Energy Is Part of the Care

By Rachel Y. Hill, DNP, FNP-BC, PMHNP-BC, AHN-BC, HWNC-BC

The Energy We Bring Into the Room

Every nurse knows the feeling.

You walk into a patient's room, and before anyone says a word, you can sense it.

The tension. The fear. The exhaustion. Sometimes the peace.

And just as surely, our patients can sense what we bring in with us.

Energy is crucial to our care, whether or not we ever talk about it.

It's in the way we enter a room, the way we touch a shoulder, the way we hold space for someone who just got hard news.

It is just as crucial to us.

How we manage our own energy decides whether we finish a shift depleted or still whole.

I recently finished my first weekend at Corestar energy school, and I came home full.

This post is about that weekend, and about what I believe nurses and nurse practitioners can gain from this kind of training.

Adding to the Toolbox

I am not new to energy work.

Over the years I have studied and practiced Healing Touch, Jin Shin Jyutsu, and Reiki.

Each one taught me something different about the body, about presence, and about the quiet power of intention.

So I didn't come to Corestar looking to replace anything.

I came to add to my toolbox.

My teachers, Lynn and Denny, have been doing this particular modality for decades.

You can feel that experience in the way they teach.

They are patient, grounded, and generous with what they know.

I have admired this work from a distance for a long time, and it was about time I got to experience it for myself.

What I didn't expect was how much it would also give back to me.

The Medicine Wheel and Sacred Space

Our class began by opening a medicine wheel.

I had never taken part in that before, but so much of it felt familiar and welcoming.

We honored the directions of the earth and the elements.

The part that moved me most was honoring the soil and the ancestors, those who healed with their hands and their prayers long before there were textbooks or certifications.

None of us arrive at this work alone. We stand on a lot of shoulders.

You might be wondering what a medicine wheel has to do with helping our patients.

I truly believe that the space we occupy is sacred: a hospital room, an exam room, a home visit, a hallway where a family gets news they will remember for the rest of their lives.

When we opened the wheel, we were opening a space with intention, which is exactly what we do every day in healthcare.

We just don't always call it that.

When you pause at the door before you walk in, when you take a breath and remind yourself who you are there for, you are opening sacred space.

The ritual may look different, but the heart of it is the same.

Energy Is Who We Are

As a holistic nurse practitioner, I have to say it plainly: energy is something else.

It is who we are.

It is what our bodies emit as we interact and communicate with one another, long before a single word is spoken.

I can't stress enough how much I believe we should consider learning about it.

Not as a replacement for anything in our clinical training, but as a way to govern ourselves.

When we understand our own energy, we can notice when we are depleted, when we are carrying what isn't ours, and when we are bringing something steady and healing into the room.

That shapes our self-care and our wellbeing, and I believe it shapes the care we give.

This is my perspective as a practitioner, offered as an invitation to be curious, not as a claim anyone has to take on faith.

Low Energy, High Energy

Low energy or high energy, it definitely matters day to day.

Some mornings the thought of work alone can make us feel like we won't make it through the day.

And then we walk into the room, we sit down with the person who needs us, we start doing what we love, and somehow the energy shows up.

It's as if the work gives back what it asks of us.

That makes me wonder about the small things.

How does a smile make someone's day?

How does one warm face in a hard moment bring a little healing magic with it?

I think it is real energy moving between two people, passed along without a word.

And how is it that people on their worst days feel that one nurse made the difference?

Many of us have heard it said: that nurse turned my day around.

Sometimes a patient will say it turned their whole life around, like never before.

The nurse may never know.

To them it may have been an ordinary shift.

But the person on the other side will carry it for years.

Our presence is not neutral.

Grounding: The Foundation of Everything

The first thing we learned was grounding, and it became the foundation for everything else.

Grounding is about securing ourselves, becoming solid and connected so that energy can flow through us with health and vitality.

Think of a tree with deep roots.

When the storm comes, it bends, but it doesn't fall over.

Nurses need that more than almost anyone.

We walk into chaos every day: codes, crying families, short staffing, a call light that never seems to stop.

If we aren't grounded, we get swept up in all of it and carry other people's fear and pain home with us.

When we are grounded, we can stay present in the storm without becoming the storm.

You can't pour from an empty cup, and you can't steady anyone else if your own feet aren't planted.

Chakras and the Levels of the Body

From there, we worked on balancing our chakras and getting familiar with the different levels of our bodies, much of it based on the work of Dr. Barbara Brennan.

Before she became a healer, Brennan was a physicist who worked as a research scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

In 1987 she published Hands of Light: A Guide to Healing Through the Human Energy Field, which became a classic among energy healers.

She describes the physical body as living within a larger human energy field, sometimes called the aura, mapped in seven layers that run from the physical to the emotional, mental, and spiritual.

She describes the chakras as energy centers that take in and transform the life energy around us.

Reading her work alongside the class gave me language for things I have sensed for years, like why a patient's fear can show up in their body, and why calm in a room can be felt before it is ever spoken.

The focus of this work was on us first.

Before we can be clear enough to support others, we have to notice where we are blocked, depleted, or out of balance.

As nurses, we are trained to assess everyone but ourselves.

This was a weekend of turning that assessment inward, with curiosity and kindness.

Four Techniques and the Gift of Being a Beginner

Over the weekend, we learned four techniques:

1. Grounding ourselves and grounding our patient. First we steady ourselves, then we help the person in front of us find that same steadiness.
2. Chakra balancing. Bringing the body's energy centers into better harmony.
3. Brain balance. Helping to bring calm and clarity to the mind.
4. Spinal cleansing. Clearing and supporting the flow of energy along the spine.

What I loved most wasn't only the techniques.

It was the chance to be a novice again.

After years of practice, it is easy to feel like you know what you're doing.

I got to be a beginner, curious and open, with no need to have all the answers.

The only thing I had to give up was being perfect.

I didn't have to get every hand position exactly right or prove anything to anyone.

I had fun. I laughed.

And I left feeling energized instead of drained, which is something I wish for every nurse after every shift.

Being a beginner also opened me up to receive. I allowed myself to heal myself, not just learn how to help others.

What Nurses and Nurse Practitioners Gain

If you are a nurse or a nurse practitioner, here is what I believe you would gain from a class like this.

A way to protect your own energy.

Burnout is real in our profession, and so much of it comes from carrying what isn't ours to carry.

Grounding gives you practical ways to stay steady and go home with something left for yourself and your family.

A deeper kind of presence.

Patients remember how we made them feel.

When you are grounded and clear, your presence itself becomes part of the care.

Another set of tools.

This work doesn't replace anything you've learned.

It sits alongside it, a complement to the clinical care you already give.

A new understanding of the whole person.

We are trained to treat bodies.

This work invites you to see body, mind, emotions, and spirit, and to honor how they are connected.

Permission to receive.

Many of us have spent our whole lives giving.

A class like this asks you to be on the receiving end, too.

For a lot of nurses, that alone can be healing.

A reconnection to your why.

Most of us came into nursing to help people heal.

This work reminds you of that calling and gives it new life.

Less at the Mercy of Our Environment

Here is what I like most about energy work for nurses.

When our energy is shifted and steady, we are less at the impact of our environment.

The poor working conditions, the chaos on the unit, and the tension in a room are still there, but they have less hold on us.

We maintain healthier boundaries, and we are in much better control of our own emotions.

It all goes hand in hand.

Being regulated and balanced is part of the self-care we experience when we explore energy work.

I want to be honest that this is not a substitute for safe staffing and healthy workplaces, and it doesn't excuse poor conditions.

Those need to change.

But while we work for that change, learning to stay regulated gives us something to stand on, and it is a gift we can give ourselves today.

Contact Hours and Certification

Here is the part I am especially excited to share.

My company, Professional Continuing Education, is offering contact hours for this program, so nurses, nurse practitioners, and other healthcare providers can grow in this work and earn credit toward their professional development at the same time.

Providers who complete the program become certified in the methodology.

I like to call it ART, because that is exactly what it feels like to me: the art of caring for the whole person, our patients and ourselves.

The Human Being as an Instrument

I think of it like music.

An instrument has to be tuned before it can play well.

When it is out of tune, even the best musician can't make it sound right.

We are the same.

When we take time to ground, balance, and clear ourselves, we become better instruments for healing, and our patients, who are instruments too, can feel the difference.

The biggest realization I carried home was how connected we are to one another.

When we set the intention to be there in support of someone, something shifts, and the space between us becomes a place where healing can happen.

I have truly enjoyed this journey, and I know it is only the beginning.

If there is one thing I hope this post reinforces, it is this: helping our patients is a beautiful thing.

But helping ourselves too only thickens the plot.

It reminds us that there is enough love, enough energy, enough peace, and enough hope to go around, for them and for us.

To my fellow nurses and nurse practitioners: your energy matters.

It matters to your patients, and it matters to you.

Take care of it. Learn about it.

You might find, like I did, that it doesn't take you away from nursing.

It brings you closer to the heart of it.

--Dr. Rachel

A Note on Sources

• Barbara Ann Brennan, Hands of Light: A Guide to Healing Through the Human Energy Field (1987).
• CoreStar Energy Healing School.

The energy-healing concepts discussed here reflect the author's personal experience and the frameworks taught in the program. They are presented as complementary practices, not substitutes for evidence-based medical care.