Snow White is an inspirational character—if you want to end up cleaning for seven dwarfs for a living, that is. I believe the Wicked Queen presents even more vital lessons, and not only about the downsides of vanity.
Have you noticed that the queen was perfectly content as long as the mirror told her she was the most beautiful in the land? Her life only deteriorated when the mirror’s message failed to affirm her first-place position.
During times of stress, pain, or crisis, it’s especially important to be stroked with positive and supportive messages. As healers, we’re part of the team providing this necessary encouragement to our clients. So how do we handle their negative attitudes in a way to assist them, and not further a downward spiral?
I have coined the phrase energetic mirroring to describe a way to do just that. The process involves mirroring or reflecting energy to another in order to create healing, not harm. Because the most powerful energy is love, our first, second, and last choice will be to mirror love to our clients, no matter what. In this article, I feature two different ways to accomplish this goal.
Before delving deeper, I want to further explore the concept of mirroring.

What is Mirroring?
Psychologists frequently use the term mirroring to explain the process of echoing an idea or perception back to someone. For instance, if a client is sad about a condition, you reiterate that she is sad. If a client is feeling pain, you recognize she is in pain.
Psychological mirroring is validating. Unfortunately, to merely affirm clients’ sadness is to leave them sad. To restate that they are in pain still leaves them in pain. As healers, we can go a step further to affect improvement. We can mirror the energy of love in all we do and say.

Energy is information that vibrates, and there are two basic types of energy. The standard issue is sensory or physical energy, which comprises the appearance of reality. Subtle energy is the hidden stuff. It flows under the surface, but votes on what will emerge or disappear in physical reality. If we can stimulate the subtle energy of love, which exists no matter how rough life appears, we exponentially increase the potential for ease and healing.

The Body’s Forces
Love is the most powerful antidote in the world. It can positively alter our approach, behavior, and perception, and alleviate situations that are difficult or negative. It can lift our mood, better our health, and even decrease pain. Although I recognize that love is emotional, conceptual, and spiritual, the most effective way to perceive it as a medicine is to acknowledge it as electromagnetic and chemical.
The newly defined discipline of neurocardiology, which treats love as an electromagnetic force, focuses on the power of the physical heart to transform the body. Neurocardiology appoints the heart with the function of a “love ambassador” or a sort of “love brain” that communicates to the brain through a complex electromagnetic field. This electromagnetic field has an amplitude about 60 times greater than that produced by the brain, permeates every cell in the body, and produces a magnetic field that can be detected several feet away from the body.
When we hold positive emotions such as gratitude or compassion in our heart, our heart patterns encourage healthy responses within our body, brain, and emotions, accomplishing everything from lowering our blood pressure to improving our mental function. The opposite is also true: negative perceptions increase stress.1
The heart is also one of the two main producers of the chemicals of love (e.g., oxytocin, a hormone produced by the brain and heart when we’re exposed to affection). Oxytocin stimulates what is called the dopamine reward system, which enables us to feel pleasure. Increased oxytocin makes us feel good, but also lowers stress hormones, reduces blood pressure, improves mood, enables pain tolerance, and can even speed up wound healing.2
Thus, we can see why we want to bathe our clients with love and encourage them to do the same for themselves.

Reframing Negativity
As a bodyworker, your touch is one of your main mirroring tools. You obviously don’t want to send pain back to a client in pain. You want to resonate love, which could be packaged as affection, care, acceptance, compassion, friendliness, or any other uplifting sensation. This activity is more powerful than you might think.
Consider that when two people touch, the “heartwave” of one registers in the brainwave of the other.3 As a bodyworker, the subtle energy enfolded within your touch can shift your client’s heart rhythm into a coherent, and subsequently, healing state, as long as you are mirroring or reflecting love. Even if you’re standing 8–10 feet away from a client, your heart’s energetic field shares blessings.4 All you have to do is concentrate on a loving sensation, image, or thought within your heart area to mirror or transfer love to your client.
Of course, if your client makes a comment, she wants a verbal response. If the statement is negative, we’re now provided the opportunity to act as an energetic guide. We want to be smarter than the mirror on the queen’s wall and avoid causing an adverse reaction. We want to guide the client toward love and, specifically, self-compassion.
Think about it: most of a client’s negative comments are actually directed toward themselves. “I can’t handle pain”; “No one understands what I’m going through”; “My whole life is going down the drain.” These ideas are comparable to looking in the mirror and seeing the worst in ourselves.
According to an analysis of 15 studies that reviewed more than 3,000 people across the age spectrum, self-criticism results in self-destruction and worsened health. By contrast, self-kindness results in fewer damaging feelings and healthier behaviors. The review found that self-compassion led individuals to eat better, exercise more, get restful sleep, and stress less.5 Bottom line: when we give ourselves compassion—a form of love—we’re better able to do what we know we should do.
As healers, we have the capacity to lead our clients toward self-love through language.
I have analyzed the self-compassion quiz developed by Kristin Neff, PhD, author of Self Compassion, in order to pinpoint the main areas of self-talk.6 In general, people choose one of these responses when focusing on their problems:
1.    Adequate versus inadequate: I can handle a stressor rather than not; I am strong enough versus too weak.
2.    Positive versus negative: good things can happen, not only bad.
3.    Connected versus separate: my suffering connects me with, rather than separates me from, humanity.
4.    Compartmentalized versus generalized: my problem occupies a part rather than the entirety of my life.
By focusing our clients on their adequacy, positivity, and connectivity, as well as the bounds of a challenge, we energetically mirror love, and encourage them to embrace its restorative properties.
How do we do this? We dive under the presenting negativity, sense the subtle presence of love, and reflect the latter back to them. For instance, when a client says, “I don’t have what it takes to deal with this stress,” we can say, “I see how much stress you are under. How have you handled situations like this in the past?” If she says, “No one understands me,” we might state, “I hear how alone you feel. Is there anyone you know who has gone through something similar?”
What we do with touch, we can do with words—and vice versa.

Transformation
Now, you have to wonder what might have happened to the Wicked Queen if the mirror, upon being asked who was the fairest in the land, didn’t say, “I’m sorry. It’s Snow White. You are so yesterday.”
What if instead, the mirror had said, “Your beauty is eternal. Stop staring in the mirror and get out there.”
All darkness can be transformed into light.

Notes
1.    in5d, Rollin McCraty, Raymond Trevor Bradley, and Dana Tomasino, “The Heart Has Its Own ‘Brain’ and Consciousness,” accessed May 2015, www.in5d.com/the-heart-has-its-own-brain-and-consciousness.
2.    National Institute of Health News In Health, “The Power of Love,” accessed May 2015, http://newsinhealth.nih.gov/2007/February/docs/01features_01.htm.
3.    Heart Power, Linda Marks, “The Power of the Heart,” accessed May 2015, www.healingheartpower.com/power-heart.html.
4.    Ibid.
5.    Time.com, Mandy Oaklander, “The Reason You Make Unhealthy Choices,” accessed February 2015, www.time.com/3430670/self-compassion-health/?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000618.
6.    Kristin Neff, Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself (New York: William Morrow, 2011); Self-Compassion website, Kristen Neff, “Test How Self-Compassionate You Are,” accessed May 2015, www.self-compassion.org/test-your-self-compassion-level.html.

Cyndi Dale is an internationally renowned author, speaker, and intuitive consultant. Her books include the bestselling The Subtle Body: An Encyclopedia of Your Energetic Anatomy (Sounds True, 2009), The Complete Book of Chakra Healing (Llewellyn Publications, 2009), and Advanced Chakra Healing (Crossing Press, 2005). To learn more about Dale and her products, services, and classes, please visit www.cyndidale.com.