Think of yourself as a spy whose mission is to detect how much in tune you really are with your life—the big picture and the details.
Whether revealing the hard truth about toxic relationships, your exhaustion level, or a thankless job, intuition is always trying to communicate, though you may not hear. It resides in a quiet place obscured by the chatter of everyday thoughts. I will take you there.
Prepare to raise your antennae. You’re constantly having intuitions about energy, but may not realize it. Suddenly, bam! A gut feeling, goose bumps, or a flash affirms what fuels or depletes you.
Intuitions can be positive. For instance, you’ll feel a burst of aliveness, clarity, or tension lifting about a new project. Or negative—your skin crawls or you wilt at the prospect of a sleazy business deal.
In the Positive Energy Program, you’ll get in the habit of intuitively tracking your energy response. As I do and teach my patients, you’ll identify information that zings and feels right. By noticing your energy’s fluctuations, you’ll get a jump on where you’re off-center—in relationships, health, and career—so you can change.
Intuition also involves picking up vibes. People and situations can give off welcoming positive energy that invigorates, or oppressive negative energy that repels.
Techniques for Sensing Positive and Negative Energy
In the mid-eighties when I’d just begun to expand my traditional psychiatric practice to include intuition and energy, I did plenty of experimenting. My good buddy for the first few years of this exploration was Michael Crichton, filmmaker, author and Harvard MD. A towering six-foot-nine, Michael has a wicked mix of intellect and humor with a cynical edge. For me, he was the perfect companion to investigate a dimension of health I’d never heard of in medical school: our body’s subtle energy system.
My world has never been the same; this was my initiation into Energy Psychiatry. I want to share with you our discoveries, and what I’ve been learning since.
Being able to sense and direct our life force gets positive energy going: we exude it, attract it, and can read it in others. Our subtle system is the engine that drives well-being. Acupuncture activates energy by placing tiny needles in meridian points in the body. So does exchanging good vibes with people.
First, I’ll teach you what energy feels like, a sublime experience that intuition conveys. You may perceive it as colors, light, or positive and negative vibes.
This program makes real for you what Energy Psychiatry is based on: that our bodies and spirits are microsystems of energy, and that health is about balance, which intuition helps us achieve.
Friends can be the best co-conspirators in charting the unknown.
Michael and I set out to experience energy, a real adventure given our “rational” medical backgrounds.
Make Changes Now: Experience Energy Through Body Scanning In The World
Sit beside your friend as she lies on her back on the floor or bed. Together, take a few deep, calming breaths. Once relaxed, observe your friend’s eyes, hair, clothes, then look further. Picture a capsule of light surrounding her body, what Carlos Castaneda calls “a luminous egg.” This is the energy you’re going to intuitively sense.
Start by cupping your hand a few feet over her head. Then slowly come closer. With the palm as your sensing device, notice a point at which you hit a subtle border of heat, coolness, pressure, a hum or vibration—the outer rim of her energy field.
Raise your hand, then lower it against the rim until you’re sure. It’s all about feel. You also may see colors. Similarly, continue to map the subtle energy around her entire body, without touching the skin.
When you’re finished, it’s your friend’s turn. Then compare notes.
What a hoot to realize we are more than our physical selves! Each of us radiates a palpable energy. In practical terms: Have you ever sat next to someone at a luncheon and were drawn to her immediately? It wasn’t so much what she said or did, but how refreshing she felt to be around. Or how about that coworker who seemed congenial, but you always left a conversation feeling run down?
An exchange occurs whenever you interact with someone.
Certain people give off positive energy, others negative. It’s the quality of someone’s being, a measure of the love with which they’ve led their lives.
It’s important to grasp, however, that once you undertake the process of healing, it changes the quality of even the negativity that remains. Don’t be too hard on yourself—we’re all works in progress.
Signs of positive energy:
- they exude an inviting sense of heart, compassion, and support
- you intuitively feel safe, relaxed, wanting to get closer; they emanate a peaceful glow
- you feel better around them
- your energy and optimism increase.
- you experience a sense of being demeaned, constricted, or attacked
- you intuitively feel unsafe, tense, or on guard
- you sense prickly, off-putting vibes
- you can’t wait to get away from them
- your energy starts to fizzle
- you may feel beleaguered or ill
This knowing wasn’t about looks or how nice a person seemed. Rather, I could sense invisible tendrils reaching out to me from a person that transmitted information about them. It would happen before we exchanged a word.
The confusing part for us is that people aren’t always as they appear. Sensing energy reveals a fuller picture.
I don’t care how intelligent or attractive someone is, if he zaps your energy, he isn’t for you. True chemistry is more than intellectual compatibility. Beyond surfaces, you must be intuitively at ease.
You can practice sensing positive and negative energy everywhere. Have fun. See what you find. The secret is to stand within two feet of someone—whether a coworker or shopper in the mall—and notice how he or she feels. Ask yourself: Am I attracted? Repelled? Unsettled or at ease? Honestly assess: Do I feel more robust or worn out?
Establish a baseline for each person. You’ll quickly know who nurtures you. If a loved one is in an arduous phase, try to cut him some slack. But also pinpoint those who consistently drag you down. Then, with a more realistic understanding, you can take better care of yourself.
I’m a big fan of being proactive in generating positive energy. The First Prescription’s formula for success: Do whatever makes your inner light brighter. In other words, try to treat yourself and everyone else with love.
It’s a constant process of tuning in: finding people who support your spirit, trusting your gut-centered decisions to guide you.
Then you won’t end up in a relationship that looks right but feels wrong. Or miss the chance to meet a loving man or woman because he or she doesn’t fit some preconception.
When you’re with trying people, aim for the high road; find common ground rather than inflame negativity.
The care with which you approach life is intuitively evident in your energy field.
We can feel each other’s love: that’s the great attraction.
Spread openheartedness around. Stay true to your intuition. Your positive energy will blossom.
Intuitive Empathy: How to Stay Open and not Absorb Negativity
In Energy Psychiatry, my patients use intuition to understand their energetic health, and also to scrutinize their reactions to positive and negative vibes.
So much happens to us that remains subliminal—the smile of a coworker; witnessing a devastating three-car pile-up while driving to work; the sight of children skating on Christmas Eve in Rockefeller Plaza—all pass through our consciousness so fast we may miss how each registers.
Intuition is a master at bringing our attention to interactions, large and subtle, that modulate our energy.
For many patients and myself, staying receptive to positive energy has been the easy part.
This openness I adore lets me live with more gratitude—for intimates, but also for Rick, my wisecracking Bronx-born plumber, and Khalsa, the white-turbaned mail carrier who, rain or shine, delivers packages to my door. The energetic quality of all our connections matter.
Every moment seems wildly extravagant. Sipping morning coffee or gazing at the galaxies above, appreciation of positive energy instills wonder in the days we so casually inhabit.
For me, negative energy has taken more getting used to.
An intuitive empath as a child, I was so attuned to people’s feelings, positive and negative, that I unknowingly absorbed them.
Normally, when you have empathy, your heart goes out to someone in distress. When you’re an intuitive empath, you take on their tribulations.
If a friend was upset or physically hurting, in a flash her discomfort would lodge in my body.
As I’ve explained, crowded places intensified my empathy. Whereas shopping malls are havens for some, for me they were war zones: I was bombarded by the swarms of people, but couldn’t explain why.
An angst-sucking sponge, I coped by shutting down. A teenager in the sixties, I numbed myself for a few years by taking drugs.
Finally a wise therapist referred me to a UCLA lab that studied intuition, where I could meet other empaths.
What a relief not to feel so out of control or alone. With their support, I developed ways to handle my empathy, to see it as a potent type of intuition, an asset.
Excerpt from Positive Energy: Ten Extraordinary Prescriptions for Transforming Fatigue, Stress, and Fear Into Vibrance, Strength, and Love, © 2005 by Judith Orloff, MD Three Rivers Press.
