Choosing Energy Therapy: A Practical Guide to Healing Options for People and Animals

By Wanda Buckner, EdD

Wanda Buckner is the perfect guide to exploring energy work for people and animals. Written for the layman, Choosing Energy Therapy draws readers into the world of energy healing. Buckner describes the theory behind energy healing and its basic concepts: all healing is self-healing and a disturbance in the body creates a disturbance in the body's energy field that can be corrected through intervention. Healers clear and balance the energetic field to support self-healing. Healing occurs on all levels--physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. Multiple stories of human and animal healing bring the concepts alive. Buckner relates human and animal experiences of the possibilities and limitations of energy healing, healing into death, and the difference between being healed and being cured. Buckner's Haystack Theory of Healing recognizes that everything we do contributes to our healing and the healing of our animals. Together, these efforts result in "the straw that healed the camel's back," the tipping point to wellness. Energy healing can be one of these straws or the final straw. People and animals use energy healing prior to the need for medical intervention, during medical treatment, and at end of life to maintain quality of life and comfort. The final section of the book helps readers define their criteria for selecting a healing method and practitioner. Personal motives for wanting to heal others are examined. Chapter subheadings allow readers to begin their exploration at any point. Questions for reflection at the end of each chapter encourage readers to examine and refine their beliefs. The annotated Resources and Recommended Reading list includes content and quotation references and suggestions for additional exploration.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 22, 2014
• ISBN: 9781483529998

Book preview

Animals®

Introduction

DISCOVERING ENERGYTHERAPY

You may have doubts about healing modalities that purport to clear, balance and support the body's energetic system so the person or animal can self-heal physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. In the following pages, you will find answers to your questions and guidance about energy therapy and practitioners. We cannot deny the energetic basis of our cells and body processes. The medical community knows that specific levels of electrical current support tissue and bone to heal. Doesn't this imply that energy flowing from our hands can also positively affect healing?

You may be dissatisfied with the current health care treatments and program you have relied on for yourself, your family, and your animals. You probably already pay attention to prevention and seek medical treatment as needed. However, these measures may not be enough for you to experience vibrant health and well-being. The stress and demands of daily life weigh heavily some days and weeks. You aren't sick enough to see a doctor or depressed enough to see a counselor, but do not enjoy life to the fullest.

Are you looking for a natural, non-invasive, non-chemical way to support your health and the health of those you love? Are you tired of just feeling okay? Do you want vibrant spiritual,emotional, mental, and physical well-being for yourself and your animals?

We have a plethora of health care options and alternatives to select from, including complementary treatments that work with the energetic fields within and around the body. These interventions go by various names—Healing Touch, Therapeutic Touch, Reiki, Reconnective Healing, Matrix Energetics—with more being added every year.

Let me be your guide to choosing therapies that work with the energetic system to clear and balance it and promote improved well-being in all areas of your life—physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. As George D. Lundberg, MD, former Editor-in-Chief, Journal of the American Medical Association, maintains, There is no complementary or alternative medicine. There is only medicine; medicine that has been tested and found to be safe and effective—use it; pay for it. Medicine that has been tested and found not to be safe and effective—don't use it; don't pay for it.

Energy therapy comes in many forms, but it is always noninvasive, risk free, relaxing, and comparatively low cost. A session with an energy practitioner will not leave you drugged, sluggish, or confused as some medications do. You may have an amazing emotional or spiritual experience, you may get off the treatment table pain free, or you may experience nothing during the session. While it is satisfying to see colors, images and visions on the treatment table, these experiences are irrelevant to the value of the session. Your healing may be instantaneous or it may unfold in the days that follow.

Perhaps you live with animals that are anxious, fearful, painful, or unhappy. Western and Eastern medicine help, but maynot be enough to bring the animals into the fullness of who they can be. Energy therapy makes a difference. We don't know how animals experience energy work internally, but we can observe their bodies' soften as deep relaxation allows selfhealing. Following the energy session(s), animals may begin to eat again, have less pain, heal more quickly and demonstrate increased confidence and joy.

Energy work does not replace medical or mental health treatment; it works in concert with the other choices you make about your health—medical treatment, counseling, nutrition, exercise, meditation, sleep. Energy therapy is one aspect of a holistic approach to living your healthiest life. In these pages, you will learn how to make informed energy therapy choices that support you in achieving your best life.

Ten years ago, I loved my life. Lloyd and I were comfortable and happy. My proposal writing and development business was rewarding and successful. We travelled and enjoyed activities with family and friends. Our Miniature Schnauzer, Zelda, and I volunteered at Providence St. Peter Hospital in the Animal Assisted Activities and Therapy Program.

Lloyd entered the hospital in November 2013 for a lung resection to remove cancer. An examination of the removed tissue showed the tiny mass was not cancer, but Bronchiolitis Obliterans Organizing Pneumonia. Complications followed, another surgery, and more complications. Despite the best efforts of the medical staff, he was left respirator-dependent, but mentally alert. Five-and-a-half months after the unnecessary surgery, at Lloyd's request, life support was withdrawn and he died.

Life as I knew it collapsed. I tried to re-create our life together, but it wasn't possible. The life I'd known shifted forever. I was adrift, frozen. Our dreams and my life plan died with him. I was alive, but without the zest that makes life worth living. My friends and grief support group gently held me. I struggled daily to move in ways that would tip my universe toward peace and away from grief, toward hope rather than despair.

The following year, my friend Jane decided to quit dialysis and medications and accept death. She gathered her family to say her final goodbyes. She hosted a wonderful reunion, full of laughter, pictures, and family memories. That evening she did not keep her dialysis appointment and did not take her medications. The crisis came. When I arrived the next morning, Jane lay on the floor in extreme agitation spewing angry accusations. Her family called hospice as planned, but the visiting nurse said hospice could not get involved because Jane was experiencing a psychotic break. She recommended the family call 911 and left.

Jane's sons picked her up and carried her to the living room couch. My sweet therapy dog, Zelda, and I sat beside her. Jane clutched Zelda and eventually calmed enough to move to her bed in the back bedroom. I spoke softly, using a guided imagery technique I'd heard thirty years earlier to take her to her favorite beach and feel herself warmed by the sun, lying on the sand, calm, relaxed, and peaceful. I felt an overwhelming compulsion to hold my hands about six inches above her body and move them slowly from above her head to below her feet.

Jane said the experience was like going to Nirvana. She fell asleep and I tiptoed out. I visited Jane daily. I went into her bedroom, closed the door, and we talked until she tired. Eventually, she would ask me to run my hands above her body. When I did this, she became peaceful and drifted into sleep.

Five days later with death imminent, Jane's family gathered at her bedside. I moved my hands slowly over her body from above her head to below her feet, repeating the motion until she slept. Jane died shortly afterwards. Her daughter asked me where she could learn to do what I had done. I had no idea; I didn't know what it was.

I purchased a book on cancer treatment options for a friend with a recent terminal diagnosis. One chapter dealt with alternative therapies and included a paragraph on Therapeutic Touch. The text said that some people without training could do this work. My experience with Jane was so powerful I bought Delores Krieger's book, The Therapeutic Touch: How to Use Your Hands to Help or to Heal, and began reading it.

I took Krieger's book with me to read while I waited my turn at Providence Hospital to get the required annual tuberculosis test for volunteers. On the table beside me was a brochure for Healing Touch Level I training at the hospital that weekend. I called the coordinator and enrolled. I completed Level I and II in quick succession. I attended the Healing Touch practice sessions twice a month where we exchanged mini-treatments. I cried on the treatment table, releasing deeply held grief from Lloyd's death. So began the long healing process that changed my life, healed my grief, and allowed me to love, and be loved, again.

Within two years, I completed my Healing Touch certification, closed my proposal development and writing business, and launched my career as an energy healer. Once I experienced Healing Touch, I wanted to explore every aspect of energy medicine. My Doctor of Education degree in Leadership didn't prepare me for this new direction in my life. I earned my Reiki Master degree, studied Pranic

Healing, Matrix Energetics®, Reconnective Healing®, The Reconnection®, ThetaHealing®, EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), and Access Consciousness®. Each method, commonly referred to as a modality, offered additional avenues for accessing this powerful healing resource. I learned and practiced Transcendental Meditation. I treated any person or animal that wanted a session. My clients were my teachers and my inspiration. I tended to my personal healing as I helped others find their healing.

I want to share with you the information I found by accident and exploration. Section One is about considering options. You'll find answers to: What is energy medicine? What research supports it? Who regulates it? Why would anyone choose it? What is it good for? Section Two discusses making choices. The use of energy healing for animals is discussed in more detail, including who's healing whom. The spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical aspects of energy healing are considered, as well as the concept of healing into death. Section Three focuses on healing ourselves and our desire to heal others. What to consider when choosing a practitioner is outlined. The role of angels and other beings in healing is discussed, as well as the challenging question: Do you want to heal others or change