This is a piece of chrysocolla, azurite, and malachite with chrysocolla druzy. There's a lot going on in a single stone. I've been struggling to be able to get a good photo of this crystal for you since there's just so much to it.

Chrysocolla is a stone of communication, as is azurite. Malachite, on the other hand, is a heart stone that is known for bringing about transformative healing. All three get their color from different copper concentrations, which is why the three of them often occur together in a single stone. 

Stones like this that combine malachite with chrysocolla and/or azurite are a great way to communicate in a heartfelt manner; thee energy of the malachite keeps you heart-focused while the energy of the azurite and/or chrysocolla helps you share your truth from the heart. A great affirmation for meditating with this stone is, "I speak my truth with love." And in so doing-- kindly and compassionately communicating your truth--you can facilitate your own healing transformation.

As you meditate and affirm, hold the stone to your heart. Visualize the energy of the stone filling your heart and then swirling upward into your throat to give power, strength, and compassion to your voice. Try this type of meditation any time you have an important communication coming up with someone where you want to be able to share your truth in a loving and compassionate manner, such as during an intervention, before a counseling or talk therapy session, making up from an argument, or even just chatting with your children or a loved one.  It's also a great stone to use during any type of negotiations or when sharing difficult news with someone. 

Do you have a happy place? Maybe it's somewhere you visualize going that makes you happy. Maybe it's a feeling you distinctly recall. Maybe it's the sound of a certain song or the way you feel after meditation. Think about when you feel your most peaceful, balanced, and joyful. Or just when you feel at your most positive. What if you could capture that any time you wish?

Great news; you can. There's a simple technique in neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) called anchoring, and you can use it to recapture a positive feeling whenever you'd like. But to do that, first you have to get the positive feeling in the first place.

Many people can think themselves there. Think of someone you love dearly; a friend, a family member, a partner, a child, or even a pet. Think about them and start to feel them deeply. Allow the glow of that good feeling to spread throughout you. Alternatively, think of your happy place, a beautiful memory, or your happy song. Use whatever you can to get yourself to that place. For me, any of the previous techniques work, or I can also do this after I've meditated or engaged in any physical activity that gets my endorphins flowing.

Once you have that positive feeling, come up with a unique gesture while you still inhabit the sensation. Make it a unique (to you) gesture; not one you perform daily. It could be tugging on your right ear with your thumb and forefinger, or making an "OK" sign with your left hand, for instance. Make it a specific gesture. And, while you are still in the feeling, make the gesture several times. As you repeat the gesture, do it exactly the same way each time. Do this until the intensity of the positive feeling begins to subside, and then stop. Alternatively, make the gesture and continue to hold it in position until the intensity of the feelings begin to lessen.

Now, any time you wish to return to that place of positive feeling, repeat the gesture exactly as you did it. That's it. It's effective and easy to do.

For energy healing practitioners, this is a great technique to teach your healing partners. At the end of their session when they're in that relaxed and positive state, teach them the technique and tell them they can return to that feeling anytime they wish by repeating the gesture. Allow them to choose a gesture that is specific and meaningful to them.

One word of caution to practitioners: Sometimes a session stirs up old, stuck negative energy, and your healing partner may be processing old negative emotions at the end of and after a session. When I observe this happening, I try to continue with additional energy until it passes or initiate a visualization to help them feel safe and peaceful, but sometimes it may take a few days for all of the emotions to process. If you observe this is the case at the close of a session, don't teach anchoring because that is not a feeling your healing partner wants to return to. Instead, wait until a laster session when your healing partner is in a positive and relaxed state.

I'm super excited because next week I'm teaching a class in Portland that offers so many energy healing techniques in a single class, you'll hardly know what to do with them all (but don't worry - I'll show  you)! We originally planned to offer the class as an advanced Reiki class, but I realized anyone can use these techniques regardless of whether they are attuned to Reiki. So, as of now, anyone is welcome to take the class. Yay!

What will you learn?

Touch Techniques
• Tapping
• Stroking
• Gazing
Healing Hands 
• Handout: Finger Meanings
• Handout: Fingers and Hands
• Handout: Fingers and Emotions
Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) 
• Handout: EFT for Practitioners
• Handout: EFT for Healing Partners
Polarity Therapy
• Handout: Polarity Elements
• Crystal and dorje polarity techniques
• Gazing tracing polarity technique
Quantum Touch
• Sensing energy
• Basic QT technique
• Spinning or moving energy
Crystals
•Handout: Crystal Lattice Patterns
• Handout: Crystal Colors and Chakras
• Crystal opacity 
• Handout: Sacred Geometry and Crystal Shapes
• Handout: Crystals and Sacred Geometry – Grids
Sacred Sound
• Tingsha diagnosis
• Handout: Body outline for diagnosis
• Starting a session with tingshas
• Bell and dorje session
• Using singing bowls
• Selecting singing bowls
• Handout: Sacred Sound Healing Instruments
• Handout: Chakra Mantras
Clearing Chakras
• Crystal or dorje technique
• Gazing technique
Aroma
• Handout: Aromatherapy
Affirmation and Visualization 
• Consultation
• Introducing it to a session
• Setting it using NLP
Creating a Sacred Space for Energy Healing
Practice
Q&A

Sounds good, right? You'll walk away with handouts describing most of the technique in simple terms with lots of graphics. You don't need your own equipment (but you can bring some if you have it). I'll have equipment there you can try and practice with. Register here. I'll also give the first five people who contact me through my contact form here a coupon code for $15 off of the class. Hope to see you there.

​My dad died on February 1 of this year. I don’t say that to garner sympathy but merely as a statement of truth. I say that because my dad no longer walks this earth, and that is my new reality.
 
He is not the first person I love who has died, but he is certainly the closest. His illness seemed sudden, although it had likely been around for months. In late October, he got a cold. He still had it at Thanksgiving, although his doctor assured him it was just a virus that was lingering. After the holidays when the cold was still there, his doctor grew concerned and sent him to a specialist. On January 10, he was diagnosed with late stage lung cancer and was in a severe amount of pain. No treatment would prolong his life. He entered hospice the last week in January and died after a few days. My mother, sister, nephew, husband, and I were all by his side as he breathed his last breath.
 
Over the past few decades, I’ve developed into a pretty chill person. Especially in the past five or so years, I’ve been an anxiety-free, happy-go-lucky, roll-with-the-punches kind of gal unless something extreme has happened. Perhaps not surprisingly, that is also the period in my life where I’ve hit my stride as an intuitive energy healer and psychic medium. Living what I believe is my life’s true purpose has smoothed my rough edges and given me a broader perspective about life and death. It’s allowed me to move into my authentic self. I’ve communicated with hundreds of spirits of people who have passed, including some I love. I’ve offered comfort to people who are mourning the loss of loved ones. So I guess somewhere in the back of my mind, I believed that when one of my immediate family members died, I would handle it with a similar level of aplomb, understanding, and even-temperedness.
 
That didn’t happen.
 
On the day my father was diagnosed, I stopped eating. I couldn’t. I tried. I’d take a bite of food and nothing would go down. I barely slept. I threw myself into work. And in my darkest moments, I was convinced I didn’t remember how to swallow. I’d try to swallow and panic would set in until I was able to relax myself enough to do it. Then, as soon as I did, it would start all over again. I was terrified I was going to choke on my own saliva. I knew intellectually these were all manifestations of anxiety arising from the stress of my dad’s illness and worry about my mom, but even knowing and understanding that didn’t matter.
 
By about January 15, doctors told us my dad probably had six months left. It was plenty of time, I thought, that we could get together and say everything we had to say. My sisters and I planned a weekend with my parents at the beginning of February where the five of us could spend time together as a family. In the meantime, I threw myself into my work, taught my classes, and accepted any project that came my way to keep my mind busy. During that two weeks, I wrote two books if that tells you anything about how frantically I worked. You have lots of time to do stuff when you stop sleeping and eating.
 
Early in the week before we were supposed to spend the weekend with my parents, my mom called and said dad was going into hospice to get his pain under control. It sounded like he would be put on some medication and return home, just as he had the previous week when he was hospitalized for the same reason. Still, in my heart I knew my dad would enter hospice, and he wouldn’t return home. I hoped I was wrong, but I didn’t think I was.
 
The next day, mom called and told us if we wanted to see Dad, we needed to come now. Unfortunately, my younger sister had a flight from Hawaii where she lives in a few days and was unable to change it. My older sister, my husband, and I dropped everything and headed to my hometown where we sat with my mom and dad in hospice.
 
My father was minimally lucid when I arrived. He had short periods of wakefulness, but he was heavily drugged and would quickly drift off to sleep. It was difficult to understand what he said when he was speaking. In one particularly lucid moment, he opened his eyes, looked at me, said, “Hi Kar,” and then asked me, “Am I dying?” I told him yes because what else was I going to do?
 
It quickly became apparent that even as heavily medicated as he was, my father was still in significant pain, so meds were raised to try and control it. He slipped away then; he was out of pain and still with us but not really with us.
 
On Thursday evening while my younger sister was still on an airplane, Dad took a turn. Something changed. His breathing was different – more erratic. We knew it would be soon, and all of us stood by his side and talked to him. We told him it was okay to go, that mom would be okay, and that we would all be okay. We told him we loved him. Well, at first just my mom and my sister did because I was overcome. I couldn’t speak the words in my heart, but then as I got my emotions under control, I was able to tell him the same thing.
 
After a short period that seemed like forever, something in the room changed. I felt something – someone there. I knew his loved ones had come for him. I turned to Jim, signaled this would be Dad’s last breath, and then watched as he took it. I felt him go.
 
My dad died. I didn’t want to let him go, but I knew we had to. Life is not the same without him, and my world is forever changed.
 
We lingered for an hour in hospice as they took care of Dad’s body and friends came to offer love and support. When they took him to the funeral home, Jim and I staggered back to our hotel in a daze. All the way, I heard my dad chattering at me, but I assumed it was just wishful thinking. He was telling me what he was experiencing, and I was happy to listen, but for once I didn’t believe I was actually receiving psychic communication. I just thought I was doing what I needed to do to comfort myself.
 
Back at the hotel, Jim left to get something out of our car while my dad’s voice still chattered in my head. I said, “I wish it was really you, but I know it’s just my mind.” And then someone physically yanked my hair hard, and my dad’s voice said loudly, “Hey! Listen to me. I’m here.”
 
And so I listened. What he said was between us. And in the back of my mind, I still didn’t believe I was really hearing it.
 
The next several weeks were numb. I went to the funeral. I took on more and more work. I taught my classes. When I tried to speak of my dad, I broke down in sobs. And when I was alone, my dad would come to me and talk. I didn’t know if he was really there; I couldn’t trust my abilities because I knew what I wanted to believe would supersede what was actually happening. I felt him visit regularly. And although I didn’t believe he was there, on the off chance he was, I talked to him. Doing so gave me comfort.
 
I told him that to get through to my mom and sisters, the best way was to communicate in their dreams. I told him I missed him, I loved him, and I wished I could have had more lucid time with him before he died. I had full conversations every time I felt his presence even though I was sure he wasn’t really there, but I just wanted him to be.
 
A few months later, I was at the Oregon Ghost Conference, where I teach and speak every year. I was surrounded by psychics, and I told my dad on one of his visits, “If you’re really here and you’ve really been coming to me, please communicate with one of my psychic medium friends and have them speak to me privately, giving me some kind of information so I will know I truly have been communicating with you.”
 
My friends Seth Michael and AuroA were giving a gallery reading that night at the conference. So far, nobody had said anything to me from my dad, so I thought that probably confirmed what I knew, which was my conversations with and visits from him were all in my mind. After all, my dad when he was alive was skeptical about psychics, and my abilities were a subject we just didn’t discuss much, if at all. So I had zero expectations at the gallery reading; I was there to support my friends.
 
I stood in the back of the room watching people getting messages from loved ones when I heard my dad’s voice say to me, “Watch this,” as Seth and AurorA were transitioning from giving messages to one person to another.
 
Then Seth started making a horrible coughing noise – one I’d heard before. “This man is making me feel so much pain and like I can’t breathe and he sounds like this,” Seth said, making the strangled noise again. It was the exact noise my dad made as he was in hospice dying.
 
“He says, ‘I gave up the ghost,’ and laughs,” Seth said. “He says, ‘I willed himself to die.’”
 
Seth was communicating with my father, who thought my ghost stuff was amusing and often made the joke of “giving up the ghost.”
 
And so, in front of a ton of people, my dad who I always thought was slightly embarrassed by the whole psychic and ghost thing communicated with me. The content of the message didn’t matter as much as the fact he was there. He was also letting me know by communicating through Seth that all the communication I believed to be my imagination was, indeed, real. It brought me comfort, and it also released something. It was the start of my true grief process.
 
I always believed that as a psychic medium I would handle the death of loved ones well, as my belief and understanding is people never really leave us and love never really dies, that they are there looking over us and loving us in spirit form. I’ve shared this information with many people, and I’ve felt it viscerally as I do.
 
But when my dad died, I forgot all of that. Or for a while, I stopped believing it. I became trapped in numbness where I felt safe. There’s not a word deep enough to describe the raw depths of my pain at my dad’s death, and it wasn’t a feeling I was willing to allow myself to experience or process. The part of me who had comforted so many people by telling them their loved ones were still there was deeply ashamed that when death became that closely personal, I somehow lacked the power of my convictions. I was angry at myself for grieving so deeply and unwilling to allow my grief because of my belief that consciousness survives death and my dad wasn’t really lost. I believed I was supposed to grieve a certain way, or that my grief should somehow be less because I could communicate beyond the veil. My pain grew sluggish and sticky. I was mired in it because I refused to allow myself to move through it since I didn’t believe given what I knew about the human soul, I should be grieving at all.
 
Instead, I processed in bits and pieces. I’ve had times where I’ve broken down, times where I’ve been numb, and times where for just a moment, I have a glimmer of understanding that what I believe about life after death is true. But those moments of knowing were ephemeral, and they slipped away before I could grasp them with desperate hands. 
 
In mid-August, we gathered to scatter my dad’s ashes. We chartered a boat filled with family and friends and traveled to the San Juan Islands. On the way, we saw porpoises, and when we arrived at the spot, there was an unexpected pod of migrating orcas.
 
All of my life, I’ve dreamed of dolphins, porpoises, orcas, and whales. They come to me in dreams during difficult periods, and I always wake from the dreams knowing everything will be all right, and all is as it should be. So it was no mistake they were there that day when we scattered my dad’s ashes. They were there for him and from him, and they were there for all of us.
 
As my older sister and nephew poured his ashes into the water where the orcas swam, the ashes made a beautiful pattern in the sea. And I did something I was unable to do at his funeral. I allowed myself to feel the depths of my grief and I cried. I told my dad good-bye, and I let him go. And underneath, I felt something else, as well. I felt gratitude I’d had my dad for 52 years and for the father he’d been, and I knew I never truly would have to let him go because he was a part of me.
 
There is no right or wrong way to grieve, nor is there a time frame or normal behavior. Regardless of what you believe or what you know, when someone you love dies, it is intensely personal. It doesn’t matter if you can communicate with spirits, if you believe in life after death, or if you believe your loved ones remain with you even though they are no longer physically embodied. For quite a while, I was unwilling to allow the grief to touch me because I didn’t believe I had a right to it given what I knew to be true about the nature of the universe. But as I tried to go about life as usual, my dad kept creeping in, and so did deep sadness at his passing. Eventually, I came to a place where I could either choose to suppress it and live my life in a state of numbness, or I could lean in and allow myself to experience it fully so I could move on. I wish I would say it was a conscious decision I chose the latter, but it wasn’t. The dam burst and I was unable to continue with the numbness because it dishonored all that my father was to me. It also dishonored the authenticity of my own feelings.
 
And so I grieve. I miss my dad. I know he is safe. I know he is well, and I know he is with us, but he is not physically here. But even in his death, my dad is still teaching me things. When he was alive, he taught me to always have an open mind. By giving me Raymond Moody’s Life After Life when I was a teenager, he set me on the path to my life’s true purpose. By his own curious exploration of the universe, he set the example that made me feel comfortable pursuing my own curiosity, and even though we ultimately arrived at different conclusions about the way things worked. Without his example, I would never have come to be where I am now.
 
In his death, my dad remains my teacher. He shows me it’s never too late to learn; you can even learn things after you die. He shows me I can’t avoid grief and sadness, and my feelings are never wrong and should never be denied. And he shows me that what I believe is, in some form true – or at least true for me. When our loved ones die, their bodies are no longer there. But their souls – those live on. They move on to new adventures and possibly even new bodies, but their love for us leaves an indelible imprint on our lives, hearts, and souls that can and will never be erased.

Cleansing the energy of the spaces where you live and work and the things you use for energy healing, such as crystals or singing bowls, is an essential part of good spiritual hygiene. I recommend people cleanse the energy of their spaces at least once a week--and more if there's been negativity such as illness, arguments, stress, etc.--and cleanse tools they use at least once a week or even more if they get heavy use. For example, I cleanse the crystals I wear once a day, and I cleanse those I use with healing partners after every use. The crystals that just sit in my house and mostly look pretty, I cleanse once a week. Before we get into the hows of energy cleansing, however, I want to get into the whys. 

​Energy and Entrainment
Back in the 1600s, a Dutch scientist named Christiaan Huygens discovered that objects with different energy frequencies locked into phase when placed in physical proximity to one another. He noticed when he hung two pendulum clocks side by side on the wall, although they started with the pendulums swaying in different rhythms, they soon moved into the same rhythm. This gradual shifting of vibration to lock into phase is called entrainment, and it is a repeatable scientific phenomenon. The video below demonstrates this principle with 32 mechanical metronomes all started with a different frequency that eventually begin to move together. 

 Entrainment is an important principle when it comes to spiritual energy as well. Everything has a vibration. All physical matter is made up of tiny vibrating strands of energy; from the chair you might be sitting in right now, to the cells of your body, to the hair on top of your head. Everything in your environment is made up of these strands of energy existing in close proximity to one another. And, as we established, when two bodies oscillating at different frequencies are located next to one another, each adjusts its energy to the other so they begin to vibrate at the same rate.

​This is happening all around you all of the time. People who are sensitive to energy can feel it as it happens. For example, have you ever been somewhere alone and felt the energy shift when another person walks into a room? That is their energy and yours reacting to one another and shifting to meet somewhere in the middle. 

In an ideal world, lower vibration would always climb to meet higher vibration while the higher vibration stayed the same. But that's not what happens. Generally, when there is a vast difference between the vibration of one object and the vibration of another, one raises, the other lowers, and the two meet somewhere in the middle. So the higher vibration comes down a bit and the lower vibration raises. That's why energetic cleansing is so important. If you bring an energy tool, such as a crystal, into your environment, it will raise your vibration, but it will also drop to meet the lower vibration of other objects around it.

Energy cleansing is like a vibrational reset button. Using energy cleansing methods helps return the tools you use and the spaces you inhabit to their natural higher vibrational frequency after they've been in contact with energy of a lower vibration. By bringing them to a higher vibration and then using them in the same environment again, the environmental energy rises once again while the tool's energy drops slightly, but they have a new, higher middle to in which to meet. The goal is to keep the energy tools cleansed so they return to their original higher energy, making the "middle" a new, higher set point after each cleansing.

​How To Cleanse
There are many ways you can cleanse tools and your environment. My go-to is to use Reiki to cleanse things like crystals and spaces where I live, work, and teach, but I realize not everyone has Reiki available, and sometimes I feel other types of cleansing are called for, as well. Some tools you can use for cleansing include:

• Sacred sound instruments such as tingshas, bells, ghanta and dorje, drumming, or singing bowls
• Incense
• Sacred herbs such as sage, palo santo, cedar, sweetgrass, or a combination thereof

When you cleanse a space, move through your space in clockwise pattern starting at the front door either sounding your instruments or wafting the smoke from your herbs or incense. At every opening to the space (doors, windows, drains), run the sound or smoke around it in a clockwise direction. Be sure to get into corners and closets, too. When you return to your front door, run the smoke or sound counter clockwise around the door to seal the energy. If you burn sage (which empties out all energy), always follow up with something that brings in positive energy, such as burning palo santo or playing sacred sound.

To cleanse any tools you use in energy healing, hold them over the sacred smoke so they are coated in smoke, or run them through the sound waves of a sound instrument. For example, you can put crystals in a singing bowl and sound it or use incense smoke around and in a singing bowl. 

Making cleansing part of your ritual can help you to maintain higher vibration with any energy healing tools you use, as well as in the spaces you work, play, and live. By attending to spiritual hygiene with this important step, you can help maintain a vibration that continues to rise. 

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So today I have something super exiting for you; a bunch of diagrams of hands and fingers. Whether you're working on self-healing or working as an energy healer, understanding how your hands and fingers--and your healing partner's--connect to various aspects of your well-being such as chakras, emotions, and elements opens new avenues to bring balance and healing energy.

The chart above shows how each finger is related to certain experiences, values, and emotions. As a self-healer, you can strengthen and support these areas of your life by wearing appropriate gemstone rings on each finger or massaging them to stimulate each pathway.

Energy healers can lightly touch or tap healing partners with the appropriate finger of their giving hand to strengthen these energies or lightly massage in counterclockwise circles with the appropriate finger of the receiving hand to absorb excess energy.

The chart above shows the associations of each finger with the elements and the chakras. For self-energy healing, you can support, balance, and strengthen the energy of each chakra or element by wearing appropriate gemstone jewelry on each finger or using sound or massage techniques on each as needed to keep the energy flowing. 

If you're an energy healing practitioner, in your sessions you can use the corresponding finger of your giving hand to provide additional energy associated with that finger (so for the thumb, you can work with your right thumb in an energy healing session to give throat chakra and ether energy). You can also use your receiving hand to decrease or balance an excess of energy (so you would use your left thumb to absorb excess throat chakra or ether energy). Additionally, you can use crystal points on the tips of each finger (place the pointed end against the tip of the finger) to balance and smooth energy flow of the corresponding chakra or elemental pathway.

The final chart shows how each finger relates to negative emotions. If you, as a self-healer, are stuck in a pattern of negative emotion, you can wear appropriate crystals (such as black tourmaline, apache tears, or garnet) on the finger of the giving hand that corresponds to those emotional patterns to counteract or absorb the negativity, or you can wear a gemstone ring on the receiving hand that holds the opposite energy of your emotion. 

Energy healers working with healing partners can use the corresponding fingers on their receiving hands by massaging in a counterclockwise circle to absorb the negative emotions, or they may want to work with smoky quartz crystal points or a dorje to draw out negative emotions by placing the pointed end against the tip of the corresponding finger and visualizing the energy flowing up and out of the crystal. The smoky quartz or dorje will transmute the negative energy to positive and send it out into the universe. 

​Tools for Healing
As with all of the other information I offer, these are additional tools you can use for self-healing or in your energy healing or Reiki practice. As you develop an arsenal of understanding and healing tools,  you can store them in your information banks and call on them intuitively throughout your healing sessions, which will allow you to create the exact healing environment needed to serve the highest and greatest good. 

You are welcome to save, use, and distribute any of these charts for yourself or in your practice provided you leave my name/link on the bottom.

I encourage my Reiki students from Second Degree onward to begin to work with clients intuitively; that is, instead of following the basic hand positions to provide a full-body treatment, I suggest they observe their healing partner and to listen to their own tuition to inform how and what they do within a treatment session. I encourage anyone working with any form of energy healing (even if you are your own healing partner; that is, you're performing self-healing) to pay attention to the intuitive signals you receive and act on them within a healing session. I believe intuition in energy healing comes from learning the form first (such as which crystals help what, the feng shui bagua, the Reiki hand positions, sound healing triads, etc.) and then, once you have a full grasp of your practice and the energy you are working with,  you can begin to explore freedom through intuition. Form first then freedom makes a powerful and confident energy healer and a deeper and more meaningful healing session for your healing partner.  And one way to bring form to every energy healing session is to create a basic outline of the anatomy of a session, a loose structure you follow in every case with every healing partner. Within this structure, you can then practice freely and confidently.

Step 1: Prepare Yourself and Your Space
Before your healing partner arrives, prepare yourself and your space in any way you need. This may include meditation, bringing energy into your treatment area, or whatever rituals you engage in to bring yourself into your own energetic healing space. 

Step 2: Documentation
When you're working with paid clients, you need to document your work. When your healing partner comes to see you, talk to him about what's going on and make notes. In the healthcare field, a consultation is part of the entire documentation process often charted as SOAP notes that include subjective complaints, objective findings, assessment (for medical professionals - diagnosis), and plan. These are required documentation for insurance and legal purposes for people visiting various health care providers, but you can bring them into professional energy healing practices, as well, for the purposes of full documentation. I've attached a simple body outline below you can use as your consultation form. Have your healing partner mark areas of complaint or issues in one color pen noting the severity and character of the issue (such as sharp pain, dull ache, shooting pain, etc) on the diagram, and you can follow up by writing your objective findings, assessment (not a diagnosis), and treatment notes. 

Step 3: Consultation

While maintaining records is essential for energy healers as a business practice, in every session with every healing partner--whether a spouse, a friend, a child, a paying client, or a pet--you need to perform a consultation before each session. A consultation is your opportunity to connect with your healing partner before you begin treatment. This includes sitting down with your healing partner, looking her in the eyes, truly listening to what she has to say, asking her goals for the session, and answering her questions simply and honestly as possible. This creates a connection between the two of you. It allows you to bear witness to your healing partner's physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual feelings.  By asking thoughtful questions and listening carefully to her replies, you are serving as a witness to your healing partner's story, and everyone deserves to be able to give voice to their story to a kind, thoughtful, compassionate, and nonjudgmental witness. In fact, just bearing witness without judgment can be healing by itself before you even start your energy work. 

During consultation, sit down face to face with your healing partner. I prefer to do this in comfy chairs away from the treatment table to start so my partner and I are on the same eye level and seated as equals. Then, ask open ended questions that encourage your healing partner to talk while you actively listen. Some questions you might ask:

• Why have you come to see me today?
• How do you feel we can work together today?
• What would you like to be the outcome of this session?
• Do you have any sense of physical/emotional/spiritual things that may contribute to _____ issue?
• What can I do to make you feel safe during your session?
• ​Is there any mantra or affirmation you'd like me to focus on for your session today?
• How do you feel I can best help you?
• What questions do you have for me?

As you listen to the answers, ask thoughtful follow-up questions as needed until you feel you have truly heard and witnessed what your healing partner needs to tell you.

Next in your consultation, discuss the treatment briefly, offering any suggestions about what he may experience during or after the sessions and allow her to ask any questions, as well. With a child or animal, this process will be simpler. With the animal, sit for a few moments looking into its eyes and just trying to connect to its energy. With a child, ask simple questions that are age appropriate. 

Step 4: Make Your Healing Partner Comfortable
Make sure your healing partner has everything he needs to be comfortable. Allow him to use the restroom or get a drink of water before he gets on your treatment table. Then offer pillows and blankets to make him more comfortable, dim the lights, and put on soft music if that pleases your healing partner. You may also use aromatherapy here, but check with your healing partner first to make sure he or she isn't sensitive to fragrance, etc. 

Step 5: Observe
When you have your healing partner comfortably situated in your healing space, take a few moments to just observe her. Stand quietly next to your healing partner and watch. Notice areas of tension or movements such as a twitch in a toe, a flickering of eyelids, or a shifting of the weight. Watch the rise and fall of the breath. Note if your healing partner is breathing regularly or irregularly, shallow or deeply. Tune in to your healing partner's energy. Connect energetically and notice what you see or feel. You may also use sound tools, such as tingshas, to scan the body and look for variations in the tone or scan your hands through your healing partner's energy fields to notice for shifts, hot patches, cool patches, or changes in sensation. Use all of your five senses and intuition here to truly observe your healing partner before you begin to work. Note on your diagram anything you notice.

Step 6: Further Energetic Connection
Once you've noted your observations on your chart, center yourself. Stand at the head of the table and place your hands lightly on each of your healing partner's shoulders. Match your breathing to his. Remain in this position until your healing partner offers a big sigh of relaxation or until you feel a connection of your energy.

Step 7: Treatment
Begin your form of energy healing treatment, focusing both on your intuition and your healing partner. Always observe her responses and reactions and make adjustments as needed. It's also important to care for yourself in an energy healing session. If, for any reason, you feel uncomfortable, lightly touch your healing partner on the shoulder and tell him to relax for a moment because you are going to step away. Then, step back and re-center yourself, continuing the session when you are ready.

Step 8: Grounding
When you have completed the session (either after a set period or when you feel intuitively it is time to end), gently step away from your healing partner and recenter yourself, observing your healing partner as  you do for any apparent discomfort, etc. Then, gently touch your healing partner on the shoulder and speaking in a soft voice, tell her the session is over and she can take her time coming up when she's ready. Disconnect your energy from your healing partner's by running your hands under cold water or touching the ground, and when your healing partner sits up (she may need gentle help because she's so deeply relaxed), offer her a glass of cold water to ground her.

Step 9: Check In
At the close of a session, check back in with your healing partner. Ask how the session was for him and ask if he has any questions or wishes to share anything. You may share simple thoughts from the session but keep them friendly and low-key. For example, you might say, "I did some work around your solar plexus today, so you may want to focus on strengthening this area in your visualizations," or "I noticed you seemed uncomfortable when I was working in the area of your left knee. You may want to follow up with your doctor for that." Don't diagnose, and don't say things like, "It felt cold over your pancreas, so I think you have diabetes." You want him to leave feeling relaxed and confident, not worried. 

If you have "homework" for things he can do on his own, this is the time to discuss that as well such as an affirmation, visualization, or mantra. Be sure to tell your healing partner to drink plenty of water and contact you should  she have any questions or concerns when she gets home. Assure her any reaction she has to the session is perfectly normal. You may suggest follow-up treatments or leave it open-ended.

Step 10: Express Gratitude
After the healing session (either while your healing partner is still there or after she's left depending on your preference), offer gratitude to your guides for helping with the healing session, your healing partner's guides for bringing her to you, and to the universal energy that you have been allowed to channel for your healing partner. Reaffirm that the work you did with your healing partner was to serve the highest and greatest good for all involved. 

I teach multiple forms of energy healing including Reiki and crystal healing, and one of the topics I return to repeatedly in all classes is that of working as a healing practitioner within an ethical framework.

Yesterday, I taught my once annual Reiki Master-Teacher course in Portland, Oregon. At the Master-Teacher level, there is a deep need for a discussion of ethics because once you have attained that level, you also have the privilege of teaching and attuning others as energy healers. I view it as a huge responsibility and an absolute honor and joy that I am able to share with others in such a significant way on their path of spiritual growth. 

What I teach my students about ethics is this: When you do energy work, you must always do so from a place of integrity. What I don't tell them, however, is what that integrity should look like. 

It's important as an energy healing practitioner if you are working with healing partners (in other words, clients but I prefer the term healing partners because it reminds me the healing work is a partnership and not just something I am doing for them), you decide what your values and ethics are surrounding your practice of energy healing. Some ethics, of course, are required by law, such as having the appropriate licensing/certification in place, following ethical business practices, keeping appropriate documentation, and adhering to HIPAA, but others are deeply personal.

Within the framework of Reiki, we are offered a simple set of ethical standards called the Five Principles of Reiki. I teach them in First Degree Reiki and return to them throughout all degrees of the teaching and attunement process in my classes because they are the perfect jumping off point for developing any personal ethical framework for energy healing practice. 

Just for today, I will not anger.
Just for today, I will not worry.
Just for today, I will be kind to all living creatures.
Just for today, I will do my work with truth and integrity (I translate this to "I will live with truth and integrity").
Just for today, I will be grateful.

These are simple beliefs and practices; something to strive for in our lives while understanding we're not going to hit every target every moment of every day. But keeping them as my core values serves as a lodestar, helping me to right myself quickly when I have moments of anger, worry, or unkindness. 

As individuals, we can choose to accept or reject any of the above principles. We can also choose our own ethical framework for how we practice our energy healing and how we live our lives. I strive for internal consistency across all aspects of my life -  as a healer, as a friend, as a sister and daughter, as a wife and mother, as an employee, as a writer, as a teacher, as a human being, etc. So my ethics for my teaching and writing are the same as for my energy healing practice, and they're the same for how I strive to live every moment of my life. 

But I can't tell you what your core values should be or how you should apply them in  your life and practice. This is something you need to do for yourself. Yesterday in my Reiki Master-Teacher class, I offered this suggestion. In the days and weeks to come, spend some time thinking about what your core values are as an energy healer. How do you want it to manifest in your life, and what effect do you wish to have on the lives of others? From there, think about individual habits and practices, and determine what your version of an ethical energy healer is. Then, work from there.

I have neither walked in another's shoes nor had their experiences, so I am in no place to tell others what their core values should be or how to live and act from those core values. I have spent a lifetime developing mine and allowing them to grow and shift as I have grown and shifted. But I invite you to spend some time thinking about your core values. What is the highest vision you have for yourself? How does it make  you feel to visualize dwelling within that vision? If it feels good deep down in your soul, then this is the place to begin forming your core values as an energy healer and as a human being. 

Being mindful during a Reiki session can create a more meaningful and intentional healing experience for both the Reiki practitioner and his or her healing partner. In his teachings, Dr. Mikao Usui taught practitioners three foundational practices that he called the three pillars of Reiki, gassho, reiji-ho, and chiryo. Each of these practices has multiple purposes, and all are equally necessary during a Reiki healing session.  Purposes of the three pillars include:
-Serving as a source of spiritual hygiene to put the Reiki practitioner into a calm and centered state of mind before and during channeling Reiki
-Allowing the practitioner's ego to step aside and allow intuitive information from the Reiki energy, her healing partner, and Divine Guidance
-Connecting the practitioner and his healing partner to the Reiki energy
-Allowing the practitioner to work more intuitively as she channels Reiki energy to her healing partner
-Creating an "envelope" of mindfulness for the session for both the practitioner and his healing partner

The First Pillar: Gassho

The first pillar of Reiki, gassho, is more than a meditative practice. It also serves as a form of spiritual hygiene, a ritual to create intention and focus, an invitation to mindfulness, a call to set aside ego, and the primary method to invite and ignite Reiki healing energy within a session.

While gassho is primarily taught in Western forms of Reiki as a meditative practice that entails holding one's hands in prayer position and focusing on where the middle fingertips meet, it is far more involved and deeper than these simple instructions indicate. During gassho, while the fingertips serve as a physical focal point to help the Reiki practitioner remain mindful and in the moment, a skilled practitioner combines the mindfulness of gassho with breath work and intention. 

As Spiritual Hygiene
As spiritual hygiene, Reiki practitioners should engage in gassho for 5 to 10 minutes before every session in order to purify not only the energy of the space in which the sacred sharing of the Reiki energy will occur, but also to enter into a state of mindfulness where he or she is open to Reiki energy and positive guidance. This is especially important for practitioners who live "normal" lives between sessions (and don't we all?) where the needs of the world often intrude on upon our ideal spiritual state of being. 

Before every session, perform any energy work in your healing space you normally do as part of your pre-game ritual, whether that involves burning herbs, drawing symbols in the space, or any other space clearing ritual. Next, sit comfortably in the space in gassho. Concentrate on your breathing and the space where your middle fingertips meet. Feel Reiki forming in the air around  you and breathe it in, allowing it to flow in through your nose and lungs and throughout your entire body. Exhale tension or anything from your day that does serve you nor not belong in your session. Do this for as long as it takes. Some days, it may only take five minutes, but on those other days where the world has intruded, it may take longer. Do this until you are calm, peaceful, centered, and out of your ego. Only then should you invite your healing partner into your healing space. 

To Set Intention and Invite and Ignite Reiki Energy
Once you have invited your healing partner into the appropriately prepared space, consulted with them as needed, and they are resting comfortably on your treatment table, stand at your partner's head or feet and enter into gassho again. This time, do so focusing on any intention for the session you and your healing partner have agreed upon along with the intention to serve the highest and greatest good. Once again, feel the Reiki gather around you. Breathe it in, and invite it to flow through you and into your hands. When you feel your hands ignite, you can begin your session. 

To Return to Mindfulness or Seek Guidance
Throughout your session, you can return to gassho any time you feel the need. Gassho is your safe space where you can return to mindfulness, refocus or reset intention, or receive guidance about where to place your hands on your healing partner. It is the form within the freedom of an intuitive Reiki session. If you feel your mind start to drift or notice your energy shift, return to gassho. If you feel unsure about what to do next, return to gassho. Walk to your partner's head or feet again and stand in gassho until  you feel refocused. If you need, ask for guidance and then pay attention. A thought may come into your head, a part of your healing partner's body may "light up" in your gaze, or you may just feel drawn to a certain area. Go with this flow. Return to gassho whenever you need to recenter, wish to return to mindfulness if the outside world starts to intrude on your session, or feel unsure of what to do next. 

To Give Thanks and Return to Yourself
You can also return to gassho at the close of a session. When you feel ready, move to your healing partner's feet and stand in gassho. Give thanks to Reiki and to your partner for allowing you to channel the energy to serve the highest and greatest good. Then, invite your energy to return to you and see the energetic connection between you and your partner releasing. When you feel ready, run your hands under cool water or touch the ground to ground yourself.

The Second Pillar: Reiji-Ho
Gassho is interwoven throughout the other two pillars of Reiki. Reiji-ho, the second pillar, is all about asking for guidance. While First Degree Reiki practitioners learn the Reiki hand positions, as they progress they may begin to feel comfortable enough to work intuitively. I encourage my students entering Second Degree Reiki to begin working intuitively as often as possible during Reiki sessions knowing if they need to, they can always return to the hand positions.

In reiji-ho, you invite guidance in. It begins in gassho, with your hands held in prayer position asking to have your hands and energy guided to serve the highest and greatest good of your healing partner. And then, you wait and you use all of your senses to listen. Listen to how your body feels, what your mind thinks, what your eyes see, and how your healing partner responds. As you wait for guidance, observe with all of your senses and allow your mind to empty so it becomes a vessel into which guidance can flow easily. You will learn over time how your Divine Guidance signals you. You may spot a twitch. You may feel something in your own body. You may hear instructions in your mind. You may feel as if you are magnetically drawn to somewhere on your healing partner's body. There is no wrong way to receive information.

Reiji-ho takes trust in yourself, your healing partner, your Divine Guidance system, Reiki, and the universe. It also requires mindfulness. It requires you to allow yourself to be energetically open in order to become a vessel the universe uses to serve the highest and greatest good. When you receive a signal, trust it, act on it, and know the Reiki energy will flow exactly where and as it is needed for the highest and greatest good. When you feel yourself slipping out of that space as a vessel and a channel and back into your own personal stuff, return to gassho and re-set yourself.

The Third Pillar: Chiryo
The third pillar of Reiki, chiryo, is all about action. Chiryo means "treatment," and it is an essential part of every Reiki session. New Reiki practitioners focus primarily on chiryo, following the mechanical process of placing hands on the body in set positions and trusting the Reiki will flow where it's needed. However, as a practitioner becomes more deeply involved in the true practice of Reiki, chiryo is something that flows and changes depending on intuitive information the Reiki practitioner receives and the needs of his or her healing partner. 

A practitioner truly engaged in chiryo moves beyond the basic hand positions and sometimes even moves beyond use of the hands. He or she may be intuitively guided to gaze, tap, stroke, blow, or visualize along with placing hands, palms, or fingertips in the ways they are guided to do so. In this way, a mindful session of Reiki becomes a flowing dance of energy that involves the practitioner, his or her healing partner, and the entire universe. 
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