What Are Energy Blocks, and How Do They Affect Us?

My client was frustrated. He ran marathons for fun! But for about five years, he’d been facing a peculiar challenge.

Ron, as I’ll call him, would start to sputter at the 15-mile mark during a race, becoming so tired that he would drop out. He knew that athletes could hit a “wall,” a low-energy point, but the pattern was relatively new and didn’t happen during training.

During an energy healing session, Ron asked me what was going on.

“You have an energy block,” I responded. “Let’s see what might be causing it.”

His block? We figured out that Ron’s best friend was jealous of Ron’s marathon success, and his life success in general. In fact, Jay (as I’ll name him) was so envious of Ron’s life that he decided to start running marathons as well. Yup. About five years earlier. The problem was that Jay could never get past the—you guessed it—15-mile mark.

Why would Jay’s limitations get stuck in Ron’s body? Everything is made of energy, which I define as information that moves. Most of us focus on physical energy—the stuff of concrete reality. If an athlete has a leg cramp, it makes sense to massage the muscles and take extra minerals. But physical energy composes less than one percent of all energy. Subtle energy, also called psychic, spiritual, or quantum energy, comprises more than 99.99999 percent of all reality. This is important because subtle energies form the latticework that organizes what happens in physical reality.

We generate unconscious subtle energies all the time, usually consisting of programming we aren’t aware of. If these programs aren’t life-affirming, they can “clog up” our energy field, causing emotional and physical repercussions. Subtle energies are also constantly passed from person to person. In Ron’s case, he was unconsciously holding onto—or being blocked by—subtle energies he’d absorbed from Jay.

Through our work, Ron also discovered that he felt guilty about being better than Jay at nearly everything. This dynamic was carried over from a childhood pattern with Ron’s brother. Once Ron decided to release his own deep-seated perceptions, he ran clear past the 26-mile mark during his next race. If Ron hadn’t been willing to embrace the invisible energies that comprise reality, he may have never cleared his issue.

Defining Energy Blocks

Fundamentally, a “block” is anything that prevents movement or flow, making it difficult to achieve a goal. Imagine you are decluttering your bedroom. You’ve tossed everything you want to donate or discard into the hallway before noticing that you’ve left no space for you to leave. You literally can’t get from the bedroom into the main part of your house.

Sure, you can climb out the bedroom window and walk through the yard to the front door. That’s what most people do when their energy is blocked. They go around the problem, ignoring it if possible. But, what’s the point in that? It’s far better to just get unstuck, even if it takes a little time, using a process that energy healers call “releasing the block.”

Energy blocks can consist of repressed feelings, dysfunctional beliefs, inherited trauma, childhood memories, and programming absorbed from our culture, religion, and more. If you believe in reincarnation, as I do, you might believe that energy blocks can be inherited through past lives as well.

As mentioned before, it’s also possible to absorb other people’s energies, which happens more often than we realize. After all, we are merely oscillating fields of light and sound. Where do we really stop, and others start?

How Negative Energies Block Our Success

To simplify the search for an energy block during energy work, we can state that we’re looking for sites of “negative energies.” In this context, the term “negative” references all energies that don’t support your true essence.

You have many layers of selfhood. Knowing about these can help you clue into the part of you being influenced by a negative energy block:

• Your spirit. Your spirit has always existed, and always will, as the truest part of yourself. This layer of selfhood isn’t affected by energy blocks, so I recommend you consult this part of yourself when you’re trying to identify the location of energy blocks elsewhere in the body.

• Your soul. This is the aspect of you that travels across time, participating in one incarnation after another, to learn about love.

• Your mind. This is a part of the soul divided into two sections. The higher mind reflects your spirit’s knowledge and is pure. The lower mind runs the brain and downloads negative ideas, which can then become mental blocks that prevent good health, balance, and success.

• Your body. This is your main vehicle for action. It is influenced by many factors, including your ancestry and childhood events.

Now that you have a good foundation for understanding energy blocks, you’re ready for tools! I suggest you conduct both practices, starting with the first one.

Practice: Finding an Energy Block

Think about a time when you were trying to perform and just couldn’t pull it off. Return consciously to that experience. Be there again.

Sense the clothes you’re wearing, the sounds that surround you, and the smells in the air. Now focus on the task ahead. You’re getting ready, set—but you can’t go.

Before you start judging yourself, drop deeper into your body. What do you sense? What is happening? Is there a congested area somewhere inside? Is there a space that feels too tight or too loose? After scanning your body, expand beyond it. Let your sense of self spread way beyond your physical perimeter. Does anything around you draw your attention, such as a pressure, a sensation, or even a being or person? See too if there are any insights regarding your mind, belief systems, or even your soul.

Through this assessment, you are beginning to become aware of the negative energy that constitutes the problem. That is the block. Feel into that adverse energy and give yourself permission to better understand it. What composes it? Is it made of your own energies or those of others? Know that more data will be made clear to you over the next few days.

Practice: Let Your Spirit Clear the Block

After you’ve developed an idea about the origin and nature of the energy block, let your own spirit enable a clearing and healing. You can follow these steps.

• Affirm your spirit. Acknowledge that your own spirit, as well as any helping or guiding spirits, will conduct this healing.

• Focus. Think of the energy block you’d like to erase and replace with positive energies.

• Request streams. “Streams” are specific types of healing energies generated by your own spirit and what you might call the Greater Spirit. Request that these attach to the block. They will enable you to gather wisdom from the block and will transform the energies.

• Close. Thank the helpers, and yourself, for this process. Move forward with your day and see how you feel and whether additional information drops in to assist.

From Energy Work for the Everyday to Elite Athlete by Cyndi Dale. © 2023 by Cyndi Dale. Used by permission from Llewellyn Worldwide, Ltd., llewellyn.com.