Posts Tagged ‘Testing’

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Why Understanding Energy Feels Impossible (But Isn’t)

Saturday, August 26th, 2017

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Lord Kelvin, the 19th century physicist who formulated the first two laws of thermodynamics, thought that science would never understand how human intent causes muscles to move: “The influence of animal or vegetable life on matter is infinitely beyond the range of any scientific inquiry hitherto entered on.”

It wasn’t merely “not yet understood.” It was “infinitely beyond.”

(“Hitherto” gives some wiggle room, but by his time scientists were already exploring nerves, the brain, and electricity.)

Friends who work with energy (or ritual magick) sometimes say that we’ll never understand why human intent causes energy to move, that energy is immune to scientific inquiry.

Like Lord Kelvin, they’ve thought about the phenomenon, considered at a few ways to explore it, and realized those paths won’t work. Usually, they’ve thought about placebo-controlled energy healing studies (to see which conditions benefit from which systems of healing), or testing which rituals produce better results. They’ve noticed how little that research would tell us about what energy is at a fundamental level. And they’re correct: Existing paths are unlikely to lead to a deep understanding of energy.

The mistake, of course, is to stop after examining those existing paths, rather than searching for new paths forward (like the sensory connections I use to watch energy structures as you work). And yet, I understand the impulse: Considering existing paths takes effort. In school, writing a paper on why the existing paths won’t work earns a good grade. That’s all you’re asked to do. And discovering a new solution isn’t just a little harder, it’s orders of magnitude harder.

Part of this, I think, is in how we teach science: As a series of successes, without any of the struggle or false turns. We forget that, from the dawn of human history up until the point we understood it, every phenomenon was a mystery, and the path to understanding was equally mysterious. We teach with the clarity of hindsight, and students learn to expect that clarity when facing new problems. Then, when we encounter our first truly new phenomenon, we have no tools or no frame of reference for exploring it, and we quickly conclude it’s impossible.

Next time exploring feels impossible, remember: Most of what we know today seemed impossible right up until it was understood.

Keep exploring.

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Energy Healing Culture: How We’re Holding Ourselves Back

Monday, July 3rd, 2017

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How does it feel to be wrong? Scary, dumb, shameful?

Actually, being wrong feels the same as being right. What feels bad is realizing we’re wrong.

Our brains encourage seeking behavior with dopamine. If we’re searching for food, and we see an apple tree in the distance, we get a little dopamine. We get closer and see ripe apples, we get a little more dopamine. When we reach the tree, you guessed it, even more dopamine.

But seeking out places where we’re wrong? No dopamine, serotonin, or happy neurotransmitters of any kind. There’s no innate drive to seek out places we’re wrong, because our brains didn’t evolve to seek truth, they evolved to keep us alive, create offspring, and seek social status.

Seeking our errors is something that must be taught through culture. And most cultures don’t.

This came up last week, talking with a friend about testing energy techniques. I told her about a class I took years ago, taught by a nurse for medical professionals to learn energy healing for patients in hospitals. Exactly the sort of teacher you’d expect to test their exercises.

Here’s the first exercise she gave: With the index finger of your right hand, almost touch the palm of your left hand. Notice the tingling. That’s energy.

I did feel tingling. I had a friend almost touch my palm, and felt tingling again. Then I asked that friend to either almost touch me or not, while I closed my eyes. I felt nothing, until I opened my eyes and saw they were already almost touching me, when I felt tingling. Which tells me: This sensation is caused by knowing I’m about to be touched, not by feeling the energy radiating off someone’s body. (The term, by the way, is proprioception.)

And the shame is, this teacher had techniques that really do help people. She was doing a lot of good, and could do even more good if her more mainstream peers would take energy healing seriously. But when the very first claim is so easy to test, and so clearly incorrect, it makes all of her work so easy to dismiss.

Telling this story to my friend, she said, “Yeah, some teachers are so lazy.” And that’s a nice fantasy: People get things wrong because they’re lazy, and as long as I’m not lazy, I won’t have to worry about overlooking my own false beliefs.

Only, it doesn’t work like that. This teacher worked as a nurse in a hospital. She is not lazy. And her error is far more pervasive, and far harder to avoid.

Our brains are wired to confirm our beliefs, not test them. Our broader culture doesn’t teach us to test beliefs, either. And the only tests I’ve ever seen in energy classes were rigged so students would succeed whether they were using real energy or not.

I want to learn how energy truly works. I want to develop techniques and demos that win over mainstream society. And to do that, we need a culture that encourages real testing.

I hope you’ll join me in creating that. There’s a lot to do, but a good first step is to blindfold a friend and play with energy. Then talk about it, write about it, and invite energy workers and teachers to explore real energy with you.

If you liked this post, consider visiting my current blog at mikesententia.com.

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What I’m Learning from Creating Sensations with Energy

Monday, March 13th, 2017

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I’m developing energy techniques to create obvious sensations, both to demonstrate that energy is real (to clients, to skeptics, to myself), and as a measurable task to focus on as I develop my skills. This post is about that testing and what I learned last week as I tested variations of the technique.

I’m using the same exercise as at the Energy Geek Meetup last month: Blindfold your partner (or just have them face away from you), send energy to either their head or their hips, verify that they feel the energy where you were sending it. I lay out the details here.

For years, I’ve known I should test my techniques, make sure each is working so I can confidently build on it. But I’ve felt such resistance, such fear of failing, that I’ve rarely done good testing. But actually testing and improving my techniques feels amazing. (Most of this post is technical, not narrative, so the excitement probably doesn’t show all the time. But I’m quite excited.)

In this most recent testing last week, I varied two aspects of the technique: Where in my aura I built the energy, and how open my shields were. My notes are below.

Aura: Use Deeper Layers

The energy around the body isn’t one uniform thing. It has layers. You can think of them as going out from the body, though to really grasp these layers you need to think in 4 dimensions.

A great deal of my work in the past decade has focused on accessing deeper layers of the aura (or biofield). It seems that changes to the deeper layers are more powerful: When I do a healing session, the deeper I go in their energy field, the faster and more pronounced the results are. So these deeper layers are a prime candidate to test when developing any energy technique.

I tested building energy in two layers: One superficial, which is the default layer that engages when I think about building energy; and one deep, the layer I normally focus on in healing sessions, that requires extra effort to engage.

I tested the superficial energy first. Didn’t work. We tried it 2 times, the receiver got both wrong. I hadn’t expected the superficial energy to work, so I took that as confirmation and moved on. (I’m assuming the sensations were placebo.)

Then I tested deeper energy 8 times. The receiver got 6 correct, 1 incorrect, and 1 where she didn’t feel anything. She also felt the sensations much quicker, and somewhat more strongly, than with the superficial energy’s placebo sensations. Good results.

A little statistics: Let’s discard the time when the receiver didn’t feel anything, and just focus on correct vs incorrect. She was correct 6/7 times. Since each guess is 50/50, you’d expect her to get about half correct by random chance. To get 6 out of 7 correct is about a 10% chance (math below). That’s good enough for a psychology paper, and it’s good enough for me too (for now).

Math: Here’s how I ballpark the stats in my head: If she went 6/6, that would be a 1 in 64 chance (2^6 = 64). But she went 6/7. There are 7 possible ways to get 6/7 correct (any one of the trials could be incorrect), so doing that is a 7 in 64 chance, or about 10%. (If anyone has better math, please leave a comment.)

So that’s my first result: Superficial energy is relatively ineffective at producing sensations. Deeper energy is much more effective. (I’m meeting with another friend next week to replicate these results.)

Shielding: Fully Open

Shielding blocks energy. I normally have shielding up, so I don’t pick up energy from the people near me.

It turns out, shielding also blocks the energy I build in my body. That was the finding from the last Energy Geek Meetup, when I forgot to open my shielding and couldn’t get the demo to work.

For the testing above, I fully opened my shields, so my energy could flow out. But I had an idea: What if I shield my body, but open my shielding around my hand? Could that help my receiver be even more accurate, since they would only receive energy from my hand, and not get any ambient energy from the rest of my body?

To test it, I closed my shield, then connected to my right arm and focused on opening my shielding there. This was my first time doing this, shielding only part of my body, so it’s possible I made a mistake here, but my body’s shielding still felt closed even as my arm felt open.

Then I built energy throughout my body (using the deeper layer energy) and sent it to my hand. It felt odd, like my energy had to find new paths from my abdomen to my hand, like the paths it normally took were blocked. What gives? Shielding goes around my body, not inside it, so it shouldn’t block my own energy within my body.

I’m not sure what was happening. Maybe the energy takes a straight-line path through the air to my hand? Maybe it flows over the surface of my body, rather than inside it? I have more exploration to do, but this showed me there’s something I don’t understand about how energy flows from one part of the body to another.

We did 2 tests like this, with my shield only open near my right hand. She got both wrong. I took that to mean that partially opening shields doesn’t work. (Maybe I can solve this once I understand what happened, but it’s low priority.)

So that’s the second result: It seems to be necessary to fully open my shielding in order to send energy effectively.

Finding My Calling

Talking about this work feels different. Better. More concrete than other work I’ve done. I had expected it to be hard, but actually it was easy. The exercises in this post took about 15 minutes to do.

Now that I’m started testing techniques, I’m excited to test (and improve) sensory connections, communication with spirits, and all the other work I do.

If you liked this post, consider visiting my current blog at mikesententia.com.

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Scientific Energy Exercises with 14 Friends

Monday, February 27th, 2017

You found my old blog. Thanks for visiting! For my new writing, visit mikesententia.com.

At the first Energy Geek Meetup last week, 15 of us did energy exercises using the methods of science: Placebo controls, blinding, and the like. I’d been preparing for weeks, developing and testing my demo, but it was still confronting and scary, but ultimately amazing.

The exercise was simple: Send energy to a blindfolded partner, either to their head or their hips. The receiver says where they feel the energy. Repeat several times — like guessing a coin flip, you will sometimes get the right answer due to luck, but getting 10 correct in a row is less than 0.1% chance.

I’ve tested this with several people in the past. It’s harder than it sounds. Once the receiver can’t see you sending, once they don’t know what they should be feeling, they’re left with only the sensations produced by your energy. It takes skill, practice, and focus in both people. I knew that many attendees would discover that their partner wasn’t (yet) feeling their energy.

But I had a plan. I’d demo it first, show everyone that it was possible, give everyone confidence that energy really worked, that there was more to it than just placebo. I lined up a couple of assistants to help me demo, including an energy healer I’ve practiced with for several months. I was all set.

The day before the event, the energy healer texts me. She’s sick, can’t meet to practice the demo. The day of the event, she’s still sick. Then my other assistant texts, she’s running late, no practice time there either. I start to worry: What if I can’t make this work, and no one else can either? Will my event, designed to create confidence, instead inspire doubt?

I think through my: Social time, an intro talk, then normal energy practice (without blindfolds). Let everyone get to know one another, and let anyone new to energy work get comfortable building and sending energy, before we really test it. And (I realize) I can test the demo during that practice time. Maybe I can pull this off after all…

The meetup started at 7pm. There were 15 of us, some with years or decades of experience with energy, others attending their first energy event. (I wish my first encounter with energy had included scientific testing!) We share energy visualizations, discuss how energy feels. We partner up to practice, and the room gets loud, telling me that people are relaxed and having fun. Then the room gets quiet as people start to practice.

I grab my assistant and another friend. We test the demo, but neither feels much. At 8pm, everyone takes a break to get some water, and I grab another friend with decades of experience, but he doesn’t feel anything either. And that’s all the time I have — now it’s time for the scientific exercise, and my demo in front of everyone.

I calm myself, and speak what I know is true: “I’m going to demo this exercise. It’s not going to work — I’m in a teacher headspace right now, and I’m having trouble engaging my energy. But I’m going to demo it anyway, because the point of testing energy techniques isn’t to have a particular technique work on a particular day. The point is to get into the habit of testing energy. Sometimes it won’t work, and that’s OK. So now, I’m going to show you the procedure, and I’m going to show you it not working, so you can all see that that’s no big deal.”

And indeed, it didn’t work, and it wasn’t a big deal. Without planning for it, I’d stumbled onto just the right tone for the event. And everyone relaxed, tried the exercise, and had fun with it. I couldn’t ask for more.

About half the group got some results, and two attendees got stellar results: One woman sent to partners 15 times, and they felt the correct location 13 times, and one man felt the precise location of energy, not just hips vs head but where exactly on his back his partner was sending.

In the end, everyone had fun and increased their skill and confidence. Which was the whole point.

And after the exercises, someone asked about shielding, to block energy from other groups. (Shielding is like a wall, blocking energy from flowing.) And it hit me: I always have shielding up, to block energy from the crowds in San Francisco. Normally I open my shielding before doing these exercises. But I forgot today, with all the excitement of the event. So my shielding, which prevents energy from flowing into me, had also prevented my energy from flowing out to my partner. That might not be the only reason my demo didn’t work, but it’s certainly sufficient. Mystery solved.

Will you be in the bay area on March 22? RSVP for the next Energy Geek Meetup on facebook and meetup.

If you liked this post, consider visiting my current blog at mikesententia.com.

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5-Minute Scientific Energy Exercises

Sunday, February 19th, 2017

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The Energy Geek Meetup is this Wednesday. We’ll be doing energy exercises based on the methods used in modern science, to make sure we’re actually using energy (and not placebo). Here are three easy exercises you can try at home, no equipment required.

#1: Do You Feel Energy?

We’ve all sent energy to a partner, and had them feel it. Now let’s make that exercise more scientific.

(All of these exercises are for two people. One sends energy, the other receives.)

If the receiver knows what the sender is doing, the sensations might be caused by suggestion and placebo, rather than energy. So the receiver should wear a blindfold ($3 at Walgreens), or face away from the sender for the full 5 minutes of the exercie. Also, many people change their breathing when building energy, so the receiver should wear headphones (playing white noise) or earplugs. This applies for all these tests.

This test has five 1-minute rounds. Here’s how each round works:

  • Sender taps receiver’s shoulder and says, “Round X starting,” so the receiver knows.
  • Sender then flips a coin. Heads = Send energy, Tails = Do nothing. (Note: This needs to happen after the sender speaks — we don’t want them sounding different in the sending vs placebo conditions.)
  • Sender sends (or does nothing) for one minute. (Use a clock.) Hover your hand a few inches away from them, don’t touch them, and don’t say anything.
  • Receiver says what they feel, and says if they think they’re feeling energy. It’s fine if you feel things that aren’t energy, too, just try to give a clear yes / no on, “Do you think you’re feeling energy?” (Sender, don’t say or ask anything. If the receiver doesn’t say anything for the whole minute, that means they didn’t feel anything.)

Why do these 1-minute rounds? Because sometimes it takes a few moments to feel energy. Sure, if a person knows the energy is coming and they expect to feel it, then this combination of energy and placebo can produce instant results. But when a person isn’t sure that energy is coming, it often takes a few moments.

I tested this exercise last weekend, except I wasn’t doing 1-minute rounds. Instead, I just waited some amount of time, then sent energy, and waited for the receiver to feel it. But there was a delay in feeling sensations, so it wasn’t clear if the sensations were from my energy or not. Would they have felt those sensations anyway? Hard to say. That’s why I added the 1-minute rounds, so there’s a clear timeframe for when energy is happening.

If this doesn’t work: It’s easier to send energy via physical contact than through the air. Try touching the receiver to send energy. (Touch them without sending energy for the placebo.) This isn’t as solid as hovering your hand, but it’s still a good exercise, and still far better than an exercise with no placebo.

Note: If you haven’t practiced with this person before, first practice sending energy without any blindfold. Let the receiver learn what your energy feels like when they know it’s coming. This will help them distinguish the ordinary sensations in their body (that occur during placebo rounds) from the sensations caused by your energy.

#2: Where Do You Feel Energy?

This exercise is mostly for receivers. It’s about feeling energy in different locations in the body.

Some people always feel energy in their head, regardless of where the energy enters their body. (Or they always feel it in their chest, or some other single location.) So let’s practice feeling where the energy is in the body.

Identify four locations. For example, head, bicep, chest, and stomach. We’ll randomize the location using two different coins (like a penny and a nickel), so make a chart like this:

  • Penny – H, Nickel – H = Head
  • Penny – H, Nickel – T = Bicep
  • Penny – T, Nickel – H = Chest
  • Penny – T, Nickel – T = Stomach

As before, the receiver is blindfolded, and the sender announces 1-minute rounds. But now, the sender always sends, and randomly determines the location. (Hover your hand over that location, don’t touch the receiver.) The sender says where they feel energy. Repeat 5-10 times.

#3: Feeling Types of Energy

So far, we’ve been feeling the presence (or absence) of energy. But energy isn’t just one thing — there are many types of energy. For this exercise, pick 2 types of energy. For example, you can try:

  • Two emotions, such as excited and sad. When the sender builds energy, they should focus on a memory that brings up that emotion. (Pick two emotions that feel different in the body, like excited and sad, rather than two that feel similar, like excited and nervous.)
  • Energy for two different tasks, such as the energy used in a healing session and the energy used to help oneself focus. (Again, pick two very different energies — if you pick two energies used in healing sessions, they might feel similar.)

First practice without blinding, letting the receiver know which energy you’re sending. Receivers, try moving the energy into yourself then to different parts of your body, your head, chest, etc. See how it feels in each location, and see where the two energies feel the most distinct and identifiable. You’re learning to send and read these two types of energies.

Then add blinding, using the same procedures as above. Flip a coin to choose the type of energy. Let the receiver feel it, work with it, and identify it. Repeat 5-10 times.

How Did It Go?

What worked? What didn’t?

Some of these exercises might not work right away. That’s OK. In fact, that’s the point: To learn, we have to try things that are difficult, things that might fail. Only then can we grow our skills to rise to that challenge.

The Energy Geek Meetup

The Energy Geek Meetup is for practitioners who want to take their energy skills and confidence to the next level. We’ll do exercises just like these ones together, in a supportive community. It’s the 4th Wednesday of every month, 7-9pm, at the Embodiment Arts Collective, 3490 20th Street, 3rd Floor, San Francisco (near 24th st BART). Suggested donation $5-10.

Please RSVP on Facebook or Meetup. (Popular events draw more people. RSVPing helps us grow. Thank you!)

If you liked this post, consider visiting my current blog at mikesententia.com.

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Building Skill with Energy: The Importance of Failure

Monday, January 30th, 2017

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Alice wants to play basketball. She shoots baskets every day. Each shot is a little different: More wrist tension, slower bicep movement, etc. Some changes help, others don’t. And each time, she sees the result. Did the ball go in? Did it get close? She keeps the helpful changes, discards the rest, and a few months later she’s sinking many more baskets.

Bob also wants to play basketball. But he fears failure. He isn’t willing to miss a single shot. So he closes his eyes and visualizes himself sinking baskets. And he throws a ball in the air, to learn how it arcs, how hard to throw it. But he never goes near a basketball hoop, because if he did, he might discover that he doesn’t sink every shot.

Who will improve more quickly?

I used to practice energy like Bob. I was afraid of seeing an energy technique fail, afraid it would give oxygen to the chorus of internal skeptics I was trying to suffocate. So I would visualize energy, note the sensations in my body, and congratulate myself. (Never mind that placebo feels exactly the same.) Or I’d test energy with a friend, telling them exactly what I was doing and what they should feel, and congratulate myself when they felt that. (Never mind that I’d suggested exactly those sensations.)

Most energy workers practice like Bob, too. That’s how we were taught to practice, and it’s how our teachers were taught, too.

In my 30s, I scientifically tested a simple energy technique with a friend. It was fun and successful. (Details here.) Then I tested another technique, with sigils. It didn’t work, but you know what happened? Nothing. There was no skeptic hiding in the bush, waiting to cry, “I told you so!” Facing my fears, seeing they were empty, felt liberating and peaceful.

Since then, I’ve been working to practice like Alice, to create tests that only succeed if I do the energy technique properly. That’s been key to my increased confidence and skill, and it’s been fun too. That’s why I’m so passionate about testing and the Energy Geek Meetup.

About the Meetup

The Energy Geek Meetup is for practitioners who want to take their energy skills and confidence to the next level. It’s the 4th Wednesday of every month, 7-9pm, at the Embodiment Arts Collective, 3490 20th Street, 3rd Floor, San Francisco (near 24th st BART). Suggested donation $5-10.

Please RSVP on Facebook or Meetup. (Popular events draw more people. RSVPing helps us grow. Thank you!)

If you liked this post, consider visiting my current blog at mikesententia.com.

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Building Skill with Energy: Why Small Tests Create Big Results

Saturday, January 21st, 2017

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“How will you test an energy healing technique at a 2-hour event?”

That’s the most common question I get about the Energy Geek Meetup. And the answer is simple: We won’t test entire healing techniques, because most techniques are complex, composed of many parts, and difficult to test. (I know. That’s something I do at Healing Lab.)

Instead, we’ll test each of those parts: We’ll build energy, and verify that a blindfolded partner senses it. We’ll energize an object, and verify that a partner can feel which object is energized. We’ll focus on small techniques like those, which are fast and easy to test. (Here’s an example.)

You’d be amazed at the confidence boost that comes from scientifically testing one simple technique.

Testing small techniques is also great for improving skills. If a person discovers that she can easily  build and sensing energy, but struggles with energizing an object, now she knows what to practice. And then next month, she can test her skills again and see her progress in an objective, quantifiable way.

And remember, each of those small techniques is a building block. A healing session usually involves building energy, moving energy, sensing energy, and more. And as we get better and more reliable with those small techniques, we’ll see better results from our healing sessions, too. (Or anything else you do with energy.)

About the Meetup

The Energy Geek Meetup is for practitioners who want to take their energy skills and confidence to the next level. It’s the 4th Wednesday of every month, 7-9pm, at the Embodiment Arts Collective, 3490 20th Street, 3rd Floor, San Francisco (near 24th st BART). Suggested donation $5-10.

Please RSVP on Facebook or Meetup. (Popular events draw more people. RSVPing helps us grow. Thank you!)

If you liked this post, consider visiting my current blog at mikesententia.com.

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Building Confidence in Energy: How I Tested a Technique in 30 Minutes

Sunday, January 8th, 2017

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Anecdotal evidence has never been enough for me. I doubt: Was the result just coincidence? Placebo? I’ve always wanted the certainty that comes from scientific testing, but that sounded so hard. Daunting. Maybe impossible.

Then I tested sending energy with a friend. It took 30 minutes. It was fun, and we both came away with more confidence. Here’s how I did it:

  • The test is to send and feel energy. One person sends, the other receives.
  • The receiver wears a blindfold and earphones with white noise, so they can’t see the sender or hear their footsteps or their breathing.
  • The sender chooses a region of the body (chest, stomach, shoulder, head, etc), hovers their hands about 6″ away from that part of the receiver’s body, and sends energy. There is no physical contact. The receiver says when and where they feel energy.

The results were great. Both of us consistently identified when energy was being sent, and where it was being sent, correctly. We came out of it much more confident in our practices.

I did a placebo control, hovering my hand without building energy. The receiver (correctly) didn’t feel anything when I didn’t build energy.

And my partner did a fun test. I was the receiver, standing up so my partner could get to my front and side. I felt energy in my chest, said so, and heard her voice to my left saying, “Correct.”

I replied, “But I felt it in my chest, and you’re standing to my left, so I guess that’s a miss.”

She explained, “No. My hand is by your chest. But I’m standing to your left, just in case you’re hearing my footsteps. You got it right.” It was clever and memorable, and increased our confidence in our energy techniques.

Experiences like this are what make me so passionate about testing energy techniques and about the Energy Geek Meetup.

About the Meetup

Note: I wrote this post and the next few posts in preparation for the Energy Geek Meetup. They’re all about testing energy techniques. The testing in this post is from 2014, I think, it was one of the first close-to-rigorous tests I did.

The Energy Geek Meetup is for practitioners who want to take their energy skills and confidence to the next level. It’s the 4th Wednesday of every month, 7-9pm, at the Embodiment Arts Collective, 3490 20th Street, 3rd Floor, San Francisco (near 24th st BART). Suggested donation $5-10.

Please RSVP on Facebook or Meetup. (Popular events draw more people. RSVPing helps us grow. Thank you!)

If you liked this post, consider visiting my current blog at mikesententia.com.

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Energy Geek Meetup

Monday, October 24th, 2016

You found my old blog. Thanks for visiting! For my new writing, visit mikesententia.com.

Everyone has doubts. Did that healing session work? Does energy work the way we think it does? Is energy even real?

For years, I tried to ignore my doubts, to push them down until they (almost) disappeared. But they kept creeping up, half-conscious, when I’d think about starting a healing practice or teaching a class. They made me uncomfortable and un-confident, and hobbled me as I pursued those dreams.

Far better to face our doubts, say, “I believe this energy technique works, but I’m not sure.” And then move from uncertain belief to confident knowledge by testing the technique, seeing it work, and knowing that it will work next time too.

But that’s hard to do alone. To ensure the results aren’t just placebo or self-suggestion, we need help from other people. And we need a supportive, safe community, so it’s OK if a technique doesn’t work the first time, or even the tenth time.

That’s why I’m creating this event. Every month, we’ll pick an energy technique and design a scientific test. Everyone who wants to test it will, and anyone who doesn’t want to test can watch.

Some months, the technique will work for everyone, and we can all go home knowing that energy is real and we can use it.

Other months, the technique will work for some people but not others. This is a great opportunity to improve — we’ll have found something to learn, and we’ll have people at the event who can teach us their approach and help us understand how to practice. Then next month, we can come back and verify that it’s working. Writing this, I realize I’ve wanted this supportive practice group for years, and I’m excited about creating it.

And occasionally, the technique won’t work for anyone. That’s OK. We’ll have learned something about how energy works, what it does and doesn’t do, and we’ll all be stronger practitioners for it. And next month, we’ll meet again, test a different technique, and keep improving.

I’m starting the Energy Geek Meetup in February 2017, in San Francisco. If you’re local, I hope you’ll join. And I’ll be posting notes and results for anyone who isn’t local.

Class & Webinar for Energy Healers and Magick Workers

I’m also planning a class for later in the year, covering the first few techniques of Direct Magick and how to apply them to other practices, from energy healing to ritual magick.

Topics will include:

  • Channeling energetic forces (“ethereal software”), contacting spirits, and how to communicate more accurately and precisely
  • How to feel energy and ethereal structures (“sensory connections”), how to do it precisely, and how to zoom in on particular aspects of the biofield or other structures
  • Finding and awakening the parts of your mind that drive energy (your “ethereal muscles”)

I’ll be doing an in-person class in San Francisco, and a webinar for everyone else.

I’ll also be creating a book, writing topics as the class progresses. It’ll be a tighter scope than the book-in-progress, for healers rather than engineers. (I’ll have another class and book for engineers eventually.)

Interested? Sign up for occasional emails (one a month at most) about my events by leaving a comment below saying “sign me up.” And if you want my posts by email, sign up for that via RSS.

If you liked this post, consider visiting my current blog at mikesententia.com.

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Confidence, Resistance, and Testing Ourselves

Sunday, July 17th, 2016

You found my old blog. Thanks for visiting! For my new writing, visit mikesententia.com.

This week I posted a double-blind placebo-controlled sigil testing.

In the days before posting it, I encountered more resistance than I have in years. The whole point of science is that it can tell you if you’re wrong, and choosing to honestly test a precious belief is a bit like choosing to walk face first into a wall — there’s an enormous urge to stop short.

But after posting it, I feel light, confident, liberated. For years, I’ve known I should be approaching my work this way. Finally doing it feels amazing.

Please try the test. It takes about 15 minutes, including reading the post.

For those of you encountering resistance: I get it, I really do. Testing brings up every doubt we have, every time we’ve feared none of this is real, or that we’re simply not good at it. Take your time, feel into that resistance, accept it as part of yourself. Then do the work. Because on the other side of that wall is peace and confidence. That’s what proper testing does for us, that’s the reward for facing the resistance.

And thank you to everyone who participated already, and everyone who will in the coming weeks!

(And to those of you who are active on discussion groups or have your own blog, please share the project. Thank you!)

If you liked this post, consider visiting my current blog at mikesententia.com.

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Posted in Personal Stories | No Comments »

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