The Power of Your Healing Hands

Let creativity and intuition flow when learning to speak energy with your hands. Letting your body activate that knowing is easier than trying to memorize which touch speaks to which emotions. It doesn’t matter if you have the correct touch — the important part is to let yourself intuitively dialogue with energies, letting your hands do the talking.  

For example, I find myself getting stressed when I know my cousin is visiting. I like her, but we were very competitive when we were kids, so whenever I’m about to see her, I get anxious. I want to overeat, I notice I’m not breathing very deeply, and I feel like a lump. So I let my hands just initiate dialogue. I start petting my head, like I would pet my dog, including pulling and extending my long doggy ears. That makes me realize how tight my head is. So I pet it a while, then tap my scalp all over to just stimulate energy to move. I feel like I need to pull all that loosened energy out of my head, so stroking downward, I pull it down my whole body and off the ends of my toes. Then I throw it in a universal recycling bin because, if I don’t want it, I don’t want it cluttering my house. 

Then I realize I just want to be held. So. I wrap my arms around myself and rock. I grab a large stuffed animal we keep around for the grandkids (official excuse), and hug it for a while, trying to wordlessly communicate consolation to the stuffy. I let myself feel both the mother in me consoling the stuffy and myself as the stuffy receiving that mothering. 

I find myself circling my solar plexus with one hand in a counterclockwise motion, spiraling out into my energy field then back in again, feeling it release energy. Then, without making a conscious decision to do so, I find myself tapping on my chest, like an ape, as if to say: I am the champ! I end the conversation by drawing hearts all over my body. Now, when I think about my cousin coming, I feel calm and slightly amused. The desire to chow down on treats has dissipated, and I can tune in to my stomach and notice I’m not hungry.  

Remember all the different styles of touch available to you: tapping, stroking, kneading, pulsing, holding, tracing shapes, pulling, pressing, and more. Over time you will find yourself combining the tools — touch plus tapping in rhythms, touch plus using sound, touch plus color, as if your fingers are paintbrushes bringing beauty to all parts of your body. If you are engaging in an actual energetic dialogue and focused on something you care about, you will find yourself able to feel what makes the most difference, rather than just randomly playing with touch.  

Exercise: Healing Hands  

Rub your two hands together to activate their healing capacity. You may want to experiment with holding them just an inch or two apart, palms facing each other, to see what you feel radiating from them: Heat? Tingling? Pulsing?  

Then take one lovely, healing hand (either left or right), and let it move to wherever on your body it wants to go. Place it, palm facing the skin, on that part of your body. Experiment with what pressure feels right: solid touch, medium touch, light touch? Go with how it feels and try to listen to your body rather than guiding this activity with your mind. 

Leave that hand in place, and take your other healing hand and let it move to where it wants to sit, palm down, on your body.  

Just hold these two places until one hand gets called to move to another spot. Shift that hand. Then check in with the other hand: Does it want to move somewhere else or stay put? 

There is no rule about how long to hold or where to place your hands. Just follow their wisdom, the inclinations of the quiet still voice within, and let yourself feel whatever sensations arise as you use your healing hands. 

Continue shifting each hand as it is pulled or guided by your body’s wisdom to move. At some point, you will have a sense of completion, that whatever needed to happen has been accomplished for now. 

It is fine to do this exercise fully dressed, but it is also lovely to do it in the bath or bed, making contact between your hands and skin. Your body will give you feedback on what it needs each time. And your healing hands will engage in an energetic dialogue your body needs, even when your conscious mind is not able to guide you. 

Excerpted from the book The Language Your Body Speaks. Copyright ©2020 by Ellen Meredith. Printed with permission from New World Library — www.newworldlibrary.com.