energetic anatomy of the hand

Hands are fascinating. If you're into alternative therapies at all, you're probably familiar with reflexology--which is based on the idea that every part of the body is reflected in miniature in the hands, feet, and ears. By working on the corresponding part of the hand or foot or ear, another part of the body can be healed.

Image here.

I had an interesting experience with this in college--a roommate, marathon runner, had run for 18 miles that morning and come home to a gigantic hamstring cramp. I massaged that muscle for an hour and nothing seemed to help. She was in such pain! Finally I had the thought to search for a reflexology chart. I pulled one up for feet, found the corresponding area on her foot, and dug my thumb into the spot. Her hamstring came unclenched immediately and everything was fine.

But there's more to the hands than that!

The lines of the hands are formed when a child is just three months old... in the womb. At twelve weeks' gestation, the lines of the hands are already created. As we go through life, our handprints change along with our personalities. That is why fully trained chirologists and handanalysts can be so accurate. A person I know had his palm read by a hand reader about 30 years ago, and his analysis was apparently freakily accurate--down to what this guy's future wife looked like, where she was from, how many kids they would have, general life arc, etc. In my personal studies, as I have practiced handanalysis I have been happily surprised at how many of my practice subjects have been happily surprised at the accuracy of it!

But what I actually wanted to write about today was not the microcosm of the hand and physical body, but the microcosm of the hand and spiritual body.

One of the many modalities I practice is called jin shin jyutsu. It is a great modality. One thing it really relies on his hand "mudras," or postures, for healing. It works because the fingers contain so many nerve endings that directly connect to the brain. Each finger directly correlates to a particular emotion, so if you are struggling with a particular emotion, pinpointing the corresponding finger and applying a hand mudra to it can clear up emotional trauma fairly quickly.

Here is a chart of the fingers and their corresponding emotions:

Image here.

The acronym for the fingers, as you can deduce from the picture above, is Worry-FAST. The thumb corresponds to worry, the index finger to fear, the middle finger to anger, the ring finger to sorrow, and the pinky to preTense, or trying too hard to be something you're not.

The yang/masculine side is the right side; that would be the side relating to things that you do. Action. The yin/feminine side is the left side, relating to things that you are. Being.

So if you have an issue of, say, anger over something someone has done, you may find relief in wrapping the fingers of your left hand around the right middle finger and breathing deeply for a while. It usually takes about 5-10 minutes to get the energy flowing, and a really heavy-duty clearing would take place in under an hour. My experience is that 45 minutes is typically more than adequate for clearing stuff from the fingers.

I will tell the story of one of my first practice sessions with this modality--I wrapped my hands around the client's index fingers, and immediately, the person startled. Their hands were suddenly buzzing, throbbing, jerking around. It was all I could do to hold onto them and all the person could do to let me continue. There was a LOT of pent-up negative energy in those hands! I only worked on each finger for about fifteen seconds that time, but even that released a lot of stuff. If you have a lot of pent-up energy, using hand mudras this way, even on yourself, can be very effective.

If you have an issue of grief or sorrow, say you've lost someone you love, wrapping your right hand around the left ring finger for half an hour while breathing slowly can help release the energy of that grief.

At the same time, finger injuries can be very telling as to what is going on in the psyche of the afflicted. The more severe the injury, the more severe the emotions at play. Sometimes knowing this can be helpful; sometimes not. A lot of times our emotional ecologies are so far under the surface, it doesn't help to even guess at what they are deep down--because sometimes we don't even consciously register our true emotions. But I mention this phenomenon anyway in case anyone who has experienced trauma to the hands finds it enlightening.

Image here.

I myself sustained two minor hand injuries while gardening a few days ago, right at the base of my left index and middle fingers. Sure enough, at the root of my feminine/dependent nature, I have been dealing with some minor feelings of fear and anger relating to a person I depend on. My feelings have not been enough to be a big deal, but big enough to leave a literal mark, apparently!

Conclusion

Holding the fingers while breathing deeply can be an effective way to release energy associated with negative emotions. I recommend doing it while watching a relaxing TV show because that can lower your brainwaves into an alpha state, one of the more effective brain states for releasing emotion. The hands are connected in powerful ways to the brain and when we are aware of this and use the connections wisely, we can benefit in so many ways!

Follow the Spirit: learn your baseline

In the Home Healing Course I'm teaching, we spent the past week studying intuition (among other things). A bunch of people commented that they wished they'd known this one technique for their whole lives, so I'm just going to share it here in the hopes that it helps others.

The secret trick: every time I pray with a question now, I have God remind me ahead of time what yes and no feel like.

So the other night, I had this weird experience where I was supposed to go to a social event, and when I got there, I started feeling like the Holy Ghost was telling me not to go. This was basically an enrichment activity involving just a bunch of people from the ward, and so I was very confused. Why would I be told not to go to that?

So I ignored the prompting, got out of my car and headed toward the house, only to be told over and over again not to go, not to go. So I went back to my car and prayed.

Image here.

Fortunately, I had this tool in my tool belt. I prayed for God to remind me what a "yes" feels like, and I allowed myself to feel that for a few moments. Then I prayed for God to remind me what a "no" feels like, and I allowed myself to feel the difference.

Then I prayed again, asking: should I be here? (No.) Should I go home now? (Yes.)

I went ahead and phrased my questions different ways--Can I go in? Should I leave right this minute? Do I need to be at home tonight? Just testing my answers' consistency. When the answers all matched, I ended up turning the car back on and driving on home, just on faith. I wanted to go be with friends but as soon as I acted on my prompting I instantly felt better. When I got home I felt to ask my husband for a blessing, for all my confused feelings. The blessing basically was like, "Good work following the Spirit!" and that was that. So I have no idea what that all was about, but I did have a good time alone repackaging my long-term food storage and listening to Har Hari Haray Wahe Guru over and over on YouTube.

That story is just an example, though, of this principle in action. I believe I was inspired to begin asking God for these reminders of what yes and no feel like. Getting answers to prayers can be hard enough without having to guess if the feeling you're getting is a yes or a no.

So, a challenge: spend some time this week with God just learning what a "yes" and a "no" feel like. Go ahead and take it a step further, if you want, and ask what a "deceptive no" feels like--the most convincing false yes that the adversary could plant in your heart. Practice discerning the difference. Watch how much more easily you will be able to discern the yes-no answers to prayers as you live your daily life. Where it used to take me personally quite a while, sometimes, to understand if I was getting a yes or no about something, now it does not take long at all. I still ask for reminders of yes and no at the beginning of important prayers, but overall I am much more confident at knowing that when I get a feeling, I will be able to recognize it for the answer it actually is.

Yes Feeling Samples

Image here.

Talking to random people who have tried this, "Yes" feelings seem to tend to include:

- feelings of light or warmth of tingling in the lungs and face
- feelings of spiritual expansion
- feelings of energy rising in the body
- feelings of spiritual "smiling"
- open feelings in the heart area

No Feeling Samples

- feelings of being closed off
- energy sinking downward instead of upward
- tingling on different parts of the body (my guts sometimes tingle, or a friend's ears tingle)
- feelings of constriction

False Yes Feeling Samples

- dizziness
- energy moving around, but not in the same way as a yes
- different body parts tingling than you would feel in a yes or a no

Everyone Is Different

It's important to figure out for yourself what your baseline is. You might have the same yes and no feelings that I do, or you might not. I suspect it's like muscle testing. For most people, if they stand up and ask themselves what their name is, their body will sway one direction or another as an answer. But for some people, instead of swaying, their body will make, for example, the right arm tingle or lift for yes, and the left arm tingle or lift for no. That's not wrong. It's just different. There are lots of different ways a yes or a no feeling might manifest for a person, but it's up to you to discover what those manifestations look like for you.

Personal prayer. Image from lds.org.

And it's so, so important to learn what a deceptive no feels like. The adversary wants us to fail when we seek answers from God. The more important the issue is that we're praying over, the more he will try and influence us falsely. If God's answer is no but the adversary's answer is yes, you need to be able to recognize what that feels like.

Similarly, you need to be able to recognize feelings of "yes" as being from God, because sometimes God tells us answers we don't want to hear. "Yes" feelings for me are not particularly comfortable. So if all I asked was a yes or no question and I got that uncomfortable sensation of yes, that buzziness in my chest, if I didn't know any better I could easily just tell myself that my answer was a no, because what would I have to compare it to? And a lot of times I think people seeking answers expect them to come in a specific way, without asking God if that specific way is appropriate for them or not.

Also, I'll mention that another thing I like to do is specifically pray that God will send me answers in a way that is unmistakeable, that I will fully understand. God will always send us answers, but there's no guarantee we'll understand them unless we ask for that understanding too!

God is not going to lead you astray with this. If you go directly to Him to get your baseline, He'll be happy to give it to you. He wants you to be able to easily discern between yes and no. I believe it's actually one of His big goals for all of His children. So I challenge you to spend some time this week practicing with this. Get on your knees and ask Him what yes and no feel like. Ask Him a question and ask Him to give you the answer in a way you won't be able to misinterpret. Notice the difference in the quality of your prayers.

Believe! Witness miracles!

how people absorb emotions from others

One thing I run into a lot is the absorption of other people's emotions.

I don't just mean in myself, although that does happen, but in my work, it is often the case that a client's unexplained emotions or pains are actually the result of absorbing emotions from other people. Some people are just very prone to doing that.

So I want to talk about why and how this is, and how you can protect yourself. This post is an introduction to emotion absorption.

The mechanics of emotion absorption

We all have dual natures: we are both physical and spiritual beings. Part of our spiritual anatomy involves things called "chakras," the Sanskrit word for "wheels," or "vortexes." The Christian scriptures refer to them as "wheels" and Ezekiel 1 teaches that the spirit is in the wheels.

The vortex-like nature of these wheels make it so things can get kind of sucked into them. If you don't protect yourself, you can end up sucking up all sorts of energy into those wheels. Ideally, we would only absorb energies that would make us better and stronger, but often people don't live their lives in a very conscious state, and so they just allow whatever is there to enter their energy system.

Everything has energy. The music you listen to is made of sound waves--vibrations--and if that musical energy, if that song's energy, is good or bad, it will end up stuck to your energy and affecting you, unless you take steps to stop it. But this doesn't just go for music: it goes for food. Friendships. Hatreds. Technologies. Everything. Everything and everyone has energy and we all give it to and take it from each other.

You could argue that a good chunk of Christian teaching--and most spiritual teachings--is two-fold in message: to only give off the highest possible energy to those around you, and to avoid or prevent negative energy from others or events or actions to penetrate or lodge in you. We learn from the scriptures and the modern prophets to deny ourselves all ungodliness, and to love those that hate us. Since love cancels out negative vibrations, this is a very powerful energetic teaching for human spiritual and physical health.

Etheric cords. Image here.

A short explanation of emotion absorption, though, is that our spirits can siphon off negative (or positive) emotions from each other and store them in ourselves. I believe that mechanically this occurs via a thing called etheric cords--the energetic connections between people. If you have spiritual sight, the gift of discernment of spirits, these are the white-blue or black lines connecting people to each other. The blue ones are two-way and good; the black ones are one-way and bad. The blue ones mean the people give and take each other's energy roughly equally; the black ones mean one person is siphoning off the other person's energies and not replacing them. Not everyone "sees" energy in this way, but that is how I personally see it.

People can have more than one cord to another person. For example, a mother might have two, three, four, or more etheric cords extending from different parts of her energy to her child. Hopefully married people have cords to and from each other's root chakras, and separate cords to and from their heart chakras and chakras in their heads. It's possible to have healthy and unhealthy cords between the same two people.

Conclusion

There is a physical mechanism for the phenomenon of feeling like someone energizes you, or conversely, feeling like someone is sucking you energetically dry. People give and take each other's energy through "etheric cords." Some are energizing and some are the opposite. This is also how people give and absorb emotions to each other.

rid your stuff of negative energy

A few weeks back a reader emailed me wondering how to get rid of the bad energy surrounding a book she'd gotten used. It was a great question.

Everything in the world is made out of energy. Our belongings all have their own energy fields, just as our bodies do. And even within the body, each organ has its own energy field. Everything has energy.
So sometimes we get objects that just have bad energy to them. You would recognize this as "bad vibes," or just a feeling that something is off. If this feeling is consistent, your object may be carrying some residual bad vibes from its past.  Many people don't realize that used items--and even new items--can come previously infected with negative energy.

Image here.

The easiest way to remove negative energy from something is to pray in faith for the negative energy to be neutralized or removed. The trick to effective prayer is visualization: ask for the negative energy to go, but then visualize or imagine it going. If you can't imagine it going, then just imagine what it would feel like to imagine it going. That can be good enough!

You can muscle test on if you own any items that need associated negative energy cleared. Your subconscious will know the answer to that. And you can muscle test after you pray for the clearing, to be sure it went through.

Other ways to clear things of negative energy are to sprinkle it with baking soda, sea salt or Himalayan salt or other natural salt, sage smudge it or use sage essential oil on it and the area around it, or leave it out in moonlight. Or bury it in a good patch of earth. But using prayer and intention is the easiest way.

Conclusion

Items and objects can carry negative energy. Your subconscious mind recognizes this subtle energy and can respond accurately to its presence through muscle testing. Prayer with visualization can be an effective way to clear negative energy from an object or a space.

5 ways to get grounded

Being grounded is crucial to accurate muscle testing and to being able to fall asleep easily at night. Whenever your brain seems to be going into overdrive, it's a good idea to ground. Grounding helps you feel calm, centered, and competent. The more grounded you are, the better able you are to handle the stressful stuff that comes up in life every day.

So how do you do get grounded?

Grounding basically is the art of reconnecting your body's energy to the earth's energy. So one easy way to do this is to go interact with nature.

But if you're not able to go hug a tree or take a walk, there are other ways to ground.

1. Eagle Pose 

In Eagle Pose, you cross your legs and ankles and arms and hands. This gets the right and left sides of the brain working together.

This fancy picture I found is good, but for our purposes you don't need to do it exactly the way described. No squeezing legs or ribs sucked in. Just crossing the arms and legs. You can do it sitting. Sometimes I do it in bed, lying down.

Do it one way, then uncross and do it the other way, 20 seconds on each side, with deep breaths. Keep muscle testing for if you are grounded in between. Usually a few cycles of this will ground you well.

2. Visualize roots. 

One thing I often do is visualize myself growing roots into the earth. Okay, I am not a very visual person, actually. How it really works for me is, I close my eyes and decide that I am now growing roots into the earth, and then I attempt to picture something like this:

From someone's pinterest.

You don't have to be sitting, though. Sometimes while standing I imagine roots growing out of my feet into the floor. It works!

3. Cocoon in the earth. 

I just started doing this in the past week, but I already love it! It's perfect for when you're trying to sleep but just can't. I imagine my energy wrapping around me like a cocoon, and then I imagine me in my cocoon, in the middle of the earth, underground. It's very calming. If I were a better artist I'd draw you a picture of what I envision. It's beautiful.

4. Command yourself to ground.

Sometimes I just say out loud, with intention: "I command myself to be grounded now." Say it three times and re-test. Sometimes this works.

5. Do something that reconnects your body to your mind.

For example, I've read of people who ground by mindfully putting on lotion, or taking a bath. It all comes down to connecting your body and mind to each other and to the earth. So living more mindfully will help you spend more of your time grounded.

Next time you muscle test, go ahead and ask if you're grounded. If you're not, try out one of these techniques! Find what works for you. It's a good thing!