Heidi Light - Ethics In Energy Medicine: Boundaries and Guidelines for Intuitive and Energetic Practices

Copyright 2018 by Heidi Light. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwisewithout the written permission of the publisher. For information contact North Atlantic Books.

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North Atlantic Books
Berkeley, California

Cover art iStockphoto.com/oonal
Cover design by Nicole Hayward
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Ethics in Energy Medicine: Boundaries and Guidelines for Intuitive and Energetic Practices is sponsored and published by the Society for the Study of Native Arts and Sciences (dba North Atlantic Books), an educational nonprofit based in Berkeley, California, that collaborates with partners to develop cross-cultural perspectives, nurture holistic views of art, science, the humanities, and healing, and seed personal and global transformation by publishing work on the relationship of body, spirit, and nature.

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To all those who have labored lovingly to carve the path,to those who are courageously walking it, and to those who are now awakening to it.

Its been a rough road to navigate. This world of energy and intuition is, for the most part, the road less traveled. And so, first and foremost and always, I want to express my profound gratitude to my fellow traveler on this road and the most enlightened person I know: John Eybergen. Your unwavering support has meant more than the world to me. Our fifteen years of exploration and constant conversation about the energetic world we see has shaped this book and so much more. But beyond that, your astonishing belief in me despite all odds and despite all my personal struggles is the one thing that has kept me moving forward so that I can do this thing. Its just not enough to say thank you. But thank you for being in my life; thank you for being my friend, my fan, and my family; thank you for being real; and thank you for shining the light on this path for me. I certainly couldnt have done any of this without you. Can we have whiskey now?

Thank you also to the friends, students, and clients who have put up with my ranting over the years. Ive certainly been both passionate and vocal about this topic for decades now, and Im sure there were times when you really just wanted me to shut up about it. I dont blame you in the slightest! I kind of wanted me to shut up about it too. So at least now its all on paper and out of my head! Big sigh of relief! Thank you for your patience in letting me share and vent and teach and ponder. I appreciate you!

Thank you to the groundbreakers, the system busters, the channelers, light-workers, and intuitives who christened the dirt of this path. You set the stage for the world that is now awakening, and for that I am eternally grateful!

A huge thank you and shout out to North Atlantic Books for publishing books that make the world a better place and for being so wonderful in working with your authors at every stage. And finally, to Acquisitions Editor Alison Knowles for putting a big YES on my manuscript and for being so awesome! Thank you for seeing something valuable in my words, Alison. Youre the best!

A new world is unfolding around usa world of intuition, energy, mysticism, and the resurfacing of ancient knowledge. Our Western culture, awash in the pursuit of science and technology for decades, has not witnessed a birth of this magnitude since the spiritualism of the 1920s.

New worlds provide us with wide perspectives, possibilities, and challenges. We navigate bumpy roads now, where boundaries and structures are not yet determined and where rules have not yet been established, let alone applied. Just as our new and burgeoning technological age is beginning to show us the need for rules to ensure our personal privacy, so too is our blossoming intuitive age demonstrating an equally vital need.

As with most issues in our world, those of us who are both negatively and personally affected by these issues, and those of us who work in the field, are the ones who rally the cries. We are the ones who see the need for guidelines because were the ones who are submerged in the issues on a daily basis. We dont just see the faults in the system; we live them. Its in our faces, were in the trenches, and theres no escaping the facts of what we see.

When this happens, we come to realize that we either have to leave the system to go join another one or we have to say something about the one that were in.

Ive chosen to say something about it.

So this is my rallying cry for the need to establish boundaries and guidelines in the worlds of intuition and energy medicine. I am in no way suggesting the licensing, registration, standardization, or similar castration of a fertile practice that requires room for flexibility and imagination. What I am suggesting is the need to understand boundaries in this field, to discuss ethical considerations, to suggest guidelines, and to apply structure. We are dealing with a large number of people who are experiencing openings in their intuitive and psychic skill set and who, without instruction or guidance, are running amok with those abilities. Were also witnessing a whole other realm of practitioners in the alternative fields who have limited understandings of the implications or scope of their work because their courses never discussed it.

Luckily, we do not have to reinvent the wheel. We already have at our disposal a large body of work that we can apply directly to this field, easily and effortlessly.

My students are always astonished when I relay true stories and case studies that demonstrate the lack of boundaries in the fields of intuition and energy medicine. When youre not in the field, you dont have as many opportunities to recognize whats happening. I have those opportunities in abundance: from massage therapists who just throw in some extra energy work during a clients massage, to past life regressionists who spill details of a clients past life at a party, to intuitives who just gotta tell you what they see about you to show what they can do, to psychics who read information about your sister instead of you, to Reiki practitioners who tell you to take off your clothes.

My desire is to call practitioners to a higher standard, to educate consumers of their rights, and to inform the practices of intuition and energy medicine.

But its more than that.

Globally, universally, we are experiencing an openingan awakening. The access we have to our intuitive abilities and consciousness levels is being blown wide open. There are many theories about why this is happeningcycles of the universe, the earths rapidly depleting magnetic field, the thinning of the veil between dimensions. Whatever the reasons, its happening everywhere, to all kinds of people, and we need a framework to understand it. Our Western culture has no framework.

In the West, we do not recognize intuition as the basic human ability that it is. We see it as some special gift that is given to only a few, which is why it tends to get ignored, distorted, or misused. We view energy medicine as New Age or alternative. We pit science against it. And yet, the study of energy is a scientific study. The true information does not conflict with science; it supports it. And true science supports what mystics have known for thousands of years. In fact, our first scientists