Like you, I’ve heard various renditions of the phrase “life is a miracle.” Usually I nod my head and smile agreeably. This statement is more than empty air, however, and we healers play a vital role in proving it as true.     
Most of us stamp the term miracle on an incredible experience that makes us or someone else feel better. Everyday life is actually full of miracles, which are easier to identify when we shift our perspective. Think of how someone from 100 years ago would respond to an IMAX movie or how a pioneer would wonder at an electric oven. In your personal life, I’m sure you enjoy all sorts of minor miracles. Who isn’t gleeful when the car starts in below-freezing temperatures? Or when a stranger passes out cool bottles of water on a hot day? We all love encounters with the atypical. I have my own label for events that are commonplace, but nonetheless astonishing. I call them physical energy miracles.

Allying with Forces
There is another set of miracles, and these grab more attention. These miracles are completely inexplicable. They bend natural law. They might even completely ignore it. In context of the ordinary, these are extraordinary. A short list would include the overnight disappearance of a tumor; a sudden return of muscle strength after paralysis; or an angelic voice preventing a car accident. I term these marvels subtle energy miracles.
As a bodyworker, you’d like to be a vehicle for both types of miracles, but you can’t force a miracle. In fact, demanding a miracle, especially a subtle one, is equivalent to trying to make a teenager clean their room. Your opinion alone isn’t going to go very far. You can increase the chances of supporting both physical and subtle miracles by working with forces.
Technically, a force is a push or pull on an object. As long as two or more objects—or teenagers, thoughts, or just about anything—are interacting, a force exists between them. In general, that force will influence a situation negatively, positively, or have a neutral effect. If a car strikes another car, the impact will damage both vehicles. If two people kiss, the force will (hopefully) create loving feelings. If a stranger accidently touches your hand, you probably won’t even notice.
Forces can travel great distances, carrying charges from the people or objects that generated them. Those charges might be measurable, in which case they are considered physical, or unmeasurable, in which case they are subtle, or also called spiritual or psychic. Most forces are loaded with both types of energies.

Identifying Forces
Energy is information that moves. As Einstein said, everything is made of energy—and that includes a tight muscle, bodily pain, feeling, or thought. There are two types of energy, however, and the success of your bodywork—and interaction with forces—depends on understanding the difference between them.
Physical energy is concrete and measurable. When a bodyworker assesses a client’s issues, they are usually evaluating a client’s physical energy. Are the muscles tight or loose? Is the client sleeping well or experiencing insomnia? Bodywork training includes making these assessments, and also using physical means to enable positive change. When a bodyworker uses their tools and techniques appropriately, the body will slowly transform, creating miracles that are linear and logical.
On the other hand, subtle energy is incalculable and barely perceptible. It’s the stuff we can’t see, hear, or perceive unless we intuitively approach it. Often called psychic and spiritual energy, subtle energies comprise the feelings, thoughts, attitudes, information, and memories that cause physical reality. When subtle energies shift quickly, the client is apt to experience a similarly sudden change, hence the “wow” that accompanies subtle energy miracles.
I’ve found that most acute, chronic, or long-term somatic disorders are anchored in subtle energy imbalances. This is because subtle energies serve as the trellis upon which physical energies organize. As a bodyworker, you can work with both physical and subtle energies at the same time by mapping the forces that lock the problem in the body.

Utilizing the Forces
As explained already, forces are the result of interactions between two or more causal agents and carry charges that cause either negative, positive, or neutral impacts. A little-known fact is that forces might be physical, subtle, or both. Knowing how to work with both types of forces is the key to powerful healing.
A physical force is measurable and responds well to physical treatment. For instance, imagine a client was hit in the arm with a baseball when sitting in the bleachers, the ball veering off a hitter’s bat. She has an egg-shaped bruise and her shoulders are tight. Physically, the injury is caused by a physical force created by the interaction between the ball and the bat, which then interacted secondarily with the client’s arm. The damage is directly related to the speed of the physical charges that hurled into your client’s arm; in other words, she is hurt because her arm got hit hard. Your palpating, stroking, and massaging are physical activities to free your client from the physical charges carried on the force or energy wave.
If you want to speed up healing, you can further analyze the effects of this physical force. There are several factors involved in force-based healing. The first is that when a force initially strikes the body, it causes an entry wound. After creating this impact site, one of two events follow. The force either continues to rush through the body, creating a pathway of injury and then popping through the body, thereby making an exit wound, or it gets stuck somewhere in the body. An exit wound can be felt as a painful or sore bodily area that is usually located opposite the entry site.
For instance, if there is bruising on one side of an arm, the exit wound is most likely on the opposite side of the arm. However, exit wounds can vector into nonlinear directions once inside the body. That twisted shoulder might actually be an exit site. Perhaps the physical force entered the body, crashed into bone, traveled upward, and jettisoned out through the shoulder. You generate physical energy miracles by working not only the entrance wound area, but also the pathway, congested areas, or the exit wound, if one exists.
If only physical energies impact a client, the recovery can be relatively swift and physically based. However, there is another factor that complicates matters, which is that of subtle energies. Physical forces can be just physical, but they might also carry subtle energies. Forces can also be primarily created by subtle energies, which are hard to perceive or track.
As expressed, subtle energies might be emotional, mental, or spiritual. They can be comprised of memories, dreams, goals, or desires. Let’s return to our wounded client and I’ll show you an example of how subtle energies can be force-based and so powerful that they can create bodily and other types of damage.

Shifting Subtle Energies
Return to the batter swinging the bat, and imagine the batter was angry that day. The anger infects the force formed by the bat and the ball, and not only does a physical force impact your client, but so does the anger. The subtle energies of the anger are now going to remain littered in the entrance wound, strewn along the force-based pathway, and fester in the exit wound.
The truth is that subtle energies can convert to physical energies and vice versa. I have found that when subtle energies linger within the body, they begin to transform. Thus, they can “become,” and attract everything from physical inflammation to disease states. They can also trigger other deeply held subtle energies, causing them to flood the body. In turn, the stuck physical charges can stir or formulate additional negative ideas and challenging emotions. Bottom line, we have to address the charges carried into the body by both subtle and physical forces.
I worked exactly this way with a client years ago. Guess what? She’d been struck by a ball during a baseball game. Three years later, her arm was still tender, her shoulder was frozen, and her moods were erratic. She’d undergone a lot of physical care, including massage and chiropractic bodywork, and was now considering surgery for the shoulder.
When I focused on the entry-wound area, my client started to feel sad and angry. The same feelings reappeared when she focused on her shoulder. She had known the batter that had hit the ball three years ago and remembered him as an angry young man.
I suggested that my client’s body was holding the batter’s emotions, but also that the long-ago hit had triggered old emotions of her own. Upon further digging, the client discovered she still held on to a wellspring of rage and other unexpressed feelings related to an abusive father. After six sessions, the physical and emotional pain had all but cleared. Her arm and shoulder moved more easily and her mood had stabilized. Massage loosened up the remaining tension. The physical miracle occurred because we enabled a subtle miracle, or shift.

Recognizing Miracles
Subtle forces don’t have to be transported by physical forces. There are also purely subtle forces. When a man yells at his wife, the rage carried on the emotionally charged force can be absorbed by their children. The mother who considers her child to be bad or unlovable sends that negativity through mentally based subtle forces straight into that child. Technically, the entry wounds in these cases might be the ears or a subtle energy field or center, but body-wide distortions can occur because subtle forces can create hundreds of dysfunctional pathways.
The good news is that if you shift the subtle energies, you can alter physical reality. Feel those feelings and the body can open up. Shift the dysfunctional beliefs and the body can detoxify. Over time, the physical self can right itself.
In the end, miracles occur when we trust that they exist. Spend a day and count the miracles your work is helping to create. How many clients can stretch farther after a session than before? How many clients tell you they are becoming more aware of their inner feelings or needs? We are comprised of physical and subtle energies, which weave together to create lives of joy and meaning.

Clearing Subtle Energies
How can you assist clients with clearing subtle energies, rather than only physical energies? Here are a few tips:
Physically Work the Pathways
Remember that physical and subtle forces create an entrance wound and pathway, as well as an exit wound or congestion site. Alleviate the wound sites, blocked areas, and pathways using bodywork techniques.
Use Subtle Energy to Clean
Picture a bright white energy cleaning and filling all wounds, pathways, and congested areas. You can ask that this subtle energy continue to work even after the session is over.
Trust Your Intuition
When working on a client, empower your intuition. Pay attention to empathically sensed feelings, awareness, images, or thoughts. Share these with a client if it’s appropriate, or ask that the client’s spiritual guidance transform the stuck energies into helpful energies.
Encourage Your Client’s Intuition
If appropriate, ask the client to focus on the areas of bodily discomfort. Encourage them to feel any long-held emotions or memories. They can also work further on these issues with a therapist.

Cyndi Dale is an internationally renowned author, speaker, and intuitive consultant. Her popular books include The Subtle Body Coloring Book: Learn Energetic Anatomy (Sounds True, 2017), Subtle Energy Techniques (Llewellyn Publications, 2017), Llewellyn’s Compete Book of Chakras (Llewellyn Publications, 2016), The Intuition Guidebook: How to Safely and Wisely Use Your Sixth Sense (Deeper Well Publishing, 2011), Energetic Boundaries: How to Stay Protected and Connected in Work, Love, and Life (Sounds True, 2011), The Subtle Body: An Encyclopedia of Your Energetic Anatomy (Sounds True, 2009), and The Complete Book of Chakra Healing (Llewellyn Publications, 2009), as well as nearly 20 additional books. To learn more about Dale and her products, services, and classes, please visit www.cyndidale.com.