The Energy Cure

How to Recharge Your Life 30 Seconds at a Time

Kimberly Kingsley

• Publisher: RWW New Page Books
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781601639813
• Topic: Persönliche Entwicklung
• Subtopic: Psychische Verfassung & Wohlbefinden

"It dances you through many quick and easy energy-boosting tips but by the end you've also taken a spiritual journey that leaves you at peace."—Steve Chandler, author of Creator
If the terms "spread too thin, " "drained, " and "strung out" sound familiar, it is because they accurately describe the chronic energy deficiency that many people experience today. The demands of a fast-paced world often pull our energy in multiple directions, leaving us depleted and overwhelmed. Gulping down Red Bull or relying on adrenalin for energy is not a long-term solution but is being treated as such, thus causing many stress-related illnesses. In this timely book, psychotherapist and energy coach Kimberly Kingsley introduces personal energy management—a way to live life to its fullest while preserving and renewing your most precious resource. Learning to harness and manage your personal energy can elevate you from survival mode to a place where you grow and thrive. As a guide to personal energy management, this book teaches you to: increase resilience against daily challenges by cultivating an energy buffer; use the language of energy for making everyday decisions; protect yourself from "drains" that exist in every sphere of life; and become free from self-defeating thoughts and behaviors that deplete energy. With The Energy Cure, you'll see how to make life-enhancing choices, not life-depleting ones, every moment of every day. " The Energy Cure is an affirmation that it is possible to unplug from external chaos and connect to internal peace."— Foreword

Chapter 1
Connect to Your Spiritual Core

Deliberately charging your energy system is proactive. I believe that this alone, if practiced by the majority of the population, would change the world. What it does for us as individuals is this: It allows us to leave the house full. It increases our patience, compassion, and resilience against the blows of the day, radically reducing stress and stress-related illnesses. It connects us to life’s purpose and provides the courage (and energy) to make necessary changes. If you do nothing else to better manage your energy, do this.

Along with providing much-needed nourishment, the life energy received when you consciously charge is imbedded with information. It may be subtle at first, but as you listen and learn the language of energy, the messages will get louder and louder. Initially, the information you receive will be focused on whatever is blocking life. As you charge, life will naturally want to extend through you and guide you in making decisions that support its increased expression.

When you read the tips in this book and start to notice all the things zapping your energy, don’t panic. Just breathe, meditate, or walk—focus on whatever you do to nourish and charge your system with pure spiritual energy. The rest will happen organically and at the pace with which you are most comfortable.

My experience is that the biggest obstacles to core expression come to the surface first. Maybe the first block is a relationship or habit that needs to be transformed or released. It is not practical to tackle everything at once; therefore, follow whatever comes up.

As you read these words, your inner self has probably already revealed your biggest source of energy depletion. If you’re not ready to go there yet, don’t. Just commit to deliberately receiving spiritual energy daily, and soon you will be ready to take the next step on your journey. It is amazing how quickly we are able to release patterns when we are ready. In the following seven sections we will explore how to spiritually charge from within—the first step toward embodied spirituality.

One Point of Reference

Charge Daily

Levels of Self

Just Breathe

Letting Life Lead

Embracing Your Potential

Stay Grounded

One Point of Reference

Fully charged people live by the principle that there is only one point of reference for every decision. This point of reference is life energy within you. Life guides us as to how it is best supported. Simply put, there are life-enhancing decisions and life-depleting decisions. Cultivating this frame of reference is how we support self-expression.

Here’s the catch: what I find life-enhancing may be depleting for you. For example, I am a writer. Each time I sit down and begin to write, life fills my body and I am joyful. If you are a natural designer or architect, and you sit down to write, energy may drain from you as you struggle to find the right words to express yourself. However, as you pick up a pencil and begin to draw, you may reverse the flow and become charged with energy and enthusiasm.

Therefore, to fulfill your function and to be as charged and life-filled as you can be, you need to develop the habit of checking your energy on an ongoing basis. Even basic questions such as, “Do I eat turkey or roast beef?” take on new significance from the perspective of managing your energy. Most of the time, the life energy within you prefers one over the other. Traditional wisdom may say that turkey is the healthier choice; however, your body might be better balanced by roast beef on that particular day.

“Should I go to the beach this year for the customary family reunion?” The whole family may shun you if you don’t go—however, life might desperately need you to stay home and get organized (and therefore more grounded) during your time off.

This habit of referring to your internal point of reference leads to an increased ability to understand the language of energy. When you ask yourself the question about turkey versus roast beef, does your body perk up or slump down? That’s information. Generally speaking, higher vibrations (energy flow without resistance) provide the positive feelings that we love, and feel light and somewhat buoyant, indicating a yes to whatever it is you are asking, whereas a no feels more like a sinking stomach, or subtle heaviness in your being. Proficiency comes with practice and an initial leap of faith. You will quickly learn to trust your ability to sense—almost effortlessly, like dancing—information that supports, rather than obstructs energy flow. Once you experience the increased energy and well-being as a result of honoring life, you will be hooked.

Energy language 101 involves two words: nourishment and depletion. Short-term gratification suddenly takes on a new light—“Is it worth it?” And if the price you pay is energy loss, the answer will be a resounding no. Once you become adept at discerning the voice of life instead of, for example, the voice of your habits, the concept of self-discipline changes from doing what you think you “should” do, to doing what feels best.

Doing what feels best is simple; it does not require constant effort or Olympic-style discipline. Rather, once you get into the groove, it feels more like going with the flow. There is a period of adjustment when you shift from making decisions based on multiple external reference points to a single internal point of reference. You may find parts of you resisting during this adjustment phase, but after that it is smooth sailing.

For example, I often work with women who are addicted to weighing themselves. The number on the scale, the external point of reference, has the power to determine their mood and behavior for the entire day. Due to chemicals in the brain that are released whenever we engage in addictive behavior, weighing themselves provides a small energy boost at first—however, stepping on the scale usually proves to be an overall energy drain. I advise them to stay off the scale, except for annual visits to the doctor, and instead to refer to their appetites and energy in their bodies to guide decision-making. By asking, “What choice will leave me feeling most buoyant and clear?” you give your body an opportunity to participate, often leading to a much better choice than your mind alone would make.

In addition to physical feelings of lightness and elevation, your emotions provide information as to what’s nourishing versus depleting. Joy, peace, and contentment indicate that you have made an energizing choice. If a choice causes irritability, frustration, or guilt, it is depleting!

Energy Tip: Life flows through peaceful corridors—if you want to know which decision supports life, ask yourself if it will give you inner peace. If the answer is yes, then go for it!

The initial resistance many of us experience when letting go and yielding to life comes from a fear of losing control. At some level, we believe that obsessing enough about our actions will put us in control. This is a trap. Surrendering to the will of life is like letting go of a branch on the side of the stream and allowing the water to carry you to your destination—all the while having a blast! It is a loss of control in terms of the ego, the part of us that is strongly identified with form (our bodies, thought forms, habits, and so on), and the ego fights hard to maintain its position. The key to gracefully surrendering to life is to tread lightly. Gently nudge your ego, laugh with it, observe it, and it will eventually yield. If you fight it, you feed it, and it gets stronger.

So if you must get on the scale, do it with lightness and make a joke while you’re at it. Tomorrow, you may not feel the need.

Charge Daily

Unless you are spending your days in a quasi-meditative state in a retreat-like setting, you are most likely energy deficient.

The pace of modern life depletes any energy we get from a decent night’s sleep by, I’d say, 11 a.m. It is essential that we augment the renewal properties of sleep with daily meditative activity. We will define meditative activity as a period of time when your awareness expands from being primarily in your brain to being in your entire body, allowing for mental stillness. As you experience these intermittent moments with no thoughts, pure life energy has an opportunity to expand beyond your thoughts. Some spiritual teachers, such Deepak Chopra and Wayne Dyer, refer to this mental stillness as “getting in the gap.”

Each time you are able to slip into the gap between your thoughts, pure, spiritual energy infuses every cell of your body, including your brain. For me, this feels as though my brain is being reformatted, like a computer disk. All redundant thoughts are wiped away so that my brain is open to serving my higher self instead of the other way around.

This charge of spiritual energy also extends slightly beyond the body, buffering it from the blows of the day. Things such as bad traffic and cranky coworkers simply bounce off a well-charged person, with a blessing going back in his or her direction. You gladly remain unaffected and grounded.

The voice of life gets clearer as well. When you bring more life into your body and clear the cobwebs of erroneous thoughts from your mind, you will more clearly perceive information that supports the flow of life. It feels natural, and not forced. You may, for example, be in the habit of surfing the Web at night as “filler” to a draining day. As more pure energy inhabits your body, you will simply not feel like spending excessive time on the computer. Rather, your body and clear mind might guide you to writing a handwritten letter to your aunt or toward another nourishing activity.

Energy Tip: The next time you head toward that activity that seems to provide a break from daily life, check the feelings in your body before and after the activity to see if it was truly nourishing.

There are many ways to relax into inner expansion and stillness. Some of you will want to create a space for meditation, and sit each morning. This is my daily ritual, though walking in nature is a favorite as well. If you are a mover, feel free to walk or run (go ahead and take your iPod, but make sure you have some time without music, which can be a distraction from self). A gardener? Start digging! The only real requirements are solitude and mental stillness. I am aware, however, that complete solitude is hard to come by. I remember taking a meditation class in downtown Chicago, where the elevated train would roar by about every 10 minutes. Most of us don’t have the luxury of escaping to a remote area in the mountains or by the ocean for our daily meditation. Simply cut out television, music, and conversation. People in the immediate vicinity will register in your awareness, so it’s best to have a door or some space between you. But we can’t ship off our kids or neighbors every time we want to meditate either, so relative solitude and silence will do.

Create your own daily ritual. Leaving it to chance is dangerous; time can easily be filled with a million other things. Pick your time, place, and activity, and go with it. After about 30 days you will find that if you skip, you feel malnourished.

Levels of Self

There are four levels to every human being:

1. Spiritual

2. Emotional

3. Mental

4. Physical

Managing your personal energy in a way that supports the flow of life requires that you understand each of these levels of self, and the role of each in the process of self-expression.

Let’s look at the spiritual level. Spirit is the universal, animating force of all living things. It doesn’t matter whether a person considers himself spiritual or not. Each of us has an unseen force that animates our cells and departs when we die; this is the spiritual level, our primary energy source. Food provides energy for your body as well; however, it is a secondary energy source. You can feed a dead person a lot of healthy food, but if the spirit has left, it won’t do any good.

One can deny or ignore one’s spiritual essence and choose to completely focus on the body, thoughts, and possessions, yet it does not change the fact the spiritual level exists.

Most of us start out over-identifying with our bodies. We think we are primarily our bodies and spend all our time and energy trying to protect and defend this fragile territory. Directing all this effort toward the “tip of the iceberg” neglects the larger, spiritual part of our identity—the part that animates our being and nourishes our cells. As our identity shifts to include our spiritual essence, we can surrender and focus on our true function of self-expression rather than fearfully trying to hold on to a static form.

Feeding your spiritual core daily allows it to grow in your awareness, thereby building a solid identity that reflects your whole self. We nurture the relationship with our spiritual self by spending time daily in meditation and following the guidance that life or spirit reveals on a moment-by-moment basis.

Each morning when I wake up, I set my intentions for the day. My intention is to love and care for myself by nourishing my spirit, honoring my feelings, aligning my mind, and taking impeccable care of my body. This captures the role of each level in the process of self-expression. We feed our spirits (or rather, make time for our spirits to feed us!), trust our feelings as guideposts, discipline our thoughts so that they are positive and supportive of who we are, and take care of our bodies that they might glorify spirit through authentic self-expression.

Just being aware of these four levels of self helps you view yourself more holistically. Try scanning your body on a regular basis to see where the bulk of your attention is focused. Often you will find it residing above your shoulders; this becomes an opportunity to breathe mindfully and redistribute your energy throughout your body.

Energy Tip: If you find your awareness condensed into the space between your ears, connect to your breath and allow it to move energy into every crevice of your body. You may find that you get fewer headaches!

Just Breathe

Taking full breaths is the most organic way to bring nourishing energy into your body. It’s amazing how few of us breathe correctly, and astonishing how much time we spend in “fight or flight” mode. This physiological response is wired into our makeup as a way to quickly utilize energy reserves to deal with a potentially life-threatening situation.

Many of us have subconsciously learned that by putting our bodies in a state of stress we can produce an energy surge to get us through. So we go about our days, breathing shallowly, releasing stress hormones, and “milking” our energ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Connect to Your Spiritual Core
• Chapter 2 Understand the Energy of Feelings
• Chapter 3 Organize Your Thoughts
• Chapter 4 Appreciate Your Body
• Chapter 5 Assess Your Environment
• Chapter 6 Increase Your Passion!
• Chapter 7 Look to the Future
• Index
• About the Author