Starting in the late 1990s, I developed a technique for observing energy. I’ve been expanding and improving it ever since.
That technique is sensory connections. So far, I’ve discussed how I developed the technique and how it works. Today, I’m guiding you through making a sensory connection yourself.
This post assumes you’re comfortable with building, moving, and quieting your energy. To learn or review those skills, see this step-by-step guide.
Making Your First Sensory Connection
A connection carries energy. We unconsciously make connections all the time. These exercises will help you learn to make connections intentionally.
Remember how you made your own custom energy visualization, matched to how you experience energy? We’re going to do the same with connections.
First, we’re going to learn to make a connection, then to guide the connection separately from our energy, and finally how to make a quiet sensory connection.
Making a Connection
Let’s start by practicing making a connection unconsciously, to make sure that’s easy for you.
Build energy in your body. Touch your leg, and send the energy down your arm, out your hand, and into your leg. Keep the energy flowing, and slowly move your hand away from your leg. Your unconscious mind will make a connection to carry the energy.
Practice this several times, starting by moving only 1-2 inches away from your leg and working your way up to 6-10 inches. Each time, make sure you can still feel the energy flowing into your leg before moving your hand further.
Guiding the Connection
We’re going to make a visualization, then use it to consciously guide the connection.
A connection carries energy. So think about how you visualize energy. What would carry that? If you visualize energy as electricity, the connection might be a wire. If you visualize energy as a hot red glow, the connection might be a metal rod. Remember, visualizations are just about communicating your intent to your unconscious, so choose whatever feels right to you.
(Note: Try to pick a visualization where you see the energy traveling along the connection. For example, if you visualize energy as water, visualize the connection as a clear glass tube (rather a metal pipe), so you can visualize the energy flowing through the connection.)
Let’s use the visualization:.Make a connection as before, with energy flowing through the air from your hand to your leg. Visualize the connection, with the energy flowing through it. In your mind, connect the visualization to the lived experience: Think about what each part of the visualization represents, how it aligns to what’s actually happening, how this is just representing what’s already happening with your energy.
Visualize the connection, stable and steady, and visualize the energy stopping. Stop the energy flowing down your arm, into your hand, and through the connection. Keep the connection stable and steady as you stop the energy.
Test it: Try sending energy again, through your connection to your leg. Make sure you can feel it. Turn the energy on and off several times.
Practice this until it’s easy to turn the energy on and off while maintaining the connection. This may take several sessions, possibly over several days or weeks. That’s OK. There’s no time limit on learning energy.
Creating a Connection Without Energy
So far, we’ve made a connection by sending energy, then stopped the energy and quieted the connection. But this adds your energy to the person’s body (or whatever you’re observing), which changes their energy. Once you do that, you’re observing the energy you sent, rather than the person’s own energy.
In this step, we’re going to make a connection from scratch, without sending energy first.
Touch your leg. Quiet the energy in your hand. Visualize a connection (without energy) between your hand and your leg. Slowly move your hand away from your leg. Visualize the connection growing and stretching, without sending energy.
As before, test it by sending energy through your connection to your leg. Make sure you can feel it. And as before, practice this until it’s easy to create a connection and then send energy along it.
Quieting the Connection
We have a connection, and we’re not sending energy along it. We’re done, right?
Not quite. Just like your body has lots of energy in it, even when you’re not actively building or moving your energy, the connection also has energy in it, even when you’re not actively sending energy along it. And just like we quiet the energy in the body to listen for someone sending us energy, we need to quiet the remaining energy in the connection.
You can make a visualization for quieting your connection, based on the visualization for quieting the energy in your body. If you do this, make a connection, stop sending energy through it, then visualize the remaining energy in the connection becoming quiet. Think about how you’re not placing energy into the connection, you’re just feeling the energy that’s alrady there and quieting it.
But we’re reaching the end of what we can do through visualization. If you keep exploring my system of energy, you’ll have to move beyond visualization. See, a visualization tells your unconscious mind what you want it to do, but they lack a certain precision, especially for techniques your unconscious doesn’t already know. Instead, you’ll learn to guide your energy consciously, feel it respond, and adjust it second by second. This has been key for me to [L]explore energy deeper, and now is a good time to learn it.
Think about how it feels to quiet your energy. Not how it feels to have quiet energy, but what the act of quieting your energy feels like. Use a visualization to quiet the energy in your body, and notice what happens. What engages in your mind and body? How does your energy shift?
Try quieting your energy without your visualization. Just think about how it feels to quiet your energy, what engages, how your energy shifts. Practice this until it’s easy. (This may take several sessions over several days.)
Now make a connection. Quiet the energy in your chest without the visualization, just by thinking about it. Quiet the energy in your arm the same way. Quiet the energy in your hand. Now quiet the energy in your connection, just by thinking about how it feels to quiet your energy.
Congratulations! You just guided your energy to make a quiet sensory connection. Practice this until it’s easy, then you’re ready to start using it.
(I’ll discuss how to use a single sensory connection next week.)