My first energy healing session: skepticism, sensations, and a softer heart

I booked my first energy healing session out of curiosity disguised as research. Friends described warmth surging through their bodies and tears arriving from nowhere; my inner skeptic rolled its eyes. Still, I wanted to test it in good faith. The practitioner, Mara, welcomed me into a quiet studio with plants, a salt lamp, and the faint scent of frankincense. We spoke for ten minutes about sleep, stress, and the buzzing between my shoulder blades that always flared during deadlines.

I lay on a massage table fully clothed. Mara invited a few slow breaths, placed one hand at my crown, another near my heart, and the room fell into a cathedral hush. Within minutes I felt heat pooling where her palms hovered, then a subtle pulsing as if my body were breathing in places I’d never noticed. My mind tried to narrate (“Probably the power of suggestion”), but the sensations persisted regardless of commentary.

When she moved to my solar plexus, emotion surfaced like a tide coming in. Not a cinematic sob—more a pressure behind the sternum, a lump dissolving. Mara said nothing; she simply kept her hands still until the wave passed. The most peculiar moment came when she worked near my throat: a spontaneous swallow, then a feeling like a knot untying. I flashed to a conversation I’d been postponing for months. The session finished with a gentle sweep along the edges of my aura (a word I’d avoided using until that day). She offered water and suggested easy movement—nothing intense—for the next twenty-four hours.

The afterglow surprised me. Colors felt brighter on the walk home; my posture, taller. That evening I slept nine uninterrupted hours, which hadn’t happened in weeks. Over the next few days, the buzzing between my shoulder blades quieted and my temper did, too. I finally scheduled the hard conversation. It went better than imagined, not because the other person changed, but because I did—I spoke without defensiveness, asked questions, paused before filling silence.

Was it placebo? Perhaps. But I noticed that dismissing relief because it might be placebo is another form of self-sabotage. If the method is ethical, gentle, and effective, I’m content to let mystery coexist with physiology. Mara framed it well: energy healing doesn’t replace medical care; it complements it by helping the nervous system remember safety. Safety, I learned, makes every other kind of healing easier.

Two weeks later, the shoulder buzz returned faintly before a big presentation. I practiced the breathing Mara had taught me—inhale to four, exhale to six while placing a hand over the area. The sensation eased. That, to me, was the real value: not outsourcing peace to a practitioner, but recovering tools to participate in my own regulation.

I remain a respectful skeptic. I also booked another session.