WTF is "Energy Work"

Here are my current views on energy work, emotions, trauma, and coming back to the body...

Edited to add: I have a different view on a good amount of this of this since writing this. Yes, what I wrote below is true: processing emotions and trauma, and being in your body is important and helpful. And/but some energy work is also … what I now see as dangerous witchy shit that I’m not down with anymore.

Read New Age Demons for more context on that.

—

Sometimes, I’m shocked when I remember that I wrote about “energy work” in The F*ck It Diet, and that most people are just… ok with it.

I sometimes see reviews from people who don’t like the book, or just don’t like that that part of the book, because it’s too woo woo for them, but, for the most part, people just accept it. I think it’s because I did my very best at simplifying and demystifying it. Or… “dumbing it down,” you could say.

So, I’m going to expand on it in this post, and dumb it down again. But I’m also going to explain my journey with “energy work,” wtf it is, and where my head is now with it.

“Energy work” and trauma take up a good amount of space in The F*ck It Diet book, and it’s because tackling the “emotional” part of healing our relationship with food, and just... the emotional part of life, is really important. If I ignored writing that part in the book, or if someone ignores that part of their own recovery, there is a way higher probability that someone would just transfer their distraction/dysfunction with food over to another distraction. A distraction from “our stuff.” That’s what happens with “addictions” or “coping mechanisms” when we don’t heal the underlying dynamic: we just jump to another distraction.

If we quit alcohol but don’t deal with the pain we were trying to numb with the alcohol, we might become obsessed (and dysfunctional with), say, exercise. Or, if we heal our relationship with food and our “addiction” to dieting, but don’t heal what we were covering up, we may just transfer it to another vice, addiction, or coping mechanism.

And what are we avoiding? Well, without even needing to know the details of anyone’s particular pain, trauma, or unprocessed experiences, the thing we are always avoiding, is coming back into the body, and feeling, and processing and experiencing what is waiting for us. Because all of that emotion / pain / and “energy”… is in our bodies. Always.

I am sure of this. However, as sure as I am, I am also… not an expert. I have not felt all there is to feel (and honestly, most people haven’t). But I am not a therapist or a somatic processing practitioner or an energy worker. I took a yoga teacher training while I was editing TFID book so I could feel like had some sort of trained authority on the mind body connection, but all it did was make me stop doing yoga (no dramatic reason, just boredom.) But there are healers and feelers who are significantly more dedicated to all of this than I am.

As much as feeling and coming back into my body is something that has helped me a lot, and a lens that I see the world (and our individual and collective pain and suffering) through… I still spend a huge amount of my days, and my life, distracted, and not embodied.

How my understanding of this started…

I’m trying to figure out how I came to understand all of this, and it’s hard to remember…

But, really, I think it all started when I was in college, and in my early twenties, and I was reading a lot of “mindful eating” and “emotional eating” blogs and books. I had this belief that my eating issues existed because I was eating instead of feeling. You know, those typical beliefs that: We shouldn’t have a snack! We should take a walk around the block! We should journal! Just go upstairs and cry yourself to sleep! You don’t need more food, you need to feel your emotions!

So, before I came to understand what would become the basis of The F*ck It Diet (we actually need to eat AND feel, and remove all restriction and dogma around eating), I was trying to feel everything, so I could stop “emotionally eating.” Even though, now, I don’t think emotional eating was ever really my problem at all.

I also had read a lot of of books that tied my own health problems to repressed emotions, and anger towards your mother, among other emotional and energetic things. So I always had this general belief that: oh shit, I have to figure what I’m supposed to do about these repressed emotions and repressed anger!?!? In Tired as F*ck, I look at all of this through a critical lens, specifically how quickly all of this became wrapped up in Toxic Positivity for me, especially when I coupled all of this with The Secret, The Law of Attraction, and manifestation, because I developed anxiety around having any bad thoughts or emotions, because I thought I was manifesting more problems…

However, the fact still remains that all of these experiences led to my current views, which, hopefully you’ll see, are a lot more forgiving.

I also started trying EFT - emotional freedom technique or Tapping, which is an acupressure tapping technique that helps you feel and process stuck emotions in your body. It is truly bizarre and goofy looking (and feeling) do go through the process of tapping and saying these mantras over and over, but there was something to it. I remember trying it a few times and ending up having tears streaming down my face over tiny things I had no idea I was even upset about, and feeling a big catharsis at a certain point, and a shift in my energy. The release part was palpable.

Working on Yourself Doesn’t Work

I also read a book called Working on Yourself Doesn’t Work when I was 21, and the gist of the book is… you can try allll of the self-help methodologies in the world, but if you’re resisting being present in your body, it’s not going to do anything. It’s not going to stick. In one section, they take you through (what seems to me like) a somatic experiencing exercise, where you focus on feeling and labeling the sensations (or pain) in your body, and you notice how it changes and morphs, and then eventually dissipates when you surrender fully to the sensation. This was formative for me… and planted a seed in my mind that informed all of my experiences with “energy work” in the future…

Energy Work

(Ahhhh, the titular section. What TF is energy work.)

Then, I stumbled on the concept of “energy work,” which, I’m not sure if there is an official definition for, but it’s a pretty vague catch-all phrase that refers to any sort of modality that is working with the energy of your body. Acupuncture is a prime example of energy work. EFT/Tapping is also energy work. And it works on the understanding and belief that the body is made up of energy (what are electrical impulses through our nervous system, after all?). Ideally there is a free flow of energy throughout our bodies, but most of us have energy blockages or stagnation, and the modality-at-hand is meant to help to move the blockages.

Then there is body work, which, according to the dictionary is: “therapies and techniques in integrative medicine which involve touching or manipulating the body.” For example: massage.

However, lots of body work is also energy work, and lots of energy work, is also body work. And that is because the physical and the energetic are connected. For example, when you get a massage, and you are extremely tight because of stress, that is a manifestation of your emotional (energetic) stress, in your physical body. Sometimes people feel an emotional release during a massage, or during a deep stretch, and that’s an example of breaking up energy stagnation by manipulating the physical body. Or, when you put in the acupuncture needle, or do the acupressure tapping of EFT, that is technically a body work and energy work, because you are making contact with the body in order to stimulate the movement of some kind of blocked or stagnant energy in the body, which, in turn, is meant to positively affect the physical body.

(There are energy work modalities that are not body work modalities, like reiki. Reiki is JUST energy, and requires more woo and spiritual beliefs about people being able to move energy without physical contact, sometimes even in “remote” ways by sending or manipulating energy with intention without even being in the same room… Yes this is woo. Yes I believe some people have these abilities and some people are scammers.)

Acupuncture deals with manipulating the physical body with needles, and then the needles stimulate the energetic body, and in the end, it has positive physical results on the body. Meaning: you go in for pain, they assess your physical body to get signs of what is happening with your energetic body, then they put needles in your physical body (barely), it stimulates the qi to better flow through certain meridians in your body, and in turn, that energy work, helps your physical pain. Because the physical and the energetic are connected.

So… physical manipulation of the body can help with energetic release. And vice versa: having an energetic release (for example, feeling sadness or crying), can also positively affect the physical body (lowered tension or regulated nervous system, and sometimes even more specific changes).

Emotions as Energy

Next, it’s important to understand that when we are talking about emotions, we are talking about energy. And when we are talking about energy (in regards to the body), we are often (but not always) talking about emotions.

The word emotion comes from the latin emovere, which means: to move out. And the middle french: esmouvoir, which means: stir up. And amazingly, that’s exactly how I envision emotional processing to be: you lean into the feeling and the sensation of the feeling in order to stir it up and move it out.

Emotions are energy, which is why they need to be felt, processed, and released from or re-integrated into your body, or else they just sit in your tissues or nervous system, simmering and causing all sorts of… “blockages” and stagnation and tension. Emotions are meant to move. When we don’t feel them, they don’t move, they get stuck, and so does our “energy” and our body.

And a lot of us avoid feeling them, because we haven’t been taught that it’s safe, healthy, and important. We think it’s weak and weird and vulnerable and foolish. And maybe even dangerous. We also avoid feeling them simply because it doesn’t feel good. But once we understand that feeling it all will help to to move it out of your body and system, it becomes a lot easier to feel the temporary discomfort that comes from feeling uncomfortable emotions.

My Journey with Energy Work

Well, you may have read my deleted chapter from Tired as F*ck, How to Be Scammed By a Woo Woo Guru, which was my experience when I went through an energy work practitioner training. But, as frustrated as I became with that particular fake-ass power-hoarding teacher, the methodology she taught us, was: 1. using an activating/triggering phrase or belief, 2. placing hands on your body, 3. closing your eyes and breathing while repeating the phrase either out-loud or quietly to yourself, and feeling that rise, peak, and fall of “energy” or emotion in your body, that became “triggered” by the phrase. And as I say in that article linked above, she did not explain it that way, which was the most annoying part of the whole training and experience with her, but, as far as I can tell, based on my understanding of energy and emotions, and based on other energy work modalities: that is how it works. And… it works.

It takes things that used to be triggering and stressful and continually running the show from your subconscious, and it neutralizes them. Not because it’s magic, but because that’s what feeling and processing your “stuff” can do. Sometimes it can shift big things in one processing experience. Sometimes it takes more effort, more time, and there are layers and layers and layers. No it’s not magic, but in a way, our bodies are magic. We are not just flesh and bones. We are a lot a lot more.

I also went through another energy work and chakra training with my friend Alexis, and I was taught something that was a huge breakthrough in my understanding of “energy.” She focused a lot on grounding, aka, how important it is to be in the body, or embodied. And, how a lot of “spiritual people” and energy workers are making a big mistake by not grounding their energy into the body. Sometimes this is also called spiritual bypassing. If I just think positive thoughts and stay super high vibe love and light I will transcend this earthly plane. But what that approach leads to for most people, is a host of unprocessed stuff (emotions, energy, trauma) in our bodies. The way out is through. And we can look at it symbolically, or woo-woo-y, but our life force is usually not in our bodies. We are not feeling what is happening in our bodies, we are thinking. Our life force is usually in our head/mind, cut off at the neck. Or dissociated from our entire body entirely… and in order to really truly heal, and process what there is to process, we have to come back down. (I talk about this in both books, but I’m going over it again so this piece makes sense out of context.)

Our bodies are not our enemy, even though believe me, I know it feels like that often. We are meant to be in our bodies. Our intuition is in our body. We are meant to feel. All healing happens in the body. All feeling happens in the body.

That is what Alexis taught me, and it was a humungous lightbulb for me, healing wise, and energy-wise, and emotions-wise, and energy work wise… in order to move stagnant energy… we have to be in our bodies. And most of us are not.

It also tied in with eating issues… because eating is grounding. Putting on weight? Grounding. Eating brings us back into our bodies. And being in our bodies will be uncomfortable in the beginning, especially if we have a lot of unprocessed stuff, which, of course we do if we are never in our bodies long enough to feel and process it?!?!?! I heard from a (formerly) anorexic client of mine at the time, who said it was nearly impossible to even visualize her life force going down below her neck. She was totally disconnected from her physical body.

Trauma

I think it was a massage therapist who told me to read Waking the Tiger. Actually, maybe it was an acupuncturist. Actually… I forget. But someone told me to read the book, and so I did. And there it was: more proof about how important it is to be in our bodies. Waking the Tiger explains how the body holds onto trauma, and how it can manifest in the body in an infinite number of ways. Not only does trauma lead to emotional and mental distress, but physical sickness as well.

And how do we become traumatized? By going through a stressful experience that puts us into a fight or flight nervous system state, and then not being in our bodies to process the flight or fight energy in real time. So, when animals go into fight or flight, they aren’t cerebral enough to overthink anything, they feel it all, and when he threat passes, they process the mobilized survival energy, often by shaking. Humans… not so much. Our blessing and our curse, is our mind. When we go into fight or flight, we usually start thinking, instead of feeling. We are not embodied, and so the process in our nervous system is incomplete, and we stay in a sort of perpetual fight or flight, leading to us being easily triggered by everything. Because to our bodies, the threat has not passed, even if our mind doesn’t even remember the experience. And, this can happen to us, even if what happened wasn’t actually life threatening at all. It doesn’t matter. You body thought it was, and now, your body is stuck.

This also lined up to me with what I’d experienced with energy work: coming back into our bodies, feeling the stuck energy, having a small catharsis and shift, and then noticing that… that emotional or charged thing? It’s not as charged or triggering anymore.

I read Waking the Tiger while I was writing TFID, and trying to figure out the best, least controversial way of explaining the disconnect we have to our bodies. And this was perfect.

What’s the answer? Coming back into our bodies, and feeling. In some ways it really is that simple. And of course, in many ways, it’s more complicated than that. This resonates with me on a deep deep level. And whenever I find myself in an activated state, my go to action now is to breath and feel and process. Sometimes I feel a shiver, and I usually take that to mean that I allowed the experience to complete itself instead of staying stuck. BUT, the truth is… I am still not an expert. I apply it to myself in ways that make sense, but there are actual practitioners out there who will be way more knowledgable about the intricacies here. And, when people have more severe trauma and PTSD, I definitely recommend lots of professional support.

I did lots of energy work

During the early years of TFID, and even up until a few years ago, I did a lot of energy work that was focused on emotions. Some of it was EFT/Tapping, and then a lot of it was using those two modalities I trained under (until I decided I hated “Melissa”). I was hardcore about it for a while, and I really do think that it processed a big chunk of my stuff, so to speak. But I went at this the way I go at a lot of things, and the way I went at all my diets too: I am going to do this perfectly, I am going to feel EVERYTHING, ALL my emotion, ALL my tension, ALL my pain. I am going to release ALL of my limiting beliefs, and I am going to become so embodied, that I process alllll of my shit. AND THEN! JUST WAIT TIL THEN! I WILL BE UNSTOPPABLE AND SO SO SO HAPPPYYYY.

Well, that’s not the best way to go about anything, because… you burn out. And it’s also putting a lot of eggs in one basket. But also, it’s just not possible to process that much all at once. It’s hard. It’s exhausting. I’d think: OK. I am going to process the emotions and energy attached to these 10 different beliefs right now. And I’d start going through the process, and become exhausted after the 3rd one. Not because I’m lazy, but because feeling emotions, and processing energy, takes a lot of energy. It is draining. And it also requires rest in order to “integrate” the changes on an energetic and even nervous system level. Think… we can’t just release it all in one day and become a brand new person. We have to release things slowly, and figure out who we are as we go along, and let our nervous system integrate as we go. It takes awareness, integration, time… and it’s a lot.

So like… what is the point of energy work? What does it DO?

Ohhhh great question. Any sort of emotional work, trauma work, or “energy work” is meant to help process what’s stuck. And when you process what is stuck, it stops that particular things from the background. Triggers lessen or go away, things are less emotionally painful, there is more space, clarity, and emotional resilience… There is less haunting you.

It moves what is stuck, and makes it less uncomfortable to be in your body. And to be present and engaged in your current life.

Do I Still Do Energy Work Today?

Yes and no. The intensity that I had around energy work and processing my shit lessened at a certain point, I guess you could say I burnt out, though I suspect I’m overusing that word these days… But, at a certain point, instead of any formal modality, I started just doing my lie-down (tool #2 from TFID), and breathing, and feeling, until I felt my nervous system regulate, or until I received some sort of clarity.

What that means is… today, I don’t really have a “practice” or even a modality that I use, except lying down and connecting with myself. Usually breathing and feeling. And sometimes praying. Literally… just… lying down, and doing whatever I need to do to feel human, and connected, and trusting again.

And, I actually just started back up. Over the last 3 years, I stopped even my practice of lying down consistently. I got a little disconnected from my body (though I’ve still gotten in the habit to breathe deep and “come back down” when I feel overwhelmed). Covid hit and I stopped getting acupuncture and massages (because things closed and when they opened back up I was not wearing a mask on a massage table if I could help it). I also went into a kind of tailspin and terror because of my new beliefs about the world, and lived for a little while back in fight or flight…

I got really out of touch with my spirituality in the past few years too, which ripples out and negatively affects my mental and emotional resilience, and my relationship with and trust of life. So I’ve started lying down again, in an attempt to have a very very gentle ritual in place, that gives me a daily reconnection with myself and any higher power. (I’ll share more about my erratic and confused relationship with spirituality and God in another post.)

Fascia, Surgery, and “Birth Trauma” …Oh my.

So. I’ve been dealing with restless legs since I was 18. Sometimes it gets better, and sometimes it gets worse, but it’s always lurking around, keeping me awake at night. (And no my iron levels aren’t low! Even though they were when I first started getting RLS.) If you don’t know what it is, consider yourself lucky. It’s hard to explain what it feels like, but it feels horrible… and it’s apparently a neurological issue? A dopamine disorder? I don’t know.

I asked my instagram followers a few months back how they healed their RLS without drugs (because… I’m not going to go on gabapentin or anything like it, even if it “works” for RLS. I have a family member who had to wean off of gabapentin and it was hell…).

Besides the usual recommendations of magnesium and magnesium spray, both things I already use, someone replied and told me that their RLS was connected to their TMJ. And they had to go to an OMT (Orofacial Myofunctional Therapist) to help their TMJ, which eventually helped their restless legs. (Wow so many three letter abbreviations. And more to come!) And I thought…. oh shit. I have so much jaw shit. Soooo muccchhh jaw shit. The years and years and years of dental work, my right jaw bone that isn’t properly in its socket, the jaw tension when I laugh, the tension in my neck, the asymmetrical jaw muscles, the teeth grinding, the slack jaw muscles since I was a child… I mean. I. have. jaw. shit. WHY hasn’t anyone told me about an OMT until now? I DO NOT KNOW. But, I guess, better late than never.

You know, it’s interesting, because, back when I was trying to feel it all, and wanted to release every tense muscle and every stored emotion… (until I got tired and had to take a break for a few years) I never thought once about my jaw tension. Maybe it was because it was too much to handle at once, and there is only so much we can focus on healing at once. I mean, most of us have layers and layers and layers of stuff: tension, tightness, emotions, experiences, trauma, beliefs… we cannot snap our fingers and all of a sudden be free, as much as I’ve always been hoping. There is a lot to untangle, and it usually takes diving into the depths of our bodies and feeling some discomfort before we feel more relief. And it’s impossible to uncover every layer at once. Healing takes time. (And I hate it!) But it also has to take time so you can integrate the changes (whether consciously or unconsciously) so it actually… sticks.

So, I went to go see an OMT. And she did an assessment on me, and told me I had tongue tie. Which… I’d never even realized was an actual medical condition. But it’s when the little ligament thingy under your tongue is shorter than it needs to be, resulting in lots of tension and overcompensation from all of the other muscles in your entire face, jaw, mouth, neck… and apparently… your whole body. That tension can affect all your body processes. Why? Because everything is connected. It’s something they’ve started diagnosing and treating in babies again, apparently, but not when I was born in 1988, they took a lil break from caring about tongue tie for a few decades. Thanks!

For babies, tongue tie manifests most obviously in trouble latching and feeding. For adults… it can affect absolutely everything: the structure of your face and jaw, your breathing, your digestion, and as I said, your entire face, neck, jaw, and… maybe… restless legs? I have no idea how it’s connected, but … ehhh, apparently it’s connected. And apparently I have tongue tie. The OMT literally said to me: “Wow, I’m surprised you don’t have more issues!”

So what’s the answer? The western medical answer is to get a laser surgery to cut the tight part under your tongue. The “I am very alternative and want to know if there is another way because surgery is so invasive and may not even be getting to the core issue” answer is: maybe you need the laser, or maybe you are just tight because your fascia is tight.

What is fascia? Ugh, here I am getting into the “I’m not an expert I’m literally just learning about all of this” territory. According to the dictionary it is “a sheet or band of fibrous connective tissue enveloping, separating, or binding together muscles, organs, and other soft structures of the body.” Essentially, it is a web of tissue that you’ll find in your body, at every point, from top to bottom. It connects our muscles and tissue and organs, which explains how tension in your muscles could impact your organs and body processes… And, for a lot of us, our fascia is very very tight.

Tight from physical trauma, and tight from emotional trauma, I’m sure.

The fascia is connected to the lymph system, I forget how, but that means that tight fascia leads to a poorly flowing lymph. Lymph is essential for all detoxification in our bodies…

Also, when you have a surgery (which I just did …twice in one year), it cuts the fascia, which cuts off the electrical impulses that are sent through the web of fascia in our bodies, which can negatively affect the body as well. Scar tissue also adheres to fascia… or … maybe it’s that scar tissue is the adhesion of fascia to muscle? I’m not sure, but when you have a surgical scar, something gets stuck, and it needs to be unstuck, usually with manual manipulation and body work. But again, that manual manipulation and massage of scar tissue, or fascia, affects the energetic flow of electrical impulses in our bodies…

So, here I am now, going to a craniosacral-FASCIAL practitioner (CFT, told you there was another 3 letter abbreviation), to try and see if that can help my tongue tie, and in turn help me entire face, and in turn help my restless legs. Actually I’m going to the guy who invented the technique, accidentally, just because he is local. I had no idea. He is 75. He often works on babies… and helps to release their “birth trauma” (actual physical birth trauma, not like “oh my mom was stressed,” though I’m sure that affects us too.) Birth trauma affects babies’ fascia, and in turn, their whole bodies, and their whole lives. And most of us never even know it. We just know we have tightness. We just know we have issues.

He asked me my birth story. I said, “well, I pooped in the birth canal …and had to be pulled out with forceps and had little dent marks on my head for a few weeks.” And he said… “Oh. Ok. That’s all I need to know. That will affect your entire body. You know, they stopped that practice of using forceps because there were so many lawsuits? They go straight to c-section now.”

I’ve only had four sessions. I haven’t noticed it changing anything yet, but he has assured me my brain was totally stuck and not moving, and now it is expanding and contracting like it’s supposed to… I’m hoping it, like… y’know, heals me of all my problems. You know, my fave. And if it doesn’t, it will “heal” me of all my money.

I also made an appointment for the laser tongue tie release, with an oral surgeon, for 6 months from now. If I am not noticing much headway by then with the fascial work (not facial, fascial, but ALSO facial and tongue exercises with the OMT) then I’ll get the tongue tie. And… will that help everything? I don’t know.

But… knowing what I know now, how can I ignore this? My head and neck and jaw and mouth are FUCKED UP. And this explains so much of it. So, I’ve…. gotta try. I’m doing my best to remember that… true healing takes time. It may not heal everything. It may not heal anything. Life is happening now, not once I’m “more healed.”

Is it just wishful thinking and the placebo effect?

It’s worth asking: is energy work just wishful thinking or the placebo effect?

Well. Processing emotions and trauma and grief is a real thing. It can’t always be measured, but I don’t think anyone would say: oh feeling and processing grief or anger is just the placebo effect.

Are there scammy energy workers out there who convince you they are helping you, but really, in the end it’s just the belief that you’re being helped that ends up helping you? Yes. Of course. There are also very very out-there spiritual healing modalities that, I believe, have some practitioners who are gifted and very legit, and some that are full of shit.

But …belief is a very powerful thing. Intention is a very powerful thing. The funny thing about the placebo effect is…. it works. I mean they say that the placebo effect may account for half of all drug’s efficacy…

However, at the same time, releasing emotion is a real thing. That’s what crying is. That’s why they tell you to hit a pillow to get out your rage.

I truly truly believe in the healing power of coming back into the body, and the healing that processing old emotion brings. Not only because it just intuitively makes sense, but it really did help me, and so many people I’ve worked with (and readers I’ve heard from!).

Though, there is also no “end” to the emotional work. There is no end to the learning and the processing and the breathing and feeling. And even though I need to remind myself of this all of the time, I’m going to remind you, too: there is no rush.

I believe you can make all of this as simple or elaborate as you want. And that everyone is going to have a different approach to “processing their shit” that resonates most with them. That’s why I boiled “energy work” down to the most simple version in The F*ck It Diet: breathing and feeling. And lying down.

---

That’s all for this week! I am trying to email every Tuesday, alternating free and paid. Next week will be The Boob Saga Part 2, behind the paywall, then another free post in two weeks (subject TBD!)

Next week, I’m going to import my entire podcast (The F*ck It Podcast!) into substack, and start sending the new episodes out by email as well. I haven’t figured out what my new podcast schedule will be, or if those updates will replace the written free newsletter each week, or if they’ll come in addition to the written free newsletter… I’ll have to play around with it and see what makes sense (and what is doable! these posts take a while to write, and podcast episodes take a while to create as well, so doubling up may not happen).

And you will also be able to access the podcast episodes on whatever app you use for podcasts (apple, spotify, etc). Regular podcast episodes will be free (as they always have been) but I’m going to be adding in a feature where I also read these long posts out-loud, and that will only be for paid subscribers. So for instance, this would be a free newsletter post, but if you pay, you can also listen to it!

Ok, more soon!

~Caroline