How to Avoid Depleting Your Own Energy When Doing Healing

Hi Shanna and welcome to Healthypages,

I've not felt exhausted after giving Reiki, in fact I've always felt more energized.

It was true to some extent but I still felt tired and exhausted at times. An experienced Reiki teacher taught me that I needed to cultivate a detached attitude about the energy flow rather than mixing my own energy with the Reiki. He suggested me to repeat the name of the symbols like mantras and visualize them as I give a Reiki treatment.

It still sounds as though you are putting some focus on using your own energy, even though you want to just use Reiki.
Perhaps, you need to simply practice the reiki precepts, especially... "Just for today, be free of worry", as I feel that it is perhaps your concern about using your own energy that is causing you to retain that focus on it, and hence use it. When you give Reiki, state clearly to yourself "I am giving Reiki" and place your focus on the Reiki energy coming in.

All Love and Reiki Hugs

I've not felt exhausted after giving Reiki, in fact I've always felt more energized.

Good for you 🙂

It still sounds as though you are putting some focus on using your own energy, even though you want to just use Reiki.

I guess it's because I was using my own energy when I discovered my healing ability.

When you give Reiki, state clearly to yourself "I am giving Reiki" and place your focus on the Reiki energy coming in.

I'm actually saying the name of the symbols to myself which is another way to state "I am giving Reiki"

Thanks for your reply 🙂

Good for you 🙂

I guess it's because I was using my own energy when I discovered my healing ability.

I'm actually saying the name of the symbols to myself which is another way to state "I am giving Reiki"

Thanks for your reply 🙂

I visualise the reiki energy coming in through my crown chakra at the start of a session. You may find this a useful image to use.

I suspect that because your were a healer before you were attuned to reiki you haven't quite been able to let go of that aspect of healing. Also if healing used to make you very tired , maybe on one level you still expect it to? As a hypnotherapist I know how much we can feel what we expect to feel in a certain situation 🙂

But this is interesting for me because I may soon be attuning someone who like yourself is a natural healer and I hadn't considered how different it might be. Thank you for raising this issue

love and light

I have found from experience that there are two main reasons why Reiki practitioners feel exhausted after giving Reiki treatments:

1. They are using their own Ki

2. They are attached to the person and/or the outcome

I advise students to use the formal process of connection and channelling to minimise the risk of using their own Ki and to detach from both the person they are treating and the outcome of the treatment. If you would like me to email you details please pm me with your email address.

Hi Shanna

In your first post you outlined the problem:

At the age of 14, I realized that I had healing abilities. I gave massages to my mother when she was tired and then I lay my hands on her. She always felt totally rejuvenated. The only problem was that I always felt tired after the session. If she had a headache, then I ended up having one while she was relieved of her own headache. Not a very pleasant experience for me!

This has nothing to do with using your own energy, for there is one life force power which we all utilise all of the time to create whatever we choose to create, this is all to do with the way that you are and you naturally heal, plus your lack of understanding of the healing process that you are utilising to heal.

When your mother was tired, you would heal her by taking the symptoms of tiredness into yourself so that she would feel revitalised, when she had a headache, you healed her headache by taking her headache into self and as the symptoms left her she felt better.

This is a valid way of healing that has been utilised for millennia, the problem is that you are only performing half of the healing cycle, you are not supposed to take someone else's symptoms into self and keep them, with this type of healing you are supposed to take them into self and then get rid of them to finish the healing cycle. 😉

Your natural way of healing is at odds with the Reiki form of healing that you have learnt, now although you are going through the Reiki ritual of performing healing, we all heal through our way of being, so you are still healing the way that you heal naturally and taking into self other people's symptoms so that they can become healed.

So to save yourself future headaches etc, when you have finished healing, disconnect yourself from the person that you are healing and then remove the symptoms that you have taken into self, by placing your hands under a running cold water tap and direct them into the water until you sense that they have completely gone and you feel complete again, simples. 🙂

I can only talk from personal experience and so far.........I have only felt better after giving Reiki 🙂

I have to say how much I appreciate Paul Cricks posts. I actually agree with most of what he says most of the time (please take that as a compliment).

Yes, taking on someone else's pain is the way of a natural healer. It makes us sick and want to be a hermit. To learn to be a conduit instead is really hard.

I have an apprentice who is a natural healer and I asked her to send me energy because I was ill. When it came...I texted her...NO...you can't have it. It feels different when some one takes your pain than when someone fills you with healing energy that heals, releases or replaces the pain. With this immediate feedback she was able to focus on being a tool for conection instead of a healer.

I'm not into the shaking or water. Raising me hands and giving gratitude can give me a cleansing.

Hi Stephanie

I have to say how much I appreciate Paul Cricks posts. I actually agree with most of what he says most of the time (please take that as a compliment).

I am glad to hear that you find them useful. 🙂

Yes, taking on someone else's pain is the way of a natural healer. It makes us sick and want to be a hermit. To learn to be a conduit instead is really hard.

Actually that is one way amongst many ways that a healer can heal someone, it is only when the person who is creating the healing environment does not understand how to complete the healing cycle within self, that they end up creating a problem for themselves, but that is part of the journey of personal discovery that a healer undertakes as they set out to learn to help others through sharing themselves to instigate a healing change, it is a common mistake that many healers make when they set about healing others before they have learnt to heal self first. 🙂

I have an apprentice who is a natural healer and I asked her to send me energy because I was ill. When it came...I texted her...NO...you can't have it. It feels different when some one takes your pain than when someone fills you with healing energy that heals, releases or replaces the pain. With this immediate feedback she was able to focus on being a tool for connection instead of a healer.

I am a little confused by this part of your message, it seems that you asked a healer for help to become healed, but then you would not allow them to actually perform the task you had asked them to perform as a healer!

I really do not understand why you judged it wrong for a healer to heal you by removing that which was giving you discomfort to create a healing change so that you could become healed and free from the discomfort that you where experiencing?

Food for thought, please consider that contra to popular belief, healing is not an energy, healing is a way of creating a healing change, it is the change that creates the healing not the sensations that we create within our bodies in response to being healed, rather than choosing to interpret those feelings to be a form of energy, we can accept that we create these feelings in response to being healed as the healing is happening. 🙂

My dear sweet loving appentice needs to learn to get her energy from the source instead of taking on the suffering of others into her body. She was thin and gray (her essence was gray). I was trying give her immediate feed back that I could feel what she was doing.

I love her like my daughter and did not want her to suffer. She laughed that I could feel the difference, pulled herself together, opened her chakras, sent me energy from the source and my pain was much relieved. She reported to me the next day that she felt rejuvenated after (with no negitive effects) it was a great experience for us both.

Since she has learned this and self healing, she has gained a little weight and has a better color. He bloodwork which was poor...is normal. She has had no attunements other that resinating with me at my energy level. At this point it is a question as to her future training. We will know when the time is right. I just have her reading what ever books of mine call to her. Right now "Johnathan Livingston Seagull" is her favorite. She's read it 6 times.

Hi Stephanie

My dear sweet loving appentice needs to learn to get her energy from the source instead of taking on the suffering of others into her body. She was thin and gray (her essence was gray). I was trying give her immediate feed back that I could feel what she was doing.

Well yes, if you choose to believe that we are separate from the source and each other, then that would be a logical conclusion for you to make, to my understanding we are all one and an integral aspect of the oneness of consciousness. 🙂

I love her like my daughter and did not want her to suffer. She laughed that I could feel the difference, pulled herself together, opened her chakras, sent me energy from the source and my pain was much relieved. She reported to me the next day that she felt rejuvenated after (with no negitive effects) it was a great experience for us both.

As you say when you asked her to stop healing you by removing the discomfort and dealing with it in self the way that she would do naturally, so she had to open what you refer to as her chakras and I refer to as our life force generators and created a healing flow within them and gave you that in place of the healing change that she was giving you before you interrupted her, but either way she was healing you. 🙂

The only thing that a healer and the person who is receiving the healing from them should be healing, anything else comes from our judgemental beliefs that get in the way of the healing that we are creating, healing is healing.

Since she has learned this and self healing, she has gained a little weight and has a better color. He bloodwork which was poor...is normal. She has had no attunements other that resinating with me at my energy level. At this point it is a question as to her future training. We will know when the time is right. I just have her reading what ever books of mine call to her. Right now "Johnathan Livingston Seagull" is her favorite. She's read it 6 times.

Yes, an interesting book that outlines that we have to move beyond our judgemental beliefs that disempower us from becoming what we are, which in this case is a natural healer who has a natural way of healing, the book might help her to see that she has to let go of the fear of failure if she wishes to embrace her healing potentiality, we all need to take that step at some point on our journey of personal discovery. 🙂

What are you talking about? She has no fear of failure.

Can you not understand that I would rather keep my pain than have someone else suffer it?

Can you not understand that it is my responsibiliy as her teacher to help her to be a healer with out pain or injury to herself?

I could have healed myself. This was an exercise for her growth. I am her teacher.

If not...then all of your intellectualism is wasted. This is simple stuff. Do no harm and make the world a better place because I have been here.

Hi Stephanie

What are you talking about? She has no fear of failure.

Then why did she listen to your instructions not to harm herself through what you judged to be a self harming way of healing and not stick to the path that she knew was the natural one for her to pursue that you judged to be a wrong way of healing?

Can you not understand that I would rather keep my pain than have someone else suffer it?

Yes I can understand what you are saying, but I was more concerned with what your beliefs were having upon her ability to learn to heal, rather than what they were having upon you. Normally we are resonsible for our own thought patterns and beliefs and the things that they create within our life experience, but in the case of teaching we are resposnible for the things that we teach to others. 🙂

Can you not understand that it is my responsibiliy as her teacher to help her to be a healer with out pain or injury to herself?

No. I personally do not perceive that it is the responsibility of a teacher to encourage their student to take on-board any disempowering judgmentally beliefs and fears that we might choose to place upon self. Surely it is a teacher's job to encourage their students to move beyond what we have managed to achieve for ourselves, so that they end up teaching us?

Why any healer would choose to perceive that healing can do anything other then heal is beyond me, but then I have never feared healing or the oneness that we heal within, I never tell a healer what they can't do, for they work like all healers within the confines of their own thought patterns and beliefs, I perceive my job as a teacher to help them to achieve their own unique creative potentiality which is different to my own creative potential. 🙂

I could have healed myself. This was an exercise for her growth. I am her teacher.

Then can I suggest that you allow her to grow in her own way, encourage her whilst allowing her to find out what she is capable of outside of your own fears of harming self whilst healing, she like all healers needs to find out what she can do for herself and be encouraged to keep going when things do not work out as expected and adapt what she is doing until she succeeds in becoming what she wants to be. 😉

If not...then all of your intellectualism is wasted. This is simple stuff. Do no harm and make the world a better place because I have been here.

A healer should do no harm to self or others whilst they are healing, this is not because they fear to do any harm or they believe that they can do harm, it is because if they did harm to self or others in the name of healing, then they would no longer be healing but doing something else entirely. 😉

I may be wrong...but it feels like judgement on your part (of my vocabulary and my teaching). Though I have read without end...I am intuitive and loving... I perfer to follow that, listening as I go.

I feel like I addressed the question at hand and gave an example for the edification of anyone interested in issue.

I have a very delicate apprentice that was making herself ill absorbing the pain and illnesses of others. Everything I say to her is for her consideration not a requirement. But I will not allow her to take on my pain in her weakened condition.

I give gratitude and listen to the universe. I try to follow the thoughts that come after. I do not need to defend my actions.