I do feel changes in my own energy. I also feel that some energy is positive and some is negative. I think sometimes I can feel the energy of another person, but maybe it is just what we call a person's "presence" and a sensitivity to his or her mood. I'm very sensitive to what people are feeling. I can't see people's energy and I have heard talk of "auras" but I have no understanding of that or firsthand experience of it. I went through a time in therapy when I was able to stop trying to hold back my feelings. When I stopped doing that, I realized that I was always going through life expending a huge amount of energy to "contain." When I stopped doing that, I suddenly had all of this energy to do something positive with. It was totally great! I did feel a real shift in my energy then. I felt like I had less negative energy and lots more positive. I had a talk with T one day about that, and he said he had detected a change in my energy too, so I guess he didn't think I was too wacko. And then we talked the rest of the time about Energy Psychology, which he has some training in but doesn't practice, and we also discussed other mind-body therapies. He told me about how applying pressure through touch on these key points that lie on the body's "meridia" can release negative energy and tension in the client. He said these are the same meridia used in acupuncture. I really don't know what he was talking about, but he sounded like he believed it, and I know acupuncture can be very effective, often when western medical techniques are not. With my recent experience at letting go of my own negative energy, it sounded plausible. I guess when I say I was expending a lot of energy to contain my feelings, I mean emotional energy. It's hard work to do that (exhausting!), and work requires energy. And if I stop using up my emotional energy on that particular work, it frees it up to do something more productive, something positive. It made me feel so much more powerful! Recently I felt I could not continue a particular meeting because of the negative energy in the room. So I tried to fix that, with limited success, lol. So I am trying to be more sensitive to things like this. I am not sure "energy" is the best word to describe what I am sensing, but it is a good enough word for it.

I too have read Waking the Tiger, about trauma. I think my T recommended it to me the very first session we had together. The energy stuff in it seemed really far out to me--it might be interesting for me to go back and read it now, almost 2 years later. But there is a lot in that book that is not energy theory, such as the theory of trauma based on examples drawn from the animal kingdom. I really liked that part, and it helped me understand my own freeze/stuck response to trauma in my past.

chaotic, I hope you will explore this more with your therapist. Anytime you are "bursting" to discuss something with your therapist is an opportunity not to be missed. There is potential to learn much and explore areas that were previously inaccessible. Go for it!