Energy Work 101: Employing Power Therein
Visualizing is to energy work as a hammer is to carpentry.
Visualizing, picturing, imagining, believing, etc., are tools that you use to focus and apply your force. They do not build a cabinet unless you are there wielding them.
The force comes from you and your personal power. Without that, the tools lay inert.
Finding out how to use and employ actual power when doing energy work can be something of a challenge.
Here's a bunch of info to troubleshoot, in no particular order.
Research altered states of consciousness (ASC). The super over-simplified version is that we have a lot of brain wave states (gamma, beta, alpha, theta, delta). When people talk about "magical mindset" or "ritual headspace," they are probably not just referring to feeling magical. They are probably referring to actually exiting the loud, everyday beta brainwave state and entering a different one. This is why so many energy work techniques and authors push relaxation and calmness exercises; it literally changes your brainwave patterns. If you're feeling like you're missing something that everyone else seems to understand so nobody is talking about it, try starting here.
Practice relaxation and calmness. Many people can wield their power in chaotic, overwhelming situations. However if you already don't know how to work with your power, this is probably a bad place to start. Relaxation and calmness is not necessarily "meditation." Choose a couple active techniques (like breathing exercises, clenching and releasing muscles, and counting down) and practice them. Combine this practice with research about ASC to understand how you are practicing the ability to drop out of "everyday" headspace and into an entirely different flow. Whenever you practice energy work, start by entering your relaxed flow.
Avoid disassociation. It all starts with your body. The carpenter doesn't sit down, meditate, exit his body, and then visualize the hammer swinging. No cabinets will be built that way. Do not mistake relaxation and calmness to mean that you should exit, ignore, or run away from your body. This is about discovering how to use a muscle group inside your body. Like someone learning how to wiggle their ears, it cannot be accomplished if the body is wholly ignored.
Look for your own energy battery. No, these are not "chakras." Our personal metaphysical energy can be understood to be "stored" in one or more locations in our physical body. Different models promote wildly different energy centers. Commonly, energy centers are believed to be at the sit-bones of your rumpus, in your solar plexus, in the middle of your chest, in your forehead, and along your spine (among many other possibilities). Try various techniques of energy-gathering (such as breathing in pure light, or pulling energy through your hands and feet), with a specific focus that the energy should go to its "storage space." Watch, feel, know, or observe where the energy goes once it enters your body. Alternatively, any energy reader worth their salt should be able to locate your energy centers for you.
Learn how to feel your energy body. For the more witch-minded, Roger J. Horne has an excellent tutorial in A Broom at Midnight, in the "Preparations and an Invitation" chapter. Robert Bruce's NEW Energy Ways is an excellent primer on feeling and working with your energy body.
Energy work should wear you out. While some people are "energy suns" and rarely seem to ever run out of energy, most of us are not. If you can 'visualize' spells, wards, and spirits without any noticeable change in energy levels, you are probably not putting any energy into them. For beginners, even a single energy work exercise, or ten or fifteen minutes of practice, may induce noticeable physiological changes.
Experiment with methods of raising energy. Methods include: breathing in energy, pulling energy directly through the pores of your skin, bringing energy in through your hands, feet, or base of your spine, drawing energy down through the top of your head, and drawing orbs of energy out of your chest or solar plexus, among other things. Toy with various techniques and see which ones feel like they hold potential for you. Try The Sorcerer's Secrets by Jason Miller for elemental energy work techniques.
Go breadth-first on techniques. Although I generally recommend choosing one technique and practicing it for a while to see how it works, you may benefit from rounding up a ton of different exercises and trying each one once or twice before moving on. Look for differences in how power is gathered, programmed, and employed. Make note of any techniques which don't click at all for you, and which ones you feel power and potential in.
Don't do it if it hurts. I have a very very messed up spine, energetically speaking. Drawing power in through my tailbone hurts, immediately, in a very physical way, that can last days. We're all built different. Energy work is not like pushing through the burn at the gym. If it hurts, stop doing it.
Pay attention to what works. Suppose you find a technique where the author says, "gather energy by breathing it into your lungs." But when you do so, the energy doesn't want to go there - it settles into your heart center. Don't write this off as you being unable to perform the technique, or some kind of lung blockage, or whatever. Maybe this is just where you hold your energy, you know? Don't try to make yourself a mediocre citizen of Conformity Town when you're already shining down on Individuality Way.
There is no key to energy work which is wholly divorced from practice. I have seen many people insist that they won't do energy work until someone tells them the real secrets - when presented with valid, community-tested, time-honored techniques, they scoff. It didn't work for them, they tried it twice. Real life is not a YA novel. There is no destiny stone or magic wand that is going to magically unlock special powers inside of you. This is athletics conditioning. If you can't bench press 100lbs today, that doesn't mean the coach is witholding secrets from you. It means you need to practice until you're able to perform the technique. Maybe situps fuck with your back and you need to replace them with planks, but nothing in the world is going to replace actual practice. Energy work is a skillset, like learning an instrument, and it requires physical conditioning, like being an athlete. Moving forward in either area requires practice.
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