What is intention?

What intention actually does

Everything you experience is energy: your body, sitting in a chair, drinking a glass of water, loving somebody. Energy on its own doesn't go anywhere — intention is what gives it a direction.

Every living system has a background intention built in already: the drive not to die, the drive to procreate. That's a direction, even if nobody chose it. Human beings get something more — the capacity to set intentions on purpose, to direct energy ourselves. That's how we connect what we value, what makes us come alive, to what's actually in front of us. It's also the vehicle for manifestation — for making a wish into something real. And it's what healing runs on: when you're doing Reiki, or any kind of energy healing, the intention underneath it is to return to wholeness.

Mastering this — and actually applying it at regular intervals, not just understanding it as an idea — is one of the more crucial things you can do for yourself. Most of us go through long stretches operating on autopilot, doing things because they need doing, without ever asking what direction we're actually pointing ourselves in.

The meditation habit that took me seven years

I did a ten-day meditation retreat about ten years ago, and it sold me on meditation completely. What it didn't give me was a framework to actually do it. So I'd meditate three days in a row, then forget, then not sit down for three months, then ten days, then nothing for four, then six. Around and around, for years.

Even after I decided meditation mattered enough to train as a mindfulness teacher — the MBSR course, the gold standard, seven years into my own practice by then — I still struggled to sit six days a week, which is what the course asked of me. Then in week six, they asked a simple question: why are you meditating? That question is what broke the pattern. Until then I was doing it from a should — I could see all the benefits, I could see how important it was, I could see it was close to required if I wanted to be a genuinely good energy healer. But asking why, and setting the intention for myself, is what actually changed it.

These days I still don't meditate every single day. I don't stress about that anymore, either — because the norm has become daily anyway, and it got there through the real intention, not the should. My intention is to be who I am: to pause and respond instead of react, to take care of myself, to let my mind slow down, to keep asking who am I, who can I become. That's what keeps me going.

Intention in the tiny moments

You can set an intention with anything, including the smallest tasks. My intention doing the dishes: they need to get done, and I want a clean counter, so cooking tomorrow is a pleasant experience. My intention listening to a video like this one is to ground myself in the concepts, to make space in my system so the words actually land.

How to actually set an intention

Two parts. First, know the why: what value you're expressing by doing this thing, what desire it's in support of. Second, imagine giving yourself — or the moment, or a meeting — a certain direction, and become willing to follow it.

It's like blowing a kiss into the air, and then acting in alignment with the direction you've set.

You can do this with anything. Set the intention to meet your person by the end of the year, and you set your energy to match that — you become the match for it. Set the intention for a stressful work meeting to go as harmoniously and productively as possible, and you walk in already aligned with that outcome instead of just bracing for it.

Reiki II is where this gets taken further — but the practice starts here, in the ordinary moments, long before any formal training.