When I first encountered Spinal Energetics, I didn't fully understand what I was walking into. I had heard the name. I had seen the videos, which, admittedly, can look alarming if you don't know what you're watching. I approached it with the same curious skepticism I've brought to every healing modality I've studied.
What I experienced left me speechless.
It is one of the most profound healing modalities I have ever encountered, and one of the most misunderstood. If you've been hearing the term and wondering what it actually is, what it does, and whether it's right for you, this is for you. I'm going to walk you through everything.
What is Spinal Energetics?
Spinal Energetics was developed by Dr. Sarah Jane, a chiropractor and energy healer who recognized that the spine is not only the body's structural core, it is its primary information highway.
The spine houses the central nervous system. It is the channel through which the brain communicates with the entire body. And like any channel, it can accumulate blockages, stress, trauma, suppressed emotion, unprocessed experience, all of it gets stored along the spine and in the surrounding tissue.
Spinal Energetics works directly with this channel. Using light touch along the spine and an understanding of how energy moves through the body, the practitioner creates the conditions for the nervous system to begin releasing what it's been holding. The body, given the right environment and invitation, knows exactly what to do next.
The result is more flow, more freedom, a lighter nervous system, and often a deeply altered sense of connection to self. Many people describe it as feeling like layers have been peeled back, access to parts of themselves they couldn't reach before.
How It's Different From Reiki
I practice both Reiki and Spinal Energetics, and clients often ask me how they're different. Both work with the body's energy field. Both can create profound shifts. But they do so in meaningfully distinct ways.
Reiki is gentle, still, and deeply meditative. You lie quietly on the table. The experience is often described as being bathed in warmth, a deep, softening rest that the body sinks into. The energy moves through the practitioner to the client, guided by intention and intuition. It is receiving in the most complete sense of the word.
Spinal Energetics can be more dynamic, and this is what surprises people who haven't experienced it. During a session, the body may move. It may shake, or undulate, or make sounds, all of it involuntary. The client doesn't choose these responses. The body simply begins to discharge the stored energy it's been carrying, sometimes for years, and movement is how it does that.
From the outside, it can look dramatic. From the inside, it feels like liberation.
These responses are not cause for alarm. They are signs that the nervous system is doing exactly what it's meant to do: releasing. Processing. Coming back into regulation. I always prepare clients for what they might experience, and I'm present throughout, attuned to what the body is communicating.
"The body knows exactly what it needs to release. Spinal Energetics creates the conditions for it to do so."
What to Expect in a Session
You arrive, we talk briefly, about what's been present for you, what you're hoping to move through. Then you lie fully clothed on the table, and we begin.
I use light touch along the spine, starting at the sacrum and moving up through the cervical vertebrae, following the body's cues. I'm not applying pressure or performing an adjustment. I'm listening. I'm offering an invitation for the energy to move, and then I follow what arises.
What happens next is unique to each person and often to each session with the same person. Some responses I commonly witness:
- Spontaneous movement, the spine undulating, the body rocking or trembling
- Deep emotion surfacing, tears, laughter, or sounds that arrive before any thought does
- Intense heat or tingling along the spine or in the extremities
- Vivid inner imagery, colors, or a dreamlike quality of consciousness
- Complete stillness, a profound quiet that drops through the entire body
- A sense of spaciousness or expansion that is difficult to describe afterward
Most people feel profoundly different when they sit up from the table. Some feel lighter. Some feel like they've been wrung out in the best possible way. Some need a few minutes to fully return to the room before they can speak.
All of it is welcome. All of it is part of the work.
Who It's For
Spinal Energetics is for anyone who is carrying something in the body that hasn't moved. Stored stress. Old trauma. Chronic tension that massage and stretching have helped but not resolved. Emotional weight that feels lodged somewhere between the shoulders, or at the base of the spine, or in the throat.
It's particularly powerful for people who have done significant work in therapy or personal development and feel like they understand their patterns intellectually, but something in the body is still holding on. The mind has done its work. The body is still waiting for permission to catch up.
Spinal Energetics meets the body where the mind cannot reach.
It's also a beautiful modality for anyone who simply feels disconnected from their physical body, living primarily from the neck up, unaware of what the body has been trying to communicate.
Spinal Energetics + Reiki
In my practice, I often weave both modalities together, and the combination is something I've come to deeply love.
Reiki creates an energetic container, a field of calm, of deep safety, of trust. It's the foundation. Spinal Energetics then moves within that container, working along the spine and nervous system to release what's ready to go. The Reiki holds the space while the Spinal Energetics does the active work of discharge and release.
Together, they address the energy field broadly and the nervous system specifically. They reach different layers of the same experience. Clients who receive sessions that incorporate both often describe feeling both settled and clear, held and freed at the same time.
If you're curious about which modality might be the right starting point for you, I'm always happy to talk through it before you book. There's no wrong answer, only what's right for where you are right now.
If your body has been speaking to you, through tension, through pain, through a quiet knowing that something is ready to move, Spinal Energetics might be exactly what you've been looking for. Not another conversation about it. Not another framework for understanding it. Just the release itself. The body remembers the way.
Experience Spinal Energetics in Napa, CA.
Sessions available in-person at Studio Be, Napa or virtually worldwide.
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