Combining Psychotherapy and Energy Healing. Why One Is the Yin To The Other’s Yang.

Don’t hold your breath for a long introductory paragraph here, the post is long enough on its own, I’ll spare you the unnecessary lead-in.

Quite simply, I was asked recently in an interview-esque forum to discuss some of the limitations of both traditional ‘talking’ therapy and energy healing and why I think a combination is where it’s at. After spewing out these answers I thought hey, maybe some of the people in my world may also find this info and explanation valuable and hey presto a new article was born. End of intro.

I studied Experimental Psychology at Oxford University before bailing on that country in 2007. I loved psychology and associated studies, but it always felt a little shallow to me, like something was missing, wherein most of what we’re taught doesn’t quite catch the root of the issue and in my opinion is unfortunately aimed at managing symptoms and developing better coping mechanisms.

In 2016 I discovered that I was able to access and read the Akashic Records (an ability that had been there likely for most of my life but had been misunderstood – another life story but hey that’s for next time). I trained and became a certified Akashic Records Reader and Soul Realignment Practitioner.

I initially offered out work to clients as an Akashic Medium with sessions geared only towards delivering the information that I retrieved from their Record, and intense energy clearing work with little additional support (as is very typical in this type of work i.e., energy healing/clearing, mediumship, intuitive modalities, etc.). I quickly learned that this too was seemingly not enough. It felt ‘incomplete’ to provide a lot of energetic shifts without accompanying support and coaching through the process to help people actually integrate these shifts into real life with conscious understanding of what had happened. And therefore a return to my psychological roots was inevitable.

I studied and became certified in Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, feeling this was the most applicable, and then spent quite some time becoming a master practitioner of NLP (and additionally grabbed a fun Life Coach certificate just for shits and giggles), to really ensure bases were covered in terms of being able to draw from several modalities to offer a holistic approach.

**Extra clarification before I answer the question, since I don’t know your frame of reference or understanding of how these different modalities work…

We have different dimensions, aspects, or ‘energy bodies’ that make up our overall state of being, e.g., our mental body, our emotional body, our physical body, our energetic body etc. and while these are intricately connected, they’re not the same thing. Different therapeutic modalities focus on different dimensions of the person, and on treating/healing/changing those different aspects, depending on what their school of thought is.

With psychotherapy, the focus is obviously on trying to understand and improve the person’s psychological health, their experience of life and their day-to-day mental and emotional states. It is grounded in verbal communication, the relaying of experience from the client to the therapist, and thus is a conscious process. The therapist is aiming to decipher what is creating the client’s current state by talking through issues with the client and the idea in a nutshell is that mental and emotional health can be improved by increasing understanding, reframing mental patterns, better regulation of emotions and implementation of new behaviors. It is conscious work done with and on mental and emotional levels, occasionally addressing physical body issues, but rarely if ever even touches the energetic dimension.

Energy healing modalities on the other hand work predominantly, if not exclusively (depending on the practitioner) on our energy body, focusing on the underlying flow of energy through and around the physical body, with the assumption that mental and emotional health is improved as a byproduct. Most energy healing schools of thought work with either the concept of the chakra system or energy meridians; each of which (either a chakra or meridian) corresponds directly to different aspects of mental and emotional well-being, as well as our organs and the health of our physical body directly. These approaches therefore consider most of the issues we experience, whether mental, emotional, or physical in nature, to be the result of blocked or stagnant energy. The aim is therefore to balance those energy systems so vital life force energy (Qi) can flow unrestricted through the individual, with the philosophy that the emotional and mental bodies will be rebalanced and restored in the process. It is an approach that is largely tackling issues without the conscious involvement of the recipient, and thus the practitioner does not need to chit-chat to get the job done.

**Now for the answer to the question:

Energy healing modalities don’t always encourage talking (and sometimes explicitly discourage it), because they don’t necessarily care about the talking component – it’s not the dimension they’re working with or on. As a very personal example, my better half works with Reiki and shamanic energy healing and sometimes we’ll work on client cases together. If people ask him questions after the sessions he always responds “I’m not the talking part” and sends them back in my direction. It’s not that he doesn’t talk or doesn’t care… it’s because by the very nature of the modality he specializes in, talking has little value. 

… and it isn’t always everything it’s cracked up to be in terms of dealing with our issues. It is completely based on the conscious, cognitive aspects of our being. It is relaying our experience through our own narrative and thus has a lot of limitations. Perhaps surprisingly, the ‘talking’ part of therapy can be problematic in and of itself.  It can keep people locked into their issues while simultaneously dragging their therapist into their conclusions with them.

There is the reality of the situation (the energetic state: root causes, traumas, issues, emotional states etc.) and then there is your interpretation of the situation i.e., the meaning you have assigned to it all, the story you tell yourself to make sense of it all. Your subjective experience is mostly down to the latter, the narrative you have about your circumstance.

Sometimes when we are talking through our issues, we can run the risk of simply reinforcing the stories we have around those experiences. The explanations we give, the stories we tell, and even the way we describe our emotional state, our mental state, and our experience of our life is saturated in our biases, our own beliefs, our own hypotheses and pre-drawn conclusions as to why we are the way we are. If the therapist is not on the ball with this, it can be very easy for the story of the patient to lead the therapist/practitioner down the wrong path too.  This story could be part of what is keeping us stuck in our current suffering. If we are disconnected from the reality of the situation and have no sensation of the actual energetic or emotional state we are experiencing (i.e., how we truly feel, what’s causing our current suffering), then the story we tell and the meaning we assign will override that, distract us from it, and prevent us from addressing the root of the issue.

For example, let’s say a parent/caregiver left you in your infancy, and right now you’re experiencing a lot of issues that you have concluded are abandonment issues and fear of being on your own which may present as a lot of anxiety in your relationships. You will have developed a lot of narrative and comprehension around this fear of being alone, and your stories and beliefs will line up with this. A therapist may easily also jump to the same conclusion after some dialogue and you’re now predominantly focusing on alleviating relationship-based fears etc. However, in this situation maybe the issue is not in fact fear of being alone but is more an issue with fundamental safety and stability. This truth will be ever present in your energy body and very active in your nervous system and will be causing/contributing to an array of issues that may unfortunately remain largely unaddressed.

There are limits to what we can perceive and verbalize consciously and talking just doesn’t cut it if we’re dealing with deep unconscious traumas. There is also the added factor that many of our issues, energetic restrictions and traumas will not be accessible through our conscious mind because they’re outside our memory of current life events e.g., past life issues, ancestral lineage issues (if you’re open to these ideas) so focusing only on what we can consciously communicate about has its limits.

There is a wealth of information in our subconscious, and in our vibratory state and these are not easily accessible through conscious dialogue. Unfortunately, we largely don’t care about this. We have become a very mind-centered people that have largely lost connection with our holistic self, and access to the infinite intelligence that exists in our bodies. We run things through our logical mind – to make sense of it – and dismiss the wisdom of our bodies. (This is also why focusing on the body sensations is incredibly powerful.) Sometimes an approach that bypasses this interfering mind monkey is the way we need to go… Unlike stories or narratives, energy doesn’t lie.

With energy healing modalities, this potentially interfering aspect or misleading voice is removed.  But this doesn’t mean that it can’t or doesn’t greatly affect your mental and emotional health. The understanding with the energy approach is that our mental and emotional health is directly related to the health of that flow of energy, and thus restoring that will inevitably impact our psychological state. 

For this it’s good to understand the interaction between these 2 things: our energetic state and our mental health. Our choices directly affect our energetic state, and our energetic state directly influences our choices – it’s messy.

Our choices being what we choose to think, feel, respond to, believe etc. (we do in fact choose all these things, but we don’t always do it consciously) … whatever our choices are, has an impact on the flow of energy through our system. For example, if you choose to think you’re not competent enough to go after goals after experiencing a setback, this could create a disturbance or blockage in the 3^rd chakra. Once that energetic disturbance is in play you may then respond to it in further limiting ways. For instance, it could start to affect your level of motivation, your perceived competence, your self-worth, your self-esteem… snowball … now you have anxiety about putting yourself out there because it all feels wildly uncomfortable, and more emotional/mental issues continue to gain strength as you create stories about what this means about yourself and your perceived identity.

We respond to our energetic state through our interpretation of what it all means, we must make sense of it, so we assign meaning and that becomes the basis of how we feel and ultimately what we think. This is directly our emotional and mental health. And of course, vice versa, what we choose to consistently think and feel feeds back to our energy and further distorts that energetic system to align with our choices. Therefore, any traumas or ‘negative’ experiences we have physically, emotionally, or mentally are imprinted across the different energy bodies and a shift in one of them affects the others.

When energy is shifted through energy healing and clearing practices, we sense these (even if not always consciously), and our emotional and mental responses can change. If there has been pent-up emotions, unresolved emotions, or emotional imbalance we can feel the release of these and no longer feel the need to react. If there has been blockage, we can suddenly have clarity around things we were unable to be clear about previously and be newly aware of what is actually possible for us without that energy resource limitation (and corresponding perceived lack) in place. This shift in our day-to-day energetic and emotional experience has major impact on our mental well-being.

For instance, with the 3^rd chakra example, if there’s a major influx of energy to that energy center you might find yourself with renewed motivation and push to accomplish something you had been avoiding… once accomplished your self-esteem likely takes a mini boost… now feeling more competent and confident you’re somewhat forced to re-evaluate and upgrade your ideas about your ability to go after goals. Y voila, a massive shift in one small component of your overall mental health.

It’s not so much that the energy work directly works on your mental health, but rather it works on removing and releasing energetic issues that form the marinade for how we experience our life. The thoughts and feelings we are having are the result of our interpretation of our state and thus changing our energetic state can change our thoughts and feelings.

There really is an endless list of what can benefit from energetic healing and clearing and where improvements may be seen.

When our energy is balanced and flowing, life is just better. I know that’s a super abstract, broad answer, but it is! When we’re in this more optimal state, we are more likely to experience feelings of joy, happiness, contentment, harmony etc. Our overall mood is just better. When we have released energetic burdens, we absolutely feel that, typically as more calm, centeredness, composure and peace. These things may seem wishy-washy but they’re far from it – it forms the basis of our state throughout the day and improves our overall well-being dramatically.

A balanced energetic system is less likely to experience overwhelm; overwhelm energetically being the imbalance of energetic resources and focus on some aspects of our being in favor of others. And, not surprisingly, people just seem to have more energy following energy healing practices. By not having restrictions in the flow of energy this can help people to feel more revitalized and thus helps with issues such as chronic fatigue. When energy is flowing freely there’s an increase in mental clarity and focus; areas of confusion, doubt or mental fog are often zapped away with an influx of high-vibing energy and the removal/release of conflicting energies.  If we can think more clearly and make decisions with greater clarity (all while feeling overall much better) we begin to take strides forward in our self-trust and self-confidence.

All the above can be very helpful for treating and healing mood disorders and issues such as depression. The basis of these disorders in a lot of cases is an imbalance in the emotional state. Simply by releasing these pent-up emotions or rejuvenating stagnant areas of our system, there can be massive shifts in the emotional experiences of these individuals.

Levels of stress and anxiety are of course very common areas for major improvement. When we feel stressed or anxious, we hold that tension in our physical bodies (and remember – vice versa!). By releasing the actual physical tension, we can reduce the level of experienced tension. And many aspects of energy healing modalities work to directly calm and regulate the nervous system too by boosting the function of the autonomic nervous system, which plays a huge role in our stress response and experiences of anxiety. And, to boot, it may be some of our traumas and unconscious programs that are creating or contributing to our anxious or stressed state so releasing these can have major impacts.

I have seen tremendous improvements in people suffering from trauma and even severe PTSD: Oftentimes when it comes to overcoming trauma and moving past the associated suffering, no matter how much traditional therapy a client engages in, they still struggle to truly feel like they are free of that event and the shitshow of emotions that come with it. The reason being that the imprints, emotions, and byproducts of the trauma still very much live inside our physical and energy bodies. By directly working to release and transmute these aspects it is infinitely easier for the individual to move forward. Of course, they still have the memory of the event, but with successful energetic work they should no longer have the associated traumatic emotional response. It is also much the same mechanism with things like grief – the imprints of the pain at its highest often need releasing before the individual can truly move forward.

Energy shifts also work incredibly well for areas of self-development, aspects such as self-esteem, self-image, self-confidence, self-expression etc. Our perception of our own identity can be the reason for a lot of our psychological struggles. A lot of mental and emotional health issues have their basis in unhealthy self-perception. We have the story that we create around who we are, what we are capable of, what we’re not capable of, our strengths and weaknesses etc. and as we compare those to others in the world around us it is very easy to develop a myriad of issues. But this self-image is rarely based in reality, it’s based on the culmination of all of our interpretations and again that delightful story we tell ourselves.  Perhaps we have created our self-story and sense of identity based on our energetic misalignments, limitations, and imbalances, and when those are shifted and rebalanced, we are able to redefine who we are. When things that are ‘not me’ are released, we can better discover what is ‘me’.

Firstly, and probably most obviously, it helps with grounding and bringing you into the present moment. Focusing only on what you are sensing in that moment is super powerful for reducing anxiety, promoting calm and having the body kick into its relaxation response, which is great for stress, anxiety, overwhelm etc.

But the real value in focusing on body sensations is in the art of learning to listen to more than just your mind and learning to tune into the mass amounts of information and wisdom that is available to us all the time in our body, nervous system, and surrounding energy field. 

Usually, our conscious attention is outward-focused, paying attention to stimuli from our senses from the outside world, and then listening to the story our mind has to say about it all. Even with our emotional responses, we don’t really react based on how we feel, we react based on how we think we feel. This is often where we get stuck and where the problems kick in. When you shift your attention to physical sensations it usually comes hand in hand with not fixating on your mind and whatever stream of chit-chat is parading through there.

As we become more aware of our body/physical state, we increase our ability to self-regulate our emotional and mental states, and typically this means having the superpower of being able to detect and address issues before they build up and gather enough momentum to become a thing. You start to become more attuned to what emotions are actually being released in your body, and not just the emotional state or feeling that you are choosing to experience and stay in (these are different). Our emotions have a physical presence before our mind latches onto them and creates a story around them, so if we’re focusing on the body, we can pick up on our emotions faster and then manage our mental interpretation of them and our behavioral responses.

For example, we can start to detect the feeling of being stressed before our mind might grasp that – we can become more attuned to the tightening of our muscles or clenching of our teeth. We may notice our posture change if we’re feeling a little defeated or have a burden of the day – these things can give us clues as to how we’ve interpreted and responded to the day or situation and allow us to effectively manage that before it builds up, is repressed and/or ignored, or is given a disproportionate weight, importance and meaning creating further psychological distress.

This is really the basis of emotional regulation; being able to recognize your emotional response and respond in healthier ways, and this is key for mental health.

If you can better regulate your emotions and reactions, you can then avoid prolonged periods of ‘negative’ experiences like sadness, despair, frustration etc. and reinforce healthier ones. Plus, this conscious component to assessing and managing your emotions and physical state comes hand-in-hand with being able to reevaluate and update the mental narrative that is associated with experiences too. It’s really all about increasing consciousness around your experience across the mind-body connection.

Being able to tune into the sensations of your physical body is also incredibly powerful for cultivating and developing self-awareness. If you can detect how you are reacting to situations, circumstances and even your thoughts – you can think of anything and detect the corresponding sensation in your body – this can be massively helpful as a practice to really start to get clarity and insight into your own self.

You can learn to recognize what it is you really want by learning to understand what feels aligned and ‘right for you’.  You can learn what you truly believe by noticing how you react to behaviors in line with or against that. You can identify patterns, triggers, and areas that need attention or healing. The physical body can really help you to get clear on what it is you truly think and feel. We can glean a lot of insight about who we are and what we desire by escaping our heads, and then be better positioned to make conscious choices that are more in line with who we want to be and what we want to achieve. All of this leads to increases in self-esteem, self-confidence, intuition, clarity… and even a sense of purpose. All great impact on our overall mental health.

Focusing on the body ultimately helps us to develop and strengthen our mind-body connection to put us in a better state of holistic living instead of swimming around in our heads 24/7. Once we learn just how interconnected it all is, and how our physical state affects our emotions, thoughts, and overall well-being, and vice versa, we’ll likely also start to adopt new better self-care practices that further lend support to improved mental health.

I particularly love this question! Energy healing modalities are powerful, but yes, they do have their limits too, and it really is why a combo of the 2 works so well together.

As much as talking can be misleading or an interference, it’s also incredibly helpful!

Talking in itself is a release. People can feel a whole lot better about something just simply by talking it out, with a trained professional or not, and we can often come to a better understanding of our issues on our own just by being able to verbalize it. Sometimes a therapist really only is a sounding board for some people and the value of that cannot be overlooked. The very act of talking and expressing something is a form of release and can help prevent mental and emotional overload.

What is truly the most powerful aspect of more traditional talking therapy is that it is a conscious dive into your psychological state; aka you are fully engaged in the self-reflection process, and are then able to really start getting insight into the health and quality of your thought patterns, your emotional responses, your biases etc. Because you are actively involved in this process you can get a deeper understanding of what’s going on with you, and what to do to change it. You can learn to recognize negative thinking patterns, challenge irrational beliefs, develop healthier coping mechanisms and implement behavioral changes – all of which require you to be aware of what’s going on. Energy healing alone rarely works on this level; you receive the energetic healing or clearing, you have the emotional blockages released, you attune yourself to a ‘higher’ vibration through sound, but you don’t consciously work on the mental or emotional body directly, and this for sure is a limitation.

We can have spontaneous clarity, understanding, and mental/emotional shifts through the energetic releases, but that’s not always a given, in which case the individual doesn’t have an upgraded or reframed narrative to support this new energetic state and the benefits will unfortunately be short-lived. For example, back to the 3^rd chakra, if there is a lot of conscious (and subconscious) support for the idea of not being competent enough to hit our goals and we powerfully believe it to be true about ourselves, perhaps even having incorporated it into our personality story, then even when the energy blockage has been transmuted, the mental story may still read with the same doubts. This then influences our actions, or lack of actions, and in no time the blockage will reappear in our energetic system. Regardless we will continue as we always have, not pursuing the goal, not putting ourselves out there, not feeling competent.

This lack of directly addressing these other aspects (mental and emotional) can result in people experiencing powerful states of cognitive dissonance following energy healing and clearing, wherein they hold contradictory or competing beliefs, ideas, and actions. This can be a real shit-show experience to go through. If you’re now feeling one way but acting completely out of sync with that, and you’re aware of this… that’s a new layer of despair and confusion which you probably didn’t sign up for.

For powerful transformation, we need to update our narrative, our conclusions and assumptions about ourselves, our meanings. And we need an upgraded framework of understanding by which to move forward. Energy healing does not always deliver on this front, whereas psychotherapy is queen of helping people to shift these components. We need to be aware of where our limitations are; what exactly is preventing us from moving forward, being happy etc. If we have more understanding and consciousness around our issues, we have more power to make change. If we can understand how past experiences, traumas and choices have shaped us and our present experience, (and how they have contributed to any psychological distress) we are better positioned to move forward and make change.

We need conscious understanding, and sometimes we really need some help in processing it all in productive ways too. Through talking. Through making sense of it.

It shouldn’t be omitted that there is also a huge value in the relationship that typically forms between the therapist/client that doesn’t typically happen with energy healing modalities. The safe space and engaged communication can help people to feel supported, validated and understood as they work through their challenges. This is very important for some people and alone can help people in times of psychological distress. 

In combining these two you have a more holistic approach that considers multiple dimensions and aspects of your being and works with both conscious and unconscious healing mechanisms. In my opinion, you end up getting a much more comprehensive shift, and the combination of the modalities increases the effectiveness of either one on its own.

For some people psychotherapy alone will not be sufficient; you’re trying to adopt new thought processes, incorporate new empowering paradigms into your psyche etc. but it doesn’t seem to ‘take root’. No matter how hard you try to think your way around something or incorporate a new belief, you’ll feel like you’re lying to yourself because it just doesn’t feel true. It feels like something underneath it all is still in opposition, and it very well might be. When centering healing or self-improvement only around talking, you’re not necessarily addressing the underlying issue or doing anything to remove and release those traumatic imprints. And you’re not likely to catch some of the mechanisms that work on a more unconscious or somatic level.

And as I mentioned in the limitations of energy healing, sometimes with energy healing work there just isn’t an accompanying shift, upgrade and reframe of the mental constructs and narratives we have about it all, or assistance with managing our emotional state.

If our choices (including mental and emotional activity) affect our energetic state, which in turn influences our choices, any healing approach that does not consider the whole system will always be a little imbalanced and incomplete (again, my opinion).

Combining the modalities gives a greater chance of creating lasting change for the client, and not just a temporary high, release or better coping mechanism.

Together these 2 modalities allow for energy body restoration and rebalancing, and energetic and emotional releases with the very necessary conscious understanding of the process and accompanying upgrades in your thought process, emotional responses and the meaning you give to every last bit of it. You get the benefit of being able to heal and transmute the really deep unconscious programming and traumas that are tough to reach through dialogue, actually release stuff from the physical body that talking alone can’t effectively do, but you also have the benefit of having the awareness of what the hell is going on. You need to be able to process the shifts, make sense of the shifts, and move forward with a new plan of attack. Combining modalities means working on all the aspects, and it helps clients/patients to start to fully embrace a holistic way of living mind-body-soul where they realize the importance of health and balance in all areas. And of course, the interconnectivity of all aspects.

You ideally want all aspects of your being to be on the same page, especially if you’re working towards a goal. You want the energetic signature, the emotional state, the content of your mind, your ego, your soul (all of it!) to be in sync and combo-modality approaches are the way to go.

For instance, in my practice, I use the Akashic Records as a database to identify all the energetic restrictions and all the restrictive choices that my clients have made (both past and present life) that are creating their current experience and/or preventing them from achieving/manifesting what they want out of life. Then we’ll clear these from the energy bodies and simultaneously work on instilling the new replacement beliefs/thought patterns etc. alongside an action plan of new behaviors and physical actions to introduce into their life… the realignment happens across the different aspects. Sometimes one area will lag a little; the energy shifts but it takes some extra work to really be able to change that mindset, or maybe the mindset and emotional state improve by leaps and bounds but the energetic imbalance needs some extra TLC, but it’s all a lot easier when all aspects are going through the same upgrade and transformation. The energetic releases are a lot easier and more powerful when there’s conscious awareness from the client as to what needs to be released, and the mental and emotional shifts are easier when they understand the root and the reason ‘why’ – it makes story upgrade and lasting transformation easy peasy.

End of chitchat.

And nope, there’ll be no well-structured conclusion to wrap it all up either. Other than this; I hope you too got something useful out of that ramble, and that for your own transformational work going forward you try to incorporate and consider all dimensions of who and what you are.