The Hidden Work

I’ve written before about the healer’s hangover — that foggy, drained feeling that comes after deep energetic work. But lately, I’ve been thinking about another kind of energetic echo: the empty space that’s left after a disconnection.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s a friendship, a relationship, or even a passing connection. Sometimes I’ve welcomed those endings with open arms. They’d run their course, I knew it, and I was ready. Yet still, the pain after separation didn’t make sense. It wasn’t like someone had harmed my body or left me physically scarred — and yet inside, there was an ache, an emptiness that lingered.

So what is that pain really?

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The Work We Do While Sleeping

Last night I was listening to Lee Harris’ newest book, and one chapter really landed with me. He spoke about the work we do while sleeping.

He described sleep as a semi-death state — our souls tethered to our bodies, but also roaming, expanded, connected to all timelines at once. He said that more healing, karmic release, and soul work happens in our sleep than we consciously realise.

And that made me stop. Because maybe this ache of separation isn’t just about the now. Maybe it’s soul work resurfacing.

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Soul Scars and the Jab Effect

Lee also talked about how the pain we feel through separation is often an old wound. Sometimes not even from this lifetime. He reminded us that many of us have lived through barbaric lifetimes, and echoes of that pain can still ripple through.

I don’t usually lean on past life explanations. My belief has always been that if energy needs transmuting, it will show up here, in this life, in some form. Karma isn’t just punishment — it has polarity, it balances itself. Sometimes instantly, sometimes across years.

But what I do believe is this: separation can jab at a soul scar. The wound might have healed long ago, but when someone presses a finger into it — ouch. It hurts all over again. Not because it’s fully opened back up, but because it’s tender to the memory.

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The Energetic Anatomy of Separation

We tend to see separation as one clean break. Someone leaves. A space is emptied. We cut the cords, return the energy, call our power back, and call it done.

But in truth, separation is rarely a single strand. It’s a whole web of threads — emotional, physical, energetic — each tethering us in a slightly different way.

As a Reiki Master Teacher, I’ve spent years reading the body’s language through energy centres, and I’ve come to see how separation shows up in the chakras:

Root (safety & belonging): When someone leaves, part of us feels unstable, even if life is objectively secure. The body registers a wobble in foundation.

Sacral (relationships & desire): This is where intimacy, friendship, and creativity weave together. Any disconnection here can feel like a hollow ache.

Solar Plexus (identity & power): Sometimes we gave away parts of ourselves in a bond. When it’s gone, the cord pulls at who we thought we were.

Heart (love & compassion): The obvious one. Even when love has shifted, the energetic imprint remains tender.

Throat (truth & expression): Words left unsaid or truths swallowed down often lodge here. Separation can squeeze the throat, literally or energetically.

Third Eye (clarity & intuition): Confusion after disconnection can cloud vision. We feel foggy, like we’ve lost our compass.

Crown (connection to source): The final strand — a reminder that even in separation, we’re never truly cut off. The ache here is more spiritual: Why did this happen? What’s the higher lesson?

When we don’t break these threads down, we risk feeling “yukky” without knowing why. But when we trace them back — when we sit with each strand (and there’s likely many attached to each chakra), feel where it lives in us, and release it consciously — the healing becomes more than just recovery. It becomes integration.

Of course, not everyone wants to go that deep. And that’s okay. Trusting the universe to clear what we can’t see is a powerful practice in itself. But for those of us who are curious, who can’t help but want to know why that ache sits in the chest, or why the throat feels tight — the anatomy of separation offers a map.

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Following the Thread Backwards

For those of us who are naturally inquisitive, intuitive, and/or psychic, these threads of separation can sometimes show us more than just where the wound sits today. They can lead us backwards through the puzzle — not as an escape, but as a deeper layer of understanding. That’s why so many healers will point you back to revisiting childhood/the inner child to find the root. And some suggest past life regression.

Personally, I’ve never been drawn to past life regression as a way of “finding answers.” I’ve always said I’d only ever do it out of curiosity or entertainment, not as a desperate search. Because I believe the answers are here, in this lifetime, woven into the energies I’m living through now.

But what I am realising is when you follow the thread honestly, without expectation, sometimes it naturally extends further than you thought. Sometimes the ache in the solar plexus isn’t just this loss, but an echo from another lifetime. Sometimes the throat that tightens isn’t only from this unsaid truth, but a voice silenced long ago.

The puzzle of the soul is never solved forwards. It only ever clicks in place backwards. And if that thread leads to another lifetime, maybe that’s not about seeking answers there — maybe it’s about letting your psychic senses reveal just how vast your healing really is.

For me, that feels like a new skill unfolding. Another layer of self-work, another piece of soul memory waking up.

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Dream Landscapes as Memory

Lee also said that some of the landscapes we wander in dreams aren’t just creations of the imagination — they’re memories. It’s common knowledge that what our subconscious creates are things we’ve actually witnessed (faces, places, etc.). We forget that dreaming pulls from the whole soul archive, not just this one lifetime.

When a dream feels ancient, strange, or hauntingly familiar, it may well be because we’re revisiting another incarnation without even realising it. That battlefield, that crumbling house, that ocean crossing — they can all be echoes from lifetimes where those stories first unfolded.

It doesn’t mean we need to chase them for answers. For me, the answers always begin here. But to recognise that dreams weave in not just this life’s lessons, but also fragments of the soul’s greater memory — that feels like another layer of truth. Another reminder of how vast we really are.

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The Dreamspace of Healing

Lee also said that souls often meet in the dreamspace to work out these imbalances. And the dreams that feel the most unsettling? They’re usually the ones doing the deepest healing.

It makes sense — our human bodies aren’t built to hold that level of energetic intensity for long. That’s why those jolts, night terrors, and strange dreamscapes feel so heavy. They’re part of the process. A clearing. A balancing.

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The Bigger Work of Sleep

And maybe this is why I’ve never felt the pull to explore past lives through regression. Because I’m already doing it every single night.

The dreamspace isn’t just downtime for the brain. It’s a gridwork arena. A soul plane. A place where karmic loops are balanced, lifetimes revisited, and healing accelerated beyond what we can consciously process while awake.

We incarnated here to live a human life — to experience, to create, to love, to raise the vibration of this planet in real time. That can only happen here, in the 3D. But the rest of it? The balancing, the remembering, the soul-level work? That’s done before we arrive, after we leave, and every single time we power down to sleep.

So maybe the empty space after separation isn’t emptiness at all. Maybe it’s proof that the work is happening — across lifetimes, across planes, every single night.