These energy healing tips and tricks are for both healers and recipients, in or out of a professional setting.  Some tips will hopefully make it easier to find a good match between healer and recipient, and easier to find a supportive setting in which to do the healing.  Other tips are aimed at helping to navigate uncomfortable issues when they arise, helping to ensure the needs of the recipient are met, helping to avoid unintended energetic harm to yourself and others, and more.

I have been giving and receiving energy healings for roughly thirty years, in a wide variety of settings, with a wide variety of people.  I have spent significant time around professional energy healers in professional environments, and since developing chronic illness I have received professional healings from many different healers using different modalities.  Among both casual healers and professional healers, I have seen a great many strange approaches, brilliant methods, easy blunders, and painful mistakes that all inspired this blog post.

Quick Note – Respect the Energy Exchange Relationship

All of my tips have a foundational awareness that no matter what healing modality is used, there is an exchange of energy between the healer(s) and recipient(s).  This exchange of energy creates a relationship that requires trust and openness in order to reach its full potential, but that same trust and openness also brings risk. 

Like with any relationship, when things go well, the impact is profound and memorable.  When things go poorly, the same is also true, but for very different reasons.  To help maximize the impact and minimize the risk, it is important to enter into energy healing with an open heart and open eyes.  Having a conscious awareness of what to expect for yourself and other(s) involved can help you navigate each situation and know when to give yourself fully to the healing, when to ask for changes, and when to call it off.

This is true no matter the setting, be it a professional healer/client relationship, a friend helping a friend, family helping family, a spiritual leader helping members of the community, or any other type of healer/recipient relationship.

Tip 1: Require Consent

Consent is important anytime a person is acting upon another.  In energy healing, the healer is seeking to use some form of energy to alter the recipient.  Thus, in order to fully respect the bodily autonomy of the recipient, the healer needs to obtain consent before acting upon that recipient.

There are those who see all healing as Good and Beneficial, and therefor always the Right course of action (moral high horses are common among those who have such an attitude), so they will walk up to strangers and get straight to work.  However, this is no more appropriate to do than if a doctor were to walk up to a stranger and start doing a physical exam without explaining themself and obtaining permission first.  I would be hard-pressed to count how many times I have seen someone impose themself on someone they saw as “needing” a healing.  Some of the time this works out fine, as the recipient realizes what the healer is doing and then retroactively gives consent, but that is not always the case. 

Surprise healings can also be very problematic beyond issues of bodily autonomy.  The recipient may not be ready for a healing, may not trust the healer, or the time, place, or method being imposed may not be appropriate for them.  There can also be trauma issues involved, or personal energy shielding or defensive magic.

A potential recipient could (and ideally should) have protections for their energy body, protections that may create a barrier to unexpected energy healing.  In some cases, those protections may even create backlash against anyone who attempts to influence that energy body without permission.

That means, not only is enthusiastic consent the morally correct answer, but it is also the best way to ensure the energy healing is as effective and pleasant as possible.  When consent is given enthusiastically, the recipient can be a participant in their own healing, and feel good about doing so.

Consent can also help to ensure that a recipient who wants to be healed can do so under the circumstances that work best for them. It gives recipients grace when they need more information, more time, a change to the setting (like music or light), or something else before they can fully relax and consent in that moment.

Tip 2: Is Touching Allowed?

It is best to discuss this before the healing session starts, especially if touching is potentially or inherently a part of the healing modality being used.  If no touching will be involved, stating this explicitly clarifies what the recipient should expect, and can help them to relax and trust the process.

If this is a professional setting, the answer could easily be “NO” for legal reasons.  In many locations where I have received energy healing, professional energy healers are not allowed to touch the client in any way unless they also have professional certification and current legal standing in a physical healing modality, like massage therapy, physical therapy, or acupuncture.

Be clear about if, when, and how the healer is allowed to touch the recipient.  If touching is conditional, is it limited to particular parts of the body or particular types of touching (laying on hands or acupressure, for example)?  Does the healer need to say something before each touch?  Does the healer need to ask for consent anew for each touch, waiting for an agreed-upon signal or word?

If you are a hopeful recipient, it is entirely reasonable to ask about touching.  If the healer seems unprepared for this question, proceed cautiously.  That could indicate they have not fully considered the variable needs of different recipients, or that they are very new to energy healing and still learning how to navigate the healer/recipient relationship.  In such situations, they may not be as knowledgeable or skilled as is ideal, or they may do a perfectly good job once those considerations are brought to their attention.

If the healer seems irritated by the question, or even worse, offended or refuses to answer, I recommend not allowing that person to heal you, even if that means paying a cancellation fee.  An ethical healer will always be sensitive to the needs and triggers of a recipient, and will want them to have the best possible experience.  That is not possible when the healer feels their desire to touch is more important than the recipient’s bodily autonomy.

A Cautionary Tale

When I was a teenager and struggling with a neglectful and emotionally abusive home life, I said “yes” to the first energy healer who offered to give me a session.  There was no discussion of consent or touching, and he did a lot of touching.  He fumbled at it in a way that was clumsily reminiscent of acupressure, but crossed a line from simply inept to creepy by loosening clothing and at times placing his hand under my clothes.  It made the session very tense and anxiety-inducing.  Although he didn’t push it further than that, the discomfort his inappropriate touches created meant energy healing was not going to happen.  All my barriers were up, even though I didn’t have the courage to tell him to stop, naively excusing it as “just part of the process”.  Looking back on it, I cannot help but think that for him “energy healing” was primarily a vehicle to touch women, whether or not he also intended to perform energy healing.

Ew.

Tip 3: Discuss Goals and Expectations before the Healing

While it is entirely possible for many energy healers to intuit what they believe should be addressed in the healing session, this discussion is still necessary.  Only when the goals are discussed can consent be possible and the issues the recipient is concerned about be addressed for certain.  This is true, even if the agreed upon goal turns out to be “use your healer’s intuition”, because consent requires conscious awareness.

If the recipient is expecting the healer to aid with a headache, but instead the healer goes after trauma (even if the trauma is ultimately the source of the headache), then the healer is addressing something the recipient did not consent to.  This can also cause a lot of problems if the recipient is not prepared to deal with the shadow work and emotional healing that needs to accompany energetic trauma healing.

Discussing goals and expectations also gives the healer an opportunity to assess if the recipient has reasonable expectations for the healing session.  That way the healer can clarify what kind of outcome is likely or even possible, and possibly refuse to do the healing if the recipient expects the impossible.

For example, energy healing can be extremely helpful with trauma healing, but it is not instant or easy.  In my experience, energy healing can help to unlock trauma and ease triggers, so the recipient can more easily see and address their trauma healing through therapy and shadow work.  A recipient who expects an instant fix to trauma and other mental health issues is doomed to disappointment and failure, and I have never seen it turn out well.  With trauma healing in particular, re-traumatizing and worsening of triggers is extremely common when it is attempted irresponsibly.

On the physical end of the spectrum, energy healing can be helpful in easing the symptoms of cancer or other serious illnesses, or to supplement conventional medical treatment for chronic illnesses, but physical illness and injury cannot be cured solely by energy healing.  A recipient who expects to be cured by energy healing is never going to achieve their goals, and a “healer” who promises this is just a con artist preying on the desperate.

Tip 4: Set the Environment for Healing

Some people can focus and give/receive healing on a busy street corner.  Other people need a fully tranquil and controlled environment.  Recognize your limits and communicate them with the other people involved.  That way you have the opportunity to move to a more conducive location, or better tailor the current environment.

It is unlikely that everyone involved will be cool with a busy street corner, and it is very rare that chaos is the preferred healing environment for anyone, so setting the environment usually means accommodating the individual who wants the greatest level of tranquility.  However, compromise might be necessary if there is a conflict in the needs of the people involved.  For example, if one person hates wind chimes, and the other hates flute music, but both prefer sound in the environment, they will need to compromise and find a background noise or music that they both find relaxing.

If you are a healer, especially in a professional capacity, please keep in mind that some recipients won’t speak up on their own if they find aspects of the environment disruptive, but disliking the environment can prevent effective healing and discourage them from coming back.  Be sure to have multiple background noise and music options, and take the time to ask them if they are comfortable and can relax.  Offer adjustments and alternatives to light, sound, physical position, and more, as appropriate.

Tip 5: Get into a Meditative/Trance Frame of Mind

If you are an energy healer, being in the right frame of mind for energy healing is absolutely essential to a successful session.

It is not essential for the recipient to know how to meditate, but if the recipient is in a calm, meditative or trance-like, receptive state of mind, it will make the energy healing a lot easier and more effective.

Anyone who is trained in a specific energy healing modality should have learned how to get into a good frame of mind as part of their training, but it is important to keep up the practice over time.  Those of us who do intuitive energy healing need to be certain to keep up the techniques and practices that allow us to focus and effectively enter, stay in, and exit from a meditative or tranced state of mind.

Exactly how each individual achieves a meditative state can vary greatly, depending upon their personal practice and tradition (if they are in one).  Generally, grounding and centering is an excellent place to start, and a consistent meditation practice outside of energy healing sessions is always beneficial.

Tip 6: Let the Energy Do the Work

The vast majority of energy healing modalities I am familiar with involve calling upon healing energies that are external to the healer.  The exact nature of that external source varies greatly, including the world around, other realms, spirits, deities, guides, ancestors, and more.  This allows the healer to tap into a vast well of healing that is far larger and more powerful than the mortal human form can sustain on its own.

From the Healer’s Point of View

If the external healing energy is coming from an intelligent source, like a deity or spirit, then the goal is usually to be a conduit for Them, and They will use Their greater awareness to help guide the healing process.  If you are a healer intuitively working with a healing deity (as opposed to receiving training in an established modality or tradition), place trust in Their knowledge, wisdom, and guidance.  They have been doing this a lot longer than you have.

When working with a more amorphous energy source, like the universe, the earth, or the world around you, it usually lacks intelligence behind it that the healer can place faith in.  It can be difficult for some healers to just let the energy flow, like a nervous driver leaning forward and holding the steering wheel in a white-knuckled death grip.

Before covid, a friend of mine who teaches reiki held monthly “reiki shares”, where reiki practitioners, especially newly attuned ones, could practice on random people in a group environment.  I attended intermittently, and one of the most common mistakes I saw was practitioners who were so eager to send healing energy that they tried to force it instead of just opening the channels and letting it flow.

As the recipient this usually worked out for me in one of two ways.  Either it felt like I was being beat up by a flood of energy that was moving too fast and hard to do anything pleasant, or none of the healing energy made it through the tension of overexertion.  In both cases, it was ineffective at best, and the practitioner was expending so much of their personal energy trying to force it, that they were sure to burn out.

If you want a drink of water from a pool and try to grab it aggressively, it will just slip through your fingers.  If you gently cup your hand and scoop the water out, you can get a drink.  Healing energy is a lot like that.  If you try to grab it or force it, it scatters or evades.  If you start splash-scooping it aggressively, it goes everywhere and makes a mess.  If you approach it with a gentle and calm heart, like gentle and calm hands in water, all you have to do is set up the route (intentions/goals) and let it flow.  Keep focus to keep it going where it needs to, and let the healing energy do the work.

This also can help to save the healer from expending too much of their personal energy.  This is particularly important if you want to give multiple healing sessions in a day, or hope to have the capacity for other activities later without feeling drained.

I have also received healings from individuals who did not tap into any external healing energy, and instead relied entirely on expending their personal energy.  I never let a single one of them ever work on me again, not because they were bad at healing, but because it was self-destructive for them.  At the end of the session, they were each drained and spent in a way that was very worrisome and unsustainable.  I am not willing to sacrifice someone else’s wellbeing for my own, and that extends to situations where the other person would willingly sacrifice their wellbeing.

From the Recipient’s Point of View

Most of the time, the person being healed is the passive recipient of healing energy.  However, if the recipient also has energy working skills, they are capable of inadvertently inhibiting their own healing.

If the recipient consciously uses energy shielding, wards, protective magic, and the like, that needs to be taken into consideration.  They need to make sure that their energetic and/or magical protections allow for the free flow of healing energy, without blocking, diverting, or nullifying it.  Depending upon the nature of their specific protections, they may inherently allow for the passage of healing energy, or it may be necessary for the recipient to consciously lower their defenses for the duration of the energy healing session.

A Peculiar Example

The strangest healing session I ever experienced was given by a friend of a friend, met on the one occasion, never to be seen again.  I was having a particularly high pain day (enough so that it was very obvious to others present that I was unwell), and the friend of a friend confidently declared that they were great at helping with things like that.  This person was odd, but seemed well-meaning, and the offer of relief was tantalizing, so I agreed to let them do their thing.

They were, indeed, very good at it.  When they were done, my pain levels were very low, but within ten minutes my pain started to climb again.  On someone else, their healing might have lasted longer.  On me it was doomed to failure, a byproduct of their strange way of doing healing combined with my personal energy shielding.

Instead of letting the healing energy pass through me and heal my personal energy field, they essentially placed nodes of modified energy within my energy field, like a bandage over the problem areas.  While present, those energy bandages greatly reduced my pain levels, but I have cultivated an energy field that clears out energy that does not belong to me.  I did this because as a child and teen I had a natural tendency to take on other people’s energies, which was problematic to say the least.  I didn’t need to get angry because someone else in the room happened to be angry, and I definitely didn’t need to carry it around for days after.  That was bad for me, and the solution I found was to make sure I was always me down to my energetic core.

By placing energy nodes like bandages on a wound, the problem was entirely unaddressed (they removed some of the “bad” energy, but no real healing to my personal energy had occurred).  Also, the energetic bandage definitely qualified as “not me” energy, so it was quickly cleared away by energy protections I had cultivated for about twenty years.

So, on someone else their technique might have worked great, especially since the goal was to provide relief for a chronic symptom.  But for me it lasted too short a time to be worth the effort, and even if I could have altered my energy to allow the bandages to stay, it would not have been worthwhile to me. 

Tip 7: Don’t Take on Detrimental Energies

Since energy healing creates an exchange of energy between the healer and the recipient, it is disturbingly easy for the healer to take on some of the detrimental energy being healed.  For some of us, unless we take precautions, taking on detrimental energy is as easy as just looking at it in detail.  We pay attention to it, and then that energy is incorporated into our own energy body.

If this describes you, I recommend taking the time to figure out how to avoid doing that.  For me, this involved frequently doing a meditation to train my energy body to clear out anything that wasn’t actually mine.  After a couple years it became second nature, and after a decade that was just how my energy body worked.

Grounding and centering are excellent tools.  When used before and after each healing session they can help to prevent taking on detrimental energies, and expel what energies do latch on.  Re-affirm what is you and yours, and let the rest melt or drift away.

Personal shielding is also very important for healers, exactly because it can help with this kind of problem.  Less commonly, it can be helpful if a recipient tries to engage in energetic foolery while they have access to the exchange (like energy vampirism).  Exactly what form your shielding or protective measures take will depend upon you and your practice.

I wish I did not need to talk about fiction tropes, but sadly I do.  In fiction there is the trope of the magical or folk healer who takes on the ills of those they heal, as part of their gift and purpose in life.  It can make for very good storytelling, but it is entirely unnecessary for the vast majority of modalities, and a horrible expectation to have of the healing process.  Despite that fact, there are some energy healers and recipients who embrace that idea.

In any energetic or magical work there is exchange, or some sort of price to pay, but that price does not need to include the illness now being in the healer.  I do not consider that to be a “healing” process.  Instead, I see it as a transference.  Nothing was actually healed.  The ill was just moved to a different location. 

Most healers pay for their healing abilities with their time and energy, maintaining their practice, potentially some assorted tools (chimes, incense, candles, crystals, etc.), and possibly offerings to deities or spirits.  Exact prices paid will vary by situation, healing modality, and tradition or personal practice, but in the overwhelming majority of situations, the healer taking on the illness is not necessary and deliberately doing so will only serve to make being a healer unsustainable.

An Alarming Example

This particular professional energy healer was a lovely person, and the session went very well for me, but not for them.  After the session was over, I was deeply alarmed to notice that the healer was in a great deal of energetic distress.  Instead of letting the energetic damage of my illness dissipate or flow elsewhere, they had absorbed a lot of it into their personal energy field.

I never want someone else to harm themself on my behalf.  I never want anyone else to have to experience what I do on the daily, even if it is only briefly.  No healer should want to take home the ills of those they heal, to bear that burden personally.  It is not necessary or good to be that kind of martyr.

Tip 8: Responsibly Dispose of Unwanted Energy

Getting rid of unwanted energy is a basic skill of magical and energy work of any kind, but it bears mentioning anyway since it is so very, very important.

Energy healing often involves removing or eliminating detrimental energies that are feeding illness and injury.  Most people I have witnessed, they let it be carried away into the universe, or let it sink down into the earth to be transformed there.  However, those are not the only two options, even if they are typically the most responsible.  Both the earth and the universe are very adept at moving and transforming energies.  Another responsible option is allowing healing deities, spirits, guides, etc. to carry it away and dispose of as They deem fit.  It could also potentially be stored in a prepared object or space for later use as a component in other workings.  I’m sure there are other responsible options as well.

What is irresponsible is to leave detrimental energies clogging the recipient’s energy body, for the healer to take them into their own energy body, to just leave the energies in the space where the healing occurred, or to shove them into other living beings who did not consent beforehand.  Yes, I have seen each of those things done, and I was appalled every time.  Just don’t.

On a related note, I suggest getting rid of the detrimental energies throughout the healing session, instead of waiting until the very end to get rid of all of them.  That can potentially be a lot to hold onto, and a lot to release in one go.

A Cringy Practice

On one occasion, the person who did an energy healing on me held onto all the detrimental energies until the session was over.  They then walked over to the household cat (not this person’s cat, but the cat that lived in the home) and just dumped all of it into the cat.  Unsurprisingly, the cat looked at this person with a clear expression of “WTAF DUDE?!?”, before walking away and giving themself a bath.

I was horrified, and demanded to know why the healer did that.  They explained that cats were very good at clearing energy, so they always looked for a nearby cat to dump energy into after doing a healing.  And yes, the cat was swiftly clearing out their energy field, but that was beside the point.  Instead of dealing with the detrimental energies responsibly, that healer made it the cat’s problem, and that cat most definitely did not consent to being involved.

Tip 9: Immediate Aftercare is Important

When you have given or received an energy healing session, it is important to take time to ground, center, and let things settle in or clear out before getting on with your day.  A good energy healing session usually involves entering an altered state, so it can be jarring and disorienting to just jump back into everyday life without an interlude.

For healers, this is important self-care, so that you can continue to be the best possible healer for your next client, or so that you are in the best shape to go on with the rest of your day.

As a recipient, this is important so you can give the healing a chance to set.  In this way, it is more likely to have a stronger and lasting impact.