In the description from the previous section passive techniques might sound like simply the lower-tier techniques, but this is not necessarily true. There is a certain strength to the passive approach, as since they are not conventional techniques, it makes the requirements on familiarity and experience less intense. They also do not require any energy to use. While granted the results are commonly less impressive on the short-term scale, they can have more lasting effects than some of the active techniques. So now that I’ve hopefully convinced you that this section is still worth reading, lets get started.

Emotions

Your emotional state has a large impact on both physical and psionic capacities. The major two emotions’ effects should be obvious, sadness typically corresponds to a drop in energy while being happy corresponds to a rise. One concern however is being too excited might cause a reduction in your ability to focus.

What’s the point of this? Well first off being happy is good and you should totally try to be happy a lot. In the long term being depressed can really hurt your productivity in any activity. However in a realistic sense people can’t be happy all the time. But what humans can do fairly well is temporarily fool themselves that they’re happy when they’re really not. So before a practice if you can’t be naturally happy, try and find a way so that you’ll at least temporarily feel better. Watch some TV, play a game, listen to some music, club baby seals to death. Ok hopefully not the last one but on that note as long as its not something that will get the police or PETA involved (that’s the animal rights activists if anyone’s in the dark there) don’t be shy about doing what works for you. Music is incredibly useful for this. Almost everyone has some kind of favorite type of music that will get them feeling all happy and ready to practice. It saves baby seals, and is subtle if you have too many people around to do whatever you really wanted to do.

Expectations

Expectations have a tremendous impact on psionics, especially since almost all of the skills are routed through the subconscious. The subconscious hears many of the expectations and preconceptions you have and treats them like commands. This applies to energy levels. If you’re expecting to feel tired it’s very likely that your subconscious might either suppress or purge a fair amount of your energy so that your expectation can be met. Conversely if you’re expecting to be full of energy and life your subconscious might be able to augment your normal energy to some degree. The good and bad news is that this effect gets stronger as you become more skilled in Energy Management, since your subconscious self learns how to do these things better as you try to teach your conscious self how to do them. The wording on the expectations doesn’t have to be so direct either, your subconscious can interpret what you think will happen and think creatively on how to accomplish it. For instance, if you’re worrying about losing a race, you aren’t implicitly asking for your energy levels to drop, but that is certainly a way to meet your expectations.

While this section is more geared toward minimizing your losses you can also turn it toward your benefit. While it likely won’t work to just directly ask for a power-up, if you know that you could do it, its possible to turn this on sometimes, for instance thinking that you still have more power to give in that race I mentioned in the example before.

This is the section probably a lot of people are really interested in, since these are actual techniques while the previous section was more thought-training, Active Techniques typically give much better short-term performance. However the draw-back is that most of them wear out over a protracted period of time, as the energy you produced runs out. Additionally since they are techniques, they are harder to use, and require more practice to use effectively.

Caution

When some people see the concept of generating energy which will be presented in this section they think they can now become a limitless energy source. This is wrong for so many reasons. First and foremost, Conservation of Energy says energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Before anyone tries to counter my physics with quantum physics remember that most quantum physics principles only work on a very small scale, around 10^-15 or so (credit to Cullen for this).

What this means is even if you generate more energy, the power to do that has to be coming from somewhere. That somewhere is assumed to be the food you eat. So even if you could keep up the technique for a very long period of time, you’re going to run out of the resources to create energy eventually. Stuffing your face also will not work because it takes time for the body to process the food you eat.

Also its unsure for a lot of Energy Management techniques whether one is actually generating energy or rather restructuring their available energy to bring what reserves they already had forward to be used. If this is the case, you definitely do not have a limitless energy source. Additionally many Energy Management techniques inherently have a limited number of uses as the energetic state they bring on makes it harder to focus. Eventually you will be too excited to properly perform the technique. In both the first and third case attempting to continue using Energy Management in spite of the finite limit can result in injury. So don’t be stupid. That is all.

Meditation is the simplest technique to employ for Energy Management either as a focusing technique or as a programming platform.

Regular meditation in the context of Energy Management is the bridge between active and passive techniques. By calming down and focusing one can more easily control their thoughts and can thus keep a handle on their emotions and expectations, thus hopefully removing most negative effects. Additionally, if the mind is focused only on one goal there is an inherent strength as there is a usually a positive expectation that the action will succeed. As I discuss in the second Troubleshooting Psionics article, when most people perform an action there is an inherent hope or expectation that it will succeed (otherwise why do it?). Thus regular meditation while technically a technique is more of a way of using most of the passive techniques at once. However it is important to practice, both for further work in Energy Management and other skills.

For those reading this who may have never meditated before I will offer a very simple but effective method. If you can count (I should hope so or you have bigger problems to worry about before learning Energy Management) and can form pictures in your mind then you can do this technique. By the latter I mean when you close your eyes images often appear (kinda fuzzy but still there). With a mild exertion of will you can cause a certain images to appear, although without practice it has to be something relatively simple. Luckily that’s just what we’re going to do here. Get comfortable (sitting, standing, whatever works), close your eyes, and start counting. As you are counting, make the numbers appear in your mind. It might be hard the first time but you get the hang of it pretty quickly. That’s it, go for as long as you feel like, although (assuming a consistent effort applied) the longer you do it the more focused you’ll be, provided that you don’t fall asleep since this is almost like counting sheep.

While this first technique is pretty basic there are more advanced things that can build off of it. For instance once you have the counting thing down you can afford a little more thinking power with which to slip something else in. This is what I meant about using meditation as a programming platform. If you repeat over and over a command while you’re meditating, to some degree that command will slip into your subconscious, which will try to accomplish that command if its possible. This can be used for a lot of things (one other good application is light healing but I’m not qualified to advise on that), in this case we’re going to use it for a very simple energy recovery/generation technique. You won’t believe how easy this is going to be. Simply while meditating in the manner mentioned before start repeating something like “generate energy,” “replenish my reserves,” “recover energy” or something else along the same lines (remember psionics is a very personal thing, use whatever command you think will work for you). There it is, I recommend you let your counting get up to somewhere around 60-120 (anything higher is a bit excessive unless you’re really tired and don’t have time to rest or something). The only drawback is since this is so simple, the amount of energy generated is much less then more advanced techniques, but if you are just starting out this is a good technique to try.

First off, although it has the word “charging” in it this technique is not actually charging, or if it is, it is a much less intense variation of it. The good news is this means while charging is too advanced and complicated for me to teach here, this technique is not. This technique typically focuses the body’s energy in one area of the body. While I guess this could be used for energy manipulation in this situation it is much easier to use it for physical augmentation. When I say that I mean it will give a temporary boost to your strength in that particular area (I sometimes use this in my arms when I’m swimming right before the race starts when it isn’t viable for me to use a more advanced technique).

This technique is more difficult to learn so listen carefully. First, close your eyes and relax. Focus on a particular area of your body (for beginners I’d recommend the arms or the legs, for some counter-intuitive reason its easier to do both arms or both legs at once so do that). Now here is the hard part, you need to visualize something, but do it in a way that you also “feel” it. What I mean is imagine a kind of buzzing in that area, and also try and make that area feel a kind of quick vibration that is in tune with the buzzing. Do not physically move or you will not do this technique right. This is one of the techniques I was referring to at the beginning where experience really matters. There is a precise “feel” to performing this technique successfully. Hopefully with enough practice you can find it. This technique can be applied to the entire body with some good effect but it takes a higher level of skill. Unfortunately while in the short term this technique gives a fairly good output, it runs out exceptionally quickly. You’ll be lucky if this lasts more than even a couple minutes.

Combinations

Energy Management is interesting in that an adept user can use several of the techniques simultaneously to achieve either a stronger or a different effect. There is luckily some sense of logic in this, if the two techniques have a similar effect they will likely augment, if they have a different effect the effect will combine if possible. (Disclaimer: I’ve lightly experimented with this, and have found both of these cases to happen, but I have not nearly experimented with it enough to cover the effects or possibility of combining all the various techniques. That said, use at your own risk, your mileage may also vary.) For example, combining microcharging and the energy generation meditation, while more difficult, will result in a larger yield. It also tends to give you a nice initial boost when you finish the meditation, which can be very useful depending on the situation.

While I will not teach charging here, if you are studying Energy Management you should at least know what charging is. Hopefully as you read it will become apparent why it is inappropriate for this article.

Description

Now that I’ve gotten all the warnings and stuff out of the way, let me try to illustrate what charging is. First off, it is one of those techniques where it is ambiguous whether it actually generates energy or brings forward what energy one has available. However, whichever one it is, the effect is massive on an incomparable level, especially in the hands of an adept user. There are two stages to the technique: a “channeling” stage where a mental trigger executes the core part of the technique and energy begins to accumulate, and a “release” stage where the built-up energy is sent rocketing through the user’s body (usually in a somewhat violent manner, it is common to experience involuntary jitters, seizures, and small fits). After the release the user experiences a kind of high as the body attempts to integrate or purge the glut of energy it has been given. While in this state the user may not be able to focus as well, but he/she now has a tremendous amount of available energy. This makes it ideal for physical augmentation, and harder to use for energy manipulation. The duration of the high varies wildly but usually ranges from a couple minutes to an hour. The particular variation of the technique used and the amount of energy produced also determine the duration. With practice if the user chooses they can “calm down” and negate the effects of the high. Multiple failed attempts at charging can leave the user drained, so it is assumed the technique requires some energy to be initially input.

The “channeling” stage mentioned before is started by use of a unique mental trigger, for which I have had trouble finding any close comparison in psionics to describe it to. I’d like to say it’s like tactile visualization for energy manipulation but there’s some subtle but important differences. That said, the main difficulty in learning this technique is figuring out what that trigger feels like. Once learned it’s like riding a bike, users can be taught other techniques of this type with relative ease, however learning it for the first time is immensely difficult for some.

As I just hinted at, there are many different charging techniques. They all in some form use the unique mental trigger mentioned before, but they are all slightly different and some may work better for some people. As a result many users may have their own personal variation that works well for them specifically. Some of the different variations are inherently more powerful than others. This also makes charging both an intermediate and an advanced level technique, as there are “basic” variants, and “advanced” variants. The latter being harder to perform but having much more power.

One important merit of this technique is as long as it is done on a responsible level, slightly overwhelming oneself with the energy from charging causes the body to adapt and increase its capacity. It is by no means an easy road to do this over a long period of time, but this is essentially a faster road than usual to building up one’s psychic capacity. However note from someone that has used this technique for just that, it is not recommended to take this shortcut you have a good reason to. Contrary to some opinions, while there is such a thing as a shortcut, there is almost never such a thing as an *easy* shortcut. Don’t get too panicked however, this kind of application requires either heavy daily use, or use of powerful charging variants on a regular basis. If not used too heavily, people can use this technique without having to worry too much about the long term effects (its possible they may still occur, but not as strongly).

One other massive merit to note is that my experiences suggest that a number of other psychic skill areas can be activated or augmented by use of charging. Particularly sensitivity-related skills seem to heighten: telepathy, empathy, general energy sensitivity, and several other obscure kinds of sensitivity that one might not even notice.

Charging is a double-edged sword, a wonderful one but a double-edged sword none the less. It has massive potential both for short-term and long-term use but in both cases one pays for the incredible yield. Some of the potential long term issues I won’t go into, however I will give some for examples: most of the time it can’t be controlled what abilities will be augmented over the long term, so imagine being stuck with one specific ability augmented to a point far beyond what you are comfortable with. Also eventually too much energy capacity is a bad thing, now imagine becoming an artificial insomniac because one has too much energy on hand to fall asleep.

Anyone that does learn charging from somewhere is strongly encouraged to talk to an experienced psion from time to time to make sure they are not misusing the technique.

A number of Energy Management techniques have been noted to have interesting effects on the state of the user’s field. Even if your goal is not to manipulate your field (unless you have a good reason to do so, you probably shouldn’t try), reading this section is recommended so you can be aware of the potential effects.

Note: I originally didn’t try to explain what a “field” is because I can’t put it into words too well, but to try and ease some confusion I’ll give it a shot. A user’s “field” is a kind of aura around a person that shows up through scanning. I’m not entirely sure how things work with it, but it does connect to how well your energetic systems are working.

Repair

This is the best reason to attempt to manipulate your field. Your field can get damaged, dented, etc. It has happened to me before. Energy Management is kind of a form of psionic exercise, which means it’s great to stretch things out and get your field back to normal. Try to “cycle” your energy around, meaning move internally it around your body (be careful with the head, its sensitive to energy being moved there), back and forth for a while. You can also try a little bit of microcharging but it has to be on a full-body scale to do any good. Enough of this will hopefully stretch your field back into its normal form. Charging can help too but I won’t go too much into that since I didn’t tell you how to do it.

Expansion

As I said before, your field to some degree represents the state of your energetic systems. That said, if you power-up using various Energy Management techniques the size of your field may expand. While I’m not too sure what all this does, it looks cool to people scanning you and is a sign that your energetic systems are working nice and strong. Since I’m not sure if this actually does anything other than look shiny, this section is really just so you know what’s going on if someone tells you that your field has grown in size after you just finished some Energy Management stuff. Its assumed that it shrinks back to normal after a while, or adept level users by now would probably have a field the size of Kansas.

Instability

Here’s the bad news: heavy use of Energy Management techniques can tend to give your field a bit of a chaotic nature. This is assumedly because the repeated use has both infused your body with a lot of energy and has shifted your field around multiple times. This is not a good thing, but unless it is a very extreme case it isn’t something dire to worry about either. The main concern is chaotic fields tend to accumulate clutter and dirt faster. Even if you don’t think this will be too much of a problem its recommended that you read an article or two about grounding and field maintenance.

Author’s note: these last two seconds pertain to the alternate meaning of Energy Management, energy efficiency, use, and conservation.

While the various sources of it are debatable, one thing people can agree on is that there exists a general level of psychic energy free-floating in the environment. While it seems to be in higher concentrations in the more populated areas, there is some level of Ambient Energy everywhere on the Earth. Most psychics ignore this source, but it is possible to tap into it for an additional supply of energy.

The one pitfall is Ambient Energy in its raw form is unstable and difficult to use. This is because it isn’t “yours” for lack of a better explanation. Energy that a psion generates is nearly always tagged with their psychic signature, not only does this identify that a psiball belongs to a certain person, from the energy’s point of view that signature determines who it should listen to. Ambient Energy either has no signature, or its original signature has long since decayed and faded away. That said, it’s hard to utilize initially because it has no reason to listen to you!

Anyone that wants to utilize ambient energy will need to imprint their signature onto it. This is a lot easier if you actually know what your signature looks/feels like. Then it is just a matter of transferring that image/feeling into the ball of ambient energy you have collected. It is a little more difficult if you don’t know what your signature looks/feels like but it is still possible. You simply have to take a collected ball of ambient energy and try to force everything that you think feels like “you” onto it. This will not be as effective but it should still work.

Quite obviously the one way to avoid needing more energy available is to learn how to use what you already have better. While I’ve touched on this before in my other articles its worth mentioning again.

The first thing to learn is the conservation part. For some reason energy seems to recover quicker based on how much you still have left (or maybe just feels like it does, but since a lot of psionics is what you think is going on, that may as well be what’s actually happening). That said, when possible it is better to spread things out, having a number of light to medium expenditures rather than having one exhausting practice with everything lumped into one run. Another big thing, avoid burnouts, i.e. practicing until you have absolutely nothing left. While the first point I made hasn’t been fully tested, it is known fairly well that besides just risking injury, a burnout slows down your energy recovery time, so it takes you much longer than usual to get back up to a workable energy level.

You can also conserve energy in combination with the earlier meaning of Energy Management. When you don’t really need to do anything major, meditate to lower your energy levels. As long as you suppress them instead of purging the energy it should still be available for later. Some would wonder why this would do anything. It conserves energy because the body doesn’t like having a glut of energy sitting there doing nothing. If you’re really energetic and not doing much with it, your body will just start to slowly expel your energy until you calm down to normal.

The other way to save energy is making the actions you take more efficient. Especially with energy manipulation a lot of people feel like they need to apply more energy because their technique and focus are inadequate. The first biggest issue is shelling. For the love of God practice shelling until you get really good at it. Go look up some guides, almost every site has one. Shelling can not be underscored in importance, because if your construct can retain the initial amount of energy you gave it, you won’t have to worry nearly as much about supplying it with more energy. Also for shields, if you have to depend on recharging a shield from time to time it gives your shields a cyclical strength. Any smart person will figure out the timing and attack when the shield is at its weakest. One thing I’ll mention that most shelling articles leave out: a key issue is confidence. This is where expectations come in, if you believe that the shell won’t work, it won’t work. When you make the shell around a construct be sure you believe that it will keep it safe and intact.

The next issue is visualization. A great deal of a construct’s strength comes from structure. You need to spend some time on any construct that you are planning to seriously use to think up a good visualization for its structure. Thinking up a visualization that has strength in your eyes gives a dramatic difference to a construct’s structural strength. While this is mostly only an issue in shields, even for regular constructs, doing this will be a core part of forming the construct’s shell. In any case a solidly structured construct tends to retain its programming and structure better, which saves you time and energy trying to repair it later.

The biggest reason for inefficient use of energy is poorly attached programming. If you do not program well, it will take longer to get the construct formed well enough to do what you want. More time means more energy used typically, so we want to avoid long construction times. Additionally a poorly programmed construct probably won’t hold energy as well, so if you lay the programming first then try to charge the construct up more later, it will take more energy to do that. That said, do it quickly and do it right.

I have two tips on this. The first is make sure you’re focused and have a strong intent when you are programming the construct. Weak intent causes poorly attached programming, so the construct probably won’t even work well in addition to being an energy hog. Also it will be easier for an attacker to shred the thing’s programming to pieces. The second tip may seem contradictory to the speed aspect of saving energy, but it’s more important in “doing it right” sense. It’s recommended for beginners or even adept people that are trying a new construct to enter the programming more than once. Somewhere between 2-4 times will be good. This makes sure that the programming really settles into the construct. Also it can help cover your mistakes if you had a “mental typo” and said something wrong.

This same approach will also help in other skill areas when its applicable, obviously most skills won’t have constructs or programming, but the things about intent, visualizations, and confidence can still make a big difference. One example is with telekinesis in light of the “do it quickly, do it right” approach. One of the things I’ve learned from my practicing of telekinesis is that short and powerful commands tend to have more success then staring at the psiwheel for 30 seconds trying to coax it along. This is because for anyone that doesn’t stay completely focused while practicing, longer means more time for the doubting aspects of the mind to “fight back” so to speak.

Internal quarreling hurts your results, and probably takes energy too if you are trying to push the psiwheel one way and part of you is pushing it the other way to negate your actions. Also it stands to reason that if an attempt at telekinesis fails, you’ll want to keep trying until you get it right. Sadly failed attempts still take energy. So while it is easier said then done, it is more efficient to get things done right quickly.

Energy Management in both meanings is an incredibly valuable skill to learn as it can complement all of your other activities. When used responsibly some of the techniques have amazing amounts of potential. While it is harder to learn than some other skills, it is well worth the work.

-Innerfire