Clearing Cooties

The Columbia River meeting the Pacific Ocean

     In the world of the shamanic healer, there are some basic techniques that are part of our daily work, part of the standard “job description” .  One of these techniques is called extraction work:  this means that we find and clear foreign energy from the field of our clients.  I refer to it (somewhat frivolously) as clearing cooties. 
  
      Energetic healers such as shamanic healers work with the human energy field.   This unseen field encircles the physical body.   Normally it flows like a powerful river;  I think of the Columbia river as it carves its way through dense columnar basalt in the Gorge.  That river is strong, goal-directed and potent.  It not only carves up rock,  it breaches into the Pacific ocean, making that sea give way before the power of the river.  This river  knows who it is and where it is going.  It is like the Wei Qi  energy field described by Chinese medicine practitioners:  a powerful protective surge of energy and life that helps keeps us healthy.

The Columbia carving through Basalt

     However, this energy field can be blocked.  Think again of the Columbia river:  the ancient landslide near the Dalles that filled the riverbed with huge boulders and nearly diverted its course.  Think of all the dams that have been built on the Columbia that block its flow.  Think of the Colorado river, whose flow has been so drained to fill the swimming pools of Los Angeles, that it can no longer feed the estuary at the mouth of the Sea of Cortez.  These blockages happen to rivers, and they can happen to people as well.

The Q’ero indigenous people of the high Andes in Peru called these dense energetic blockages hucha.  For them, people are normally beings of shining light.  But when  foreign energy intrudes, we can lose our light, and lose our way in life, as well.  Our light gets overwhelmed by the density of hucha.

The Holy Light of the Sun

     The most common way we pick up these blockages is simply through the course of ordinary life.  It’s like picking up the common cold:  you go to the mall on a busy holiday weekend and ten feet in front of you, someone with a nasty cold blows a big sneeze.  There is a five foot sneeze cloud left behind and if you walk through it, you can easily breath in virus particles. 
     Foreign energy blockages are like that.  If you hang out in bars a lot, you can be easily exposed.    If you spend a lot of time under the influence of substances, you can easily be vulnerable to hucha.  Other common places where stuff can be picked up are hospitals, cemeteries and courthouses.

       It happened to me that way.  I had just had major joint replacement surgery and was in the hospital for four days, recovering.  While lying on my bed, weakened from surgery and blood loss, and gorked out on pain meds, I picked up some energy that was not my own.
      I was sluggish, very exhausted and my mood was low.  I had trouble finding my usual enthusiasm for life.  My healing was slow, too.  It was easy to miss the energy intrusion, since all these things could have been part of the surgery recovery.
      As it turned out, shortly after I left the hospital I had an appointment with my teacher/healer Mary Blankenship.  She saw the problem and quickly cleared it.  After her work,  I started to feel great, to sleep great, to have better energy.  My healing from surgery took huge strides forward.  Best of all, life once again was worth living.

     People often ask how to do this work themselves.   The good news is that that Wei Qi energy field I spoke of earlier does do a good job of clearing out many minor energies before they can get a foot hold.  However if something has truly become stuck in one’s energy field, it requires a shamanic healer who does extraction work to clear it out.  It’s sort of like repairing your own car;  you can do routine maintenance, but you wouldn’t dream of doing an engine overhaul by yourself.  The same is true with this type of shamanic work.

     So how do shamanic healers do this extraction work?  It depends, of course, on each healer.  My approach is to sit and talk with the person,  looking at how their life is working, or not working for them.  Are things stuck?  Is their mood low? Are they having trouble sleeping, with intense/scary dreams?  Are they having trouble moving forward in life, bringing their vision to fruition?  As we talk,  I am tracking their energy field, sensing the places of blockage and planning how to clear them.
      After this conversation,  the client gets on the massage table.  I call in Great Spirit, my guides, my plant and stone medicine helpers, and together we work to clean out the “cooties” and restore the river of energy back to a more normal flow. 

      Most people notice a big difference afterwards.  They feel lighter, more buoyant and optimistic.  As the healer, I see their own clear and bright spiritual light shining out from their eyes.  In the next days and weeks ahead, the person  begins to see that they are moving forward in their life;  old stuck things are falling away and they start to move to the rhythm of their own season. 

      This is the power of “clearing cooties”.

Janet

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Photos by Nancy and Janet Partlow