Reclaiming Personal Power Through Shamanic and Energy Healing

by Jerry Hocek

Shamanic healing is the oldest form of holistic healing, practiced for thousands of years among many indigenous cultures. It focuses on working with the invisible, spiritual and energetic world to create a bridge of balance and harmony in the physical world. In indigenous cultures, the shaman, also known as a medicine man or woman, is the channel to the spirit world and the physical world for healing the community on both a global and individual level. This ancient practice continues to thrive today, and is becoming increasingly popular through work provided by modern shamanic practitioners.

Energy healing is a holistic practice that activates the body’s subtle energy systems to release energetic disturbances, or blocks, that are energetic imprints or residual energy caused by trauma. By clearing these blocks, the body’s inherent ability to heal itself is stimulated.

In 1999, I attended my brother’s wedding. At the reception, my date and I were assigned to the same table as Nancy Weldon, the interfaith minister and psychic that performed the wedding ceremony. As my date and I conversed with Nancy and her husband, we learned that in the past, she worked with law enforcement officials for several years, assisting them to locate missing children.

At that time, Nancy’s focus was spiritual counseling and performing ceremonies, as well as publishing a local magazine that focused on spiritual and metaphysical topics. Nancy was what I now refer to as a psychic healer. At the time she and I met, my life was going quite well. It appeared that I was soon to be engaged to the second big love of my life. I was also a partner in a lucrative business based in Bergen county. Even so, something compelled me to book a spiritual counseling session with her.

During that first session, Nancy spared no time zeroing in on some of my most compelling issues. Let’s face it, we’re all the products of some amount of family dysfunction. I perhaps elected to take a much bigger piece of the dysfunctional pie in this life. Nancy immediately keyed in on my issues with “perceived unfair authority figures”, which originated in this life with my father. My parents emigrated from Communist Czechoslovakia in 1969 and my defiant and rebellious nature was well-honed during my first 14 years in America, mainly due to growing up in the former rough-and-tumble blue-collar havens like Jersey City and Bayonne.

At age 16, my family moved to the suburbs, and I eventually spent my last year-and-a-half of high school in Bergenfield. It was not long after my arrival that I befriended the most troubled youths in and out of Bergenfield High School. It all climaxed three years later with continued hard drug abuse and other destructive behavior that eventually fueled what was trumpeted by local and national news as, “a suicide pact” between four Bergenfield teenagers (see the New York Times article here: Tinyurl.com/bfield87).

Several nights earlier, I drank beer and watched a boxing match with the two young men that died in the tragedy. We were ironically doing this at a mutual friend’s apartment in the same complex where the tragedy later occurred. Thomas Rizzo and I were like brothers during my senior year of high school. At the time, I didn’t know how to exactly process what occurred, so life went on, and so did the debauchery.

During that first counseling session Nancy Weldon, I learned that trauma leaves behind energetic imprints in our physiology. She described them as energetic blocks, or knots, that create trauma-patterning. An energy healer or practitioner will call them energetic imprints, and a hypnotherapist may call them “the charge behind the memory.” Think of it like this: the traumatic event already occurred. It’s over. Gone. However, the event leaves behind energy specific to that event that can ensue in trauma patterning. These patterns serve as survival mechanisms or coping skills that allow us to survive the traumas at the time that we’re young and more fragile.

One of the most common examples of trauma patterning that we see today is the fear-control addiction. Adults with moderate to sever control issues were typically raised in homes that were abusive. The abuse experienced by the child typically consists of some form or a combination of physical abuse, sexual abuse, overt emotional abuse or covert manipulation, emotional abandonment, physical abandonment and enmeshment between parent and child.

The child’s trauma pattering is born out of protection. The child learns that it can perhaps protect itself from the ensuing abuse or trauma by attempting to control its environment. This may actually be effective to some degree throughout childhood, but typically wreaks havoc later in life, especially with family and social relations, romantic relationship and especially marriage. The more obvious forms of trauma patterning are drug and alcohol abuse (self-medication), chronic anger or rage, criminal activity, unhappiness, victimhood, narcissism, depression and even suicide.

I engaged in counseling sessions with Nancy about every six months for two years, and in 2001, after a major personal crisis, I elected to work with a trauma recovery practitioner in New Jersey that employed a technique called eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), a form of psychotherapy developed by psychologist Francine Shapiro that emphasizes the role of distressing memories particularly with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

This form of therapy did help, but I was far from done with my recovery. It wasn’t until the last four years that I was able to finally recover from PTSD, various addictions and their related patterns and behaviors. I owe my recent success to my relentless and fearless recovery work and participating in over two dozen ayahuasca ceremonies, and especially to Angelica Pat Hocek, my ex-wife and best friend.

Angelica became an energy practitioner during our marriage, and has earned the title of shaman from her studies at Dr. Alberto Villoldo’s school, The Four Winds Society. I have also done much effective recovery work with some of the most skilled energy practitioners and shamanic healers in northern New Jersey and New York State. I can say without reservation that I have reclaimed myself and my power, and I’m consistently happy for no apparent reason.

For more information about trauma and addiction recovery, visit JerryHocek.com.

Jerry Hocek is a entrepreneur, publisher, writer and born-again good citizen. He currently collaborates with some of the most talented and effective energy practitioners and shamans to assist those seeking recovery from trauma and addictions. Look out for his debut novel, due to hit book stores in 2018.