Energy healing is a form of therapy that employs various physical interventions to balance your vital energy or Qi (pronounced “chee”) in Traditional Chinese Medicine or prana in Ayurveda – the life force that these therapies seek to balance.
Some critics of energy psychology note the financial gain gained by practitioners from its success, as well as claims that some research on these therapies lack integrity by failing to disclose financial affiliations as required by scientific ethics guidelines.
The Benefits of Energy Focused Therapy
Energy focused therapy provides an alternative approach to traditional psychotherapy by targeting the body’s energy field to treat psychological distress. Energy healing seeks to clear away blockages and restore balance; many who struggle with anxiety, depression and trauma benefit from its holistic approach.
Energy therapy should not be seen as a replacement to traditional mental health services; rather, it can supplement them. Energy therapy operates under the theory that each of us possesses vital energy force – known as “qi” in Chinese or “ki” or prana in Indian – which flows through us and can be balanced to enhance wellbeing.
Energy therapy encompasses various methods, but most often centers on harmonizing the energy that flows through our meridians or chakras. Practitioners may use thoughts, touches, visualization, music or other means to achieve this result.
Energy therapies provide clients with tools to identify and shift distorted thoughts that contribute to negative emotions. For instance, Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) uses tapping on energy points around the body until the client no longer experiences distress when thinking of specific events or feelings.
Other energy therapy modalities focus on alleviating physical symptoms. Reiki involves placing hands lightly over or on top of a client to activate their parasympathetic nervous system; studies demonstrate its benefits in relieving stress and increasing relaxation.
Energy therapies often combine exposure therapy – an established Western method for relieving emotional distress – with non-Western techniques designed to heal disruptions in human electromagnetic fields and energy systems. This form of energy psychology is often combined with cognitive behavioral therapy.
Exposure therapy tends to be more active and goal oriented, whereas energy psychology uses clients’ internal energy to modify their thoughts, feelings and behaviors. For example, someone who fears spiders could perform body tapping while recalling and recalling a painful memory with their Spiderman costume on.
How Energy Focused Therapy Works
Energy focused therapy is a form of psychological treatment which works by balancing an individual’s internal energy flow and channeling it in specific ways to help heal both mind and body. Based on ancient practices that seek to promote wellbeing by channeling energy in particular ways.
Energy focused therapy seeks to assist individuals in overcoming negative thoughts and beliefs that block the natural flow of energy throughout their bodies. While not considered scientific treatment, energy focused therapy has provided numerous advantages for many who undergo it.
Energy healing techniques used by practitioners to assist their clients in finding inner peace and overcoming emotional distress are diverse, from touch to visualization techniques. One such energy healing practice, called Reiki, involves placing their hands on specific bodily points while Jin Shin Jyutsu uses pressure applied by their practitioner’s hands to balance a client’s bodily energy balance.
Energy healing techniques are generally considered safe and noninvasive procedures do not take place during their application. However, some researchers and clinicians have raised concerns regarding their profitability by their proponents – who they suspect of making financial gains by selling products and trainings related to energy psychology to people receiving treatments from these practitioners.
Energy work is increasingly used as part of therapy sessions, either as an add-on to other forms of counseling or as part of an overall approach to treating clients’ mental health concerns. Some therapists use exposure therapy – an established, research-backed Western approach – to help their clients overcome fears and anxieties by recalling traumatic memories while performing physical interventions designed to restore balance to the human energy system.
Perspectives’ therapists integrate energy healing into their treatment to provide clients with a more holistic experience and overcome potential barriers to healing, such as lack of time or accessibility to traditional therapy services.
Intensive Energy Focused Therapy
Intensive therapy can be an invaluable way to jump-start the healing process. By setting aside several days or multiple hours of focused time, intensive therapy allows you to address the underlying causes that contribute to your pain and suffering more efficiently than more traditional forms of weekly counseling sessions.
If you are exploring the benefits of EMDR therapy or trauma therapy, it’s essential that you find a therapist with adequate training and experience. Seek advice from friends or colleagues who have themselves undergone trauma therapy or EMDR themselves and may offer valuable recommendations.
People often opt for EMDR intensives as they offer a more intensive therapeutic experience. An intensive session allows participants to explore past traumas and unprocessed emotions with support from a trained therapist guiding the process. An additional advantage of an intensive is having dedicated time for processing emotional and psychological struggles without distraction or interruption from daily life.
EMDR intensives can also be an effective tool in treating complex trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Many times these traumas stem from childhood experiences and can manifest themselves through repeated cycles of fear, frustration or disappointment in relationships, career pursuits or other aspects of life. With an EMDR intensive you will have space and time to investigate their source as well as develop healthy responses going forward.
Couples seeking therapy through an EMDR intensive can use it to heal emotional wounds from past emotional abuse and build strong, loving bonds again. This can be accomplished by focusing on each partner’s relationship system to allow access to love and connection; increase emotional safety; and foster long-term intimacy.
Individually, an EMDR intensive can help remove emotional barriers that prevent growth and happiness. This can be accomplished by identifying and clearing away blockages that prevent you from fully experiencing your emotional, physical, and spiritual essence – this could include releasing negative emotions, reprocessing childhood traumas, or managing energy imbalances.
Healing Touch
Hands have long been associated with healing, from religious traditions such as laying of hands to massage and even surgery instruments. Modern physics suggests that all living things have an energy field which exchanges energy with their environment to reach harmony with the universe; this theory forms the basis of energy therapies such as Healing Touch which use gentle touch to re-pattern an individual’s energetic field and accelerate healing of body, mind and spirit.
Healing Touch operates under the assumption that there exists an invisible network of energetic pathways connecting all aspects of our physical bodies. A Healing Touch practitioner should recognize these paths, identify any aberrant energies and remove it to create an ideal condition for healing to take place. In an average session, you’ll recline or lie down while your practitioner gently moves her hands around your body – either directly on specific energy centers or just generally around the energy field – either warming up the area around or tapping specific points directly. You might experience nothing at all or some heat/cold sensations/imagery or feelings of peace/calmness – depending on individual responses.
Healing Touch’s mechanisms remain mysterious, yet studies have demonstrated positive results for its use by patients. One research paper showed that bone cells treated by Healing Touch practitioners grew faster and stronger than those receiving sham treatments.
Energy psychology techniques differ from traditional psychotherapy in that they focus more on goal-setting and the body’s energy systems than on behaviors or thoughts, often used to treat emotional problems such as anxiety, depression and phobias. Furthermore, energy psychology may also help relieve fatigue, stress and chronic pain from illness symptoms.
Energy Psychology techniques focus on harnessing our body’s natural energy system for greater wellbeing. Practitioners work with meridian and chakra points on the body to promote improved health; similar to cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), practitioners use tapping motions targeting energy points on the body until no negative reactions to triggers arise anymore. Typically in a CBT session, clients rate their feelings of distress before the therapist guides them through tapping motions targeting energy points on their bodies; the process continues until no negative responses come up when thinking of specific triggers anymore when thinking of specific triggers arises when thinking about certain triggers – CBT sessions typically consist of sessions lasting one-to-one.
