Hal Stone, Ph.D. & Sidra Stone, Ph.D.
Did you ever wonder why you felt alone even when you were with somebody else? Have you had the experience - in the middle of a conversation - of suddenly feeling as though the other person wasn’t listening to you even though, when you challenged him, he could repeat back to you exactly what you had just said? Have you ever thought that your partner was more attached to the computer than to you?
All these are examples of what we call a loss of energetic connection - a loss of linkage. Our relationships have mental, emotional, and spiritual components - but they also have an energetic component - and it is this energetic component that we are now addressing. There are many ways to communicate or connect with others. We usually think of communication as verbal; we talk to each other. Another way of communicating is through our “body language”; we signal each other with recognizable signs of interest - like affection, caring, or sexuality - or conversely, we signal with recognizable signs of our lack of interest - like boredom, irritation, anger.
Many people are sensitive to this kind of communication. For instance, they know that when we “can’t look them in the eyes”, we are probably not telling the truth, or when we cross them even if we don’t say anything, or when our hands are cold, we’re feeling anxious even tough we are speaking confidently. Each of us has our own set of signals that can be read by others. And the others - particularly our significant others - are often happy to tell us just what our particular signals are.
But energetic connection is something different. It is subtle. Each of us has a body energy field that extends beyond our physical body - a set of vibrating energies that is finer than those that make up our bodies. This has always been known by people involved in energetic healing and by many indigenous peoples, but now it is being measured and photographed in the laboratories.
Most of us don’t know about these fields.
But they exist, they play an important part in
our relationships, and they affect our feelings
of wellbeing. When we don’t know about them,
we control them automatically. For instance,
when we are out in a crowd, we 
might contract
our energy fields so that we are not so available
to others. When we are thinking rather than
feeling, our fields are cooler - the connections
we make are cool and fairly impersonal. If we
are feeling loving, our fields are warmer - the
connections we make are warmer and our fields
are likely to blend with others’ energy fields.
Our energetic availability often does not match our verbal communication. We can say we’re listening, and we may hear the words, but we are not truly present in an energetic sense. As for body language, you can’t always point to a clearly observable specific physical change that correlates with a change in energetic connection.
Some people know how to smile and maintain good eye contact while - at the same time - they withdraw their energies completely. Conversely, we say (or even believe) that we are not trying to intrude but energetically we are actually moving our energies into the other person’s field.
This is a new way of looking at connections
and communication that we find particularly
fascinating. Once you know the reality of these
invisible, subtle energetic connections, you have
available an entirely new kind of information
about relationships and - most particularly - your
feelings of connection or intimacy.
© December, 2002
