Recently the people from SoundsTrue.com, hosted an online Shamanic Summit. I am not a shaman but I did devote over 30 hours in the span of about a week to listen to all of their speakers. Some I really enjoyed more then others but I definitely learned a whole lot! One of the speakers that really caught my attention was HeatherAsh Amara. She spoke on recapitulation, which is defined by the "gathering" of your life force energy through guided visualization. Using your imagination and breath work to recapture some of the energy you might have left behind in difficult life situations. This tool is from the Toltec Tradition and HeatherAsh Amara describes it in this book The Toltec Path of Transformation: Embracing the Four Elements of Change.
She recommends to use this work daily as a way to gather and store energy. Every day there are times where your losing energy due to situations in which you get emotional, like anger and sadness. But the best part is that through daily practice of this energy work we no longer have to leave it behind. Using this as a guided meditation at the end of a long yoga class is a great routine to practice. To describe a little bit about the energy work we need to start by sitting and grounding. We then begin thinking about an intention, energy work always needs an intention. Hold that intention in the mind, when energy is being gathered, maybe think of what we need that energy for: a difficult conversation with someone, a difficult situation, etc. HeatherAsh went into detail about grounding when we started to make sure we were firmly thinking about stability. So, she had us visualize the sun and then a rope of energy braided and traveling from around the waist all the way up to the sun! I imagined these fibers as glowing golden fibers. With the sun as your anchor we were ready to start. We began to think of a moment in time where our energy was taken away: a death, an argument with a friend, something that created a significant emotion and in turn created a loss of energy. The catch is to make sure that that moment no longer creates an emotion in the body now, no tears, no sadness, just neutrality. Then we know that we can start to imagine and visualize that situation. In detail as if we were watching a movie of ourselves in that moment. Then using deep inhalations and exhalations to inhale our energy left behind and exhale the energy which is not ours. visualizing a way to gather the energy helps the energy to travel back to us. I visualized an old broom like a witch's broom self-moving (like Mickey Mouse's broom from the epic scene in Fantasia) and sweeping that energy to me. The energy particles looked the same as the braided cord of energy that grounded me to the earth from the sun: golden strands that were slightly illuminated. Making sure that our exhale carried a neutral energy with no attached emotions. She also mentioned in order to neutralize the emotion you can think about the energy moving through the soil of the earth and being filtered and cleaned and neutralized before letting it go back. My personal situation gathered energy that I then stored for later use.
Part of HeatherAsh's explanation of energy was telling people that energy and thought (imagination) has made everything around you: your phone, the computer, the chair and fabric on the chair, everything comes from the imagination. Why can we not use this imagination to take back the energies that were lost throughout life. The basis of this thinking is essential the power of the mind and how positive (and negative) thoughts can influence everything in life. Positive thinking is a game changer.
I also liked some of the other presenters from that summit but HeatherAsh's presentation has changed my perspective just a little bit more.