Can bio-energy channeled through your hands really heal?

Personal experiences and perspectives on energy healing

Whether you are skeptical about, intrigued by, or opening up to, hands-on energy work, I’d like to share here my experiences with it and perspective on it, to help you in your exploration.

Although my intention in laying on of hands is healing and/or pain relief, I make no claims either to “be” a healer or not to be one. I’m more like an explorer of what humans are capable of when it comes to directing their bioenergy (chi, qi, life force, prana) – in this case, through their hands – and of what that energy is capable of when it comes to healing.

First encounters with healing bio energy

My first direct experience with hands-on healing energy happened when I was 19. I’d stayed at a friend’s house and had a sore back from sleeping on the fold-out camping cot. He had me sit still while he put his hands on my back and breathed steadily. I don’t recall feeling any particular sensation beyond the normal warmth of hands, but my pain disappeared quickly and completely. A skeptic would no doubt say it was due to either the heat or the passage of time, but this felt different from those two kinds of recovery.

It wasn’t until 5 years later that I started exploring healing with my own hands. I took a course in massage, not expecting it to lead to anything but the know-how of therapeutic manipulations. I did, in fact, learn how to knead away muscular tension, and the feedback part of that is recognizing how tense or relaxed a muscle is by how rigid or fluid it feels to touch and hold. I also discovered, however, that, beyond the tactile observation of tightness in muscles, I was receiving other information from the bodies I was massaging. This was unexpected, as I wasn’t attempting to do anything beyond physical manipulation, and hadn’t yet read or heard anyone’s description of the inner experiences that are possible during hands-on energywork or healing. I’m sure it’s a little different for each person. I’ll describe what it’s like for me in the next post, an account of my personal experience with hands-on healing energy.

Then, in a third post, I’ll offer some simple exercises for you to experiment with if you’d like to explore your own ability to channel energy.

Your own experience with healing hands energy

As you’ll see in the post on my personal experience, imagery can play a big role in hands-on energy work (and other types of healing). If you’d like to help me in my research of image and perception, or if you’d just like to share your own experience with energywork and/or healing, please feel free to leave a comment sharing your personal experience, or contact me by email if you’d prefer to keep your story private.

So — what’s the answer?

Can a person really heal another by channeling bio-energy through their hands? I’ll let you be the one to decide what to believe. For it to be an informed decision, I invite you to explore with me, with an open heart and an open mind. I hope my personal experiences and the mini-workshop exercises will help you do that.

(You can also sign up for my Body Mind newsletter for more thoughts and experiments.)

~ Marian