You are made up entirely of energy and understanding how your energy works is key to growth and healing on all levels.
Your Energetic Body
Your Energetic Body is what we call this combination of energy working within your physical body. It contains your Chakras, Shushumna and Outer Bodies along with other parts not covered here.
What is so important about Chakras and Energy? Energy is what your body, mind, and spirit work on. The clearer your energy is, the better you feel. Energy is very similar to food. A calorie is really a measurement of energy! Due to physical, emotional, and mental stimuli, your energy can become clearer or muddier. Think of muddy energy as eating a food with empty calories, you don’t get much from it. Your chakras clean your energy while moving it into, around, and out of the body. Although all energy is really the same, Earth and The Divine’s energy are often thought of as a purer form of energy than energy coming from another person as neither contain the disharmony or, in our example, mud.
Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, yet it can be changed. It can be observed as motion. Energy can be “at work” as in the case of a river rapid or “potential energy” as in the case of a dammed-up lake. In science, it is the ability to do work.
Vibration
Energy is often referred to as some quality that is being emitted from an object like this rock has soothing energy or that man has negative energy. This is called an object’s vibration. What determines a person’s level of vibration? Thoughts, actions and environment; actions based on judgment and negative thinking lower vibration whereas actions based on discernment, thoughts of compassion and love raises vibrations.
Your vibrations, thought of as the frequency of your energy, waft out like the smell of cookies baking in the oven. For example, if your vibration reflects a calm and peaceful energy it will imbue your surroundings with a sense of calm and peace. Those coming in contact with you will, consciously or not, be affected by that calm and peace to the level that they either resonate with your vibration or are in conflict with it. People resonate with you if their vibrations are similar. The stronger the resonance, or similar vibration, the stronger the effect is. Your vibration will affect your client. It is important to remember this when you are working. Consciously work toward raising your vibration so as to be the best facilitator possible.
The Law of Attraction teaches that similar energies are attracted to each other. As your vibration rises, you will attract higher vibrating and positive thinking clients. You will also help your client raise her vibration and attract more positivity into her life. People with lower or negative vibrations won’t feel comfortable around you, so they won’t stick around.
Level of vibration, like emotions, naturally goes up and down. Trying to force yourself to “think happy thoughts” and pretend everything is okay is not healthy. It’s important to honor your mental and emotional state. Yet, by becoming mindful of how your thoughts and emotions influence your vibration, you can raise your vibration. If you or your client struggles with negative thinking or lower vibration, here are seven different steps to implement into a practice. Your intuition and discussion with your client will help you to know which of these to recommend.
Ways to Raise Your Vibration
- Sing or listen to positive uplifting music or read positive and empowering literature. By surrounding yourself with positive thoughts and sounds, you will start to experience a higher vibration.
- Spend time with a group of positive people or an inspiring friend. Being around a group of positive people, you begin to resonate with their more positive energy, giving your body and mind an example of what higher vibrations feels like.
- Think of a loving situation or something you are grateful for and allow that vibration to fill your heart and radiate throughout your body. Gratitude is a proven way to both attract positive energy and attract abundance on all levels. Love is one of the highest vibrations, so allowing yourself to bask in loving energy will raise your vibration and help you to attract even more positive energy to you!
- Try meditating by simply focusing on your breath for a few minutes. This simple yet affective mediation brings you into the present moment. In the present moment, you are not wasting your energy worrying about the future or fretting about the past. When you find yourself in the past or present, practice focusing on your breath to bring you back into the now.
- Donate something or volunteer your time. Giving to others is a wonderful way to shift the focus off your own issues. Being of service has long been a spiritual instruction for raising your vibration. Plus, it just feels good to help someone else. Another bonus, getting rid of clutter is a great way to wash your environment of old energies.
- Take care of your body by getting enough sleep and eating well. A healthy body vibrates at a higher level than one that is tired or bogged down with heavy foods.
- Don’t judge your vibration; just do the best you can, when you can. Judgment lowers your vibration! This is important. You are human and sometimes you need to be in a crummy mood. Remember, it’s healthy to experience the full spectrum of emotions. Though you can help yourself emotionally, mentally and physically by practicing at least one of these steps each day no matter how you are feeling.
Your Energetic System
Your Energetic System is a combination of the chakras and outer bodies that bring in and process energy as well as the Sushumna that distributes it. There is more to the Energetic System including the meridians and nadis yet those will not be discussed here. Energy, chakras, the outer bodies and healing are intertwined. Without a strong Energetic System, there is no way to bring in and distribute the clean energy needed to maintain physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health.
The Chakras
Think of Chakras as facilitators for energy to come into and leave your body. There are seven main Chakras in the physical body each connected to one of your seven Outer Bodies, along with hundreds of other Chakras in your physical and non-physical bodies.
If you could imagine someone dropping a plumb line from the top of your head and down through your body, it would come out between your legs. That line is the Sushumna, which is the highway used by the energy brought in by the Chakras to travel through the body. Like any highway, roads branch off from exits. Think of the exits as the Chakras and the highways and minor roads as the major and minor Nadis.
Each Chakra is assigned to transport energy to and from different organs and parts of the body. Chakras can be visualized as vortexes, although they are energetic. Chakras won’t be found on an x-ray or CAT scan, yet can be seen by those who are sensitive to Chakra energy or the aura. Not all cultures agree on the specific details of the individual chakras, so if you follow a different tradition, that is okay. When working with Chakras in meditation or with the spreads, it is best to use the colors, names, and locations you, or if working with a client, she is most comfortable with, no matter what any book says.
Chakras have their own vibratory rates, rising faster and higher as you move up the Sushumna. Of the seven main Chakras in the body, the Chakra with the slowest rate is the Root Chakra and the fastest vibratory rate is the Crown Chakra. These two flow in one direction. The Root Chakra points downward and mostly deals with Earth Energy. The Crown Chakra points upward and deals with The Divine or Universal Energy. The other five Chakras have a front and back. The rear of the Chakra is usually a little smaller than the front entrance, and sometimes the back of the Chakra is located slightly lower on the back of your body.
Each Chakra deals with a different type of consciousness, organ, color, food, tone, etc. The idea is that these elements should be balanced, so even though you want to strengthen your solar plexus using the food of the solar plexus Chakra, starch, and the color, yellow, it doesn’t give you a free pass to binge on cookies or wear bright yellow every day! You need to balance your starch intake and using a vibrant yellow in your Chakra Healing Color Meditation will help invigorate the solar plexus, where a soft yellow will calm it down.
The easiest way to work with a chakra is to use the associated color in the Chakra Healing Color Meditation, which will be discussed in the chapter on Light work, while balancing its corresponding food in your diet. You can also wear the color, or a crystal with that same color, and vocalize using the corresponding tone. Bringing the element of the Chakra into your life also works. If you are working with the Root Chakra, the related element is Earth. Go play in the garden for a bit! If you start working with the healthy attributes of the Chakra by emulating them in daily life, that will also help empower that Chakra. Working with a Chakra is never a substitute for traditional medical care, yet this healing can support any mainstream treatment. You can find the colors, foods, etc for each chakra in the handy chart at the end of this section.
Trouble with a particular Chakra can show up through disease or malfunction in the body parts or organs related to the particular Chakra. It is important to remember that a Chakra cannot be totally blocked or totally open without major illness. I have people tell me that a psychic told them their Chakra is blocked, or their aura is dark, and for X amount of dollars the “psychic” will fix it. This ridiculousness is what gives psychics a bad name. If a Chakra was totally blocked you would be dead, or in the hospital at best, and everyone has a bad day with a gloomy aura. The best thing you can do to avoid a clogged-up Chakra or dull aura is to do your Chakra Meditations, eat well, get enough rest, laugh, love, and live your life as fully as possible. There is something called a Kundalini Awakening that can leave your Chakras blown open if you are not prepared for it, yet this is rare and can create a mental imbalance if not activated properly. If you come across a client who has had a Kundalini experience, it is recommended to refer her to someone who is more experienced with Kundalini energy.
Chakra Chart
The Outer Bodies
Your Energetic System contains more than the chakras—it also has the outer bodies. Each Chakra is connected to a specific outer body as well as being connected to you physically, emotionally, mentally, intuitively, or spiritually. Understanding the chakra–outer body association will allow you to work on strengthening a particular Outer Body by bolstering the associated Chakra and vice versa. Look to the Chakra Chart above to see the Outer Body’s corresponding Chakra. To visualize the Outer Bodies, they are taught as if they aligned like a seven-layer cake and although that is not quite accurate, it is how we will present it here.
Each outer body contains information as well as an associated energy. It is like downloading to the physical body the information from the specific program associated with the particular Outer Body. Thus, contacting one of the Intuitive Bodies, you would get intuitive information. If you contact the Emotional Body, information would come in the form of emotion. Also, your intuitions, thoughts, emotions and sensations activate the corresponding Body. If you are deeply involved with your emotions, you will activate the Emotional Body. If you are connecting to your intuition, you activate one of the Intuitive Bodies. If an outside energy is affecting the Mental Body, your thoughts will be affected. If you are clearing or working with the Emotional Body, your emotions are triggered, etc.
Each outer body corresponds with a chakra. Intuition having to do with daily life is accessed via the Brow Chakra and the Lower Intuitive Body. Similarly, the Higher Mental Body provides access to your beliefs about society and spirituality through the Throat Chakra. There is an integral connection between Chakras and Outer Bodies. Also an integral connection between the outer bodies. Suppose you are overthinking, associated with the Lower Mental Body. In that case, you will eventually put a drain on the Emotional and Etheric bodies as the Lower Mental Body is using more energy, and less energy is passed along to the bodies below it.
Energy for the most part first enters the Transcendent Outer Body and then trickles down through the Intuitive Bodies, the Mental Bodies, the Emotional Body, and finally into your physical body through the Etheric Body. With that said, the energy level of each Chakra is also affected by the energy level of its associated Outer Body. If one of the outer bodies is weak, you will find that the energy of the associated Chakra will most likely be weak.
Your higher guidance is also funneled down through the Outer Bodies. Think of your guides whispering instructions into your Transcendent Body like in the game of Telephone. Each Outer Body passes along the message, slightly colored by their perception, down to the Outer Body below it. The information finally arrives through the Etheric Body and if the outer bodies are not strong and clear, the message can be distorted. Similar to how energy from the Outer Body strengthens the corresponding Chakra, certain information or strengths are offered to you through each of the corresponding Outer Bodies. The loving vibrations sent by The Divine and your guides come in contact with the outermost bodies first and through the process of integration, that love begins its journey inward to your hearts, blossoming into the light of your inner spirit.
Conclusion
Clear outer bodies will allow the energy and guidance you receive to come through pure and unbiased. With clear and healthy Chakras, you can bring in, clean, process and distribute the energy from The Divine, Mother Earth, and those around you. Understanding how energy affects you and others will allow you to be proactive instead of reactive in dealing with the people and circumstances life throws at you. Keeping your Chakras and your Outer Bodies clear, strong, and working together is essential for your physical health as well as any intuitive or spiritual work you want to do. Recognizing how Energy is affected is also key and we will discuss a bit of that next.
How Energy Interacts and Affects You
Attraction of Like Energies
Mystics throughout the ages have taught that creation came about by The Divine stepping down or lowering its vibration. Next, similar vibrations were attracted to each other and came together to form matter. Matter is made up of these Divine clumps, so to speak, of similarly vibrating energy. All of creation is made of Divine Energy existing at different levels of vibration. Even our fellow humans are vibrating at different frequencies or levels of vibration. Some of mankind are evolving, emitting a higher level of vibration, literally vibrating at a faster rate. Others, usually those usually stuck in negative thought patterns, are vibrating at a slower rate. People are not the only creation that vibrates. Plants, minerals, animals, locations and even situations each have their own vibratory rate.
This process of similar vibrations being attracted to each other continues to create your environment and your circumstances. Like in creation, you will tend to attract those individuals and circumstances that match your vibration. You will tend to repel dissimilar vibrations. Yet, because of this innate principle that vibrations like to “vibe’ with each other, when you are around discordant or dissimilar vibrations either your or the other person’s energy will either raise or lower its vibration depending on who’s vibration is the strongest, not necessarily the highest.
Energetic Interactions
Plain and simple, other people’s energy affects us. Think of someone’s energy spreading out like the smell of cookies baking in the oven. When you walk into a house where someone is baking cookies, you smell them the minute you enter the door. You might even start to feel hungry. A person, or even a place’s energy, can be sensed before you can see the source of it, and it can affect you from a distance as well. Right now, think of the last time you had fresh-baked, warm, delicious-smelling cookies right out of the oven. Even though you do not really smell them now, you might even find your mouth watering or your tummy reacting. Energy works like that, too! Your energy goes where your attention is focused, and you experience the energy that is manifested where you are focused. That energy affects you and how you react in a current situation. Energy can affect you from the past, present, or even projected into the future. For example, if you are thinking of when you broke up, and at the time you felt that the energy was very discordant, then you bring that discordant energy into your present moment. You and those you are dealing with in the present moment will be affected by the past discordant energy.
This is why it can be so destructive to keep reliving a distressing experience. You keep re-bathing yourself in the unhealthy energy of that experience. Yet when you rethink a past negative situation and empower that memory with “how you would handle it better,” you are converting the lower vibration to a higher one. Our ability to experience energy by thinking of past situations enables us to reminisce. That can be a boost when it is a positive memory, yet obsessing about a past unhealthy situation can be detrimental when not for healing purposes.
When you are in close quarters with someone with discordant energy, the effect is compounded because when you interact with someone, your energies become deeply entwined. Below is a technique called Staying in Your Energy Meditation for protecting your energy if you are forced to be around someone with a lower vibration. The process of going behind your eyelashes helps to detach you from his or her energy. It does not remove you one hundred percent, yet it can assist you in reclaiming your center and help create a healthier boundary between the two of you.
Staying in Your Energy Meditation
- Stop and take a few deep breaths the next time you find yourself interacting with an unhealthy person or situation.
- Close your eyes or look away from the person or situation for just a second if you cannot leave the area. You don’t have to close your eyes or look away first, yet it will help you to detach.
- Imagine that you are looking out from inside your head. If you have glasses on, notice the rims of the glasses. If you do not have glasses then imagine what it would look like to be behind your eyelashes.
- Consciously decide to detach from the energy around you and continue to breathe deep and full.
- Soften your gaze a little; you might want to practice softening your gaze in front of a mirror so you don’t look dazed.
- Pay attention to, and interact with, what is going on around you, but focus your energy tightly around your own body by staying behind your eyeglasses.
- Breathe deeply if you feel energetically dragged into the situation again.
- Find the best way to get yourself out of the unhealthy situation, while keeping your energy close to you by staying behind your eyelashes.
It is important to be realistic about applying this meditation. You can only stay in this detached space for a short while. This meditation is to be used as a way to help you detach from unhealthy energy long enough to reconnect to your energy, and your soul’s goals, and see your best next move. Sometimes that can mean a permanent move away from the unhealthy job, relationship, or neighborhood.
You do not want to live detached from other people’s energies—life would get boring pretty quickly. The Staying in Your Energy Meditation is to be used when you cannot get out of a difficult situation. This meditation also helps you to realize how you are affected by other people’s energies and, in turn, how you affect others. To be mindful of how your energy affects others is an important part of spiritual growth. Another reason to not stay detached is that sharing energies can positively feed each other. Think of how wonderful you feel after getting together for a cup of tea with a positive friend. The two of you both walk away feeling terrific! It is more than the good company; there has been an energetic exchange. Yet that exchange can backfire just as easily, resulting in feeling drained after an exchange with a needy or difficult person.
Giving Your Energy Away
It is not always the other person’s energy that affects you. You can send part of your own energy away by focusing on a person or situation. Remember that energy flows where attention goes, so obsessing about a situation or person is like feeding it. Take the example of a relationship breakup. When you have trouble letting go of the other person, you obsess about him. It is like sending an energetic sandwich, every time you think about him. You feel drained, but your ex-boyfriend feels great. He doesn’t know why, he just does. He may even think it is the freedom of not being in a relationship that has him so charged; yet it is you, delivering your energy to him like a hamburger.
Eventually, you start to get over the relationship. You are not thinking of your ex so much, and even start to flirt with someone new! You are no longer sending your energy to the ex. Now, doesn’t it figure, your ex calls you up, just as you are starting to move on. You think, “Wow, he must have missed me so much—he will be a much better boyfriend now!” Sorry, but most of the time, it is your energetic sandwich he is missing. The old relationship issues are still there.
I am not saying that every time a relationship resumes it is doomed because of this energetic exchange. Yet I have seen it happen over and over again in my spiritual counseling practice. The best way to make sure you don’t fall into the same dead-end cycle after a relationship ends is to go out and do things that you enjoy, reminding yourself of your potential. Make yourself the focus of your energy instead of feeding it to the ex. Sometimes it is helpful to have a “go-to” image or daydream to use when you find yourself obsessing about the old relationship. Maybe pick someplace you would love to visit, and when you think of the ex, shift your thoughts to your new image. Another technique is to see yourself surrounded in Golden Light, God’s unconditional love, from above and ask your guides or angels to arrange that your ex’s guides surround him in Golden Light. You don’t want the energy to come from you, or to merge your separate Golden Lights, as that would defeat the purpose.
Life is a Story
Another way to avoid being drained by difficult people and situations is to understand them as storylines in your life’s play. If you believe that before you incarnate your soul works out a life story that will teach you what you need to learn and offer you the experiences you wish to have, it is easy to imagine that these difficult people and situations are a part of your story line. Taking as an example an everyday scenario, imagine that the obnoxious lady at the Customer Service desk is there because you asked her to teach you patience. Instead of looking at her as someone whose life purpose is to torment you today, imagine that your soul prearranged this scene in order for you to practice being as patient as possible. Often when you learn your desired lesson, the difficult situation (or person) leaves. This is not to say you should stay in a dysfunctional relationship, job, or home life because it is teaching you lessons. That is not the way it works. These types of situations arise in your life’s play to cue you that it’s time for movement and growth. When you understand the lesson, you make the changes in your life to reflect the learning. Don’t worry, if you didn’t get it right, or missed part of it, your guides will make sure to present the lesson again in a way that allows you to be more successful! Choosing suffering is not expected, required, useful, or necessary for growth.
Recognizing that not every person’s action or reaction has to do with you is another way not to get knocked about by situations with people. Our human tendency is to think everything is always about us. When you start to realize that the obnoxious Customer Service person is most likely obnoxious to everyone, or that the guy who boxed your car in is simply a poor driver, you don’t need to waste your energy on the situation. This does not release you of the responsibility of how your own energy may contribute to a situation, yet most often other people’s reactions have little to do with you.
Conclusion
Think of your Energetic System as an energetic alarm system. It is important to have your energy open and available as much as possible, and with strong chakras and outer bodies you can walk—or run—through your hectic day knowing that you are less likely to get surprised by unexpected influences in your environment. You will be aware when you are getting run-down, know when someone is starting to get annoyed, and even know how to distinguish when your child, co-worker, mate, friend, or parent is simply being needy or really needs your help. You can then choose your action based on an informed knowledge of what is really going on instead of making a knee-jerk reaction that pulls you off center and takes you out of the flow of your day.
These insights on energy, vibrations, chakras, outer bodies, and how the exchange of energy affects you and others around you is important for healing on all levels. Use this information to help your clients when they are dealing with the effects of energy and vibration as well as for your own growth and well-being. Your Energetic System delivers energy as well as offers support and guidance from The Divine and your guides. It is imperative to be a clear channel when you are working with clients and to support your own growth and healing. By maintaining a strong and healthy Energetic System, you can create balance throughout your entire life: physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.
