The Healing Handbook: A Spiritual Guide to Healing Yourself and others

By Tara Ward

Use this Healing Handbook to Revitalise Your Life Force.

For thousands of years our ancestors relied on spiritual healing in times of illness, sorrow or distress. Tara Ward taps into this this ancient wisdom, presenting a range of techniques to heal yourself and others.

These methods will help you:
• Heal physical conditions
• Create a healing sanctuary
• Release anger and resentment
• Increase relaxation
• Develop chakra awareness
• Use healing tools, including crystals, color and pendulums

Open a door in the wondrous world of spiritual healing through simple exercises and align your physical, mental and spiritual self.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcturus Publishing
• Release date: Nov 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781398814097

Tara Ward

Tara Ward is an art historian specializing in twentieth- and twenty-first-century visual culture. She is editor of Gender and Popular Culture: A Visual Study, and her work has been published by the Guggenheim Museum, Oxford Art Journal, and Excursions.

Book preview

PART ONE:

HEALING YOURSELF

Now you are gaining an understanding that spiritual healing can be a kind of new doctor for you, you are probably wondering how this can ever work. This form of healing will not be conventional in the sense that there will be no consultations, no physical treatment as such. So what will you be working with and how can it possibly be effective?

You have to start thinking of human beings in a slightly different way. This does not mean that you should ignore what you already know. You can still acknowledge everything you understand about the human body and how it works physically, about how we react emotionally and mentally. All of that is still important for health. Next we are going to add a little more to create the full picture.

HEALING AS ENERGY

Every human being is a ball of energy. This energy is not just the physical kind we use to get through each day. It’s more than that. Apart from having our own energy, we are also giving out and receiving different types of energy all the time. Some energies are helpful and encouraging; others can make us unwell.

The simplest way to understand human energy is to compare it to an experience you have already had. Earlier we touched on the effect that someone giving you a loving smile can have. That is an exchange of energy. There is also the less enjoyable experience of being in someone’s company for a while and ending up feeling exhausted and drained. Some people can leave us feeling as though we have just done ten rounds in the boxing ring. Physically, as well as emotionally and mentally, we feel wiped out. Most people have experienced this at some time. You may even be able to immediately identify one particular person who has this effect on you every time you see them. Do you have a slight feeling of dread when you know a meeting with them is coming up? It does not mean you do not like them or appreciate their good qualities on other levels, but you might wish they were less tiring personalities.

An exchange of energy is also taking place in this instance. This person is actually tapping into your energy field and drawing your energy into themselves. In other words, you are being used as a recharging unit for their batteries! The more sensitive and naturally giving you are as a person, the more difficult it will be for you not to let this happen, unless you take steps to prevent it.

As humans, we do not just react with other humans, we also exchange energies with animals, plants and endless other forms of energy and life. Take, for example, an occasion when you may have been working extremely hard and realized that you must have a break. What do humans often choose to do? To go away somewhere by the sea or other stretch of water, to lie in the sun, to take walks in the woods or enjoy some beautiful change of scenery, whether it be mountainous or flat. We often use the expression ‘I need to recharge my batteries’. All you mean is that your own energy field is depleted and you need to take in some more energy.

Different places have extraordinarily different atmospheres and energies, and individuals respond better to certain areas than others. Some people find a wild, raging sea invigorating and energizing, while others find it frightening and simply shut down. Some people love to climb mountains; others find them unfriendly and threatening. You might choose a gentle stroll by a still lake; your friend might want to stand under a gushing waterfall! The reason we all like different things is because we are unconsciously responding to what we know we need. Just as humans have different energies, so do different geographical locations and physical features have different energies too. A basic study of feng shui, the art of living harmoniously within a given area, shows how these energies can be used to our advantage. So, if you can accept that something is happening on different levels with these forms of energy and that spiritual healing is connected to these activities, the next step is to gain an understanding of human energy and how it works.

Human energy is often called the human aura. To easily distinguish human energy from other forms during this book, we will call the human energy field the ‘aura’. The most helpful way to start your new relationship with the aura would be to see it. This is not as daunting as it sounds. However, some people find it easier than others. The people who can see auras are not necessarily smarter or more talented than the people who cannot, nor does it mean they have the ability to work well with auras or that they will make good spiritual healers. All it means is that they see auras.

Looking at the human aura

Try the following experiment when you are with a willing friend or relative who does not mind sitting still for a few minutes. Make sure you choose someone with whom you feel comfortable and who is receptive to the possibility of the aura. It will help you if they encourage and respect your attempts, rather than ridiculing you. Like all new experiences, this exercise may feel strange initially.

Ask your friend to sit in front of a plain background, preferably a very dark or very light colour. Now shine a reasonably bright light at them but have the rest of the room dark. Ask them to relax; let them close their eyes if they prefer. Now sit comfortably yourself, at least six feet away from them, and take a few deep breaths. There is no contest here for you to do well, and it doesn’t matter if you see nothing.

When you feel comfortable, start gazing at the top of your friend’s head. You don’t need to stare intently, because the more relaxed you are, the more likely you are to see something. It might help if you imagine that you are looking at a 3D picture. If you soften your focus and relax your eyes, it becomes easier to see. Don’t worry if you see nothing.

After a few minutes, you may notice a hazy sort of glow around your friend’s head, which may look like the top of a candle flame. This glow is usually very fuzzy and radiates outwards, gradually fading into the background. Sometimes the aura seems to shimmer and pulsate. Alternatively, you may see it as a solid colour, perhaps a golden yellow or white. You might even see different colours.

If you do see something, continue to breathe comfortably and keep studying what you see. How far out does it extend from the head? Is it brighter in some parts and more intense? Is there an even glow around the head or are there gaps? Do your friend’s shoulders give off any sort of glow? Study it for as long as you like. If it suddenly disappears, that is fine too.

When you feel ready, close your eyes and let the image disappear. Wait a few minutes before you get up and turn on other lights, then share with your friend what you experienced. Ask them if they would like to try to see your aura and offer to sit in the light. Don’t worry if their experience is completely different from yours. There are no set rules.

You might find this exercise quite exciting or it might leave you feeling deflated. Whatever you see, it is right for you. There are many healers who never actually see auras in any shape or colour. They work entirely on instinctual feelings and with what they sense, rather than with what they see. You may see nothing for a long time and then suddenly, when you no longer care about seeing auras (because you are already working with them anyway), you may suddenly start seeing them all the time! It can then get to the stage when you wish they would go away for a while, because it becomes off-putting seeing colours and shapes around people all the time. It simply does not matter how you work with the aura as long as you can acknowledge its existence in the first place.

If you do not feel comfortable asking a person to help you with this exercise, you can always substitute a plant or a patient animal. All living forms have energy fields. It would be interesting for you to compare plants, animals and human auras when you have the time, particularly if you are someone who sees auras with very little effort.

Feeling a human aura

It would also help you to try the experiment below. Again, you can use a plant or animal instead if you do not feel happy about asking a friend to help you.

Ask your friend to stand in the middle of a room. The lighting does not matter for this exercise. What is important is that your friend keeps their eyes open, so they do not end up feeling dizzy or off-balance. Explain that you want to feel the space around them but you won’t touch them. Ask them to let you know immediately if they feel uncomfortable or if they want you to move further away. Keep asking them how they feel during this exercise and be sensitive to their response.

Now you’re going to try to feel their aura. Start by standing several feet away from them. Hold your arms out in front of you and see if you can feel around their energy field. Don’t get too close to begin with. The more sensitive you are, the further away you will be able to feel their energy. If you get too close, they may feel threatened or nervous. Avoid letting your hands linger over their heart area or the top of their head. These are especially sensitive areas, as you will discover later.

Slowly, move your hands closer in to their body. At what point do you feel something? What does it feel like? Keep concentrating and, as you slowly move around their body, notice where the sensations change. Are there areas that feel warmer or colder than others? Are there areas you feel you should move away from? Notice if you have any sudden sensations or emotions which you weren’t expecting. Don’t forget to feel the area around their legs and feet too, and notice if that feels different.

When you feel you have thoroughly explored around their aura, move well away from them and let them know you have finished. Thank them for being willing to help with your experiment. Offer them the opportunity to feel your aura if they wish.

It can be very useful to reverse the process, because it is only when you experience someone else approaching your aura that you realize how unnerving it can be. Even if you know someone well, there is an awkward moment when you wish they would not stand quite so close. Notice when you start to feel encroached upon and how far back they need to stand for you to feel safe. Remember that when you subsequently feel someone else’s aura.

Working with auras is how you will effect spiritual healing. The aura is your blueprint, if you like, with which you will work to move and/or unblock energies to create holistic health. Do not worry if this idea seems odd. You may need to understand more about the aura before you can accept how important it is.

The aura explained

At this stage you should begin to believe the human aura exists. Whether you saw it or felt it or simply sensed it was there, you are ready to acknowledge that it exists. But what exactly is the human aura? If it is indeed a blueprint for spiritual healing, what does it contain? The amazing answer is that it contains all of you. This is why the aura is so powerful, so sensitive, and needs to be treated with the utmost respect and consideration. It is all of you in energy form. Let us delve further into that statement.

The aura is not in fact just that one fuzzy glow you might have been able to see around your friend’s head. The aura actually consists of seven different layers that expand outwards from the body. Each layer contains its own catalogue of information about you, with each layer becoming finer and lighter in vibration. The finer the layer, the more difficult it is to see. However, the fact you cannot see the outer layers does not mean they do not exist.

The analogy of an electric fan is a useful illustration of this point. Picture the wings of the fan when the machine is turned to a low setting. You can see the wings as they revolve slowly. If you turn the setting to medium speed, the wings move faster and start to become blurred. You know they are still there but they are not as easy to see. Now envisage the setting turned to ‘high’ – the wings move so quickly they are invisible to the eye. Again, you know the wings are there, but the speed of their movement prohibits a clear sight of them. The levels of the human aura work in this way. The finer the layer of the aura, the faster its vibrational frequency and the more difficult it is to see it. You can tune your eyes to gradually see the finer layers of the aura. It takes practice and time, however, and you may decide it is not necessary for you to see them in order to work with them.

The aura is often called the ‘subtle body’, which seems rather appropriate. It is not as noticeable as your physical body to most human eyes, but it is there. Now let us look at what each layer contains as far as information is concerned. If you turn to the picture on page 32, this may help.

Layers of the aura

The first layer is the layer nearest the body. It is the densest and therefore the easiest to see. If you saw anything in the human aura exercise, it probably related to the first layer. This first layer is known as the physical blueprint of our life. What that means is that it relates to our physical body and how we react to practical, earthly matters. So, if you love physical exercise and live very much on a practical, day-to-day basis, this layer of your aura will be strong.

The second layer is called our emotional blueprint. This is where we store how we feel about things emotionally, especially in relation to our self. So it is not so much about how we deal with others. It is to do with self-love and self-expression and how happy we feel with our own company. It would show whether we bottle up our emotions or release them freely.

The third layer is the mental blueprint. This concerns how agile we are in our minds and how rationally we think. Philosophers and writers often have strong third layers as they spend a great deal of time thinking through equations or ideas. Do you often have negative thoughts about yourself and other people? These negative images would show up as energy blocks within your third layer.

The fourth layer is about love. It means how you love yourself and others around you. It is about relationships at all levels and how you deal with them: family, friends, colleagues. Even animals and your feelings for inanimate objects are contained here. Your ability to both give out and receive love will be shown within this layer. As love is a complex issue for most of us, this layer is where the vibrations start to change and become finer, lighter and brighter. It also becomes more difficult to define using human language.

The fifth layer is called your blueprint for divine will. This does not mean personal goals and aims; it is about completely unselfish acts that relate to looking at the universe in a much wider context. It is to do with knowing where you fit into the universe as a whole and generally broadening your horizons. Until you expand your thought processes, it is hard to understand how divine will relates to you personally.

The sixth layer is about unconditional love. This does not mean loving yourself or others to whom you are close. This is love in a larger, universal context where you love and appreciate all around you, irrespective of your individual relationships with people and material things. You may know someone who has committed an abhorrent act. The sixth layer is about your ability to understand and to deal with that situation without condemning. Again, you have to expand your thoughts to be able to deal with this sphere.

The seven levels of the human aura.

The seventh and final layer is the finest, lightest and brightest of all. It is called the blueprint for bliss and a fusion with the divine mind. Don’t worry if this sounds impossibly incomprehensible. There is so much to learn about the first three layers of the aura that you need not concentrate on something as complex as the seventh until a later stage. It is enough to acknowledge that it exists without trying to understand it.

It is important to have some variety in life, in order to keep all the auric levels fully active. This is what holistic health means: enjoying all of you. It is important to accept this, because as you move into the realms of spiritual healing, it is not intended that you ignore all the other aspects of you. In other words, concentrating solely on your aura and discovering the different aspects of spiritual healing will not nurture the other parts of you. You have to continue eating, you need to have some form of exercise, you want to continue your interaction – emotional and mental – with other people. Balance becomes the key word in healing yourself; it is not always easy to accomplish.

Imbalances in the aura will show up in different ways. Sometimes they manifest as a blockage where energy cannot flow. Sometimes it will be seen as a smudgy, dark area which pulses discordantly. On other occasions, you will actually see or sense a complete hole or rip in the aura, showing that energy is leaking out or unwanted influences are creeping into the aura. It is most common to talk of energy blockages.

So, if we know that our energies can become unbalanced and we want to use tools to rebalance them, what are those tools? Two major tools which we are going to use throughout this book are other forms of energy.

Grounding energy

The first kind, which is called grounding energy, we have already touched on. When we were discussing geographical locations and the benefits of the sun and bodies of water, we were discussing this form of physical energy. Grounding energy is useful if we feel that we are going around with our head in the clouds, not really focusing on day-to-day reality and appreciating what we have around us. This energy is invaluable to help balance us, particularly if we have spent a lot of time working on spiritual healing and light vibrational energies. You can literally feel slightly disconnected from our planet after a period of time. We then draw this grounding energy up into us and let it help balance our auric energies. The method we use for doing this is discussed in the next chapter.

Another name for grounding energy is Mother Nature. We think of Mother Nature as being so many different things: the trees, the grass, the animals, the plant life. Taken on a deeper level, it could be said to be the primitive force of consciousness which allows nature to take its own course, irrespective of humanity’s involvement. For instance, we are learning that we cannot control the forces of nature without creating disastrous results, a fact that we are having to relearn and that our ancient ancestors always knew. Shamanic and other societies which use spiritual healing as the backbone of their existence know they have to live in harmony with all of nature and to respect and revere her great strength. They would see any attempt to control nature as an evil force. One could also describe nature as part of the universal laws of existence.

When we work with grounding energy, we draw it up from the ground, which is where all the energies of our planet are stored. Have you ever thought about what is contained in the core of our planet? Most of us never stop to consider that there must be something below the surface of the Earth. What is it?

The scientific reality is that planet Earth is approximately 8,000 miles in diameter. However, the actual land mass is only 22 miles thick (except under the ocean, where it is only 4 miles thick). Beneath that, what is there? Molten lava: incredibly hot, thick molten lava, which scientists estimate could be as hot as 6,000 degrees Celsius at the core. That is as hot as the surface of the sun. Is it not strange to think of that incredible powerhouse of heat and energy being such a short distance under our feet? It’s hard to grasp just how powerful that focused heat could be and how much energy is contained within its core.

Cosmic energy

The second form of energy that we use in spiritual healing is cosmic energy. Unlike grounding energy, which is Earth-related, cosmic energy deals with a very different realm. It comes from above, from our infinite universe. It is also infinite in supply and perfect in structure, a pure, undiluted ‘perfect’ energy. Cosmic energy bears no relation to earthly matters and is of what could be called ‘heavenly’ extraction.

Cosmic energy may mean different things to different people. One of the greatest joys and benefits of spiritual healing is that it crosses all religious barriers. You do not even need to have any religious beliefs to practise it. All you need is a belief in and a respect for a higher source of perfect energy, love and power which emanates from the universe above.

This source of power has been given many different names over the centuries: God, Buddha, Allah, Great White Spirit. It does not matter what you call it. You can discover your own name for it which feels right: Supreme Being, Universal Energy or Creator of All. Whatever name you choose, the power and purity of cosmic energy is undisputed. Its strength remains ever-constant and infinite in supply. Creating your own name can help strengthen your relationship with cosmic energy. If you are still uncertain whether you believe in this energy, do not worry at this stage. The next chapter will discuss ways in which you can work with this energy and prove its existence for yourself.

All these forms of energy have been acknowledged and discussed for thousands of years. Again, we are not talking about new phenomena. These energies have had a number of different names: prana, ch’i, odic force, monads, magnetic fluids, maya, mana, bioplasma, orgone, iliaster, yin and yang, num, kia. The name is not significant. The important issue is that these energies have been accepted, studied and respected for a very long time. If you want to read more about people who have studied life forces, look for books written by or about the following people: Wilhelm von Reichenbach, Walter J. Kilner, Semyon and Valentina Kirlian, Dr Hans Jenny, Franz Mesmer, Wilhelm Reich, Barbara Ann Brennan, George de la Warr, C. Maxwell Cade.

As far as cosmic energy is concerned, you might want to take some quiet moments to reflect upon your beliefs about the universe and our reasons for being here on Earth. Do you believe there is some universal, all-powerful influence which is guiding and protecting us? How do you see this force? Do you believe we as humans are all part of that force? What else is out there in the universe? Are you aware that recent research has indicated there may be as many as 125 billion galaxies in our universe? (Earth is in the galaxy of the Milky Way which comprises approximately 100 billion stars. Our universe may therefore contain well over 10 thousand billion billion stars.) What is infinity to you? If you hold particular religious beliefs, spend a little more time than usual in prayer and ask for guidance and support in this new area of your life. Notice what thoughts or inspirations come through as a result of this gently reflective