By Karen K. Harrison, Ed.S., LPC, LMFT
First Published in Reiki News Summer 2003
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I am a psychotherapist and Reiki master. I have found Reiki to be a useful
adjunct to my counseling practice. It has improved the quality of my work and
decreased the number of sessions necessary to produce significant healing and
recovery for many of my clients.

Because of professional and legal constraints, I do not use hands-on Reiki in my
counseling practice. However, Reiki aura clearing is a technique I can use, as it
is done without touching the client. Aura clearing (also called “psychic surgery,”
but not the same as the Filipino version) is a technique I have found useful in
both my counseling and Reiki practices. It is very powerful and often creates
dramatic results.

This technique was developed at The International Center for Reiki Training and
involves the combined use of Reiki, NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), and a
shamanic technique. The practitioner gains the help of the client by asking them
to identify, in a metaphorical way, where their psychic pain lies in their physical
body. Using this technique, the client usually becomes aware of an energy shape
with color(s), texture, weight, and often, sound. To prepare for clearing, the
practitioner does a number of things, including saying a prayer to call on spiritual
help and extending their Reiki fingers. Once preparations are complete, the
practitioner proceeds to pull out the energy shape using repeated hand motions
combined with a breathing technique.

Aura clearing can quickly and easily release energetic blockages from all levels
of the energy field, working more quickly than Reiki alone. These blocked
patterns can be recent, from childhood, or even from a past life.
I have had success with aura clearing in both counseling and Reiki settings. My
clients benefit from this technique in many ways. Some of their stories follow. (All
the names and identifying information have been changed to protect the
confidentiality of my clients.)

Aura Clearing in My Counseling Practice
Bee was feeling a lot of pain due to a separation from her husband of more than
twenty years. This, combined with the stress of moving to a new state and
starting a new job, left her emotionally unsettled. We worked in counseling for
several months to help her address her feelings, talk about her ambivalence
about the marriage, and work on emotionally releasing the marriage. After
making some progress, I described the aura clearing technique to her, and she
agreed to try it. I first had her sign an informed consent form, because aura
clearing is not a standard psychological treatment. This is for my protection, but it
is also helpful to the client. The form describes the steps involved in aura
clearing, helping the client better understand the procedure and make an
informed decision.

I asked Bee to identify where in her body the pain from the marriage resided. She
described her pain as a broken-heart shape lodged in her chest. We said a
prayer asking God and the Reiki guides to help her release whatever was right
for her to release. Next, as an additional check, I used my hand to scan her aura
to see where I felt the blockage. I was able to identify it right where she indicated.
Then I activated and extended my Reiki fingers and moved them through her
aura over the area she identified as the broken heart. It took several rounds of
pulling the blocked energy out, but she was able to release the broken heart
completely. I filled the area with Reiki energy from a distance of about three feet
for about ten minutes. Bee noted that she felt much lighter, as though the burden
of sadness over the marriage had lifted. She was able to leave the counseling
session feeling better than when she came! Bee continued to report feeling better
about her seperation and thought the Reiki treatment had been a turning point for
her.

Often when people come to counseling, they discuss painful feelings and leave a
session feeling worse than when they arrived. The purpose of this is to help them
release the feelings in order to feel better later. The use of aura clearing is more
effective—it creates the same results more quickly and without the client
experiencing the painful feelings.

Pulling negative energy out and sending it up to the light.

Rita, another counseling client, suffered from the trauma of being raped. At the
time of the assault, she had been drinking and taking several medications for
various physical problems. Because of the drugs, she didn’t know exactly what
happened, but she did know that she had been raped. A police exam confirmed
this.

Rita was obviously traumatized when she arrived. She told me the man had held
her hands down, but she really didn’t want to discuss the experience further. Rita
didn’t have the words to describe what happened to her energetically. She just
had a sense that his energy was still on her body, and she felt dirty. From an
energetic standpoint, I felt that when the rape occurred, the rapist left pieces of
his aura or energy in her energy field, leaving Rita to feel continually traumatized
by the rape. She indicated that she wanted to release the feelings of
contamination. This indicated to me that aura clearing would be an ideal
technique for her situation.

As I scanned her body, I could feel her attacker’s energy in several places,
including on her hands. Blocks feel very different depending on how long they
have been there, how much trauma they represent, and whether or not a spirit is
attached. This energy felt very dark and repulsive to me, so I could tell that
something awful had happened.

In the opening prayers prior to commencing aura clearing, I asked Archangel
Michael to help along with the ascended Reiki masters. In my experience,
Archangel Michael is able to help release attachments to one’s energy field. I
protected myself with the power symbol over all my chakras. Then I began
pulling the negative energy from Rita in all the places where we felt blockages. I
discovered that she also had blocks in her head and heart from the trauma of the
experience. After about twenty minutes of aura clearing, I no longer felt any
blocks remaining, and she reported that she felt released from the dirty energy.
I then proceeded to hold my hands over her body and give her Reiki for another
twenty minutes to fill her energy field with positive energy. Rita commented that
she felt she could go on with healing now that “his energy” was gone from her
body. Previously, she felt repulsed by her body and the energetic remnants he
had left.

After the aura clearing, Rita felt she could start to move forward with her life.
Additionally, she no longer felt the need to talk through this event in counseling
and was able to return to the other things we had been addressing. This is
remarkable progress because a rape is often an event that impacts a person for
many years and in many ways.

Aura Clearing in My Reiki Practice
Colette, who was in her late twenties, had a long history of problems with bulimia.
She had not been active in her bulimic purging for several years, but still had a
distorted body image. She hated her abdominal area and couldn’t stand to touch
herself there; she thought her stomach was fat and felt something ugly inside
her. I energetically scanned her body and found some very heavy, dense energy
over her abdomen that also felt repulsive to me. Telling Colette what I found
seemed to validate for her what she felt about her body.

When scanning people, occasionally I have felt energy blockages so dense and
repulsive that I felt there was some sort of entity attached. Since I don’t see what
I am removing, I am only guessing, but the quality of the energy feels different in
these cases. This is what I felt with Colette. She described her energy blockage
as a dark brown mass shaped like a pool of mud. It felt very heavy and dense.
Colette affirmed that she was willing to release the blockage and let it go.
Before I started the aura clearing, I said a prayer calling in the ascended Reiki
masters and Archangel Michael to help remove the entity and take it back to a
place where it could no longer cause harm. I also protected my energy body with
a large power symbol over my trunk and small power symbols over each chakra.
As I started pulling the blocked energy out, I felt it release quite a bit and lighten.
Since it did not completely release, I used an additional technique. I drew the
mental/emotional symbol over her stomach and began channeling Reiki into the
area. I asked her to focus on her stomach and tell me what she became aware
of. Up came the memory of a trauma as a twelve-year-old girl, when she felt the
ugliness in her stomach had started. I sent Reiki to the little girl using the
distance symbol, and the block continued to lighten.

For another two sessions, we continued to work on the blockage and finally
removed all of it. Colette reported that she was finally able to touch her stomach
and no longer felt repulsed by it. The aura clearing was a huge success for
Colette, as it facilitated the release of the negative energy and the burden of the
trauma that she had carried from age twelve.

Carter is another client who experienced aura clearing during our Reiki sessions.
Carter was a young man who had tried counseling for his issues without much
success. Sometimes talk therapy doesn’t work well for certain kinds of clients,
while Reiki can do wonders. He reported feeling disoriented, negative, confused,
lost, and depressed. He thought this condition might be due in part to a “bad trip”
with psilocybin mushrooms two years ago, which is when he started feeling this
way.

By scanning his energy field, I found huge blocks in his head, heart, and
stomach. The block around his head and the back of his neck felt particularly
dense and negative. During this process, Carter also became aware that the
source of his problems seemed to lie at the nape of his neck. Because the
energy felt so dense and repulsive, I thought it might be some sort of energetic
attachment or entity. Therefore, I called in Archangel Michael and Jesus to assist
and, in addition, used Karuna Reiki® energy. I drew the Karuna symbols and the
Usui symbols on my hands for spiritual anesthesia and releasing. During the aura
clearing, Carter experienced significant emotional release and cried as he let go
of the pain of his mental confusion. He said that he felt Jesus reconnect him to
Source and, at the end, felt much better.

Five days later I saw Carter again. I was guided to use the healing attunement on
him first, to help him be more receptive to the Reiki energy. (The healing
attunement is a technique developed at the International Center for Reiki
Training.) Then, using aura clearing, we cleared out another layer of blockage in
the back of his head, neck, and in his heart. Again I had asked Jesus to assist
me in this session. Very powerful energy surged through me from Jesus, giving
me several bursts of healing energy, which felt like powerful waves of bliss that
came down through my head and flowed out through my hands. This part of the
session was again very powerful, and Carter cried a lot. He felt Jesus reconnect
his head and heart and help to heal his heart, broken by the death of his mother
when he was a boy.

Over the next six sessions, we continued to work on the blockage at the back of
his head and the block in his heart, along with a general clearing out of his
energy field in his third eye and along his spine. Carter came in looking brighter
and happier each time. He reported the fog that had imprisoned him was
completely gone. When I ran into Carter’s father, he announced that the Reiki
had performed a miracle on his son when nothing else had worked.
When calling in spiritual being(s) during sessions, I have experimented with using
beings the client prefers. Doing so seems to provide additional comfort to the
client, as they feel attended by the spiritual being(s) of their choice. My Buddhist
client much preferred me to call in Buddha over my usual choice of Jesus and
Mother Mary. On the other hand, my Catholic client was overjoyed to have me
ask Mother Mary to work with us.

The use of aura clearing has allowed me to facilitate the release of emotional,
mental, physical, and spiritual traumas and issues more quickly than I have been
able to do with psychotherapy alone for similar issues. And in other cases, it
worked where psychotherapy had not been successful.
Karen Harrison has been a Marriage and Family Therapist and Professional
Counselor since 1991 and a Reiki practitioner since 1993. She is a Professional
Licensed Reiki teacher with the International Center for Reiki Training. She is in
private practice and formerly supervised therapists working on their licensure
credentials after they finished their graduate degree. Additionally, she was an
adjunct professor of Marriage and Family Therapy at the University of Missouri,
Kansas City, for five years. Karen has served on the spiritual counseling staff of
her church since 1994. She can be contacted by email at
Reiki@KarenHarrison.net, and her website is www.KarenHarrison.net.