The Benefits of Energy Awakening: How It Can Transform Your Life
Energy awakening is simple and natural. It happens through curious, loving self observation. Awakening energy can increase vitality, connection, and mental clarity. This article explores the transformative power of energy awakening and how it can positively impact your life.
What is energy awakening?
Awakening your energy is an inaccurate phrase. Your energy is always awake, doing the best it can for you. When you think and act out of balance, energy stagnates. We have been socialized to think we are independent, that we must work and consume things in order to have value in society. We extract from people, plants, animals, and the earth.
This is a profoundly imbalanced way to think and behave. It interrupts the natural, circular flow of giving and receiving with the natural world, separates us from life sustaining nature, and causes our energy to stagnate.
During most energy awakenings, the thing that wakes up is your heart. You are able to feel your place “in the family of things,” as Mary Oliver said. You let go of dysfunctional coping mechanisms that cause imbalance. More balanced, healthy behavior towards yourself and others follows. Health becomes a devotional, loving practice of care and nourishment, instead of just rules to follow. I am going to continue to use the phrase “energy awakening” as I write because it is a common way to describe the phenomenon.
Energy awakening can happen when you tap into the natural energy flow of your body and allow it to guide you. When you observe your body with love and curiosity, you allow the natural flow of energy in your body to balance itself in relationship to the world around you. This promotes healing. (See also Spontaneous Yoga Explained.)
Meditation, breath, yoga, and other practices can cause energy awakening. These techniques reduce stress and anxiety and quiet the mind. They also activate the body’s energy centers. When the mind gets quiet enough, energy can be felt and followed. Spontaneous movements, images, colors, or clear thoughts can arise to guide you towards overall well-being.
How do I awaken my energy?
Find a location where you feel safe. Orient yourself in space and time through your senses. Notice what you see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. Turn your body and head to look above you and behind you. Let yourself settle as best you can. Then, do your spiritual practice with loving, curious attention.
After you meditate, breathe, or practice a yoga posture, allow your body to take the lead, like you’d let a friend have the next sentence in a conversation. Get curious about what arises. You might feel to be still. You might feel to move. If there are movements, they might be big or small. Movements can sometimes be repetitive or one sided. Trust what comes, get curious, and let it develop. Cultivate a curious, loving attention towards your body as it spontaneously moves or is still. Watch your thoughts come and go.
The spontaneous stillness or movement may come to a completion. You can also ask the energy to find a completion. Then, you can stop your practice. Alternatively, you can do another round of willful spiritual practice. Then, allow your body to take the lead again. At the end of your practice, orient yourself in space and time again. (See also Yoga Bliss: How to Create a Calming Practice at Home)
Sometimes the movement of energy is powerfully insistent. If that is the case, set a timer. This will give the energy a contained time to move. Then, you can go about your day. Remember that energy, even powerful energy, responds to your intentions. You can develop a give and receive relationship with the energy. Your desire, especially a true, loving, creative desire, impacts the energy. This is true of dysfunctional desires, as well.
If the energy is very insistent, consider getting some help navigating it. I speak with folks in private sessions and before and after live classes in Spontaneous Yoga Membership. I also offer email support to Spontaneous Yoga Members. It’s $1.00 to try one month with the code HEART. I am purposely very financially accessible so that folks who may need help managing energy awakenings can get it easily. See my post on my energy awakening and how mystical experiences happen through the heart.
How can energy awakening transform my life?
By awakening your energy, you can allow the energy to guide you towards balance. There is a deep “peace that passes understanding” (Philippians 4:6, The Bible) and “uncaused joy” (Eckhart Tolle) that comes when you are in balance. The yogis call it bliss. Bliss can open your heart, clear your mind, and liberate you from dysfunctional ways of being.
Rather than only consuming, staying on top, thinking of yourself and your closest loved ones, accumulating stuff, you will start to give and take in a more balanced, loving, natural way. This can be scary for your ego, for the part of you that survives and copes. We are socialized to grab and take what we view as ours, to extract, rather than allow a natural flow of ups and downs in our life.
Balance is a circle of giving and receiving, not a pile of stuff to stand on and defend.
If you can sit with the anxiety that comes with letting go of dysfunctional hoarding and let it pass, you will feel the bliss of being in balance. Once you experience balance and feel bliss, you will naturally want more of it! It might give you the courage to heal. Healing takes a shift in energy, in life habits, in relationships. It takes faith that life could be better. Experiencing bliss can give you the courage to try a new, more nourishing way of being. Shifting towards balance might even be effortless, if scary to your ego.
Be curious. Have the courage to experiment. See where your heart takes you.
Includes live online classes, a library of over 120 recorded classes, and email support. Topics covered: breath, back, knees, shoulders, neck, pelvic floor, aiding respiratory system recovery, pain, and so much more! Classes include chair options. First month is $1.00 with the code HEART. Cancel anytime.