What Am I Actually Doing When I Work with Energy?

By Dr. Marie Feuer, Life Path Healings: Yucaipa California

Someone asked me a very reasonable question: when I work with energy, where does it come from? Does it come from me? From the universe? Do I have some kind of energy organ, an antenna? I liked the question because people use the word “energy” constantly in spiritual circles, often as if everybody knows exactly what everybody else means. Meanwhile, the person sitting there may be thinking, “I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about, but apparently I’m supposed to.”

The closest description I can give is water. In my experience, living with this sensitivity is like living in an ocean. The water is there whether I’m doing anything with it or not. There are currents, waves, movement, quiet places. But when I work with someone, I begin paying attention differently. Where is the current? What am I being drawn toward? What seems to be happening with this particular person? I use the phrase “running energy,” but riding it is probably more accurate. I’m not manufacturing an ocean.

If you’ve ever been body surfing, you know that you participate. You feel the wave, start swimming with it, and sometimes catch it. You aren’t controlling the entire sea, but you also aren’t lying there like a dead body. That is much closer to what the work feels like to me than the picture of a healer deciding what is wrong with somebody and firing corrective energy at the problem. I open myself to guidance, follow what I perceive, and participate in helping the person connect with what is happening. This is a description of my experience, not a scientific explanation of a mechanism.

Sometimes that participation involves conversation. Sometimes I might ask someone to move, or, with their permission, use touch. Sometimes we sit quietly. There isn’t one procedure I apply to everybody, because the people in front of me aren’t interchangeable. Even with someone I know well, I have to pay attention to who is here today. Knowing their history doesn’t mean I already know what this session should be.

The person asking the question wanted the mechanics, which I understand. If I tell you I’m doing something, naturally you might want to know how to do it. But there is a problem with turning my internal experience into instructions for yours. Some people describe seeing images or colors. Some hear words. Some experience a physical sensation, or recognize something later through a dream. For me, much of it is a kind of sensing and knowing. I have often wished for a guide who would simply speak in complete sentences and explain everything. That would be very convenient. It isn’t generally how it works for me.

Learning to recognize that knowing has taken practice, and it has not required me to stop asking questions. My background was not one in which I automatically accepted spiritual explanations. I have had to work with my own skepticism, pay attention to what happened, and discover which perceptions I could reasonably trust. I cannot hand someone else the results of that process and say, “Here, believe this.” They need room to find out how they perceive things, including room to discover that an interpretation was mistaken.

This also matters when someone has a strong response during a session. Tears may come, or anger, or a feeling they can’t immediately describe. A person might have a memory or a story connected to it; another might say, “I don’t know what that was about.” In conversation, I sometimes distinguish between an emotion with an identifiable story and something I experience as energy expressed emotionally. That is how I describe the difference in my work. The absence of a story doesn’t prove what caused the feeling, and I don’t need to invent one to make the experience sound more impressive.

My responsibility is to remain present enough to find out what is needed. If I become frightened by someone’s tears, I may rush to stop them because I’m uncomfortable. If I become fascinated by an intense experience, I may give the intensity more importance than it deserves. Neither reaction helps me listen. Sometimes we talk; sometimes we allow a little quiet before deciding what there is to discuss. There also has to be room for the person to say they want to pause. A partnership means their experience and their choices matter.

People sometimes tell me they experience something while working with me that they don’t experience when they meditate alone. My response is that I see this as an encounter with their own capacity. It can give them a sense of something they may learn to recognize more readily for themselves. I don’t want them to conclude that I own the connection and they have to keep coming back to rent it. What would be the point of helping someone become more sensitive while making them less able to trust themselves? My energy field creates a zone where the person can experience what is in them, and what will be possible to achieve. Now it is up to each person to cultivate that energy to be able to get there on their own. 

I don’t create narratives for people and I encourage people to stay away from the “stories” they tell themselves about an experience. Read Pema Chodron’s work for an in depth explanation of this aspect of having a spiritual practice. After all these years, an unexpected moment of connection can still stop me in my tracks. I still think, “Holy shit, that was incredible.” Experience hasn’t made me bored with it. It has made me more aware of the difference between having an experience, interpreting it, and deciding what to do next. Those deserve attention in their own right.

I don’t want the left brain creative explanation to remove all the wonder and curiosity. Creating a story removes your ability to learn because now you have taken the unknown experience and shoved it into a narrative that makes sense to you now, in your current level of enlightenment. Experience the energy. Be willing to not know. And in a few days or weeks, while cleaning the house or walking, an epiphany will be given to you. Trust that. 

So when someone asks what I’m actually doing, the most honest answer is that I am sensing, listening, asking for guidance, and responding. I bring years of practice, psychic perception, psychological understanding, and my own very human capacity to get something wrong. The person working with me brings their perceptions, questions, willingness, and limits. We find out what is possible through that particular encounter. I can describe the ocean as carefully as I know how, but your relationship with it has to become your own.

If you’ve been curious about energy work but want room for questions, skepticism, and your own experience, we can explore whether private one-to-one work with me would be useful. 

I offer a 30-minute introductory Zoom session for $25. You can learn more at DrMarie.org.

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