Jonathan Livingston Seagull is a story about following your own heart and making your own rules.
This classic book, written by Richard Bach in 1970, was based on three primary concepts: pursue your passion relentlessly, find company that welcomes your authentic self, and inspire others through your example.
We are all unique individuals on our unique journeys in Life, having our unique interests and experiences. When we are alive, curious, and interested, we are bound to be drawn into learning as much as we can about the field of study we are passionate about. If we are to continue evolving as an individual or as a practitioner, it is inevitable that we will gather a variety of information which will then be alchemized into our unique expression.
One of the best things about aging is hindsight. For me, it’s been a magical and fulfilling thing to look back and recognize how my education, personal experiences, and the books I’ve read have gradually layered over time, developing my unique perspective. With each newly gained skill, technique, theory, and perspective, my craft morphed into my own distinctive expression and offering.
Becoming a master practitioner doesn’t happen all at once, and finding your ultimate niche may take a few years, but each step of the way is valuable and important to both you and your clients.
Whether your interest in energy healing is professional or personal in nature, it will be helpful to dial in to your overall intention—or mission—early on, to calibrate your compass toward your destiny. (Missions morph too as time goes by, but having an idea of your overriding objective will help illuminate your pathway toward fulfillment.)
Professionally your ‘mission’ might be helping people feel better, get out of pain, feel more joy and vitality, or find a sense of connection to their Source. (Your mission might be much the same for yourself personally—both are equally valuable and important to the world.) If what compels you to do this work isn’t already clear to you, you can pose this query to your higher self during mediation, or by using automatic writing. If it takes a bit for your mission to come into focus, continue to follow what you love and return periodically to the question until you gain that clarity.
With your mission clarified, your ideal training options will stand out and the choices that you make will be congruent with your intention. You’ll be drawn toward the modalities that will be most helpful for your service to yourself and others.
Something important to ask yourself is:
Are you a dabbler or a diver? Are you comfortable knowing a little bit about a lot of things, or a lot about a particular thing? Are you interested in mastering a technique or approach precisely, or are you interested in finding out how that technique or approach aligns with, enhances, or illuminates the understanding and skills that you’ve gained so far?
We don’t have to become an expert in every modality we study, but competency is key. It’s important to have enough experience and a clear understanding of what the originator intended, before we decide it’s not for us or before we transmute it into our own style. Honoring the source of a particular technique, and being transparent in how we’ve amalgamated it with other techniques, is important for professional integrity.
Likewise it is important to honor the sanctity of indigenous traditions, and avoid appropriating or commercializing techniques that are outside of your cultural playing field. For instance, I’ve had a lot of training in Neuromuscular Therapy, St. John Method, but I did not become certified in it. If anyone is looking for a certified NMT practitioner I will tell them exactly that. Similarly, I have always been inspired by Native American healing traditions, but I am not entitled to claim any heritage—nor have I been authorized—to incorporate them into my work. There are as many approaches to healing as there are people who want to heal (after all, everyone’s energy body is unique). No single approach is the answer for everyone’s healing and we should beware of a fundamentalist attitude about any technique, diet, or practice that we undertake (this is the ‘best’, the ‘only’, the ‘ultimate’). Any technique that we bring to our practice is going to be filtered—not only through our own experience and bias, but through our client’s filter of experience, bias, and current needs.
This is where the art and skill of energy testing comes in handy (among your techniques).
Say you’ve gathered several modalities in your picnic basket and you’re preparing to serve your client a lunch specifically designed for them. You’re not sure whether this client will respond best to the egg salad sandwiches or the Salade Niçoise, and whether they’d like potato chips or sweet potato fries with that. Some clients do well with a sweet pickle on the side, others do better with dill pickles. It doesn’t matter that you’ve just learned a new recipe for your egg salad that you want to try out—this client might not do well with eggs no matter how delicious your salad is. Energy testing will assure you that the combination of ingredients that you have will be right for that individual.
For instance, in my own practice I often like to use essential oils when I’m clearing chakras, or doing the Hopi Spine or Brazilian Toe techniques. When I energy test to find out if my client’s energies would welcome that addition, it’s usually a 50/50 affirmative response. Much as my client and I might like to use the oils, their energy isn’t always so keen on it. If I do get an affirmative response to the general inquiry, I’ll then test to discover which oil would serve that individual best.
What modalities might you mix?
Let me start by offering what has transpired in my own experience of thirty-seven years, and how it’s all come together to create my unique practice. I started putting my hands on people as a massage student, so therapeutic massage has always been the foundation of my methodology. What is your foundation? Where are you starting from? Even if you’re coming to an energy medicine practice from a completely unrelated field, you probably have some insight and experience under your belt that you’ll naturally draw from.
I once had a student come to a beginning class who was a customer service representative for a major airline. She knew she wanted to become an energy medicine practitioner, but she felt like she didn’t have any relative background or experience to launch from. I pointed out that working at a customer service desk in an airport terminal had given her ample opportunity to understand how stress affects people, and how fellow agents are impacted by duress. I suggested that she could bring her people management and communication skills into her practice, and bring energy medicine and stress management techniques to the demographic that she was already familiar with.
As someone trained in therapeutic massage I knew that there was much more to a person than their flesh, muscle, and bones, so I began studying energy medicine with Donna Eden. Right away I was looking for ways that I could integrate what I was learning about energy with what my massage training had taught me about the physical body. Ultimately the merging of these two modalities evolved into specializing in working with energy via fascia.
When our daughters were teenagers our family began working with a counselor who specialized in Non- Violent Communication.
We all learned so much about clear, clean communication, and how to listen for a person’s feelings and needs without judging or assessing through our own bias. When I experienced how valuable these communication skills were within my immediate family, I recognized how powerful they’d be with my clients as well. I continued to study Marshall Rosenberg’s work and bring it into my style as a therapist. It’s been a powerful modality in helping my clients feel heard and seen, as well as aiding them in gaining insight as to what might be going on for key players in their personal relationships. This modality can be used in helping my clients formulate a fresh approach/response/perspective to a sticky situation in their lives.
As an Eden Method Practitioner I have become familiar with Emotional Freedom Technique, or ‘tapping’ method, as demonstrated by David Feinstein and Dawson Church. This technique is excellent in helping emotional regulation which is a need that I frequently encounter in my practice.
When I have a client come in who is in a heightened state of emotion I will describe the technique and ask if they want to try it before they get on the table. I let them know that it will likely help them get into a more receptive and calm state and allow the energy medicine techniques to be more effective. In a case like this we might spend a third of the session using the EFT and the other two thirds of the session using energy medicine.
Another key modality in my practice is breathwork.
As a household yogi myself, breathwork plays a huge role in my own self-regulation and well-being. It would be impossible for me to serve a client’s intention to live a full and vital life without bringing breath into the picture. I am fond of saying that your energy medicine modality is only as good as the breath you bring to it. Informed and intentional breathing will clear space, move energy, promote healing, and make any other technique more effective. The book Breath, by James Nestor is a good place to start if you’re new to understanding breath and breathing. My personal study and practice of kundalini yoga with Jai Dev Singh of the Life Force Academy has been my primary source of breathwork education.
Over my many years as a Licensed Massage Therapist and certified Eden Method Practitioner I have been required to accrue many continuing education units. Though sometimes the requirement of CEU’s can feel burdensome, they do expose a practitioner to many adjunct modalities, some of which will work their way into your personal style of practice. The use of essential oils, flower essences, tuning forks, and toning bowls for example.
What modalities call to you and light you up? Some of them might be: energy medicine, Reiki, yoga, chiropractic/osteopathic manipulation, acupuncture, Ayurveda, Tai Chi, Qi Gong, massage therapy, psychotherapy, EFT, sound healing, pranic healing, essential oils, flower essences, yogic breathing, homeopathy, or herbalism. I’m sure I can’t name all of the possibilities that you might discover and blend in your unique cauldron of creation.
Here are a few things to keep in mind to maintain integrity and congruence in what you offer your clients:
- People are drawn to both competency and authenticity.
- You don’t have to be an expert in every modality, but you should be competent and transparent about your level of expertise.
- Be able to describe your unique style and what modalities you bring to it.
- What is your foundation?
- What are your primary modalities?
- What are your adjunct modalities?
- Be able to describe the reason for, and benefits of, each modality.
- Clients need to be informed about, and consent to, the use of any modality that you may want to use.
- Your client’s ability to choose is imperative.
As you relentlessly pursue your passion in learning about natural healing and energy medicine, you will find modalities that light you up, and your practice will become an inspired amalgamation of your personal experience combined with your educational pursuits. As you mix and match the methods that call you, and apply what you learn on a personal level, you’ll develop a genuine and unique treatment style that will attract a clientele that resonates with your authentic self.