© 1998, Ann Veilleux, MSSW
Almost anyone can feel inside their bodies and locate places of tension, soreness, or a dead, still feeling. Using energy as a metaphor, these can be thought of as blocks to the normal flow of your body's energy. You can get information about the blocked energy - what caused it, what emotions are related to it - by placing your awareness deeply in the sensation and feeling it. With practice you can learn to take the step from simply feeling the energy to reading it; to be able to perceive, through the body, by feel, what the energy is "saying".
Here's an example. You probably recognize fear as a tight feeling in your belly. Reading the energy means feeling deeply into the fear to note the particular qualities of this fear; what's it about, where did it come from? The energy of the fear may take a certain form that can be sensed spatially within yourself, or it may be layered behind another shape - perhaps of anger. Subtle differences in the feeling sense of the energy give you this information, and can give you much more. Just as you see with your eyes and hear with your ears, you perceive energy with your body.
Reading your body's energy gives you direct access to self knowledge. Emotions are only a part of what you can discover about yourself in your energy field. Beliefs, thought patterns, your history, and other personal truths are also recorded there.
There are many ways that having access to this kind of self knowledge can be useful. A certain question may occur to you as you go along in your life. Perhaps a problem keeps showing up in different forms. If you listen to your body, your energy will tell what the problem is really about. You'll discover how this issue connects to things you already know about yourself, and you can even be directed to what to do next in the real world outside. As you become skilled at keeping track of yourself in relation to your world around you, the unfolding path of your life can become clearly lit.
Once you learn to connect in this way to what really going on with you , you can follow the movement of the energy to show you what is the right next step . These "right steps" are a part of your growth or healing process which is unfolding ,all the time, within you. You are a whole person with full potential already existing inside you. Working through your fear, for example, liberates your courage. This self expansion can also be experienced in your energy field.
I believe this inner process is directed by your spiritual nature. As such it can bring you to satisfaction and fulfillment as it guides you to becoming who you truly are.
[Back]