Have you ever asked yourself, how do I unwind? How do I self-regulate? How do I calm the thought down? Seek no further. We are excited to be in conversation with our friend and fellow Sage + Sound practitioner, Nicholas Pratley, to discuss answers by talking through his new treatment, Energy Medicine.
“We really are our best doctors, our best healers. If we feel into the emotion, the energy starts to move. If the energy is moving, we get closer to the cause. If I'm getting closer to my root cause, then I'm reducing inflammation, which is the cause of all disease. And I'm self-healing. Self-regulating.” -Nicholas Pratley
Let’s start with a little background information. Why “Energy Healing”?
If we treat the energetic body and we optimize the energetic body, we optimize the physical body. We're so wired into focusing on just the physical experience that we leave out this energetic experience. If we include both, then we're a whole. If we're leaving out a piece, we're separated in some way. When I can get somebody into a state where they can feel their own energy and they feel bigger than just the physical inside their own psyche, the synapses of their brain are firing a different way to remember their own wholeness, and I think it's such an important thing to be doing right now. As the world reorganizes itself and we try to figure out where we belong, we need these reminders of what our own natural intelligence is.
What is “the energetic body”?
We all respond and react energetically without even realizing. Like you get an instinct to not walk that way. You feel attracted to somebody, you like their energy, you go and sit next to them and spark a new friendship. We’re responding energetically all the time, and we're responding like that because we're energetic beings. We have energetic pathways that move through the body. We open those pathways and more energy floods in—we feel more vibrant and full of vital life force energy. So when we learn what our responses mean and we're tuned into that energy, we start to have a stronger sense of it.
What can one expect from taking an “Energy Medicine” session?
The energy that I focus on more in these treatments is from the physical body to the energetic body layer, rather to the mental layer, to the spiritual layer, to the luminous layer. And in the treatments, I'm using your luminous layer. Yes, I'm there as a guide, but I'm really using your own luminous layer to come back into the body. These treatments are designed to slow you down, to let you connect to your energy, to let you process energy that you've been avoiding so that you feel you understand that, it’s not that big. It’s the perception of it being bigger than it really is.
And what is the luminous layer?
I liken it to when you look up at the moon and you can see the rainbow layer around the moon. That's your spiritual layer. And if you look beyond that, there is a white layer on the other side of the rainbow layer, but we're usually focused on the color that we forget the white part. And so we have the same thing. The moon is not having a physical, emotional, mental experience, but it is having a virtual and luminous experience. Our field looks the same way, and we often talk about feeling like a big ball of energy or saying a child is like one big ball of energy. When you feel that, or you notice that in somebody, they are connected to every layer of their field—of their bio field. We are receiving light, and it's being interpreted by our cells and we're either growing or not. That's what this session, in part, does. It's helping you interpret light that your body is supposed to be receiving more of.
So, I book an appointment for Energy Medicine. What can I expect when I walk into class?
We connect and talk a little bit about what’s going on for you. It might be that you're having the best time of your life and you're happier and more free than you've ever been, but you're not feeling all of that and you feel constricted in some areas. You can be wherever you are. We just check in, see where you are. We set an intention. You lie down. I track through your body and just connect. I can see and feel energy so I can see and feel where the stagnation is, or where the fractures in the field are. Then I work with all the integration points in the body where stuck emotion or energy can live, and I charge that space with energy. We charge a spot, we release a spot, and then we fill that spot with good energy with your own luminous light.
Is Energy Medicine for certain people and not for others?
No. Part of my intention, when I'm treating somebody, is to get them into a state of relaxation where the nervous system can do its own work. The nervous system has its own natural intelligence that already knows how to self-regulate. The breath is deep enough and the energy around the nervous system is rich enough—it can do its own job. Often, for people who have been sick or have had pain, it starts to either go away or shift. So I want to get somebody into a state where we can bring the nervous system online and they can feel their own self-regulation, which is another way of being connected to your energy. Some people fall asleep, some people feel rushes of energy, some people are wide awake and just feel peaceful. People usually go into a very peaceful state and the purpose is to clear whatever is in the way and to optimize your energetic body with your own luminous energy. If we optimize the energetic body, we're optimizing the physical way.
Is there any preparation recommended prior to coming to class?
I think you come as you are. The more relaxed your nervous system is, the better. The point of the treatment is to specifically relax the nervous system. I think as a practice, day to day, just noticing where your emotional life is. I always instruct people to notice where your emotions are. Where are they sitting in your body? Put a hand there, just like when you put your hand on somebody that you love on their shoulder and they break down into tears because they're feeling somebody hold space for them. Breathing into it lets the energy move, and it's about being in the practice of what's present for you because the more you do it, the easier it gets. And the more you do it, the more the energy moves. This is a muscle that we're training. You’re reminding your brain that it’s safe, you're reminding your nervous system that you're allowed to feel. And we're not taught to do that.
It's clear that the goal is to leave the class feeling more peaceful, more present in your body, more connected, but what are some things that you hope somebody continues doing afterwards?
Any type of energy flow work, which is breathwork, sound healing, energy, medicine, meditation, yoga, being in nature, playing with your dog, anything that allows the energy to flow. When we're connected to our energy, we're connected to everything. They come into the session, they feel a palpable sense of what that actually means. When you're in that state and space, you can feel well. You have a sense of what I need to do for myself so that I feel that more often than not. Would it be helpful for me after this to go be around toxic people that I know I shouldn't be around? No. Would it be helpful for me to get into nature? Probably. Would it be helpful for me to have a cup of coffee? Maybe not. Would it be helpful for me to go and tell my husband I love him? Maybe. You start to feel you have a different sense of what nurtures your energy, what enhances your energy versus depletes your energy. So my hope would be that people have a stronger awareness of how to enhance versus deplete their energy. The more they do that, the stronger that muscle gets.
“Energy” or “medicine” can sound a certain way to some people who aren't familiar with this space. What do you think the biggest misconception is when we're talking about Energy Healing work?
If we're willing to slow down enough to really feel what we believe because we believe and not because somebody else is telling us to believe it, we already know we're energy and that we can feel certain things and that there is something else going on.
Could you ever misinterpret your energy?
That's an important piece of the work because there's a reset that can happen there. We're so overstimulated and it takes a minute to unwind, and that's probably the biggest thing that I want people to understand with the work. Because everything is so outward and so fast now, our nervous systems are wired to not only leave self but be in fight or flight. While you're really learning to listen and decipher, it takes a minute to figure out. But again, the key is to just be in the practice of feeling where you are, and the more you do it, the stronger the muscle gets. The stronger the muscle gets, the better you feel and the more discerning you can become. Right. But if we're not discerning and not feeling, we’re creating more distance between ourselves and what the energy is trying to tell us.
Energy Medicine with Nicholas Pratley begins February 4, 2023. Book your class here.
