If you are in the caring profession, then you know work can be draining and you can become progressively less effective at work. As a result, doctors, nurses, therapists, and social workers need to learn how to renew their energy effectively to meet the demands of the people they come into contact with.

Healers incur pain as they endeavor to care for the broken and wounded.  When trauma or crisis hits, they are called upon to guide and sustain their communities.  They do so with little room to take care of themselves.  How can they replenish their own energy to address everyday challenges?

Managing your energy is a skill, especially when your work involves being in one-on-one contact with those who are suffering in pain and who need your constant attention. These people can unintentionally drain your energy. As a healer, you recognize your Chi energy can get drained significantly to the point where your healing abilities diminish because you’re giving your energy to others. If you’re a healer, psychologist, or intensive care nurse, then you recognize the amount of emotional, mental, and psychic energy you give to others. 

When you’re around sick, depressed, or other kinds of people who drain your energy, then you can lose your own pleasure for living.

So professional healers who come into close contact with their clients or patients need a practical way to increase their personal energy, stamina, and resistance to burnout.

Energy Practice Daily

Avoid long-term stress in your job because prolonged stress reduces your success. 

Doing some sort of energy practice daily, or at least regularly is advised. An energy practice is designed to help you cultivate strength and endurance.  This type of practice invites you to use the power tools of breath, movement and discipline to get clear about what you want out of your day.

Consider taking the time every day to do some kind of energy practice such as Tai Chi.  Tai Chi is designed to help you to practice mindfully and regularly so you can find the energy to rise to the occasion as a healer.  The energy practice of Tai Chi makes you feel complete and whole. 

Doing Tai Chi replenishes your life force energy. 

Helping others can drain our energy, as much as we love to do it. Try a short Tai Chi workout for 15-30 minutes a day, or longer if you have a heavier workflow and need longer breaks. With energy practice, you’ll recognize that pacing yourself is going to help you in the long run.

You don’t want to ever get to a place where you are exceeding your limits. If you lack some sort of regular energy practice or regimen, it’s almost impossible for you to recognize when you’re going over your limits before you crash and burn.

Tai Chi’s motions remove negative energy from your body. This negative energy can come from work and from interacting with your clients during the day. Tai Chi builds up and replenishes your depleted energetic reserves inside your dantian, where your energy is stored.

How? You may be asking…

Tai Chi uses opening and closing techniques for releasing tension from your body and your joints. It also helps you to stretch your body, during times when your body has collapsed under the pressure of work.

Expand and contract.  Open and close.  Get into the flow.

Think of it this way, the Tai Chi movement of expanding and contracting doesn’t use your muscles. Instead, you’re moving the fluids inside your body.  When you are able to move your energy, you can let things pass – all the hurt and pain can go away.

You’re using your mind’s intent to move the blood, the lymph, and fluids like the synovial fluids in your joints. So move the fluids around your joints to open and close them. Create circulation and movement.  Allow the energy to pass so that a new energy can come in.

The openings and closings of your body are achieved through relaxation.  Relax and immerse yourself into your body’s natural mechanics, making your movements flow either toward or away from your body.  Tai Chi is practiced in this way.

Let’s do a quick Tai Chi flow right now to demonstrate the openings and closings of the movements.

Watch the video for the opening and closing techniques involved.

1. Bring your feet together, shoulder-width apart, exhale, relax, sink.

2. Extend the arms out, open.

2. Exhale, retract the arms, close.

3. Energize, opening your joints.

4. Relax back down, exhaling all the way.

Again:

1. Energize, opening up.

2. Exhale, relax, sink back down, and close. Release into your left foot.

3. Energize, open up, expand out.

Do this a few more times, following along with my video to fully see the movements.

What if you can consciously break the pattern of being excessively contracted or stiff most of the time?

Slouched at your desk or sitting in a slump all the time? Wouldn’t you benefit from doing these expanding and contracting, opening and closing exercises?

What are some other ways for you to recognize what is possible within your capability to be productive in the present moment without being stressed out?

Start by taking some Online Tai Chi Classes here today. Work hard. And take breaks.