Unsure who to work with? Questions to consider when finding a coach or energy healing practitioner to work with

With so many energy healing practitioners and life coaches promoting themselves online and in real life, it can be hard to know who to work with. There’s an abundance of practitioners (for ease of communicating in the context of this blog, I’ll be interchanging the words practitioner/healer/facilitator/coach/guide throughout) that it can sometimes be challenging to know who’s reputable and who you may gel with, let alone what modality type may resonate for you.

While it’s quite common to choose a practitioner based on the modality they practice, it’s also important to take into consideration the way a practitioner holds space and works with the modalities they practice.

After many years of finding and working with an array of energy healing practitioners, coaches and modalities for my own healing journey (and now becoming one myself), I’ve been fortunate to have stumbled upon many practitioners who have helped me experience positive life-changing transformations and who I’d consider trustworthy lifelong guides and teachers.

However, like in any industry, there can also be unpleasant experiences with facilitators who may not work with integrity to offer the support they claim they can provide or provide their services in a way that feels unsafe, which as you can imagine can cause more harm than good.

Unfortunately, this was something that I experienced from a previous mentor a couple of years ago. Since then, I’ve dedicated time to receive healing for myself from this traumatic experience, and have continued to invest in further training and deepening my awareness around trauma, the nervous system, and striving to create safer and more stable healing environments for my clients. It’s actually become something that I’m really passionate about; trauma-informed and nervous system care.

My hope with this post is to create awareness around this, so you’re more equipped on your journey of choosing and working with a healing practitioner.

Before we dive into it, I always recommend and encourage anyone looking to work with a practitioner is to practice your discernment, listen and trust your gut and felt sense, and have an understanding of what you need to feel safe in a practitioner/client relationship. I also want to normalise that it’s okay to not know how to do these things, I’ve had many clients come work with me to learn how to do these things for themselves. If this is something you’re experiencing, you may find the following contemplations helpful in building these muscles for yourself.

Here are some things that may be helpful to consider when looking to work with a coach or energy healing practitioner:

What do you value when working with a practitioner?

What qualities do you look for when working with a practitioner? Do you prefer someone who holds and gives you space to be heard and seen? Or do you prefer working with someone who tells you what to do?

Every practitioner holds space in different ways, and one of the keys to working with a practitioner on your healing journey is working with one who you resonate with. If you don’t vibe with one practitioner, it doesn’t necessarily mean the modality isn’t working, it may just be that you’re better suited to someone else. Oftentimes, a modality changes based on the person who is practicing it, because it is being filtered through their worldview and lived experiences.

Perhaps take a moment to check in with yourself and get clear on who you usually work best with, the personality types you get along well with or the types of people you feel safe around. Working with a practitioner is building a relationship, so finding the right person you resonate with and feel you can trust to let into your world, is important.

Is the practitioner working with integrity and within their scope of practice?

Aka are they qualified to be doing the work that they offer? Even though a practitioner may have a large following on socials or are qualified in certain holistic, wellness or health-related therapies, it may not mean they are fully equipped, have embodied experience or awareness, or operating within their area of expertise.

Currently, coaching is an unregulated industry with a lack of standardized ethics, meaning anyone can label themselves as a coach or mentor without any training or qualifications.

If this is a topic that is important to you, a helpful question to ask the practitioner is: what certifications, experiences, values, beliefs or approaches inform their work?

Are they empathetic, non-judgmental or able to be vulnerable?

Feeling like you are seen, held and heard by a practitioner is, in itself so healing, especially if you have had previous traumatic or stressful experiences within your life. While it cannot always be guaranteed that a practitioner can and will offer safe space 100% of the time, feeling safe is an important aspect of a practitioner-client relationship.

A good facilitator should validate your emotions, strive to create an environment that feels stable and safe and minimises your harm, meets you where you are, prioritises your wellbeing and best interests, and upholds professional boundaries. A good facilitator deeply listens to what it is you have to say, cares about you, and strives to understand you without any judgment or shaming you into being someone you’re not.

If at any stage of your process of working with a practitioner you feel there’s pressure to buy their service or take financial risks to engage in their services, there’s exaggerated promises of their service results, or you feel dismissed by them, this could be information to proceed with caution.

Checking in with yourself, how does your body respond to the idea of working with them?

Sometimes we may forget to pause and feel what our body or intuition are trying to communicate with us, and we can get swept up in the hype of a certain offer or the way a practitioner communicates their work.

One of my deciding factors on whether to work with a practitioner, is connecting with how they make me feel.

How do you feel when you read/listen to the content that a practitioner shares on social media or online?

Or if you get the chance to connect with a practitioner before booking in, whether that be through the DMs or maybe on a Connection Call, or during the session itself - I invite you to take a moment afterward to pause and reflect on how you feel after working with them.

Do you feel like you resonated with the practitioner or a level of trust and safety is present within your relationship with them? Do you feel a sense of expansion or contraction within your body (during or after your session)? Is there a sense of anticipation (good or bad) before your next session? Or is there a feeling of ‘hmm I’m not quite sure how I feel about the practitioner’ or there’s a feeling of something not sitting well? Do you feel that they can hold space for you and your uniqueness?

The answers that you find within yourself from these reflections offer so much wisdom and information.

It’s okay to need what you need, and to be picky when it comes to choosing a practitioner. Sometimes it does require dipping your toes into working with different practitioners until you find the one who you resonate with most, and it’s normal for that to take time. There is no rush to your healing journey, to your growth, you have your whole lifetime.

If you are curious about receiving trauma-informed and nervous-system based care from me, I am currently deepening my craft to become a somatic coach. I am, however, a certified Life Coach and Trauma-Informed Coach, and offer this support through my 1:1 Reiki-Infused Coaching sessions or my 3-month Grounded Expansion Coaching and Healing container. I also offer a free, no-obligation Connection Call, where you get to see if we’d be the right fit to work together or to know more about my approach. If you have any questions please do feel free to reach out, my inbox is open.