This is an excellent, and thought-provoking question. I noticed this feeling first after visiting doctors. Feeling ill, I looked to these "healers" to make me better. Most of the time, though, after filling my prescriptions and "following doctors orders", I found myself trying to manage the side-effects of the very substances that were supposed to heal me! I also noticed this let-down after seeing other "healers"- chiropractors, counselors, etc. I almost always regretted the money spent, and the time invested in the whole process. Similarly, when I began training in Reiki, I found that I felt much better after doing the healing work than I did receiving the healing energy. What was going on?

Seldom do healers of any walk invite those that they intend to help to participate in the healing. Why? Because there is a subtle shift in power between a healer and client. The client, whether aware of it or not, is put in the position of not being equal (at least in the specific healing session) to the healer.

Picture every aspect of the visit to the physician. You are asked to wait, usually with many others, in uncomfortable chairs, in deliberately uninspiring rooms that depress rather than uplift waiting patients. Then a nurse calls you back, and you are called by your first name- no Mr. or Ms. but Walter or Dorothy, even if you are decades older. You are "triaged", a process where you are processed as warmly as hamburger is packaged. Your vitals are recorded. Then you are led to an even more uncomfortable cubicle, which (if you are lucky) reeks of cleaning solvent and alcohol, or worse, smells of humanity. Then you are given a gown which demeans you even more, and are left to await the arrival of the lofty healer, who might give you ten minutes of time towards your complaint. I have deliberately exaggerated this scenario so you can easily see this shift in power. I hope that you might be able to apply this to a typical energy session.

Frankly, I have met very few "energy workers" who are actually really good at perceiving problems in the human energy field, and then know how to fix what is wrong (if anything). A great number of the people I have met who do this work are on some sort of power trip. They like the feeling of "fixing" you, and get off on it. When you ask them what they are doing and why, they either give you a canned response, or ask for questions to be delayed until the treatment is "done". I know of a woman who has made a complete business of teaching energy work across three counties, and is so frenetically busy with all of it that when I get near her, I swear I feel the accumulation of confusing, unbalanced energy rolling off of her in waves. The first time I received a Reiki treatment from her, she "taught" enthralled acolytes who were "helping" with my session throughout my entire treatment. I felt dazed and confused when she was done with me, and she told me that I might feel lousy for a week after my session as "my body got rid of all that negative energy". I felt worse, all right. She was supposed to be top-notch. What she was instead was someone who was trying to feel better about herself by "healing" others. My session was all about her, in truth.

A real energy worker will invite you into your own healing. He or she will be a centered and calm person, who will explain without condescension what is going on. I received a magnificent massage once from a most unassuming woman who had hands of power and a calm center I envied. She had really great boundaries, knew her limits, and had no trouble telling me what she could do for me, and what I needed to change to feel better. She invited my input. My husband is another such healer. He does not "get off" on healing. He knows who he is and doesn't need to heal people to feel good about himself. I never feel beneath him, and he does not demand that I surrender my power to him.

I hope this helps you. Believe me, if you feel worse after energy work, then I wonder to myself if in fact you actually had energy taken from you. Check out a book by Barbara Brennan called "Hands of Light". She actually has drawings showing how people steal energy from one another.

Blessings,

Jaianniah

I remember when my Reiki teacher was teaching me some NLP how she said, don't let my thought wander. If I am helping someone with NLP and think "I could go for a pizza right about now" I'll find the client wants a pizza. She said now if I am not clear while doing this and get a depressing thought, that depressing thought gets transfered to the person. So during a healing season we need to hold love and the thought of well being, balance and already healed. This is a place of mind of peace. This place is a place that has no ego or any need for appreciation or recognition of being the source of healing. Instead it is in cooperation of the healing and tuning disharmony into harmony of peace, love and wellness. An example of this are the many that pray for others that never seek to be thanked or even known that they prayed for others. What is important is the deed that is in need of being fulfilled not how or who does, but that there person suffering being healed and helped that is all that is important. In other words the one most important is the client not the healer. In this state of mind is the love, peace, alignment, health and healing. This is the state of mind that keeps the healer's mind out of the problem and keeps the healer's problems it off the clients mind and energy field.