There is a vital issue I want to discuss at this time, and that is the issue of Energy Medicine and the "Other Side."

The Epilogue of Energy Medicine tells about some of my experiences with the strange places that energy medicine can lead. People often wonder why I don't speak and teach more about these.

I have in the past.  Those classes were some of the biggest professional mistakes I have made. Our culture has a fascination with the occult and the supernatural and the glamour we assign to it.  People are also starved for genuine deep contact with the spirit world.  Because energy medicine can move into these realms, many were attracted to those classes. This also filled certain ego needs, to be one of the "special" ones who can have psychic experiences or talk to the spirits. It is seductive, particularly if you feel you have a normal perhaps unexciting life and want to feel special.

I learned a lot very quickly in those early classes.  Yes, it is possible to open people to these realms.  And no, it is not a good idea until they are ready. Even as grounded as I am in energy work, I do not seek to enter those realms without a strong stabilizing force — in my case, David becomes very centered and assists.  Of course there are times other realms and forces enter a session, but all the more reason to be thoroughly educated and comfortable with the basic energy techniques.  They will often save the day much better than sucking the ghost out of a person and blowing the detritus into the flame (well, actually that is not the worst technique in the world, what I object to is assuming it is a ghost before considering that it may just be yucky energy).  I profoundly believe that before anyone steps out to do other-worldly shamanic work or profess to be psychic with clients, a very solid base in energy work is a fundamental requirement and strong necessity.

If you are not prepared to travel to the other side yet and you do, the fallout can make you much less functional in this world.  Your reality and your judgment can get very confused — it is not unusual to start interpreting energy and information in ways that are inaccurate and destructive.  And it is very hard to reason with people who have become delusional in these ways. I watched a very reputable healer who I think is amazingly skilled, knowledgeable, and psychic go over the edge and take many of her students with her into a world of unreality that held untold costs for them and their families.  Another teacher, well-trained in Touch for Health, began with simple energy testing.  So far, so good.  Then he started asking the body questions (see my cautions about this at Innersource Energy Medicine Q&A "Ask the Body").

Then he was energy testing questions about the other world.  He began to see evil everywhere and provided people very damaging explanations about their lives when they came to sessions.  Soon he was energy testing for the answers to questions such as:  "Is your Aunt Matilda here now?"  "Does she put her blessings on this marriage?"  The person literally wound up in the psychiatric unit of a hospital after his family had escaped the home under police protection. I have experienced people who were very talented and seemingly stable step over into the other world and be so traumatized that they vowed never to go there again.   The tragedy was being seduced into that world before they were educated enough in energy to be able to handle it. 

I think this material is very worthy of being taught, and I think there is a great responsibility to teach it only to those who are ready.  And I am even concerned in writing this letter that I will cause some people to be more enticed than cautioned, saying "I can handle it.  Give me the tools to get there."   Mistake!!!! 

After I stopped teaching these kinds of classes except to very advanced students, several people in my community, some extremely well respected, began to teach classes designed for quickly opening to the psychic realm. Anyone could attend.  And how often I ended up trying to help those people who were damaged piece their lives back together. People would wind up in a very dysfunctional and scary place and it wasn't always easy to guide them back. But what did guide them back were basic energy tools.  

I do not think it is responsible to teach people how to go through the doorway until they have built a solid floor so they don’t crash through into the unknown and uncontrollable.  This floor certainly involves teaching them about protection and grounding, but it is much more.  They need to be well educated about their body’s energies — in whatever terms — and how to manage them.   How many times someone has wanted to get into an advanced class, telling me they have training in grounding and protecting themselves.  But they were still lost without a firm foundation in working with their energies.  Your grounding and sense of protection can disappear in a moment, but you are okay if you have the tools to reconnect central and governing and your other radiant circuits, to calm and solidify your chakras and aura, and to unscramble your meridians.  And if you are doing work that invites your clients into these realms, it is critical that you have all these basic energy skills available to meet whatever might occur.

There were many prerequisites to the Colors, Aura, and Psychic Realm class in Ashland in November, 2005, and even there, we only got our feet wet in the material.  Besides insisting on a readiness in students before teaching about how to operate in the psychic realms, there is another way that the glamour and fascination with the psychic realm impacts our work as energy medicine practitioners. When we are working with a client and encounter strange responses or invading energies, there are many ways to interpret them.  My advice is to start with the most basic, least esoteric interpretations.  I’ve worked with more than 10,000 people in 90-minute sessions and I’ve lost count of how many tens of thousands of people in classes, and except in rare instances, everything I have observed could be accounted for in terms of the nine energy systems.  While much more dramatic language can be used — referring to entities and evil energies and invading forces from the "other side" — it is not only often inaccurate, it plants powerful suggestions when people are very open and vulnerable. 

No one really has great language for describing the many subtle and amorphous dimensions of the energies of the body and soul. And often the nature and source of clearly negative influences are not obvious.  Invasive energies may be intrusions from the environment, split off parts of the psyche, another person willfully intruding, or a force from the "other side."  Usually we don’t know in advance which it is.  Many of the descriptions that are used, such as "an arrow in the heart," are clearly metaphors to try to capture the feel and essence of the energies involved.

The reason for this formal statement is that I want to minimize within our community the human tendency to dramatize, especially while people are still learning the basics. Energy healing brings us into realms where there can be a great deal of enchantment plus people love the connection to the spiritual world. They love the sense of entering the spiritual world. Beginning students can also get confused and scared around this topic. People drawn to this work need guidance in how to interpret the unusual and the unfamiliar, and I am writing this to say that interpreting within the language of the nine energy systems is usually all that is needed.

While all the possibilities are indeed possibilities (split off parts of the psyche, actual entity, et cetera), except in highly unusual situations, the language of the nine energy systems can describe and address what is occurring quite adequately. I think that what is taught in our Certification Program, for instance, provides a solid foundation for understanding events that are more "out there," and that it is a good emphasis.  This is not to deny what is in the Epilogue, but to encourage people to become very educated and seasoned about energy work.