What If Your Mind Is the Only Thing Standing Between You and Your Healing?

A conversation about belief, openness, and what it really takes to receive transformation.

By Janell Rae | Energy Intelligence Method™

I want to tell you something that took me years to fully understand — and that I now see play out in almost every healing session I hold.

It's not the method that determines how much healing happens. It's not the practitioner's skill. It's not even the depth of the wound being worked on.

More than any of those things, what determines how much healing flows through is how open you are to receiving it.

I know that might sound simple. Maybe even a little frustrating if you've been working hard at your healing for a long time. But stay with me — because what I'm talking about isn't about trying harder. It's actually about something entirely different.

The Theater Concept That Changed How I Think About Healing

There's a phrase used in storytelling and theater called the suspension of disbelief. When you sit down to watch a movie, you know it isn't real. You know those aren't actual people living those lives on screen. But you make a choice — a quiet, internal agreement — to set that knowledge aside for a while. You let the story in. You allow yourself to feel with the characters, to be moved, to be surprised.

If you don't do that? You spend the whole film picking apart the special effects and questioning plot holes. You stay emotionally disengaged. You walk out untouched.

Healing works the same way.

When we step into energy work — or really, any kind of deep inner transformation — our logical mind immediately wants to audit the process. It wants a sequence. It wants proof. It wants to understand how A leads to B leads to C before it will allow anything to happen.

And here's the thing: that logical mind isn't wrong to want those things. It has kept you safe. It has helped you navigate a complicated world. I have genuine respect for it.

But in the space of healing, it has to take a back seat. Not because it's broken — but because healing doesn't always move in a straight line that logic can follow in real time.

The knowing often comes after the shift, not before. You'll see the dots connect — but usually only once you've allowed the movement to happen.

The Irrigation Gate

Here's an image I come back to often when I'm working with clients:

Imagine you want to water a field. You have every intention of doing it. The water is there, ready to flow. But if you only open the irrigation gate a quarter of the way, only a quarter of the field gets watered. The water doesn't create more channel than you've allowed. It can only move through the opening you give it.

Your belief — your openness — is that gate.

When you come to a healing session holding a lot of skepticism, it's not that the healing isn't there. It's that the gate is barely open. The water is waiting. But it can only flow through what you allow.

This isn't about forcing yourself to believe something you don't. Genuine skepticism is completely human, and I would never ask you to abandon your discernment. What I'm inviting you toward is something softer than belief — it's willingness. The simple internal choice to say: I don't know yet, but I'm open.

That small opening is often all it takes to begin.

A moment worth sitting with:

Think about the last time you were in a healing space — therapy, energy work, a coaching session, even a quiet moment of meditation. Were you there to receive? Or were you there to evaluate? Neither answer is wrong. But noticing is the beginning of everything.

What Suspension of Disbelief Is NOT

I want to be really clear about something, because I've seen this misunderstood before.

Suspending your disbelief in a healing context does not mean:

✗ Abandoning your judgment or your discernment

✗ Believing blindly in every modality or every practitioner you encounter

✗ Pretending you have no doubts

What it does mean is this: you use your senses, you check in with your body, you ask yourself whether this path feels aligned with your highest good — and if it does, you choose to soften into it. You choose to receive rather than guard.

You hold your sovereignty completely. You are never giving that away. In fact, the Energy Intelligence Method™ is built on the understanding that you have full energetic sovereignty over your own healing process at every moment. Nothing moves through you without your permission.

Suspending disbelief is not surrendering control. It's consciously choosing to open the gate.

Trust isn't something you manufacture before healing begins. It's something that grows as you take the first step — and let that step show you what's possible.

The Gift That Needs Hands to Receive It

I think about it this way sometimes: imagine someone is holding something out to you — a gift, a medicine, a piece of wisdom you've been waiting for. It's right there. They're offering it with both hands.

But if your arms are crossed, if your hands are braced against your chest — the gift can' reach you. Not because it isn't real. Not because the person offering it doesn't mean it. Simply because you haven't made the physical gesture of receiving.

Healing requires that gesture. It requires extending your hands — energetically, emotionally, internally — and saying: yes. I'm here. I'm willing to receive what's for me.

The most magnificent things can be right in front of you, ready to change your life. But if you don't open to them, they remain just there. Present. Available. But not yet yours.

Where This Leaves Us

If you've been working on your healing for a while and feel like something is stuck — I'd gently invite you to ask yourself one question:

Am I here to receive, or am I here to evaluate?

There's no shame in the answer either way. Evaluation has its place. And sometimes we've been hurt enough that receiving feels genuinely unsafe — and that itself is something that can be healed.

But if you find that your logical mind has been running the show in your healing spaces, consider what it might look like to soften — just a little. To let the knowing come after, instead of requiring it before. To open the gate a little wider, and see what flows through.

Because the water is there. It's always been there. It's waiting for the opening you give it.

This blog is part of a four-part series exploring the energetics of belief, receptivity, and healing.

Next: What the irrigation gate teaches us about intention — and why wanting to heal isn't always enough. Learn more about the Energy Intelligence Method™ at janellrae.com

About Janell Rae

Janell Rae is an energy healer and the Founder of the Energy Intelligence Method™ — a framework for understanding and transforming the energetic patterns that drive emotional cycles, identity blocks, and healing resistance. Her work bridges neuroscience, somatic psychology, and energy-based practice to create lasting, embodied change.