by Abby Wynne
You may also want to ask yourself: ‘Do I need to get help for this?’
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Healing and your family system
We’re talking about space and expanding, and when you change your shape, you affect everyone that’s connected to you.
Imagine your family system is a bit like the solar system. Each member of your family is a planet that spins at its own speed, on its own axis. Some planets are bigger than others, some planets spin faster than others – get the picture? You’re at the centre, and each of these planets not only spins in its own way, but it then also spins around you. Some of them are closer to you than others, and some of these planets come in fast and leave as quickly as they came.
It might be fun to draw out your family system with you at the centre, using lots of different colours so that you can visualize it more clearly. I use this as an exercise in workshops and people are amazed at how their pictures turn out; they see patterns in their family system that they never realized were there before. If you imagine you were small in your energy for years, the system shaping itself around you, but then, after connecting into healing energy you get bigger, you can imagine that some adjustments may have to be made.
Sarah had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder early in her life. Her parents were both alcoholics and became violent when they were drunk, and so Sarah and her sister, Patricia, moved in together to start a life of their own when they were in their early 20s. But a pattern had developed between the two sisters, in which Sarah would have mood swings, panic attacks and bouts of depression and Patricia would comfort her, cook her meals and make sure she took her medication. She came to see me after several years of living like this, wanting to improve her life. I taught her some Energy Healing techniques and she started doing them every day. On the third session with me it was apparent that something had changed.
‘Patricia is angry at me. I don’t know what I did. She won’t stop picking on me, she’s nasty, angry and screams all the time – I stand there and shake in front of her. It’s like my world is falling apart – I don’t know what to do.’
‘How are you feeling in yourself?’ I asked her.
‘After our last session I went home and slept for 12 hours. When I woke up I felt brighter, more positive, had more energy. I tried the meditation you gave me every day for the next week, and I was able to do it. I felt much calmer for a while, but now this fighting with Patricia is really horrible and I think it’s making me sick again – do you think she’s angry because I’m getting better?’
A codependent relationship develops when someone is sick and the other is the caregiver. As Sarah got better she needed less and less care from Patricia, and Patricia felt rejected and abandoned, and lashed out at Sarah. Sarah was not strong enough to manage the situation, and unfortunately she stopped coming for healing so as not to upset her sister further.
It’s important for you to know as you go deeper into your healing process that your healing will affect your entire family. Sometimes it’s in a good way; where there is no codependency in a family, they’re delighted and pleased to see someone feeling better and becoming happy. But sometimes there’s jealousy, there’s anger and resentment. Patricia was not ready to heal yet, and she didn’t want Sarah to heal because it was going to force her to do work she didn’t want to do. There may be people in your family too, who by seeing your progress may become unhappy, knowing that they have work to do as well.
The next few exercises are designed to help you manage the shifts in your family system as you grow and heal. However, your healing may bring up deeper issues either in you or in your family that cannot be managed simply by using the exercises in this book. Do consider getting additional help and support if you need to.
You also need to know that you are connected energetically to everyone you care about, and anyone who cares about you, even if they are not blood relations. They may not be in your actual family, but they are in an energy system with you, similar to the family system I’ve described, and they can also feel the impact as your energy shifts and heals.
I had a client come for one session of pure Energy Healing. About 15 minutes into the session his phone rang, and rang. The fifth time it rang I brought it over to him and asked him to turn it off. When the session was over he looked at the phone and there were nine missed calls and five text messages, all from his ex-girlfriend.
‘She must be angry at you for clearing your energy so you can move on with your life!’ I said.
‘Oh my gosh!’ he said. ‘Now I understand why she’s been acting weird all week! Yes, I met someone else. I’m ready to move on.’
Creating more space for yourself in your family system
In this exercise, we work within the family system to reorganize it, so you have more space for yourself. Read through it carefully before you try it so that you know what to expect. After doing this exercise a few times don’t be surprised if your brother phones you, or your cousin!
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Exercise: healing your family system
Sit in your space of love, breathe and come into your body.
Wait until you feel you are fully present in the room.
Bring the focus of your awareness into your head, and with every breath, drop down deeper into your body.
Bring yourself all the way in, and down to your stomach. Notice how you are feeling, if you are fearful or anxious, and know that you’re not hurting anyone doing this, you’re just reorganizing the energy around you so there’s more room for your new healed self.
Bring your awareness into your hips, and move it down your legs slowly, feeling like they’re opening up as you move down each leg into your knees, into your ankles, then into your feet.
Bring your awareness down through the floor and ground yourself as deep as you need to go. When you feel secure and grounded, bring your awareness back up to your body, to your heart centre.
Now draw down healing energy from above your head; take as long as you need to clear anything that needs to leave before you can continue this exercise. Expand your energy field outwards so that you are big, bright and shining in your mind’s eye, and you fill the space you are in. How do you feel now?
Imagine you are the centre of your family system. Don’t imagine them all at once, start with the person that you feel closest to in your family. See them as a ball of light separate to you, but yet inside your energy field. They could be to the left of you, to the right, above you, below you, in front of you or behind you. What colour are they? How close are they to you? Are they bigger than you? Smaller than you? How fast do they spin? What does it feel like to imagine them there?
Be with it however it feels for a while, just to gauge that it feels the way things actually are and not how you may think things are. Once you’re ready, take a breath and imagine that on your next out breath you’re gently pushing this ball of light, this family member, gently outside your energy field. Now do it. Slowly. Know that they’re not gone, they’re just that bit further away from you to give you space. How does this feel? Have you moved them far enough away? If not, on the next breath push them out a little bit more. Is that better? Keep going until you feel like you have enough space for yourself.
Dissolve the images away, and take a moment to come into balance. Now imagine someone else from your family – where do they appear in your energy field? Does the position of the first person change just by imagining this person? Observe, and when you feel grounded and centred in yourself, use your breath again to gently push the ball of light outwards, away from you, until it feels right.
Now you feel much bigger in your space, in your energy, stretch your body if you need to.
Who else do you need to shift out of your energy field? Let them come into your mind’s eye, and repeat it again. It might be someone you don’t expect, so check with the yes/no technique and trust your instinct. Perhaps three is enough for one sitting, perhaps you feel like you want to keep going. Stay grounded
and slow while you work.
To finish, you can create a healing ball of light between your hands, fill it up with unconditional love and light, and then allow it to grow so big that it’s the same size as you. Then grow it bigger still, so that it touches the people in your family system who you’ve shifted out of your space. Send love and light to each of them, and if you feel like you need to talk to them, do it here, to their energy, in this safe space. Say thank you, and tell them you love them. Tell them how you feel when they do what they do, and ask them please not to do it any more. Know that you are healing the family when you do this, and know that some people in your family are not ready for healing. It’s all as it should be.
Now let all the images dissolve away. Bring your awareness back to your physical body and your breath. Feel your feet on the ground, and feel the chair beneath you.
Take time to come back into your space of love, and be gentle on yourself. This is big work. Well done.
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This is big work, I’m not kidding. You might feel tired after this one, and you might find that after a day or two the system slips back to the way it was, and that you have to do it again. One of my clients did this exercise with me and two days later his mother phoned and screamed at him for an hour and then hung up on him. She didn’t remember a word she had said when he asked her about it the next time they met up, but thankfully, he was prepared, so he didn’t take it personally!
Remember you can use the exercises from Chapter 5 in combination with this one – sending a healing ball of light to someone, or sending love and light directly to the person you have in mind. Shrink the family system in your mind’s eye and send the whole system a healing ball of light. Play with it! It is serious, but be light in it. If you find working with your family invokes anger in you, take your anger outside these exercises and deal with it there so it doesn’t destroy all the good work you are doing.
Check in on your family system in your mind’s eye from time to time to see if it’s shifted back. Make little tweaks to your own energy space now and then to ensure that you don’t feel encroached upon by Aunty Violet, or by Granny May! Only work with how they interact with you, don’t worry about how they are interacting with each other. That’s their business and not yours. If you respect their boundaries, they are more likely to respect yours in return.
Energy Healing for the office
If you work in an office you may be in a space that you don’t really have much control over. Whether you work for yourself or for someone else, chances are you are restricted in some ways as to how much you can do with your workspace. You may be sitting beside someone who irritates you, or you may even be doing work that you don’t enjoy. You may be at the beck and call of a manager’s mood swings, or working on a project with a group of people with whom you feel you cannot be yourself. Just like some of the other examples in this chapter, the situation might not be likely to change, but you can. You can bring Energy Healing into these situations to help you expand and ground yourself, clear your head and bring strength and focus into your day.
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Exercise: creating a healed space for your desk
You can create an oasis of healing energy at your desk if you put your mind to it! I used to have many people come up just to say ‘Hello’ when I worked in a busy office, because they always felt better in the energy space I created!
Here are some practical ideas to clear the heavy energies of your space and raise the vibration:
Put something on your desk that makes you smile. You could try making the healing crystal from Chapter 5.
Always have fresh flowers or a plant nearby.
See if you can move extension cables with plugs away from where you are sitting.
Try and have as much natural light as possible. Change a normal light bulb for a full-spectrum light bulb if you can.
Put up a picture or some artwork that makes your heart happy. If you can’t hang it on the wall, you could use it for your desktop wallpaper.
Keep your space organized. Is there a lot of clutter on your desk? Can you file the paperwork away and have a tidy desk?
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You get the idea. While these are not directly Energy Healing ideas, everything affects the energy around you and you can change big energies by changing small things.
Remember to get big at work
You don’t feel the physical impact of people’s emotional energy as much when you are expanded in your energies. Offices are great places for gossip, for heavy emotional energies of fear, anxiety, jealousy, competitiveness and resentment (remember Sandra in Chapter 2?).
Check in with yourself during the day and remember to get big; imagine other people’s emotional energies slide off you and into the ground. Breathe them out if they feel stuck, and get big and strong like we’ve done already. Use your desktop wallpaper to remind you that you can get big like a tree, like a sunflower or like a statue.
Consciously expanding and feeling big at work can also help you feel more grounded at meetings, interviews or presentations. It can help you access your intuition and make better decisions. Ask yourself the yes/no questions about work issues! You’ve done the work already – just remember to apply it to the situations where it can be most helpful to you.
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Exercise: healing at the end of the working day
You might have picked up other people’s energy during your day at work and you don’t want to bring it home, especially if it’s stress around work or money. This type of emotional energy can ‘stick’ to you and because it’s similar to what you may have experienced before, you think it’s yours. You need to clear it away from your energy so that you don’t get caught up in it, or pass it on to someone else. Take a few minutes at the end of your working day to try this:
Breathe, centre and ground.
Connect to a source of healing light.
Breathe it down and into your body, relax and expand.
Imagine that as you expand, any emotional energies that do not belong to you are melting away, dissolving away, falling into the ground.
Ask for all energies that are not yours to leave, just to emphasize your intention.
You can also ask for any healing that you may need before going home.
Give thanks for the day that you had, for the evening to come and for a good night’s sleep.
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You can do this at your desk after you switch off your computer, or in the car before you start the engine. Taking a few minutes every day to clear the energies from work is so beneficial. It enables you to return home feeling more refreshed and grateful for all the good in your life.
Raising the vibration in your home
Just as you can make an oasis at work, you can bring fresh eyes into your living space and find ways to raise the energy there, too. Clutter is a big issue. If you can remove clutter, you open space for new energies to come in. I’m not an expert at Feng Shui, but if you felt drawn to it, you might consider getting a Feng Shui practitioner to come in and help reorganize the flow in your home so that you can invite in more wealth, happiness or romance. This may involve moving mirrors on to different walls, or putting plants in certain corners of the house. It’s a whole science in itself, and whether you seek an expert or not, clearing clutter and keeping your living space tidy and organized will certainly help keep your vibration high. See the Resources for more information.
Consider doing the following:
Remove clutter. Clean away stale dirt and dust.
Paint in fresh, bright colours, upgrade your curtains, get a bright throw for the sofa/bed, buy in some new cushions or a new duvet.
Remove anything from plain sight that makes you emotional (such as a photo of a loved one who has died).
Use aromatherapy candles/incense/oils to bring in smells that you love.
Remove the television and any electrical equipment from your bedroom or sleeping area.
Replace bulbs with natu
ral light spectrum bulbs, use timers to switch off electrical appliances, replace old appliances such as microwaves, kettles and toasters for newer, more economical models.
You don’t have to do any of these things, simply do what you feel moved to do, as you feel moved to do it. It’s all common sense; remove anything that makes you feel heavy and slow, and bring in new things that make you feel lighter in your Self. You can use the ‘yes/no’ exercise if you’re not sure of something.
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Exercise: raising the vibration of a room
You can apply this healing exercise to any room you like. You can even do it in the office if you feel safe to do so. I love doing this in a hotel room because it makes me feel like the room is clearer for me, instead of containing the energies of all the people that may have slept in it before I got there!
Standing up, face a corner of the room and connect into the ground.
Ask to be connected to the highest vibration of healing light that you can hold today.
Visualize the light entering your body, coming down your arms and out of your hands.
Fill the walls with this healing energy from a distance by moving your hands slowly, up and down the wall, as if you are painting them with healing energy. Imagine that the healing energy from you is clearing away anything of low vibration.
When you’ve finished the first wall, turn and do the next, and the next and so on. If there is a window, do that too.
When you’ve finished the walls, then use your intention to send healing into the ceiling, and then to the floor.