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Juanita Lepage MSW, RSW, BHP

Counselling & Energy Healing (289) 812-8089 Hamilton, Ontario

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Barbara Brennan

Introducing Energy Healing At Home

September 27, 2018 by Juanita Lepage Leave a Comment

After a few months of simmering with this idea, I finally got creative and made a few videos for those interested in learning a few methods of energy healing to do at home.

If your energy field is healthy and strong, this positively impacts your physical, emotional, & spiritual well-being too.

In each video I explain the benefits of each exercise and give you a video demonstration of how to do them.  They are easy exercises to add to the start of your day or at a moment when you need to connect with yourself and centre.

Go to www.JuanitaLepage.com and sign-up to learn more.

 

Filed Under: Energy Healing Articles Tagged With: Barbara Brennan, Chakras, core star, energy healing, hara

How Energy Healing Helps Heal Physical Illness

March 22, 2018 by Juanita Lepage 3 Comments

energy healing

I recently watched the movie Kumaré, about American filmmaker Vikram Gandhi who transformed himself into Sri Kumaré, an enlightened guru from a fictional village in India.  He adopted a fake Indian accent, grew out his beard and hair, and came up with his own message and yoga moves to teach his future disciples.  Vikram struggled as he went further into this charade about the moral implications of this experiment.  One way he tries to keep some morality is by keeping his main message to people that they don’t need a guru and that they can “find the guru within themselves”.

This message is one of the same messages given in energy healing. It is not the healer that heals the patient, but the healer that helps the patient heal himself. In her book Hands of Light (1987), Barbara Brennan states that,

“No matter how miraculous the result, the healer really induces the patient to heal himself through natural processes, even though they are beyond what is considered to be natural for those who are not familiar with healing” (p.147)[1].

In the same chapter, Barbara Brennan describes 3 things that an energy healer has to offer people with physical illness that they often will not get by seeking someone in the medical profession:

  1. A broader perspective and understanding of the causes and cures of disease
  2. Access to information in the energy field about a physical illness that may not be available through the traditional medical methodology
  3. Helping the patient to enhance his own healing abilities

Here is an overview of each benefit.

A) Broader Understanding of the Causes and Cures of Disease 

When someone gets a serious illness, there are different responses.  Illness can be understood through a physical, emotional, or spiritual lens.  Energy Healing will encompass the spiritual approach, and may recommend a physical and emotionally-focussed approach as well.

Physical Causes and Cures (Body)

doctor healing

From this perspective, something caused you to get sick and now you need to find a way to become healthy again if possible.  For some things, we don’t look any deeper than this.  We seek a doctor, take recommended treatments, and go from there.

Some people will wonder about what caused their illness.  They may seek reasons in their physical environment by exploring their relationship with their physical body – diet, exercise, sleep, medications, environment and more. Changing patterns in relationship with your physical body can bring healing to an illness.

Emotional Causes and Cures (Mind)

emotional causes illness

Some people will look deeper at their emotional relationships to see how these may have impacted or exacerbated their illness.  Gabor Maté is a Canadian medical doctor who has shifted his understanding of illness from a purely biological one to an emotional-related one.  He has written multiple books exploring the relationship of the mind-body link of both mental health issues, physical illness, and addiction.  He demonstrates their connection with scientific research, case histories, and his own experience.   For illnesses that stick around, shifting emotional patterns and family dynamics can offer healing to illness that the medical options on their own won’t have the capacity to heal.

One example is ADHD.  The common medical perspective is that it is an illness and needs to be treated with medication for a lifetime.  Yet people can heal from ADHD by exploring their emotional patterns and family dynamics.  Gabor Maté writes in his book Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder (2012):

“People often ask if one can “grow out” of attention deficit disorder – a good question, for healing is a matter of growth.  And the answer is yes.  It is not curing that ADD children need: they need to be helped to grow.   What is required is not a change in parenting techniques but a change in parenting attitudes, based on a deeper understanding of the child.  The adult with attention deficit disorder needs also to gain a deeper understanding of herself, to undertake the task we will later describe as self-parenting” (p. 141-142)[2]

Spiritual Causes and Cures (Spirit)

Next are people who will want to use a spiritual lens to get a broader sense of their illness.  They look at illness as a teacher in their lives.  They can look at what an illness is giving them in their lives that they aren’t receiving elsewhere.  Illnesses can bring suffering and pain and at the same time wisdom and insight.  Spiritual insight can initiate change in foundational patterns people have in their lives and bring healing to illness.

Some people will look at their life with the perspective that they chose this life, this illness, and even their family before they were born.  Once you start reading books by spiritual leaders you will realize that many of them have this perspective including some of my favorites – Ram Dass and Paramahansa Yogananda.  From this broader perspective a person can realize that illness is neither good nor bad but a tool to help them with something on their spiritual journey.  Ram Dass talks about the role of karma in regard to illness.  From the karmic perspective, sometimes illness is related to past-lives.

How To Combine Mind-Body-Spirit Approaches

My perspective is that a combination of each perspective is needed on a journey towards healing an illness.  Certainly, exploring one avenue may bring you the desired results, but when you broaden your perspective you open yourself to more avenues to healing.

If the spiritual lens doesn’t fit with your world-view, then start with the physical and emotional lens.  If the medical lens doesn’t fit with you, consider exploring your reasons why.  They may be well-founded, but you may be making your life overly complicated.

Sometimes the Medical Path is All That is Needed

I remember when one of my sons was younger and he was having frequent bloody noses along with his cold and occasional fevers.  Early on I went to my doctor who was curious whether it was allergy related and referred him to an allergist.  While waiting months for this appointment, his symptoms were getting worse.  I took him to a naturopath.  She determined that it was a sinus infection and referred me back to my doctor to get antibiotics.  The naturopath also recommended probiotics. The antibiotics and probiotics were what my son needed, and he got better.  We didn’t need to explore an emotional or spiritual lens in this scenario.

My Experience with a Mind-Body-Spirit Approach

When I had a depression many years ago when I lived in Vancouver, I started with a physical approach by making sure I got outside every day even though I rarely wanted to. I always felt a little better after I went for a bike ride.  I also explored it an emotional level with a therapist and decided to make some big changes in my life – quitting my job and moving back to Ontario.  Next, I started to explore it at a spiritual level and that’s when I found a deeper healing.  Depression was a teacher in my life whether I wanted it to be or not.

B) Energy Healers Have Access to Information in the Energy Field

chakras and biofield

A second benefit of an energy healer is that they have access to information in your energy field. An energy healer uses their sixth sense to attune to a person’s biofield and chakras.  When a person presents with physical illness, an energy healer can sometimes look at a person’s energy field and receive information or offer healing in a way that attending to the body or mind cannot.  I’ve written a general overview of this process in the Anatomy of an Energy Healing .

Both of my sons have had eye surgeries and have had reactions after receiving anesthesia.  They would become wild as they awoke after surgery and it was scary for both parents and kids.  When my youngest was going to receive his final eye surgery, I had an energy healer do a healing on him.  She was able to give me tips on how to support him during and after surgery.  She received these insights by tuning into his energy field.  We used warm blankets on his feet to help him ground.  I was by his side as they gave him anesthesia. She gave a healing to help his eye heal more quickly as well.  All these things contributed to a better experience for all of us.  The energy healer was able to access information that was beyond the scope of a medical provider and personalized towards my son.

C) Energy Healing Helps People Enhance Their Own Healing Abilities

The best healings come when a healer helps you enhance your own healing abilities. When I do an energy healing I tell them that I do an energy healing that aligns with their intention. We all have the capacity to heal, and my experience is that energy healing will often amplify the healing of both mental health problems and physical illness. When an energy healer works on your biofield, the positive impact on your biofield can help your physical body do what it needs to heal.  In addition, if you’re doing things already in your life to help improve your health, energy healing is like a boost to your other efforts.

Additionally, I find that psychotherapy is a way to deepen one’s healing abilities in combination with energy healing.  Many of us want a quick answer – tell me what the cause of my illness is and what I need to do.  You may think you want to know these things, but once you start examining the layers of illness in relation to mind, body, and spirit, you will realize that this journey takes courage.  You will have to make changes in your life that you may strongly resist.  You may have to look at different parts of yourself that you don’t want to.  You may find yourself saying, “I’ll do anything but that”.  Be gentle with yourself if you find these pieces in yourself. The reasons for our resistance served us at a time in our life even though they’re not helping us in the same way anymore.

Shifting Unhealthy Patterns to Healthy Ones

In a deeper exploration of the roots of my depression I was able to see deeply held patterns in my life that had served me in a positive way growing up.  Over time these patterns didn’t serve me anymore and I became depressed. Now I’ve gotten to the point where often I can recognize that I’m in an old unhelpful pattern and I’ll shift how I react to a situation.  No one else is encouraging me to change my thoughts or behaviors, I’m able to recognize situations that I need to make a change. My own healing ability has been amplified.

If you spend decades embroiled in an unhelpful pattern, it takes time, willingness, and compassion to change that pattern. Fortunately, this journey is available to us all and there are people willing to guide and be with us along this path.

When Illness Persists

Sometimes an illness will not be cured in this lifetime.  An illness may appear and a person will not recover and may die from it.  A spiritual lens can help a person make sense of it when it doesn’t make any sense as to why it appeared and you aren’t seeing the changes you want no matter what you do.

When an illness persists there are many thoughts and emotions to sift through – Fear, Anger, feeling like a victim and more.  An illness’ appearance may not have any rational understanding.  Miracles certainly can happen in the most dire of circumstances, yet many times this is not the case.  Like any healing modality, energy healing doesn’t bring a guarantee of a return to health. Yet unlike other modalities, the spiritual lens in energy healing can sometimes bring peace in a difficult situation.

Want to learn more?

Books to Explore Illness from an Emotional Lens by Gabor Maté

  • Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder
  • When the Body Says No: The Hidden Cost of Stress
  • In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addictions

Books to Explore Illness from a Spiritual Lens

  • Be Love Now by Ram Dass: Chapter Seven – The Way of Grace
  • Hands of Light by Barbara Brennan: Chapter 15 – From Energy Block to Physical Disease
  • Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda

 

 

 

 

[1] Brennan, Barbara (1987). Hands of Light. New York: Bantam Books.

[2] Maté, Gabor (2012). Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder. Toronto: Vintage Canada.

Filed Under: Energy Healing Articles, Psychotherapy and Counselling Articles Tagged With: Barbara Brennan, counselling, energy healing, Gabor Maté, Illness, Mental Health, psychotherapy, Ram Dass

Anatomy Of Energy Healing (Energy Healing 101)

February 1, 2018 by Juanita Lepage 6 Comments

The location of the chakras on the human body

Reiki, Therapeutic Touch, Quantum Healing, Energy Medicine, Energy Psychology, and Brennan Healing are some of the many types of energy healing that are available to people who are interested in looking beyond the physical body.   Over the years I’ve seen many similarities and many differences between them all.  If energy healing is a new world for you, today I’m going to give you a brief overview.  I’ll give you a little bit more if you’re curious to know more.

The Biofield

All types of energy healing work on the level of the biofield in an individual.  We each have an energy field that encompasses and surrounds our bodies.  Research has shown that this field is related to homeostasis or balance within all aspects of our lives. (See Science of Energy Healing blog post for more details).  In some types of energy healing, practitioners will work on the biofield in general.  They will not distinguish between the different levels. Reiki and Therapeutic Touch are good examples of working on the field as a whole.

Brennan Healing will distinguish between 7 levels of the field, but there are even more.  The odd levels are structured levels and appear like a grid.  The even levels are fluid and can look like clouds. Depending on what’s going on in your life, the energy may be moving quickly or slowly.  Your field can be tightly compressed to your body or expanded to a large area around you.

Chakras

Energy healing also encompasses work with the chakras.  Chakras can also be understood as energy centers which filter or digest energy between our bodies and the world.  There are 7 major ones which you can see in the top picture of this post.  Many energy practitioners would agree on their locations and their general colour.

Chakra Location Colour
1 Base of the body Red
2 Sacral (below belly button) Orange
3 Solar Plexus (above belly button) Yellow
4 Heart Green
5 Throat Blue
6 Forehead Indigo
7 Crown (top of head) White/Violet

 

Some energy healers know the locations and may balance a person’s chakras but may not have a comprehensive understanding of them.  Brennan Healing involves studying the chakras and getting to know their functions well.

Most of the chakras on a person’s back are related to a person’s will.  Many on the front are related to emotions.  The chakras on your head are related to reason.  Our chakras and biofield change all the time based on how we are feeling and what we are doing. Some of us are very comfortable with expressing emotions and will have more open chakras on our fronts, others will have more open reason or will chakras.  We tend to have a dominant area of chakras that are most open.

Chakras 102 – Psychological Functions

I remember when I took some Anatomy courses at Mcmaster University, I was in awe of the human body.  I realized that a person could spend a life-time on one small area or system of the body and never know everything.  The same goes for chakras.  Chakras are complex and have incredible depth.  Barbara Brennan’s Book, Hands of Light is a great resource if you’re interested in learning more.  Here is a brief highlight of the psychological function of each chakra as summarized from Hands of Light.

The letter “A” represents the front of the body and the letter “B” represents the back of the body

1     Quantity of physical energy, will to live

2A  Quality of love in relationship. Quality of giving & receiving sexual pleasure

2B   Quantity of sexual energy

3A    Sense of who you are/feeling of belonging in the universe

3B    One’s intention towards one’s physical health

4A    Heart feelings of love for another human being

4B    Related to going after what we want in the world

5A    Taking responsibility for our personal needs & the ability to take what is given to us

5B    Your sense of self within society, your profession, peers

6A   Capacity to visualize and understand mental concepts

6B   Bringing your ideas into the world

7      Connection to spirituality & integration of it into life

Another similarity between energy healers, is that we can all tune into the biofield and the chakras.  Some people are born seeing people’s fields (auras) and others (like me) have learned to develop their sixth sense to do so.  I don’t walk around “looking” at other people’s energy fields.  During an energy healing session, I will “tune into” a person’s field.  Barbara Brennan was an individual who believed that everyone could be taught this – it is not something available only to a few people.

Reiki is a great introduction into energy healing if you’re looking for a place to start.  You can learn Reiki in a few weekends. Brennan Healing is a comprehensive 4-year program which dives deeper into the field of energy healing. I am the kind of person who likes to understand things.  I wanted to know more about energy healing and what it was people are doing when they were working in my energy field.  I have had experiences where people were working in my energy field and didn’t really know what they were doing – they were just guessing.

Which Type of Energy Healing is Best?

Like choosing a therapist, choosing an energy healer is a personal choice.  The most important things are finding someone you connect and feel safe with.  Even better if the healer has experience working with the issue that you’re experiencing.  There are many types of energy healing, pick one or two that you are intuitively drawn to and learn more about them.

Filed Under: Energy Healing Articles Tagged With: Barbara Brennan, Biofield, Brennan Healing, Chakras, Hands of Light, Reiki, Therapeutic Touch

The Force Awakens: My Journey into Energy Healing

September 24, 2017 by Juanita Lepage Leave a Comment

Journey into Energy Healing

Episode I: Reiki

My journey into energy healing happened almost by accident.  It was the year 2005 and I was newly living in Milton, Ontario with my husband. I was working full-time and looking for something interesting to do in my spare time.  One of my sisters had finished a weekend course in Reiki, and when I saw Reiki mentioned in a local community centre, I decided to try it out.  I joined a group of 10 people of all ages in Mississauga and we met weekly for a few weeks.  I was introduced to an age-old way of healing -healing with hands. Reiki involves light touch in specific positions on the body while a person is resting quietly on a table, fully clothed.  It is a taught by a Reiki Master.  How it is taught will vary depending on your teacher, but the principles will be the same.

I decided to continue with this group to learn Reiki level 2.  We were introduced to how to use energy healing with the use of intentions. I tried it out.  I set my intention to move to Vancouver and find a job effortlessly within the next few months.  3 months later in the Spring of 2006, I was living and working in Vancouver with a government job in the field of child and youth mental health. I was impressed and my curiosity deepened.

Episode II: The Experimental phase

In Vancouver, I got involved with a Reiki-share where practitioners practice their skills with each other.  I learned about other techniques that were related and took a weekend course in the Emotion Freedom Technique – which was a combination of tapping points on the body and the use of affirmations.

I went to an evening workshop with a woman who had started her own energy healing school. We had a person with an injury on his leg. She invited us to lightly hold our hands over his legs and see if we could sense where the injury was located.  We could all feel where his injury was located – each in our own way.

I wanted to expand my learning about energy healing and joined a 3-year program at Langara College.  The program involved multiple week-long retreats throughout the year.  I never completed that program, but I was introduced to energy healing in more depth.  Perhaps the greatest gift I received from that program was a book in the curriculum, “Hands of Light” by Barbara Brennan. One of my classmates and I discussed how it would be great to attend the Barbara Brennan School of Healing instead of attending a school that was based on some of her principles.  It would be like learning Reiki from the original master who started it all instead learning it from one of his students.

Episode III:  The Dark Side

Then life took a turn in 2007, I had a miscarriage and subsequently entered a depression.  This was a good impetus to start my own psychotherapy and take a leave from my job. It also prompted a move back to Ontario to be closer to family support.  While in Vancouver, I briefly saw a psychologist who also used energy healing in her practice.

It took time to heal from that depression.  I would say that it was over 2 years before I felt fully like myself again.

Episode IV: Training/Apprenticeship

Back in Ontario, I was fortunate to give birth to two boys.  I also found a great new job as a social worker/psychotherapist in child and youth mental health at McMaster Children’s Hospital.

The desire to go to Barbara Brennan School of Healing (BBSH) had lain dormant for many years, but I carried it with me.  I attended one of school’s Hands of Light Workshops and was deeply impressed by the skill level and frankness in answers.  The teachers weren’t wishy-washy and answered the questions I had satisfactorily. So, in 2012, I started my journey with BBSH.

Occasionally, I meet someone who is highly intuitive, they have been so since childhood, they can see auras, they can bend metal with their intention, or do other things that defy the laws of science that I have been taught in school.  I was never one of these people. At BBSH we were taught that anyone can learn to develop their sixth sense, and indeed that it is what I did.  Everyone has different ways to sense the energy fields around us, but all of us have the ability.

The school taught me to skillfully offer hands on healing.  I learned about chakras and felt them too. I learned about the 7 levels of our energy field and what each level represented.  I can work with someone and get see what depression looks like in their field.  This didn’t happen overnight and developed over the 4 years of the school.  Even now, while I have a very comprehensive understanding of energy healing, I continue to learn more in this field that keeps gathering momentum.

Episode V: Energy healing and Mental Health

While I thought I had fully recovered from my depression after my miscarriage, there were deeper parts that still needed to be healed.  On the surface these were not obvious, but many pains remained.  Throughout the 4 years of school, a combination of psychotherapy and energy healing helped me to heal at a deeper level.

I am a person who has worked in a traditional medical system with child and youth mental health and have a lot of appreciation for the people who work within it. These are highly skilled individuals with great compassion.  Yet, anyone in the field of mental health will agree that the current system for healing in child and youth mental health is an ever-growing field with a lot of past mistakes and a continual shift in recommended psychotherapeutic techniques.

Energy healing is new edge in the field of mental health.  I have seen it help those I’ve worked with and it has also helped me tremendously. There many frustrated people with mental health issues who have tried many different options.  Energy healing can be a new avenue to explore.

Episode VI: Private Practice

2017 was a year of many changes including the beginning of a private practice where I offer energy healing or a combination of energy healing and psychotherapy. While I live in France, I am offering sessions virtually with plans to additionally offer in-person sessions in Ontario starting in January 2018.

Filed Under: Energy Healing Articles Tagged With: Barbara Brennan, energy healing, Mental Health, Reiki

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