Building Confidence as a New Practitioner

Want to get direct answers from a seasoned practitioner? Once a month, Your Energy Medicine Library for Practitioners gives you just that!

Each month, I hold a live Q&A for members of Your Energy Medicine Library for Practitioners where students and practitioners can ask me anything—clinical questions, technique challenges, client cases, or the topics they're most curious about.

THE STUDENT Q&A SERIES grew out of these conversations.

Rather than choosing topics on my own, I wanted to write about the questions that matter most to you—the students and practitioners I've had the joy of teaching over the years. Each article in this series is inspired by a real question from one of our monthly Q&A sessions.

Here's the first article, on a topic that I know many students and new practitioners wrestle with…

Building Confidence as a New Practitioner

Q: I don't feel confident in what I've learned. I practice on family, but I don't feel safe or sure about what to do or which techniques to use. How do I build that confidence?

When you're brand-new at something, there's always a learning curve. That uncertainty can feel especially disconcerting when you're treating friends and family—let alone your first paying clients.

How can we get comfortable in this new role as we shift from Student to Practitioner? A fundamental part of becoming a new Energy Medicine practitioner is building calm and confidence. Being able to manage our insecurity and still stay present and focused on the client is a big part of making that shift.

Having taught Energy Medicine for over 20 years, here are four foundational practices I’ve found that can really help make that shift:

1. Cultivate a Practitioner’s Mindset

Even when you're working on family or friends, treat them like actual clients.

For example, if you’re practicing on your brother who has chronic indigestion:

• Write down his symptoms and rate their severity.
• Schedule a clear, deliberate appointment time.
• Keep the session focused—avoid chatting about dinner plans until you’re done!
• Take notes, assign homework, and track progress over time.

Simply stepping into the role of "Practitioner" changes how you think about your sessions and immediately shifts your energy while working on others.

What if I get nervous and don’t know what to do next?

If you find yourself getting flustered and not knowing where to go next, one thing I have found really helpful is to find a simple energy hold of any kind and sink into it. I often use Hook Ups or Kidney 1 - they’re great points to hold and I don’t have to think about the technique.

Just sit, hold the points, and breathe. Take as much time as you need. When our heads get jammed, it’s hard to use our heads to find our way out! If you hold any energy point and relax into it you’re much more likely to have an idea come to you.

2. Embrace the Basics

What I see so often as a teacher is students trying to "get somewhere" — rushing through the basic energies to reach something more interesting, more important. There's a feeling that the foundational energies are something to get out of the way before getting down to business.

The basics ARE the business. Or at least, the first business!

If foundational energies aren't solid—if the client isn't grounded, hooked up, or crossing their energies—it’s much harder for deeper work to take root. A strong foundation creates the openness required for larger shifts to happen. Balancing the basics also creates a ripple effect across all the energy systems. You might assess a client and find 5 or 6 meridians out of balance. But if you balance their foundational energies first, those 5 or 6 meridians often drop down to just 2 or 3—pinpointing the exact areas that truly need your attention.

Choose a System and Stay with It

After balancing the basics, select a primary system to assess: chakras, meridians, 5-Elements, etc.

• You can’t make a bad choice: Every system is worth exploring. If the system you pick isn't the core issue, it will balance quickly, allowing you to move on smoothly.
• Take your time: Something I’ll see students and new practitioners jump from meridians one week, chakras the next, radiant circuits the week after. You can't follow a trail if you keep changing direction! Stay with the system until it is reasonably balanced before you move on to the next thing.

NOTE: This doesn’t mean you have to restrict yourself to only one system during a session; it just means that if you are going to work with a system, give it the time it needs – during the session and ongoing – to get it into balance.

3. Treat Yourself as a Client

Virtually every student gets nervous when working on their first clients, not to mention doing demo tests! Learning to manage that anxiety isn't just empowering; it allows you to stay present and actually enjoy the work you’re doing.

To address this, it’s important to understand that all nervousness is not created equal! It will manifest really differently depending on your own unique nature; your Primary Element, your Sensory type, etc.

Try This Exercise:

1. When you have an upcoming session or demo test, pause and tune into your body and emotions.
2. Allow yourself to feel the nervous energy rising and energy test yourself right then and there.
3. Where does this land in my energies? Do I lose my grounding? Does my Wayne Cook go out of balance? Am I slipping into Triple Warmer reactivity?

Tracking your own stress responses teaches you which energies need attention to build your personal resilience. You might think that getting client results is what will help you build confidence. But if you figure out how to ease out of your own nervousness, the sense of accomplishment will be huge. And you’ll have found the key to your own freedom. 

4. Be Easy About It

Becoming a seasoned practitioner takes time—there are no shortcuts! The real question is: How can we make this journey as relaxed, ineresting, and fun as possible?

If you are studying Energy Medicine, likely you are someone who wants to keep on growing, learning, and expanding.  Which means that you will be continually having to manage the edge of that learning curve. That edge is where all the magic is happening!

If you can meet that edge with curiosity and self-compassion, then we can start to enjoy the thrill of our growth.

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