Gene, I always read your materials with interest and would appreciate your comment concerning energy protection. I have two questions.

First, I understand, before a practitioner starts treating clients he/she can create a protective energy layer around himself. How does this affect a practitioner as they connect with a client to muscle test or tune into what the client is experiencing? Won’t this type of protection prevent the practitioner from doing their work?

Second, I understand one can “cut he cord” of energy between a practitioner and client, to stop the energy from flowing between them after the treatment. What about the energies that the practitioner has already “caught” over the course of the session?

photo by Łukasz Strachanowski

These are two really great questions. Let’s look at them one at a time.

Before A Session
At the start of the day and before every session I do a number of things to take care of my heath and well-being. One of the steps I always take is much like what is described in the question, but when I do it I do it a little differently. I don’t just create a force field around myself to keep myself safe. Instead I create a filter with the intention “to only let through the energy and information that is helpful and healthy to me.”

At one point in my practice I wouldn’t have been able to take a step like this. I would have been worried “that by keeping out some of the information that I wouldn’t be able to help my clients” and “it would be unfair to my client to keep out that information”.

As I have matured as a practitioner I have come to realize that it is not my job to “fix” everyone. It is not even my job to “fix” anyone. My job as practitioner is to use my expertise, experience, and emotional detachment from my client’s situation to provide guidance as they walk down a healing path.

Coming to this realization has helped me to understand that not only am I NOT responsible for my client’s healing (they are), but I am also not the right practitioner for every client. There are clients who are not health for me to work with, there are clients I am not the right person to help them, and there are clients who are not looking for help in healing, but instead are just looking for someone to validate their wounded identity.

If my willingness to make a choice to protect myself from energy and information that is harmful to me is going to prevent me from helping a client down a healing path than I am not the right practitioner for that client. Not only is it important that I do no harm to my clients, but it just as important that I do no harm to myself.

It took me a while before I could admit that I was not the right practitioner for every client. Now it is a very liberating knowing when I take care of myself and refer out the clients that are not a good fit that I am taking care of my clients and myself.

After A Session
After a session and at the end of the day I have a similar set of steps I go through to take care of myself.

First, I do what was recommended in the questions. At one point I would recommend to practitioners that they “cut the cord”. I have found that some people find this image too violent. If you are not comfortable cutting the cord you can also do what I, which is to unplug. When I do this I think about the old telephone operators who connected and disconnected calls with a series of wires.

When I do this I reach to my chest and pantomime pulling out the cord. This is less violent then cutting and it gives the sense that when I want to reconnect in the future with the client I can just plug back in.

Second, depending on the nature of the client, the number of clients I have worked with, and my general state of well being I do a number of things to clean up any extra emotion that I have picked up from my client. Here are is a short list of some of the things I do:

• Shake my hands over an imaginary ceramic pot of poison, shaking off any and all excess that I have picked up durring the conversation.
• Tap on the fact that it is a very high act of love to pick up burdens for another person, but is a higher act of love to let them go (which is not the same as giving them back). As I continue to tap I visualize letting go and releasing these burdens.
• Going for a walk or jog in area with lots of trees. (the air is much cleaner than on city street)
• Taking a salt bath (the ions are great a breaking up energy>

I would love to hear you take care of yourself before and after a session. Please add your routine to the comment section below.