During my amazing visit to Kripalu, I decided to explore another type of energy treatment since I had enjoyed my first reiki session so much. I chose Integrated Energy Therapy or IET. The service was described on Kripalu's Healing Arts brochure as follows:
"Your therapist combines angelic energy with specific hand positions and light acupressure in various locations on the physical body to gently and easily lift suppressed cellular memory from within your physical and energetic body. This treatment is ideal to clear energy blocks that have accumulated from physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual trauma. Through releasing these blocks, you will begin to feel more self-empowered, spiritually connected, and able to move through life more easily. This treatment is done fully clothed."
Sounds cool, right? As I research and explore all these methods of self-care, I am keeping a completely open mind. I did not know much about angelic energy but I decided that I wasn't going to have any preconceptions or judgements and just be open to whatever type of energetic and/or angelic experience I was about to have. I figured there were some blocks that I had of some sort or another that could use some release, so I was eager to try the treatment.
The only negative was that there was a minor glitch at my check-in and the therapist wasn't notified that I was there, so I started my session 10 minutes late. She was very apologetic and the Healing Arts director was able to prorate my session, so I didn't mind the oversight.
My practitioner asked me if I had any specific things I wanted to gain from the session and things I perhaps wanted to let go of. She let me know that there would be light touch throughout the session and that I may experience some emotions, visions, memories, colors or sensations. I gave her a few examples of things that needed improvement and/or release and then she asked me to lie down and begin to clear my mind. She gave me some breathing exercises to begin and started her work. It's hard to say exactly what was going on in terms of the things she was doing because my eyes were closed and I was really focused on my breath and trying to relax my mind. I know she had her hands lightly on me during various points-my shoulders, stomach, heart, feet, and head. There were certain places where she spent more time. The whole time I was completely relaxed and enjoying the experience. I had feelings of warmth and tingling and several memories and images came to me, related to the things I had indicated that I wanted to gain and let go of.
When the session was completed, we discussed the chakras of mine that were active, inactive, and blocked. She gave me a few suggestions for crystals that might help me and a few meditations to practice. I felt unburdened from the things I was trying to let go of and energized about the things she suggested for more chakra healing and balancing.
Overall, the experience reminded me of reiki, with the main difference being the intensity of the physical and visual sensations I experienced with IET. I feel like IET is reiki with a kick. When I did a little more research on the differences between IET and reiki, it seems like IET is more useful to deal with emotional issues, limiting and negative beliefs, and past traumas. Reiki can be more effective with physical issues, such as illness, pain, stress, tension, weight loss, etc. Another difference is the source of the energy that flows from the practitioner. With IET, the healing energy comes from the "angelic realm" and the energy involved with reiki is considered a "high frequency universal energy". Yet another difference can be found in where the practitioners place their hands on the body. A reiki practitioner will place their hands in strategic spots above the patient’s body. These spots coincide with the 7 chakras in the body. The reiki hand positions are designed to provide a general coverage to the energy anatomy with no specific focus to clearing suppressed emotions. On the other hand, IET is based on a unique cellular memory map in which 9 primary areas of the energy anatomy are identified as storing specific suppressed emotions and are targeted for clearing. IET hand positions are focused to clear the 9 cellular memory areas.
I really liked it and would definitely do it again! I'm very much enjoying this research journey and so happy to be able to offer these recommendations to my clients, as they also work on development a self-care routine and balancing mind and body. Stayed tuned for my next post-a review of my recent visit to Urban Sweat at Raffa Yoga:)
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