Once upon a time...

I felt a deep yearning, a calling, to explore the healing arts. To explore energy medicine, in particular. I wasn't so sure if this was a valid path at first, but I followed my heart anyway. And over 20 years later, I have never looked back.

(Above image: Some new students learning how to palpate the human energy field at our most recent Polarity One class)

Why Learn Energy Medicine?

If you are anything like I was (and still am), and you relate to being curious and drawn to the healing arts, then you are probably a seeker, a sensitive, or both.

It is often difficult to ignore this kind of call when you can sense and feel things that most people dismiss or don't seem to notice. It is almost painful to ignore it actually. Embracing this path, however, can be exhilarating, liberating, inspiring, and fascinating. In fact, there's never been a better time in history to become an energy medicine practitioner.

Below are five (actually six) reasons why I pursued an education in energy medicine and why you may want to consider this path well.

1. Every time you give a session, you get a session

This is a polarity saying and it couldn't be more true. As a massage, Craniosacral and Polarity therapist of over 20 years, I must have given at least ten thousand sessions if not more. In my younger days I would regularly see up to six people back to back! But I was always amazed at how much energy I got from giving sessions.

I received so much energy and joy from giving sessions that I regularly marveled at the fact that I was also getting paid!

As a massage therapist, physically, energy medicine saved my body from the constant requests for deep tissue. Most of my clients didn't really want deep tissue, they just didn't know that what they really wanted was to be seen and heard and energetically met. They had no concept of what energy medicine was and no idea that their issues (physical, emotional, you name it) were rooted in how their energy was flowing. Or not flowing, as the case may be.

But over time I educated many of my clients and attracted the people to me who wanted what I had to offer regardless of whether they understood how it worked. They just knew that it did. My work became more and more subtle, gentle, and restorative for both me and my clients.

In order to show up for others in a multidimensional way, I also learned that you can't help others find alignment if you are out of alignment yourself.

But luckily, the act of giving a session helps your own energy come into alignment.

Giving a polarity or cranial session gets you into your own channel, it requires a meditative focus that gets your energy flowing and clears your own blockages as well.

It's like teaching yoga:

You can't demonstrate how to do a posture without getting the benefits that it offers.

What happens as you help others open up their energy is that by default you end up fine tuning your own energy.

By helping others find relief, inspiration, clarity, health, and energetic flow, you are freeing up your own energy as well.

And it just doesn't get better than that.

2. You will learn how to trust yourself (and the rest will follow)

What guides us in the subtle art of energy medicine is our intuition.

And when we deny our intuition, we are denying our higher wisdom and our relationship to our selves in the truest fullest sense.

Our intuition (just like our energy), is not something ephemeral and imaginal. It lives in our cells, in our gut, in our body. Energy is just as physical as it is non-physical. It is what animates us!

When we ignore or deny our intuition, we cut ourselves off from our ability to be fully embodied and self- actualized.

This is more common than you might think because most of us are not trained to trust our instincts. In fact, as children and all the way into adulthood, we are usually taught and pressured to disregard them.

Living in disconnection from our higher wisdom and inner bodily knowing can be miserable. Denying our intuition can show up as chronic illness, depression, or life circumstances that lead to tragedy and disappointment. This is often because we are ignoring our true path out of fear or resistance. UGH.

But the good news is this:

Once we take the courageous leap towards following our intuition, our body often begins to miraculously heal and our life path opens up to support us. When we say yes to the "still small voice within", we find our people and our people find us. And when we have support and community to validate our inner truth, life becomes a whole lot better. Simple as that.

3. Studying energy medicine will improve your relationships (and filter out the ones that don't serve you)

Speaking of finding your people, I thought it would be good to unpack why painful endings can sometimes bring the most exquisite new beginnings.

Even though it might seem a little backwards that break-ups and alienation could be a bonus to walking the healer's path, the hard truth is, sometimes in order to attract friends and relationships that match our vibration, we have to let go of old ones that don't.

Which is both wonderful and awful.

Yet this is a natural byproduct of spiritual growth. As we deepen our skills in energetic communications and holding space, we discover who is capable of receiving this level of authentic connection and who is not receptive to it. Some of our people will stick around and grow with us, while others will opt out due to their own trauma or limited capacity.

We may have been willing to give our energy to inauthentic relationships unknowingly in the past, but as we grow, this becomes more uncomfortable than letting people go.

This is because studying energy medicine is life-changing (regardless of whether you decide to offer private sessions professionally, or just want to understand it for yourself). And in order to embody this work, you have to do your own work.

That is why I refer to my classes as both personal and professional development.

In all of my polarity and craniosacral classes and programs I leave time and space for deep conversations and personal revelations because these "a-ha" moments are a necessary part of the learning.

We may sign up for a class to learn technique but we are also receiving the work as we practice on one another. We learn how to heal others while we are healing ourselves. We then take this new way out into our lives and it ripples out indelibly.

This is a wonderful thing when those closest to us decide to come along. I have personally experienced so many relationship transformations and have been blown away by the positive night and day difference when family and friends decided to hop on the soul train and do their own work.

As I have honed my energy tools and communication skills and upleveled my vibe, by default I would be modeling to those around me how to process energy. I did this by example at first but eventually all of my closest folks (including my immediate family) all wanted to know:

How could they do this for themselves? How could they do this for me?

Imagine living in a family of energy informed wisdom keepers? Imagine being in an intimate relationship with someone who knows how to listen deeply and hold sacred space for you? Imagine if all of your closest friendships were deeply fulfilling, healing and real deal?

Let me just say, it is a glorious thing.

As our frequency shifts and we wake up in our energy, old patterns are healed and old relationships that don't match this new attunement must evolve and level up. Or fall away. Sure, relationship culling can be scary, and so, so sad. But ultimately this kind of sacrifice is incredibly liberating as we stop engaging with people who drain our energy and make room for more amazingness to come in.

Until eventually we don't even bother with inauthentic, dissatisfying, toxic or burdensome relationships. We can see them coming from a mile away and we redirect our attention accordingly. We fill our lives and our calendars with meaningful, resonant, healthy connections only. And the less satisfying relationships that we are bound to by karmic duty stop bothering us so much as we gain clarity and cease to get caught up in the drama.

The truth is, we cannot evolve in a vacuum without affecting (and being affected by) those around us. But the best part of this is, that even as you shed old relationships, you will not remain alone. Even as you pass through periods of loneliness you can rest assured that you are just in a new place with more tools than you had before, becoming a clearer beacon to attract like-minded soulful seekers into your amazing world.

And believe me, having one resonant person in your life is worth a thousand inauthentic relationships. Hands down.

4. It never gets boring

An average session (or an average day) becomes extraordinary each time I pull out my energy medicine tools.

I noticed this early on in my practice when I first started integrating polarity therapy. It was as though there was a synchronicity switch that would suddenly get flipped as soon as I turned my energy feelers on. And then, suddenly everything became... interesting.

I learned how to follow my curiosity in order to know where the energy needed to flow.

I would listen to my clients energy through their body language, their tone of voice, the words they were (or weren't) saying.

But I also learned how energy speaks its own language. As you learn how to interpret your intuition, information starts to flood in. It comes through symbology, phenomenology, as well as your own body.

Energy speaks through every bird that flies past the window, in the music that shifts at the perfect moment, or in a random emotion that suddenly washes over you.

What I discovered over many years of practice, was that the more I shared what I noticed or sensed- even if it seemed obvious or totally out of left field, the more my intuitive perceptions were validated. This taught me how to trust until I no longer questioned what I was sensing. But it has never ceased to fascinate me. Because there is always an element of mystery which keeps things interesting. And the best part?

The curiosity and fascination leak out into everyday life as well.

And yes, we all have this ability if we choose to hone it.

5. There has never been a better time in history

Energy medicine (as taught through the lens of Craniosacral and Polarity therapy), is based in both ancient technologies as well as cutting edge science. Although many of these practices have been passed down and shared by various cultures and philosophies for thousands of years, modern science is just beginning to catch up. We can now measure and quantify things that seemed utterly magical (or supernatural and threatening) to generations that came before.

At this juncture in history working in the field of energy medicine is not only a viable professional path, it is abundant and only growing in popularity. There has never been a better time in history to share your witchy ways. These holistic modalities are safe, non-invasive and backed by tons of scholarly research and statistics. They are becoming more widely accepted by mainstream medicine than ever before.

When I decided to take my studies in energy medicine and yoga to the next level and created an independent contract through the Evergreen State College in 2009 for example, there were very few, as in only a handful, of published resources about yoga, the chakras, and even somatics. Nowadays you can google any of these things and be flooded with information. Chakras used to be super esoteric and "out there". Now they are a household word!

Also...

For all our ancestors who couldn't safely practice, it's about time the healer's path is being recognized and supported!

But the only way it will continue to grow is if we say YES to our inner calling and continue to courageously show up and do the work regardless of what anyone else has to say about it.

6. (Bonus) It feels good to do good

I know, I was only planning on sharing five things. But seriously, I could not leave this out.

When you are following your path, and working to attune yourself to the flow of subtle energy, you're not the only one who benefits. Even if they have no words for what they are feeling, people around you will just feel better because you are radiating authenticity and true presence.

This means you are potentially helping people even when you are not working directly with clients or trying to "help" people. You're just being in your own energy and this is a very powerful thing.

Learning energy medicine is not only about feeling good, of course. We often pass through uncomfortable initiations as we evolve by facing our shadow, becoming more accountable, and shifting old patterns that no longer serve our highest good. Expansion cannot happen without contraction.

But even if you never decided to work with clients, this kind of self-work gives you greater compassion and capacity. You will find yourself holding space for those around you in a deeper way, grounding your energy more effectively, and therefor elevating the energy of everyone who comes into your field.

When we are in alignment in our own energy, we are helping others without compromising ourselves.

And no matter how much work our Soulwork requires of us, when we are showing up in this way, we are doing good. And this knowledge alone can feel AMAZING!

Written by Amanda Lux

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