Shamanic energy healing with teens.
Energy healing with teens (ages approximately ranging from 13 to 19 years old) is always a fascinating experience.
In each session, each teen brings their unique beauty into our interaction.
Most of them are still children. They look all grown up, and I need to remind myself that they are still also children. Dependent, growing, and taking their first steps into the world of adults.
They usually reach out to me through their parents. Others are friends of my teen daughters, and some have heard of me through their friends, coming as independent individuals.
As we are all souls, inhabiting a physical body, spirits in a human experience, I often wonder: Do I treat them as the enormous souls they are? Or do I need to remember they are also still dependent human kids? It is always incredibly confusing.
In my studies within this world, many of my teachers emphasize that we should look at each individual’s light.
We listen to the stories our client shares, but we focus on her light. We witness our client’s life journey, and we hold only his light before our eyes.
Witnessing our client’s light means holding that individual’s great, enormous, beautiful, and pure energetic essence—the possible. Within a shamanic energy healing session, we hope to assist our clients with finding balance and harmony so that their light will shine. Shining our light is partially what connects us to the one that we all are.
Why do teens seek out energy medicine?
Most teens who show up for sessions or workshops work with their intuition, sense energy, or journey—experience shamanic journeying naturally.
They bring forth fears, anxieties, social challenges, and sometimes also emotional and physical ones.
They also issue a deeper request, a call for healing unresolved issues they brought with them from past lifetimes or their family’s energetic heritage. Energies that no longer serve them, and that they do not need, in this lifetime.
The teens often experience these themes in repeated dreams or journeying, asking for a session to understand and release. Puberty awakens these abilities. And it can be very confusing.
To some of them, not all, these strange visions and experiences create a sense of isolation. Some feel they are different than others. Their experiences are so “strange” that they do not talk about them with their friends. Those who find the courage to share with a friend usually find they are not alone.
I find that working with teens in groups is a beautiful gift. It turns their secret into a shared experience, empowers them, and gives them a sense of belonging.
It transforms the experiences that made them feel like outsiders into a common phenomenon, which it is– a common, widespread phenomenon. They no longer view their abilities as something that makes them different. In the groups, they meet both the “popular” girl from school, the “geek,” and my own three homeschooled teens.
Teens ask challenging questions about energy healing
I frequently find myself challenged by teens’ questions.
The easy questions are actually on themes I know nothing about—questions about star constellations or the healing attributes of different plants. My answer is that I don’t know, or do not know enough. I turn the questions back to them, listen to their perception of the topic, offer further guiding questions, and if I can, I guide them about where to search for reliable answers.
The challenging questions are those with complicated answers. Ones in which the answer is multi-layered and multi-faceted. Our universe is a beautiful place, and it is also sadly full of violence and lots of confused souls.
We, too, all of us, make mistakes. We also had experiences in other lifetimes that we may not be proud of or wish to bring into our awareness.
Accepting the multi-layeredness of ourselves and, thus, taking a compassionate approach to ourselves and the mistakes we may have made, in this lifetime or another, and to others, is not always easy.
Teens ask to understand at the layer of their minds.
Some teens show up with repeated dreams or journeying. The memories or energy trying to be released or to offer them teaching are already in their awareness (to some extent).
They ask for a mental understanding of what they experience. They wish to understand the story. To talk about it and discover if what they remember from their dreams or journeying, or what I saw in my tracking with the shared work, really happened or if it is symbolic. If I suggest it is symbolic, they wish to understand that meaning as well.
Letting the story go
In energy work, and this type specifically, it is often about letting the story go: experiencing it, embracing the teachings it offers, releasing what needs to be released, and then walking forward, putting it all behind them.
When teens, and all clients, repeatedly return to the story, they often bring back at least some of the energy that we already cleared in the session.
An example from a group
Recently, I held a short four-day summer workshop for a group of eight amazing girls, ages 12–15. Half of them worked with me throughout the year, and the other four joined just for this workshop. One of them needed me to explain everything before being willing to experience it. It was all very simple, basic exercises such as sensing our luminous field, visualizing light washing over us, or sending roots into the ground.
I knew I could not explain everything and that one needs to experience it. I still tried. I wanted her to feel safe and thought we would get there by talking to her mind. Eventually, after too much talking, I realized that maybe I was getting to her, but I was confusing the others. I stopped with an important lesson learned and went into the experience. Of course, she immediately got it.
Working with teens: Should the parents be involved?
Last challenge I wish to share for this post: Parents. Us…
About half the teens I meet prefer that their parents are not involved.
On the other hand, I have found that I prefer the parents to be at least partially involved.
There is only one teen I am currently working with without any communication with her parents. They speak the energy language, and they know she sometimes approaches me for sessions. They are not involved in our work. I understood her reasons for this work model and chose to respect her wish to work this way, but I did insist that her parents know we are working together.
In every other case, the teens, even if they are on their way to being adults, need a place to talk about the session, ask questions, and have an adult walk with them through their transformation and change. For most…
…even if they do not share what took place in the session, having the parent know there was a session allows the teen to take the time they need to integrate. Knowing there is someone by them who cares and can provide the space they need.
And it almost always opens a new channel of communication. Like any child, teens who “sense things” in all possible facets of sensing usually have parents who have these abilities as well.
Further Reading
Read about the challenges of energy healing with tweens (~9-12). And about the challenges of energy healing with younger ages.
I hope that this sequence of three posts briefly sharing some of the challenges that emerge when working with children, tweens, and teens helps you better understand who the children that walk among us today are, and the teachings they offer us.
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.
