Chakra cord healing work is a new level of expertise for energy healers. After clearing and charging the chakra system, and then removing astral energetic blockages, the next layer of work moves towards healing a client’s relational connections. The energetic hardware for dealing with our relationships can be found in the invisible webbing that connect us to others: chakra cords.
I began working with chakra cords over sixteen years ago, in conjunction with my astral extraction and auric clearing work. In Relational Energy Therapy (RET) the etheric structured cord connections between us are a major aspect of human energetic relationship, and the fluid, non-structured Astral world is the other one. Human beings use both wiredand wireless mediums – chakra cords and the Astral world – to energetically relate to other people: to form and maintain contact, and to share important ideas and vital resources with each other. Shortly after I left The Barbara Brennan School of Healing in 2003, my spirit guidance team taught me about an additional aspect to chakra cord anatomy, and one that ultimately became vital to my Relational Energy Therapy working model: chakra self-cords.
These tiny filaments represent the energetic “wiring” of the way in which we internalize the outer world – and their relationships – into our personal, inner world. We become truly individuated through these personalized connections, rather than just another predictable personality springing out of our family heritage. While relational chakra cords extend out to others, and astral energies surround, or are embedded within our physical body, self cords emerge out of our cord connections with others, looping back and embedding themselves into the outer aspect of the chakra head.
Normally these cords grow through our early and healthy interactions with others. They are automatically repaired and enhanced in any adult-to-adult relationship, such as that of a caring family member, a close friend or mentor, or even with your psychotherapist when engaged in long-term work. If the cleaning and strengthening of these chakra self cords were simply a nice idea it would be one thing. But close to twenty years experience now shows that that by receiving self cord work my clients (and my students) make substantial leaps of progress in many areas of personal growth, including:
* self-esteem, or self-value
* healing from co-dependent relationships
* releasing abusive, toxic, or addictive relationships
* healing of early childhood wounds and developmental deficits
* awakening to true spiritual identity
The primary focus of RET chakra cord work is when the healer enters the auric system with the intention to clear or untangle any problematic energetic wiring of the self, as well as to reinforce important connections where necessary. A variation of this is Heritage/DNA chakra cord work, which addresses family patterns which we may unconsciously be perpetuating in our own lives. I have discovered that self-cord work is especially helpful to those individuals who have already accomplished much in their lives, and are looking for a new level to healing their past. As these early chakra cord connections are often pre-verbal, held in place by years of habits, a supportive re-wiring of the chakra cord system helps create the circumstances for any leap to another level of awareness.
This is not to imply that chakra cord work is dramatic or cathartic; cord healing is almost always gradual and gentle. One day you realize a glimpse into a new inner world, one where you are connected to a deepened sense of self. The old way you experienced yourself, and others, is somehow behind you; all of a sudden, the past is done, and you have found yourself. And the past is done.
Upgrading our auric energy system
As we get older, life experience reforms earlier teachings we have been given to us by others. There appear to be at least three major stages we all go through. First, we take on the teachings (or values) of others, and identify with them as the way things really are, rather than only one of the many options available. Secondly, these teachings are tested in the crucible of our life experience. Perhaps we find out they work well for us, but sometimes they fall short. At that point, these teachings are either clung to despite any inadequacy on their part (as dogma), or they may come to erode our personal growth because of their built-in limitations.
But it is possible to find ourselves at a place where earlier teachings are replaced by new and alive individualisticresponses to life, and that our earlier way of thinking and doing things comes to be replaced. We may evolve into a simplicity and directness of life built upon the foundational ashes of the past, rather than to come to merely repeat or loop the past. Learning, if evolving, can eventually lead us towards life strategies that are genuinely helpful and supportive of human spirituality-in-action, rather than to merely become a part of maintaining the status quo of our past.
One example of this three-way process has been my appreciation of the energetics of narcissism: one of the important psycho-emotional stages of human development. At the start of my training as a healer I was introduced to two differing viewpoints on narcissism, one from my early reading of Asian mysticism, and the other from the Bioenergetics and Core Energetics approach that used the body in personal process. A Western (New Age) reading of Eastern spirituality stresses formlessness and passivity as essential ingredients in spiritual awakening. Having an “ego”, or a strong container of self, is regarded as less optimal than being accepting of all, and non-judgemental of others and their actions. Personal boundaries should be open to all energies. New Age writers will happily illustrate this ideal way of being using Zen Buddhist or other Eastern teaching stories. But on closer inspection many of these Eastern stories are steeped in orientalism (the Western interpretation of exotic cultures) and more illustrative of the author’s viewpoint than reflective of Asian practical wisdom.
The second influence upon my formative years as a healer was the Bioenergetic / Core energetic work on personal process; that which used body energy charging and discharging to awaken the aliveness of the client’s “character” style. In these disciplines the issue of narcissism is labelled “psychopathy”, which is unfortunate as this term is commonly reserved for significantly toxic individuals who lack both empathy and human morality, and who often prey upon “normal” people without remorse. I saw this same assumption of passivity being draped like a blanket over the character style of “psychopathy”, misleading people into thinking that control or the seduction of others was a energetic defense rather than a problem with their personal development. While there is far more to Core Energetics than this, I have seen the character style of Psychopathy being applied during healing work that suggests the client is un-evolved rather than struggling with a human developmental issue.
New Age assumptions about “ego” or about the “psychopathic character type” have significant problems for transformational energy healers engaged in modern-day personal and spiritual growth. I have personally found the need to reformulate my earlier studies in healing to take into account both healthy narcissism in regular individuals, and its necessary function in the formation of a strong ego self identity with boundaries, as well as unhealthy narcissism (an undeveloped self with lack of empathy for others, and an infantile strategy to hide any underlying intention).
My early ideas about the formation of the evolving ego plus spiritual self crumbled in the face of overwhelming experiential data about this most important developmental stage. Without a strong sense of self-worth, self-value, and self-determination, an individual cannot move into higher states of spiritual development. The negative opinion on having an “ego” by New Age writers in the past unwittingly does a tremendous disservice to spiritual seekers. Similarly, in some body-centered psychotherapies, the disparaging of the “psychopath character energy structure” as being distastefully “controlling” or “seductive”, and, as such, in need of modification, demonstrates a misunderstanding of the important need for structure and boundaries on the path to spiritual awakening.
As a healer I strive to move into what could be described an a vital stage of learning: letting go of older forms of working with egoic self structure and its variations, and looking towards developing new ways of spiritual growth.
The Therapeutic Energy Healing model (i.e., reforming life experience by the dropping of the past and the embracing of a more fluid and responsive energy field system) tracks some of the important landmarks of psycho-emotional narcissistic development for healers and their clients. First, we become aware of the “created” egoic identity, mostly through the assimilation of the ideas and values of others, and moderated by our personality preferences.
Secondly, we face a series of tests, crises, and initiations in our lives, all of which can crack apart previous assumptions about who we think we are, and about how the world actually works. Finally, we recover our infant-like fluidity, and can build flexible and sensitive energetic boundaries with others, as well as with connections to our inner self. We are not – as some New Age dogma suggests – striving to imitate the state of being of another awakened adult. The pathways of spiritual awakening must pass through the lands of personality challenges, boundary changes, and relationship crises. Like steel, our individuated ego self is forged in the furnace of life. Growth does not simply appear out of nowhere.
Practical application of chakra self-cord work
So, what does this mean for our practical application, in the world of energy healing? Does it mean a radical departure from working towards ego-self reduction, as certain New Age-inspired therapies stress? Yes, based on my personal experience. Because if I measure that life experience against the teachings of New Age dogma, then I, personally, must leave behind what is unhelpful. My practical results trump theoretical dogma every time, even with regard to well-meaning spiritual teachings. My private energy healing work currently stresses both the clearing of auric field boundaries as well as the support and guidance necessary to form a more clear sense of self.
It also stresses that any increasing sense of self must be rooted in the original energy consciousness of the person, and not the idealized ego image of that person, or of another. This is moving towards not a passive acceptance of everything that happens, but an energetic engagement with others, and increasing with the authentic self. It therefor includes work with Chakra Self Cords: the psychic anchoring cords of the outer experience with others into the energetic chakra self system.
The access points for these self cords are to be found around the edge of each chakra head. The self-cords sprout out ofthe relational cords towards (or from) others, and anchor identity inwardly (via life experience, and not through mental constructs learned at an early age). Additionally, personal process work is orientated around both fully experiencing personal boundaries (often experienced when someone transgresses our boundary, or when someone confronts a weakly-developed boundary) and increasing its development (as in the three stages of dogma, conflict, and evolution) in the client’s energy system. This often results in the client having a growing and sustainable awareness of new and healthier options in their lives.
Slowly, in the client’s life, new choices appear and reportedly become far more attractive to my clients than the previous habitual ones. In accepting energy work that not only clears but increases their sensitivity, my clients will often report the emergence of new options. The old, predictable past ways of doing things, of having relationships, begins to shift, sometimes radically. New choices, ones filled with unexpected possibilities, arrives for them like a new dawn. Far from losing their ego, or eliminating ways of controlling or manipulating others to get personal needs met, they begin to naturally access more evolved strategies and interpersonal skills. They evolve further into spiritual adults, and by way of their humanity, rather than by cherry-picking which parts of human experience they should idealize, or suppress.
Chakra Self-Cord work is only one of many ways in which moving through the three stages of dogma, crisis, and evolution, can work to support our personal development. Psychotherapy, neo-Shamanism, and many and varied transformational practices are all pathways to the same result. Used in conjunction, emotional work, energetic healing, and spiritual practice take us towards, and into, awakening. And then we can not only heal the past, but come to see it as necessary psycho-emotional “fertilizer” that is necessary to grow the rose of consciousness: a state of enlightenment that is fully and empathically human, rather than one that only expresses our narcissistic dreams. We grow through relationships – and the ending of relationships – and self-cord back into ourselves all that is important to us, and all which best represents our authentic inner self.
© 2017 by Dean Ramsden. All rights reserved.
