The Cauldron: A Pagan Forum

Did you learn to sense energy or did you always have the ability? How do you sense it (sight, sound, touch, etc)? What types of exercises would you recommend? Can I have walls up and not realize it?

I think that meditation would play a role in this as well, just focusing on your breath and your self will allow some of those hidden skills to emerge and become less hidden. Has this been the case for you?

I feel like energy is an important factor and I'd like to practice it while I continue to learn.

Did you learn to sense energy or did you always have the ability? How do you sense it (sight, sound, touch, etc)? What types of exercises would you recommend?

The other way you can explore this is to put yourself in situations where focused energy is in play. This can be a ritual, but depending on the setting, other kinds of religious service may do it. Some kinds of music concerts do it, or theatre. Some yoga practices do. Some martial arts do. For a lot of people I've worked with, once you figure it out in one setting, a bunch of others will follow very quickly.

The other biggest thing I can say is that society trains us *out* of sensing energy in a lot of ways. Regular repeated work (even if it feels at the moment like you're not making headway) can be very helpful over time. Doing quick things that help reinforce that you're getting useful data can help.

I can taste energy and I can feel it in my stomach (for some reason energy is like food for me don't worry I don't get it either)

Sorry about that I didn't see your post either. Well energy tastes like different things depending on the type of energy but it is hard to distinguish sometimes. A lot of time it tastes like dry static, and many times it can taste like spring water. Sometimes the taste just can't really be put into words no matter how hard I try. The energy given off by my computer right now tastes like a dry towel. Of course all this really means was that I had no right posting here in the first place cus' my way of sensing things is so far off from everyone else's that my success rate for teaching it is zero. Anyways hope that helped.

I mostly *hear* energy, but it's something that took me a long time to be able to talk about, and something that still doesn't go into English very well. (Or rather, I can put it into English with people who have a fairly large and specialised musical vocabulary - my descriptions are usually a combination of instrumentation, tonality, and comparisons to various genres or pieces of music (hi, yes, I was a music major in college among other things.))

I do also feel it, if I'm in the right setting: once I learned how to play with the energy resistance in the exercise you described, I had a much easier time feeling it elsewhere. But it took some practice with people (my teachers) who were skilled at producing focused energy on demand, for some approaches.

I should also note that learning how to sense energy is a lot easier with someone else to work with (ideally, someone who's got some sense in whether they're focusing energy or not). Doing it on your own, you hit the question of "are you not producing much, or not sensing much?" and the troubleshooting for the two is different.

Anyway, as that article notes, there are bunches of different ways to sense energy, and most people have one or two that work, and a couple that really don't work. (I get no visuals at *all*, for example)

The other way you can explore this is to put yourself in situations where focused energy is in play. This can be a ritual, but depending on the setting, other kinds of religious service may do it. Some kinds of music concerts do it, or theatre. Some yoga practices do. Some martial arts do. For a lot of people I've worked with, once you figure it out in one setting, a bunch of others will follow very quickly.

The other biggest thing I can say is that society trains us *out* of sensing energy in a lot of ways. Regular repeated work (even if it feels at the moment like you're not making headway) can be very helpful over time. Doing quick things that help reinforce that you're getting useful data can help.

When I was doing initial energy training, I was doing a lot of library book shelving and inventory. One of the things I used to do is hold the book, guess its age, and then check it. I started out by being maybe in a 15-20 year range, and by the time I stopped doing the exercise, was within a year (i.e. if the book was published in, say, 85, I'd say 84, 85, or 86) at least 75% of the time.

Now *some* of that is clearly cues from the layout/font/binding/design/etc. (A book designed in the 80s is... well, the 80s are sort of unmistakeable in a lot of ways.) But to get it down to a year on either side, something else was going on.

The other advice my teachers always gave was 'act as if'. Do energy exercises (like grounding, centering, etc.) as if they're working, even if you don't feel them. For some people, that'll open up the channels so they actually do start working. (It may take some time.)