Working with children using shamanic energy healing is both fascinating and challenging.
As a practitioner, I find it important to share and be transparent about those little challenging elements. We can all learn from them, and it helps us understand what takes place within shamanic energy healing sessions.
Children need to know their energy body – Orbs of light
Children of all ages react reasonably quickly to healing directed to their energy bodies. Usually much more quickly than adults.
Younger children are still very much attuned to the Earth and the energies around them. When their parents explain to them about the session or when we meet, and we sense together the ball of light always existing between their hands, as demonstrated in the illustration (see elaborated description here), they easily join the game.
They make vast orbs of light, others can sense the energy coming from their hands, and they can feel the energy as warmth coming from others.
Not all children sense the energy, but most do.
For young children, somewhere between two, when they can already play this game, to four-five, when they are still (hopefully) naïve, open, and trusting, this game, in many ways, is a reflection of what they already sense around them: The healing energy of nature or the pleasant versus uncomfortable energies of people around them.
Social awareness and its effect in shamanic and energy healing sessions with children
Some children are more socially aware than others.
Without tracking, I cannot know whether they actually feel the energy ball created between their hands or whether they tell me that they do because they understand that this is what I am hoping for.
The older children get, the stronger this question becomes.
Do they sense what they tell me they are sensing?
Or are they telling me what their parents expect them to? Or what they heard from someone else?
Social awareness also plays in sessions in the opposite direction.
Young children understand very fast that within our session, they can talk about anything. Such as the colors they see around people, plants, animals, or creatures living above the closet. And as this is part of their reality, they share.
Some of them are used to sharing, as they also share at home. Others, at a very young age, unfortunately, learn they should not talk about everything they experience.
I often feel that one of the most important roles I play for families is the legitimacy I give the children (and often also their parents) to the energetic aspects they feel, sense, and experience, opening up an essential line of communication with one another.
As children get older, it takes them longer to share. They have learned that most people do not believe them or are very uncomfortable hearing them talk about angels, guidance, wisdom, energy running through their bodies, or monsters under their beds. Uncomfortable because as adults, these experiences are mostly outside of our narrative, we were silenced as kids ourselves, or we don’t know what to say or how to guide them.
If you are interested – you can receive simplified guidance on how to incorporate energetic tools into your family’s daily life directly into your mailbox. Read more bout it HERE.
Why getting children’s permission for a shamanic energy healing session is so important
Getting children’s permission is also a challenge I find noteworthy. Parents often wonder why I mostly insist on working with one of the parents before working with their child. Well, for many reasons.
First, some of the healing can take place through the parents. Not all of it, but some.
Furthermore, the modalities I work with an aim at bringing resolution, balance, and harmony. When parents walk their true essence, it’s much easier for their children to embrace healing themselves and be who they came here to be.
Additionally, we can explain what something is when we either understand it or, in the case of shamanic energy healing, which can be understood only through experience, it is something that we have experienced ourselves.
Without experiencing it ourselves, it can be challenging to explain what this healing is about. And more, it helps to express our trust in this strange modality of looking and healing through something not all of them see, or when they do, is something very private.
Last, some children are used to adults making all the major decisions. Thus, merely asking their permission feels strange. Sadly, it is often an example of how disrespectful we are to our children. Forgetting that while they are small in their bodies and still dependent on us, they are also beautiful, whole, old souls.
Further Reading
Working with older children, and kids in their tweens and teen years, entails many different challenges. See On the challenges of shamanic energy healing with tweens and On the challenges of shamanic energy healing with teens.
Next Steps?
Explore the Nurturing Your Child’s Energy Field and the Spiritual Techniques for Grounding FREE Resources.
Learn more about the Shamanic Journeying with Children and Teens Course. A Course for you, the parent (teens over 15 can participate with their parent present, learning and experiencing together) offering all the information (and beyond) that you need for you to guide your children, tweens, and teens on Shamanic Journeying.
