an exchange of energy. Sometimes this exchange is palpable. You feel a surge, almost like an electrical charge, when you shake the hand of a person who has an outgoing personality and great vigor, or the warmth of love surround you when you hug a loved one.

We “read” these energy exchanges, and use them both to communicate with and make assessments about each other. What do you notice about a couple that tells you they are deeply in love? They might walk along or sit together, holding hands, touching and sharing each other’s physical space so they appear to be more as one than as two. As you get near, you can feel the energy of their togetherness like you might feel the charged air beneath a high-tension power line. This is such wonderful energy that you might feel like walking past this couple again, just to connect with it!

You give energy to others nearly every moment of the day, in each interaction you have with someone else. When this process stays a fairly balanced give-and-take situation, you don’t notice much about it. You give and you receive, and your energy stays supportive of you physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

When the balance shifts to giving more than to receiving, you might feel tired, rundown, and edgy. Everyone around you wants, wants, wants. No one seems to care what you might want or need. This constant demand drains your energy, and it’s no longer sufficient to support your body, mind, and spirit.

You might start to see indications of this in your health and attitude. You could become more susceptible to the “office bug” and assorted minor ailments. You might find yourself clumsier than usual, and prone to small injuries as a result. It’s not that these problems are your fault. Rather, you’re not able to resist them.

You might even feel like your energy is being taken away from you, withdrawn from you, instead of you willingly giving it. We speak, sometimes, of people who “suck us dry.” These people have such intense needs that they draw energy from those around them but have little to give back to make the process an exchange.

Have you ever said, “I just can’t deal with this relationship anymore. It takes too much energy.” You might be thinking in terms of the work you put out to sustain the relationship, the amount of time you spend trying to manage your behaviors and emotions. But you’re also sensing a loss of energy, literally. It’s like the other person is a magnet, and every time you go near, it feels like little fragments of you go flying toward it.

Exchange is a process of giving and receiving. Just as you give your energy to others, you receive energy from others. The strongest, most positive, most supportive energy is love. When love thrives in any of its multiple dimensions, energy blossoms. It’s almost as though you can feel and watch your energy intensify.

Sometimes it sounds trite to talk of “the power of love.” From sonnets to rock songs, the phrase is everywhere. So much so, in fact, that the spell checker in your word processing program might identify it as a cliché and ask you if you want to change it! But love is the foundation of the universe’s energy, and its power is very real.

When you feel happy and good in the presence of someone else, you’re drawing from an energy based in love. It is this energy base, the energy of love, that heals. When you feel it, you know it. It recharges and replenishes you. It restores your sense of well-being and happiness. It makes you whole and unites all parts of your being.

Can you receive “bad” or negative energy from others? Certainly. This is the hallmark of what psychologists call dysfunctional relationships. No one really understands why, if we can choose the energy of love that we don’t. There are as many explanations for this as there are people. Sometimes this is baggage carried from other lives. Perhaps it’s related to your soul’s lesson in this life.

What’s more important than the “why” of such choices is the recognition that they are choices. You don’t have to accept negative energy from others! Not from anyone! Change is not always easy, but it is possible. And there’s plenty of positive energy—the power of love—out there to support you in choosing to refuse negative energy.

Your aura is the energy field that surrounds your body. All living beings have auras—plants, animals, humans. Auras contain the energy of biological life. When spirit energy connects with yours, it does so through your aura. This is how spirit energy heals—it flows into your aura, replenishing and strengthening your personal energy. Your aura also acts to protect you. When you pray or meditate to connect with the God of your understanding, your aura enlarges. People who can see auras can see this happen.

Auras appear as colors. If this seems odd to you, think about electrical storms. They often produce lightning of different colors depending on what other substances are in the air at the time they strike. Energy, when it takes a form that the human eye can detect, is quite colorful.

The color of your aura provides clues about your physical, emotional, and spiritual states. The vibrancy of the color—whether it’s bold and vivid or subdued and flat—and the thickness of its layer influence the meaning of it. Color interpretations, like the symbolism of dreams, are general. What particular colors mean to you can vary.

The energy emission of your aura is very low range, beyond the range of normal vision. But with practice, you can learn to extend the reach of visual detection. (We have an exercise for you in the next section.) Here are common colors and their general meanings:

Because your life is constantly changing, so is your aura. It changes with the physical and emotional changes that occur during your daily life. An aura that’s bright and vivid indicates that your health is good and your energy is strong. An aura that’s gray or neutralized shows someone in need. You can send healing energy to someone you know is in need. However, that person’s spirit (sometimes called higher being in the context of energy healing) decides whether to accept it. Although this is a process of choice, it’s not one that you participate in consciously. Similarly, if someone sends you healing energy, your spirit determines whether to accept it. This is another way that your energy protects you.

Do you want to see your own aura? It’s easy to do, and you can do it alone! All you need is a white or black (preferred) nonreflective surface, such as a piece of poster board, a darkened room, and a candle.

If another person is present, you can have that person stand in front of the nonreflective surface (which must be large enough to function as a screen). What colors do you see around this person?

Seymon Kirlian, the Russian electrician and inventor now famous for the form of photography that bears his name (we introduced Kirlian and his work in Chapter 16), discovered that the auras of health and illness have distinct illuminations. Diseased leaves projected differently when photographed than healthy leaves of the same species. Even though the leaf itself appeared healthy, the leaf’s aura showed that it had already been infected.

Although Kirlian was certainly not the first person to explore the correlation between energy and illness, he was the first to provide evidence of it. This was a significant discovery step in understanding as well as validating energy healing.

A predecessor of Kirlian, Walter J. Kilner, invented a special lens through which the aura becomes visible. Called a dicyanin screen, the device filters light rays to make the very low spectrum rays of the aura more easily visible to the human eye.

Energy healing works through spirit chemists, spirit physicians, and other healers to heal someone on the earth plane physically, emotionally, and spiritually. A spirit chemist is a spirit guide that works through healing to change the biochemistry within the body. A spirit physician is a spirit guide that works like a physician on the earth plane might. Certain people who do healing have “specialist” spirit guides. A healer might have a “bone specialist” spirit guide, and so the healing related to bone problems is especially effective.

Energy healing makes a profound difference in people. The changes are physical, emotional, and spiritual—you need all three for healing to happen. It’s also essential to release any anger that you’re holding. Holding onto anger creates a constant cause and effect—you send out negative energy and so it returns to you. The result is dysfunction of some sort.

Energy healing is not about making everything better; it is about reaching your highest and best. Sometimes the outcome isn’t quite what you might expect. Rita once worked as a psychologist with troubled adolescents. A boy told her something he was going to do to break the law and asked her to pray for him. She told him if she did so, he would be caught and arrested, because this would be the highest and best outcome for him. He did go out to do it, and he did get arrested! He ended up going to jail, but then managed to turn his life around and is now doing fine.

Although there are numerous specialized forms of energy healing, all people have the ability to do energy healing. As always, it’s essential to begin with setting your intent for the highest good for the other person, and to conclude with thanks to your spirit guides and the God of your understanding.

Reiki is an ancient system of hands-on energy healing. The word means “universal energy.” Reiki originated in Buddhist practices in ancient India, then was lost for several centuries. It resurfaced in Japan in the 1800s. In contemporary Reiki practice, there are four levels of practitioner identified as level 1, level 2, level 3, and master.

Reiki treatment involves having a Reiki practitioner place his or her hands on your body so that the energy passing through them activates the energy in the body part that is hurt or diseased. The premise is similar to that of acupuncture: to restore the flow of energy. As you feel the energy that the Reiki practitioner is guiding through your body, you talk about the images that appear in your head. This releases trapped energy, and allows the natural flow to resume.

In the United States, Reiki therapy is often combined with psychotherapy. The Reiki practitioner is also a trained psychologist or therapist. As with all forms of energy healing, the outcome can be quite profound.

Energy healing is a fundamental element of Spiritualism, which believes that healing is part of all spirit contact and communication. Each service includes healing, as do most circles. During healing, the medium or leader asks healing spirit guides to come close. Each healer also asks his or her specific spirit guide healers to come close.

In the Spiritualist church service, members of the church who are known to have strong healing abilities are invited to stand behind chairs designated as healing chairs, to direct energy to people in need. The person who comes up to sit in the chair receives the directed healing.

The healer lightly touches the head and shoulders of the person in the chair, to let the healing energy flow into them. The prevailing thought about this is that the energy is “intelligent” and will go to where the person needs it. The person receiving healing should relax, and release anything that he or she is holding onto that is no longer needed. When the healing session is finished, the healer gently brushes the shoulders to clear the space.

Rita knows what it’s like to be on both sides of the healing chair. As a Spiritualist minister, she regularly conducts healings. In the fall of 1996, Rita neared completion of chemotherapy for breast cancer. The chemotherapy left her feeling very sick and drained. She felt so sick during the church service that she asked someone else to drive her home after the service. Rita came to a healing chair and her friend and mentor, Bob Miller, stood behind it.

Bob lightly touched Rita’s shoulders, and then raised his hands above her. She felt like an enormous vacuum was sucking everything out of her. Then another member of the church came forward and added healing energy … and then other healers did the same, one after the other, adding the energies and resources of their spirit guides to the healing.

“I felt like all of the love in the universe came into me,” Rita says about the experience. At the end of the service, Rita’s nausea and tiredness disappeared. She no longer felt weakened from her cancer treatments. In fact, the following day she put in a full day’s work. (Rita is now cancer-free.)

What people experience during spirit healing ranges from feeling very calm to feeling better either immediately or after some time. Spirit healing can’t and isn’t meant to heal everything; the purpose is always for the highest and the best. There are spiritual lessons in illness, and many things that we don’t understand. We are sometimes volunteers for people around us to learn their lessons. We don’t always know the divine purpose of a particular situation; this is beyond our capacity.

Absent healing is healing energy you send to someone who doesn’t necessarily know that you’re sending healing to them. You might offer healing prayers for a friend who’s sick. You might do a healing meditation for the cashier at the grocery store or the mail carrier after hearing that the person is having surgery. There are dozens of times every day that you learn of or encounter people who need healing.

Rita had many powerful experiences in her work as a counselor to troubled adolescent boys. One evening, someone broke into her office and stole, among other things, her leather jacket. It was a cold night, and Rita had to walk to her car without a coat. She was aggravated, and on the drive home she vented to her spirit guides.

“What do I do about this?” she asked. “How do I deal with these boys?” In answer she heard, “Send them healing.” She said, “You’ve got to be kidding!” But she got the message again, so that’s what she did. When Rita got to work the next morning, her jacket had been returned! It was the first time in the facility’s history that stolen property had been returned, although thefts were quite common. There’s no doubt in Rita’s mind that the reason it came back was because she sent the healing. Take a look back to Chapter 12 and take another look at Rita’s painting, We Worked So Hard, which depicts the spirit she believes led her to this challenging but fulfilling work with troubled youth.

When you use your own energy for healing, you’re using magnetic energy. This is a powerful source, but it quickly depletes. When you send healing to others, learn to use universal energy rather than your own energy. Here’s how a Native American healer taught Rita to draw energy through, rather than from herself:

Remember, healing is always about love, with the highest and best intent. You can recharge depleted energy by raising your left hand, which is the receiving hand, palm upward. Concentrate on allowing the energy of the universe to flow into you through your palm, letting it recharge and revitalize you.

Grief is very real. Inasmuch as we know that life continues on, the feeling of loss can be overwhelming. Even for mediums who can stay in touch with their loved ones quite easily, the loss of a loved one brings tangible pain. This pain needs to be healed. Give yourself the time and the space to feel your emotions. Allow yourself to go through the full process of grieving. If you’re having difficulty coping with your grief, seek professional help from a grief counselor or psychotherapist.

Rita prepared to display some of her paintings in a studio show. She rushed around the gallery space, trying to make sure everything hung in its place. She still needed to place some of her art, and time was running short. Hurrying down the stairs, she missed a step and twisted her ankle. Ow! She crumpled in a heap on the stairs. Her ankle hurt, but more than anything she felt somewhat panicked. This was not a time she could afford to be hobbled by an injury—she had work to do!

She lay there for a few minutes, mentally crying, “Why me? Why now?” This, of course, did little to make her ankle feel better. Finally she said to herself, “What’s going on here? Why have I created this in my life?” She put her hands on her ankle and directed energy to it, just as if she were healing someone else. Then she said, “What do I need to learn from this? To stop rushing around so much?!” She forgave herself for creating the situation that allowed her to injure herself, and continued directing energy to her ankle. After about 20 minutes, Rita stood up and walked slowly down the rest of the steps. Within two hours all of the swelling was gone and she could walk easily.

This isn’t to say that injury and illness are consequences of your doing. They are not. This is not a process of placing blame. Rather, it’s a process of looking at the events that happen and trying to figure out what lessons they hold and how to make the best of them. No one wishes for cancer or a heart attack. But when these situations of crisis occur, they can become pivotal points in your life. You are the creator of your path through this life, and part of your mission is to find your way around the obstacles that are blocking your way.

As actor Michael J. Fox explains on the flap copy of his best-selling memoir, Lucky Man (Hyperion, 2002), he would not trade his experience with Parkinson’s disease even if given the opportunity to wave a magic wand and erase it all. Living and coping daily with the tough challenges of Parkinson’s, for Michael J. Fox and for millions of others, can be transformed into a life path of spiritual growth and rich experience.

One of the most powerful aspects of energy healing is that you can do it for yourself. Try this exercise:

You don’t have to like whatever problem it is that you have, but blessing it is important because this says that you understand its purpose in your life and that you accept it. Self-healing can be very profound.

The universe is a generous, abundant, giving source. All that you need is yours for the asking. The trouble is, most of the time we either don’t know what we need or forget that we need to ask for it. The energy of the universe is always available to help you, in many and diverse ways. If you want to make changes in your life, put your intent out to the universe. What comes back might surprise and delight you.

As Rita says, “Ask, and the universe will provide!”

The Least You Need to Know