I am always looking for new tools for myself and others to help me with self-perfection, healing and empowerment. I think understanding subtle energies is one of those tools. So in the library, I decided to type “energy body” in the keyword search.
This led me to Robert Bruce’s book. I was immediately drawn in when I read the introduction to how the author discovered Body Awareness Tactile Imaging to better teach energy to blind students. Since energy is most commonly taught through visualization, as a teacher, I was fascinated with another approach. In teaching, being able to alter the way you present information to different students to maximize their understanding is a highly desirable skill. Since the vast majority of people have difficulty visualizing, I wanted to learn the technique myself.
Body Awareness Tactile Imaging is about moving your sense of touch through your body. The first practice exercise she recommends trying is to lightly rub or scratch a specific area to help focus body awareness. For example, rub your knee to cause a slight tingling. Feel the tingling. Then find more knee and move further away from it like a joint. Move your point of body awareness around the knee as if you were bandaging it. You can test this at any point on your body. The touch helps you focus on the point, but with practice you don’t need to rub or scratch the area you are focusing on.
Most exercises involve creating some kind of physical stimulation to create a memory to draw from. This is the same as visualization. The mind relies on memory to aid it in energy work.
Bruce also had other helpful tips. To calm your mind, she suggests keeping a journal before a relaxation or energy work session. If the mind starts to chatter, say firmly, “I choose not to think about it. I choose to relax and clear my mind.”
By Chapter 3, you will be creating energy balls and learning different energy work actions that will help you manipulate energy. Bruce guides you on how to use the inhalation and exhalation of the breath with each action; This is something that I use and teach myself.
The book covers the work of the chakras, or as Bruce calls it “primary energy center work”, as well as the charging of energy with intention, energy blockages, self-healing, and the healing of others with energy. There is A LOT of information in the book and it covers the subject of energy work quite thoroughly. I still haven’t digested it all.
Bruce swipes the display with the touch image (ie “creates a green ball”). Also, at various points, Bruce’s perspective of energy didn’t align perfectly with mine. However, I would still recommend this book to anyone looking to deepen their understanding of the energy body and its systems. He explains things simply and systematically in an accessible and grounded style that I appreciate. I think it would be particularly helpful for Reiki practitioners, as well as other healers who work or want to work with energy.
