In addition to reading the article, you’re also welcome to watch the video or listen to the audio version — whichever helps you absorb the material more fully.

For decades, I’ve heard people talk about “emotional blocks,” or say something about their chakras being blocked. And to be honest, I find it irritating, and also disheartening, because it reflects a level of gross ignorance, lack of awareness, and disconnect that many people experience from what’s actually taking place inside their own bodies and minds. It’s a grossly inaccurate assessment.

What people are often describing as being “blocked” is far more complex and far more concrete. In many cases, there are neurochemical and hormonal imbalances, damage or dysregulation within the nervous and other system, and internal organs that have become compromised over time. Chronic stress, trauma, illness, and prolonged emotional strain place an enormous load on the body. Systems begin to degrade, compensation patterns develop, and resilience drops.

Layered on top of this are highly charged emotional experiences, unresolved trauma, and fragmented consciousness. Parts of the psyche split off or become compartmentalized as a means of survival. Attention narrows. Awareness constricts. The system does not stop functioning, but it functions under strain, looping around unresolved material and operating in a diminished capacity.

What most people don’t understand is that our lived experiences, and our emotional responses to them, need to go through a process in which they are digested. Whatever we fail to digest doesn’t just disappear. It becomes stagnant residue that remains trapped in the body, and that can begin to impede the function of the organs and systems. Again, it’s not a “block” that needs to be removed. It’s material that needs to be metabolized, much like the food we eat, so it can be utilized as fuel for our continued growth, rather than remaining stuck inside us as pain, tension, and stagnant emotion.

Nothing here is “blocked.”

The system is overloaded, exhausted, fragmented, or compromised — and still doing its best to hold itself together.

Healing, then, is not about removing an obstruction. It’s about restoring capacity, supporting the nervous and other systems and internal organs, enabling lived experience and emotional charge to be digested, and reintegrating what was split off under duress. As capacity increases, function returns, not because something was cleared, but because the system can finally do what it was designed to do.

When people say, “my emotions are blocked,” or “my chakra is blocked,” what they’re usually doing is referring to some form of cognitive, emotional, or physiological dysfunction without actually understanding the processes involved, while using a grossly inaccurate metaphor as if it were an explanation.

With that said, chakras and the subtle bodies have been described in Hindu-Vedic, Buddhist, and Tantric traditions for thousands of years. If you feel drawn to explore that, I encourage you to do so through those ancient systems, with study and practice. Wikipedia offers a brief overview of the chakra system. Click this link if you want a basic starting point. 

Computers Don’t Get “Blocked”

Our computers often malfunction. Would it make any sense at all to say our computer is “blocked”? It would be pretty silly, wouldn’t it?

Our bodies are highly complex bioelectrical systems. I see a lot of similarity between the digital systems we’ve created and our own bodies and minds. Computers don’t malfunction because they’re “blocked.” They malfunction because specific systems are compromised. The CPU gets overloaded because too many processes are running simultaneously. Memory gets maxed out. Programs freeze, or keep running in the background. Software glitches, conflicts, and poorly configured updates create instability. Files and other data become corrupted, and the system becomes unstable. Hardware degrades, components overheat, drives begin to fail, RAM becomes faulty. None of this is mysterious. It’s not “blocked.” It’s overloaded, strained, and compromised.

Transmission, Practice, and Actual Capability

My mentor Horace Daukei, one of the last surviving traditional doctors, medicine men among the Kiowa Tribe, like many Native Americans in his generation, didn’t have the opportunity to continue his education. He probably had the equivalent of an eighth grade education. Yet Horace’s father had passed on a portion of the medicine, the healing power he possessed. Not too long afterwards, Horace shipped out to Europe, where he fought in World War Two.

Horace, having received the transmission from his father and going through numerous vision quests, possessed extraordinary capabilities. Even though he didn’t know proper anatomical terms, he could observe what was taking place in people’s bodies and describe it in great detail. And then he would tell his patients what he would do to address their needs. He was highly effective in identifying the issues and addressing them.

The problem with so many present-day new-agey folks is that they’ve read all kinds of bullshit books, yet they’re not doing the hours of intensive daily practice, like Indian yogis and Buddhist monks, that would actually facilitate the development of their bodies and minds. They don’t possess the kinds of gifts and powers that adepts within the ancient spiritual traditions have worked with for thousands of years. They can’t perceive what’s going on in other people’s bodies, or even their own for that matter. In many respects, they’re like children playing doctor with a toy stethoscope.

That’s why I encourage people to actually learn, and do, the practices that have been passed on through the Hindu-Vedic, Buddhist, Native American, and other ancient spiritual traditions, practices that can help you develop these capacities, and many others. And while you’re at it, I also suggest you study anatomy and physiology, neuroscience, medicine, both modern allopathic and holistic, and psychology, so you gain a clearer understanding of what’s actually taking place within the body and mind.

Before graduating from college, I did an independent study with a couple who practiced an intensive form of bodywork that involved acupressure. The husband, Randy, could actually see the subtle bodies, chakras, layers of the aura, and specific points on the body, and that’s how he determined what needed to be addressed.

I couldn’t see in the same way Randy did, yet I soon discovered that I could feel much of what he was seeing through my hands. And gradually, over time, I developed the capacity to feel the individual chakras, feel people’s current emotional states, and sense the stresses, emotions, unresolved issues, and trauma being held in the body. I could also feel illness or injuries. I could feel the resources and capabilities they possessed.

Whenever I’ve conducted classes or workshops, I’ve often offered to scan people’s bodies. Many have been so impressed by how accurately I could perceive what was going on in their lives, how they were coping emotionally, and what was taking place in their physical bodies, that it convinced them they wanted to work with me.

My capacity to sense what’s going on in people’s bodies has continued to develop over time, largely as a result of the many hours of intensive meditation practice, Chi Gong, and going through so many vision quests. And in addition to feeling through my hands, I gradually developed an internal vision of what I was sensing. As I felt through my hands, I could also see in my mind’s eye what I was feeling.

While people these days tend to be more scattered, disconnected, overstimulated, and stressed out, living in a constant state of sensory overload driven by digital media and the ongoing struggle they go through just to survive, I do feel that many still possess the capacity to develop deeper awareness and perception. And over the years, I have taught a few people to do exactly that. And if that’s a capacity you’re interested in developing, you’re welcome to reach out to me.

Again, that’s why I encourage people to work with the practices I’m teaching, along with other practices such as Chi Gong and pranayama, to work with gifted healers such as myself, and for those who feel called, to even go on the vision quest.

It’s also critically important that we learn to work effectively with our emotions, face the issues concerning us head on, clean up our diets, and eliminate refined sugar and other heavily processed foods, tobacco, alcohol, and other substances that have a numbing effect, substances that blunt our emotional awareness.

In closing, I do want to mention that possessing this sensitivity can be a real challenge at times. The most challenging aspect of being an empath is that you’re far more acutely aware of the dysfunction and toxicity that is so prevalent. And at times, that toxicity can feel very unpleasant, to put it mildly. Yet it’s this sensitivity that is so essential for healing, for ourselves, for others, and for the planet.

If you’d like to learn more, you can message or call at (332) 333-5155 or visit HealMyHeartache.com, BreakupFirstAid.com, or BenOofana.com.

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