Let's talk about intent. What do you intend to do today? How do you set intent when you heal or do energy work, or be with other people?
What is intent? Well, it’s what you mean to do. When you go to work you intend to finish some project or reach some goal. When you interact with people, what is your intent? How do you want to come across? Do you worry about how you come across when you work with people?
As a healer, an energy worker, a massage therapist, I have to have perfect intent in order to do what I need to do. If I don't, I can upset people unnecessarily, hurt them, make them angry. For a holistic healer, intent is the core basis of what we do. For an energy worker, intent is 90% of the process.
Let's start with one of the things I do, massage. In this field especially, intent must be perfect. I may be working on someone of the opposite sex. They are laying on the table wearing nothing but a sheet. During a massage session, literally the entire back of the body is worked. Now, in doing a session, my mind has to be focused on one thing, healing. You see, because of the energy one gives off, it is easily noticeable if the therapist's thoughts stray. If I were to go into a session thinking of sex, my client would sense that and become very uncomfortable. This is especially true when working the buttocks, an area not normally touched in every day occurrences. This is where the intent and mindset have to be on healing. I was once told by a massage therapist whom I traded with that she had received massage from only two people whose intent was almost pure, and I was one of them. Finding someone with absolute pure intent is practically impossible.
Now as an energy healer, intent takes on a whole new meaning. True, it acts to set the mood and expectations as in massage, but here it helps direct and give purpose to the energy which helps accomplish the goal. Basically, if you intend to heal, you will. No matter what hand positions you have, no matter what your training is, if you intend to heal, you will simply because your intention creates the necessary healing energy. Now, don't get me wrong. I am not saying intent can replace training and attunements. Anyone with the intent to heal can create and send healing energy, but without the proper training, they can never be as powerful as they could with it.
How does one set intent? They do it by knowing what they want to do, and centering on that. Obviously during a healing or massage session, other thoughts can come into one’s mind. Like in massage a couple of the chakra points we send energy into during a Reiki session are very personal, and can be construed as inappropriate touch. Some practitioners (myself included) get nervous touching certain areas. Now, obviously the procedure is to raise one’s hands, but I have found it better to touch because many people can’t feel the energy, and if you are touching, they have confidence that you are doing something. I know that I may have a second’s hesitation when working above a woman’s breasts. If I use the standard position, that would place one hand on each breast, something I’m not about to do. I alter the position so that one hand is touching below the breasts, and one just above. I also use a very light touch (something I do normally) so it is not offensive. But there is for a second that ‘not wanting to be construed as something other than what is intended’ nervousness. When thoughts like these pop into one’s head, they must throw them out, and re-center on the intention of what they are doing.
There are many styles of Reiki. They use different hand positions, different moves, different timings. Yet they all heal. They work because the practitioner's intent is to heal. Intent without training can help, but training without intent is worthless. In class we may get together to do group healing, and we may have people that do not know Reiki or any other type of energy healing. We have them join in because as long as they intend to heal, they will add to what the rest of us are doing.
With all energy methods, it comes down to what one wants to do, or intends to do. That is the basis for everything. You can astral project to help someone if that is your intent, and it is strong enough to override doubt. Anything you want to do with energy starts with intent.
So, what do you intend to do today?