Good Thursday, and I hope everyone had a beautiful and blessed Beltane, I know I did. I spent the weekend working spells and doing tarot readings which have been such a monumental joy for me, I know I keep repeating myself, but being able to do these tarot readings with folks face-to-face is such a beautiful energy exchange. And yes, it’s online so there is that distance, but the messages have been coming through so strongly and I am overwhelmed by the openness that I have received from everyone.
That isn’t probably the best usage of the English language to describe how it feels, but there is such a pouring out that I feel and receiving everyone’s spirit, their nature, has been a really beautiful gift and I have loved every minute of it.
Now before we get to the topic of the day, I received a question from a witch called K and it’s one I think a lot of us can relate to sometimes:
One of the blocks I find when starting to work on a spell is a fear of jinxing myself somehow. It’s a bit hard to explain, but for example, I have been hesitant to do protection work on my house or vehicle. I find myself wondering “what if I mess up the spell and invite an issue?” I know that spells need to be specific, and have always followed the “love like a poet, pray like a lawyer” advice. I’m just finding myself stuck.
Here is my current question: I want to do a spell about getting a raise. But I am worried the opportunity will present itself in a way that I won’t like. So if I say “I want a 12% raise at X company”, what if the universe presents it as a promotion that I don’t want? I guess I’m trying to find the balance between being open to the universe’s opportunities but not too open that my life changes in ways that I am not ready for.
And I told K that I get it. I understand that reluctance, especially around Mercury Retrograde when every witch on TikTok is warning against doing spells at all. But, while I do think we need to be really clear in how we word our intentions, I also think that we need to be mindful that we don’t let that get in the way of just doing the work and asking for what we want. So for this witch’s first example, in the case of working a protection spell over her vehicle or her home, I just advise that she come up with a petition that is very clear like, “no harm befalls me in this car”.
This spells out exactly what we want without inadvertently asking for or opening us up to anything we don’t want. “My home is protected from harm, from within and from without” does the same thing.
As for a spell for receiving a raise, I think that (even if we don’t want to be offered a promotion we do not want) we also should try to remember that sometimes when things like this present themselves, they’re also opportunities for growth. So it might be worth remaining open to receiving what we ask for in whatever way the Universe chooses to present it to us. But if that just isn’t what we want, then a clear petition for this raise, for example “[Boss’ name] gives me a 12% raise with no added responsibilities” is all that is going to be needed.
But again, we cannot know the ways that we may grow if we shut ourselves out of any possibility for it. The more open we are to the method of delivery for our manifestations, the more quickly, easily, and readily the Universe will be able to provide. We can still get what we want when we dictate constraints, it just may take longer.
So thank you, K for that question, and if you’d like to send in a question, please email me at eli@middleagedwitch.com. And without further ado, let’s get to it.
Okay, well today I wanted to talk a bit about energetic healing, which was a suggestion from a listener called Javin. And I’d like to preface this discussion by saying two things: firstly, all of this information is presented solely for informational, educational, and entertainment purposes. I am not a doctor and nothing I say is intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, a psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Do not use any of this information in place of a professional diagnosis or treatment. Always seek the assistance of a qualified healthcare professional.
Secondly, we are going to talk about a few different modalities of alternative healing today and I am not an expert. So if you are interested in any of the disciplines that we discuss today, please pursue them further with someone who is qualified to train you. I will post links with further information on all of these modalities in the episode description.
And with the disclaimers in place, let’s begin. I wanted to start with reiki, as it’s probably the most well-known currently. At least, it’s enjoying a big surge in popularity at the moment and I think that’s really cool. It is a form of energy healing that comes to us originally from Japan in the early 1900s. And for a discipline that hasn’t been around all that long, it’s really gained a lot of traction.
Reiki practitioners use their hands to transfer healing energy into their client, and this is most often done during one-on-one sessions, although it is also sometimes performed remotely. In fact it’s the only practice that we’re going to talk about today that can even be performed remotely. Often, the practitioner will also use crystals or sound frequencies to support the reiki session, and we will talk about both of those modalities in a moment, but the majority of the session will consist of the practitioner either gently touching or hovering their palms just above the client’s body.
The goal is to gather up and remove unwanted energies from the client, energetic blockages, and also transferring healing, positive energy back into the client. Based on the placement of the practitioner’s hands, they may discern blockages in the head, the throat, the sternum, and so on that they can sense and are trained to remove. The practitioner may also use breathwork to assist them in this removal.
They may have a general pattern that they follow, but they will also use their own intuition to discern where any major blockages may be held in the client’s body and will concentrate their efforts on these areas in particular. The session should be calm and restful, however, as these blocks are removed, as your energy, your emotional energy in particular begins to flow freely, there can and often will be sudden surges of very strong emotion. Crying during reiki is not uncommon. It’s no cause for alarm, it’s nothing to be embarrassed or self-conscious about, and it’s actually a good sign that your session has been effective.
It’s also not uncommon for guides to come through during these sessions, or an ancestor who is especially close to you, even an animal totem may come through and share a message, or a memory, or just some wisdom that you may need in that moment. And this could be in the form of visions, impressions, the practitioner may receive the message and channel it for you. Again, I am not a reiki practitioner, although it is something I would love to pursue. It’s something I fully intend to pursue. But I do love love love a good reiki session.
It’s very meditative, I find it incredibly therapeutic, and I do encourage everyone to at least try it. Just make sure your practitioner is legit. As with all of these healing modalities, they’re not super regulated, so it’s tricky to separate the true reiki masters from the folks who printed a certificate off Google images. Just read reviews and take recommendations from people you trust.
The next method of energetic healing I want to talk about is Crystal Healing. Crystals, as we know, vibrate at specific frequencies according to the molecular composition of the crystal itself. And it is thought and believed that if we can sort of reset the vibrations of our bodies, of our organs, with the particular crystal whose natural vibration matches our desired vibration, then we can experience healing to some extent.
And this is why I’m sure we’ve all seen the chakra stone sets in the metaphysical shops. There are seven stones, one for each chakra, and they’re frequently aligned with the rainbow, interestingly enough. They don’t actually have to be rainbow colored, they just often are. I think it helps folks kind of keep track of which stone is meant for which chakra, but there are variations.
For the first chakra, the root, the stones are typically red or black, they’re going to be very grounding stones. So you might see red jasper, hematite, black obsidian, black tourmaline, smoky quartz, or garnet, among others. The second chakra, the sacrum, is usually treated with an orange or a blue-green stone, such as copper, topaz, orange calcite, turquoise, fluorite, or tiger’s eye.
The third chakra, the solar plexus, is gonna be a yellow stone such as amber, apatite, calcite, citrine, or yellow Jasper. The fourth chakra, which is the heart, will be green or pink. So this might include rose quartz, jade, pink tourmaline, lepidolite, or green aventurine. The fifth chakra is the throat and this will be a blue stone, usually aquamarine, amazonite, blue calcite, sodalite, blue kyanite, and sometimes turquoise again.
The sixth chakra is the third eye and this is typically indigo. Stones like la·puhs la·zuh·lee, tanzanite, or one of my favorite stones, blue apatite. And finally the seventh chakra is the crown. And although this is usually treated with amethyst, there are also white or clear stones used for this chakra as well, so herkimer diamond, clear quartz, or selenite are also perfectly valid for this use.
But beyond the chakras, we will frequently use crystals in our own ways, for example I love to sleep with an amethyst on my nightstand. I sleep like a damn baby. I will put selenite at the four corners of my bed and sleep inside my own make-shift crystal grid whenever I’m feeling mentally foggy or icky or like there’s just those energetic cobwebs kind of gooping up my brain. And again this is not a substitute for mental healthcare.
But there are all kinds of ways that we can use crystals to support our health. And really that kind of info is just a Google search away. I also like a few books on the topic that I’ve mentioned six hundred times, but let’s make it 601. I like Llewellyn’s Complete Book of Correspondences and I like Cunningham’s Encyclopedia of Crystals, Gems, and Metal Magic and I’ll link both of those in the show notes as well. If you can only get one of those books, I’d go with Llewellyn’s but that’s just me.
Sound healing is another modality that has really exploded in recent years. I know that it’s not actually anything new, but we in the West do love to act like we’ve discovered something new anytime we’re introduced to a practice that’s already been in use for thousands of years by other cultures. But the theory of using sound as a method of healing is essentially this: the human body is composed of about 70% water, so sound frequencies travel through us quite easily; we are fantastic conductors of sound waves.
The practice of sound healing is based on the notion that certain frequencies, as they travel through our bodies, can break up physical blocks, like tight muscles, or emotional blocks, like repressed feelings. Sound healers might use all kinds of tools to treat clients, like tuning forks, singing bowls, chimes, and so on to reharmonize the body and the mind and affect healing.
Sound baths are typically group events led by sound healers in order to help a lot of people all at once. Folks will sit or lie comfortably in a communal space while sound healers use specially-tuned gongs or singing bowls to take the group through specific frequencies designed to resonate with the body and promote healing and wellness.
They’re called sound baths because the sustained frequencies wash over the body. It’s a really immersive experience. These harmonics and frequencies are meant to resonate in such a way that it helps the mind to relax while the vibrations work within the body to encourage healing, to release stress and tension, and to help the client to direct focus inward. It’s again very meditative.
Earthing, or grounding is probably the easiest of all the methods we’ll talk about today. In essence, this is just standing or sitting on the bare earth, in the sand on the beach, in the forest, in the backyard, sit your ass on a boulder, and just allow the unwanted heaviness, the unwanted energies that we are carrying around day and day out, to be carried down and away from us, into the earth, and simultaneously allowing the fresh, rejuvenating energy of the earth to fill us.
The theory behind this practice is that the earth is really an enormous super-conductor of free electrons. This contact with the earth allows our bodies to take up the free electrons which do some manner of battle against the free radicals in our body, and we release them. So what exactly does that mean? I don’t know, I just know that a half hour in the garden with my hands in the dirt or playing fetch with the dog barefoot in the grass feels like nothing else.
Proponents of this practice assert that it can help lower blood pressure and normalize hormonal imbalances and reduce stress and on and on and I don’t know whether that’s demonstrably provable or not. All I know is that it feels better than a nap. It’s so invigorating and we are witches, we know goddamned good and well that we are meant to be outside, in the fresh air, in the sunshine, standing firmly on the earth just drinking it in. And that’s what earthing is, that’s all it is, but it’s worth a try.
And there are certainly other modes of energetic healing, like acupuncture and reflexology and so on, but I don’t really know enough about these to be either helpful or interesting. So my advice and my hope is that if you are interested in those, you’ll pursue them. There are a lot of ways to heal ourselves that won’t interfere with traditional Western medicine, and that’s the goal in talking about all of these methods of energetic healing today. There’s so much we can do to support our wellness and it’s important to take an active role.
So again, I’m leaving information in the episode description if any of this is interesting, and I hope everyone makes the most of the full moon and the lunar eclipse. Have a lovely weekend, and we’ll talk again next week. My name is Eli Ro, and this has been the Middle-Aged Witch podcast.
Llewellyn’s Complete Book of Correspondences: https://a.co/d/4okr43m
Cunningham’s Encyclopedia of Crystal, Gem, and Metal Magic: https://a.co/d/cLsng4Q
https://middleagedwitch.com/liveservices/
https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/sound-healing
https://www.earthing.com/pages/what-is-earthing
https://www.reiki.org/faqs/what-reiki
One thought on “Energetic Healing”