Healing class this morning was lovely. Here is one of the techniques or healing concepts we explored:
BRIDGING
Bridging is the idea of connecting two areas or parts of a person that are disconnected. While it mostly comes up as an intrapersonal issue (within ourselves), bridges can also be built between ourselves and others, or between ourselves and our dreams. Quite often though, resolving internal divides resolves external divisions. As my mother so often says : “Magic begins on the inside!”
In hands-on healing, bridging is the act of placing your hands (or fingertips) in two different areas and intending a flow of energy through the clients body/aura between these two points. For example, one hand is placed on the hip and the other on the knee; this bridges the area between hip and knee, with a circuit of healing energy flowing between the healers hands. The healing energy will clear blockages in the thigh as well as repairing any broken or tangled energy lines.
In todays healing class there was a special emphasis on bridging the front and back bodies, or restoring energy flow between the front and the back of the body, especially in the base chakra area. You don’t have to place your hands on the physical body layer of the aura, obviously! Using intent (power of the mind), you can place your hands on one of the surrounding auric layers, with the palm of one hand facing the pelvis and the palm of the other facing the tailbone. You can do this quite literally and easily if the person is standing. If the client is laying down or sitting, simply imagine placing your hands on the front and the back of the base chakra.
In psychic surgery, a common form of bridging is to sew up a wound with needle and thread. Each thread is like a bridge in and of itself, joining one side of the wound with the other. These threads are energy lines. They provide structural support for the aura, while also acting as channels or vessels for energy to travel through. When all our energy lines are healthy and strong, the energy within them can traverse the entire mind-body and connect it together as one cohesive whole.
We have shamans in the class, so it’s always important to translate the more structural and literal language of the aura into shamanic terms, rich with nature-based visual metaphor. In shamanic healing the entire body is a landscape that you observe, interact with and travel through. Bridging, in shamanic terms, usually means building bridges in your visual imagination, between one part of the landscape and another. In a recent healing for example, I bridged a path across a muddy quagmire coming up in the clients life.
I laid a few long planks of wood over the quagmire so she could safely cross that section of her life without becoming bogged down and stuck. The bridge is by no means easy to traverse though; she will have to keep her wits about her and stay focused on keeping her balance! As the healer I want to provide a helping hand but the client’s journey is the client’s journey. That mud pool is there for a reason and could provide her with valuable growth.
As one student was exploring today, bridges can sometimes be escape mechanisms to avoid facing things. Instead of meeting things head-on, we skirt them, gloss over them, or let it all go over our heads…..
As a healer, balance intrigues me; we are always searching for this beautifully fluid, spiralling swing from yin to yang and back again. Some want to forge their own way through thick jungles without any help from others. Perhaps they take this too far at times, preferring to be swallowed alive rather than reaching out for the vine dangling nearby. Others refuse to even attempt difficult crossings unless someone else carries them across.
A little bit of struggle, challenge and hardship is good for us. If we can engage with difficulties in a balanced way, with an empowered blend of acceptance, good humour and compassion for ourselves and others, we can become stronger and wiser. What doesn’t work so well is playing the victim and getting stuck in self-pity and resentment. Or giving up in the face of obstacles. Or being bloody-minded and refusing to admit any kind of vulnerability or need for help. Or refusing to accept limits, such as our own physical mortality or need for rest. Showing ourselves kindness, we find the perfect balance; measuring risk and engaging only with those risks that are likely to build and strengthen us rather than destroying and disempowering us.
One of our shamanic students tapped into a few other forms of shamanic bridging today. Without being told anything about these techniques beforehand, she travelled through a very watery part of the landscape/aura by tunnelling under it. Tunnels are yet another form of bridging and in shamanic healing they are a little like portals that convey us from one reality/place/time to another. This is where transpersonal bridging comes in. The pegasus that carried the healer from one place to another while she was healing, was a transpersonal bridge, a bridge of spiritual support.
One of the newly developing shamanic students was a little baffled to find himself viewing breath-taking scenes from nature, but not getting any directions to actually do anything beyond hold the scene. As I explained to him, this is still a form of bridging. Bridging is all about reconnection and we can role-model reconnecting with a state of ‘being’ or ‘experiencing’ rather than needing to always be ‘doing’ healing. In this instance, the healing student was using imagery to access and convey specific moods, such as calm, majesty, peace, strength, awe and wonder. He was reconnecting each student with their hidden or inner strengths and reminding them of who they are.
Blessed Be
Om