Energy Healing: What is It, Does it Work, and How to Use It
Nicola Tesla wrote, “If you want to find the secrets of the Universe think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.”
As members of this Universe, this equally applies to us.
The concept of removing blocks in your energy field to restore health, lies at the heart of many traditional healing modalities. Reiki, Yoga, Chakras, Acupuncture and Shamanism are all based on working with energy.
Here we explore how it works, if it works, and the basics of working with energy.
Let's Get Started:
There is More to Us than Just the Physical
Before Einstein’s E=mc2, people viewed energy and mass as two separate things. Two unrelated entities. Einstein’s genius was the realization that energy and mass are two sides of the same thing.
Think about that. Every physical object you see, a tree, a human, or a stone, can be viewed as a physical object or as an energy field. Yet, despite this knowledge, we continue to view life from the physical perspective.
We describe a tree or another human being by their physical properties, such as their size or shape. We rarely talk about their energy.
We describe diseases by their physical properties. We describe inflammation as a cascade of inflammatory cells amassed at the injury site. Yet, if we are sensitive enough, we can feel the heat emanating from an inflamed knee. Or if we use an infrared camera, we can see the heat. So why don’t we describe inflammation simply as excessive heat? Then eliminate that source of heat for the cure?
Energy Healing: The Past
Long before E=mc2, Traditional healing modalities described our bodies as an energetic field. Human auras, chakras, and acupuncture points came from an awareness that we have an energetic field. Tai chi, reiki, yoga, meditation, mantras, and sounds manipulate that energy field. Guided imagery transmits and transforms that energy, as does prayer and the laying of hands.
Most “alternative” healing modalities believe illnesses begin as a disturbance in our energetic field. Left long enough, these energy disturbances eventually manifest as a physical illness.
Symptom or Disease
A parent feels the chronic burden of a sick child. They think they can take it, “their shoulders are broad.”
Years pass, and that emotional burden continues to bear down on them. Their shoulders slump forward, or they overcompensate by holding themselves rigidly upright. Either way, this abnormal posture eventually leads to neck and shoulder pain. An X-ray reveals they have osteoarthritis.
What was the cause of the neck pain? Osteoarthritis in the neck? Poor posture causing the osteoarthritis, or an energetic, emotional disturbance that created the cascade?
Ever noticed how often you get sick when you are “run down”? Is that sore throat or cold just a virus you were exposed to?
Or was it your depleted energy that suppressed your immune system, allowing that virus to take hold in your throat? Disturbances in our energy field, left long enough, precipitate into physical illness.
Energy Healing: The Present
According to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH), energy medicine (or biofield therapies) is the act of channelling and manipulating the energy that courses through your body in order to heal it.
If we look at the big picture, we know our bodies have an energy field. We measure it all the time. An electrocardiogram (ECG) measures your heart’s electromagnetic energy field, and an electroencephalogram (EEG) measures your brain’s energy field.
We have vision because our eyes convert electromagnetic energy between 380 and 700 nanometer wavelength into different colours. That is how we see. And we can hear because our ears convert vibrational energy into various sounds.
We know that our bodies take in and radiate thermal energy (heat) and that our every thought or action requires an electrochemical spark to cross between our nerves. We know that every function within every cell requires an electrochemical force to carry out its function. Our heart only beats because of an electrical discharge across the wall of our heart cells.
We know we can use large external energy forces such as radiation, electric shocks, lasers and heat to create a cure. But can we guide and work with our own energy? Can others help direct our energy? Let’s explore.
Does Energy Healing Work
Unlike using large external sources of energy to treat disease, energy healing uses smaller, more subjective energy forces. Depending on the modality, an energy practitioner uses hands-on, hands-off or distant healing. Unlike laser therapy, where you direct an exact energy dose at a particular wavelength, you cannot precisely control or measure the energy from a practitioner’s hands. Even if we could measure that energy, it likely changes within a practitioner (if they are having a good or bad day) and between practitioners.
The lack of control and consistency makes it difficult to determine unequivocally how much these therapies work.
Acupuncture- which inserts needles into specific energy points- is the most studied therapy and found to be helpful in most causes of pain. Acupuncture points are considered unique points along energy channels called meridians.
Distant healing, defined as a compassionate mental act directed toward the health and well-being of a distant person, showed positive results in 57% of trials.(2)
One of the most rigorous and well-known distant healing studies showed patients in the coronary care unit healed faster when they unknowingly received intercessory prayer.(3)
Healing Touch also shows a diversity of results. When you work with smaller energy forces with so many variables, you need a vast database to say energy therapy works unequivocally. And we don’t have that much data yet.
Yet Energy therapists with reputable training should be versed in the language of energy and healing. They can provide you with tools and another Perspective on how to heal and Rebalance.
6 Ways to Rebalance your Energy Field
Yes, we need more research and better tools to study healing therapies, but what is clear is that we are as much energy as we are matter. It is simply a matter of how you choose to perceive yourself.
Here are Five tools to use to rebalance your energy:
1) Listen to Your Metaphors
A weight on our shoulder’s, a tightness in our chest. The metaphors we use to describe our feelings offer insight into what is disturbing our energy field. What is causing that weight on our shoulders? What is causing that tightness, squeezing or stabbing pain? Observe your metaphors. What are you doing or saying when you use them? Observe the language you use to describe your pain and discomfort.
2) Your Energy Tune In
When we get a “bad vibe” from a specific person or feel “good energy” in a place, we are perceiving life from an energetic perspective.
We all experience days when we have lots of energy and days when our energy is low.
Tune in to your energy when different people and various circumstances surround you. What depletes you? What rejuvenates?
Spiritual Rituals, like weekly yoga, offer you time and space to tune in to yourself. During yoga, if you can, close your eyes and tune in to yourself, not what others are doing. What’s my energy level, where am I blocked (pain), and where am I imbalanced?
Pain, from an energetic perspective, is blocked energy; it cannot flow. What is causing the block?
Tune in and learn to listen to your body’s messages.
3) Absorb Positive Energy
Sunlight is the source of all life on earth, without it, we wouldn’t exist. Sunlight is the master clock for all our circadian rhythms, and our circadian rhythms control our body’s metabolism.
Living at higher latitudes increases your risk of dying from Hodgkin’s lymphoma, breast, ovarian, colon, pancreatic, prostate and other cancers. And as you leave the equator, there is a latitudinal increased risk of MS, diabetes, metabolic syndrome and cardiac diseases. There is also evidence that sun exposure can reduce your risk of asthma, rheumatoid arthritis and infectious disease.(4)
How do you feel when you are in the sun?
Sunlight is Healing. It is a powerful energy source. Absorb extra in winter, don’t overdo it in summer.
Nature is where we hear the soothing vibration of a bird sound or the calming wavelength of green light. Nature is Healing. Absorb Nature’s energy.
Be around people, places and activities that energize you.
4) Block Negative Energy
Avoid or deflect energy toxins like you do physical toxins. A blast of hot anger in your field can be more harmful to your health than a one-night binge. Chronic exposure to either will eventually cause illness.
If your work or home environment feels toxic, figure out how to minimize it. How can you change the energy in your space?
Add positive energy like plants, people, music, and calming views and smells to balance it. Take time out to rejuvenate yourself.
5) Eat Live Food
What provides you with more energy, a dried-up shrivelled leaf of Kale or one where the poor little thing was picked off the plant and popped into your mouth?
How would your energy level be after a week of takeout vs a week of fresh, natural produce? You want to feel alive, you eat live. Forage your food as much as you can. Don’t just think mushrooms in fall, tender leaves in spring and chamomile flowers in summer. What about the blackberries along a path or the apple tree in your neighbourhood overflowing with fruit?
Foraging provides live food and gets you out soaking up Nature’s Healing energy. Grow your own herbs, pick them fresh for your meals, and freeze the rest if they don’t survive winter. Touch them, thank them and smell their essential oils. Eat live and rewild yourself and your environment.
6) Use Visualization
Visualization is one of the tools we use to rewire our brains. Visualization changes behaviour, improves our skills and helps us to channel our energy where there is a block. A therapist trained in guiding imagery can guide your visualization to heal mental and physical symptoms. Add breathwork to your visualization when using it to unblock energy. When you breathe in, you bring in energy. When you breathe out, you eliminate toxins. Use visualization and your breath to work your energy.
We are as much energy beings as we are physical beings. Everything, animate and inanimate, has an energy field around it. Every energy field interacts with the other energy fields around it. Don’t limit yourself by living purely in the physical and be mindful of what energy you choose to be around.
Life is a journey. Let health be your guide.
References:
1) Summary of Acupuncture Benefits
3) Coronary Artery Disease and intercessory prayer
Want to learn more? “Vibrational Medicine the#1 Handbook on Subtle -Energy Therapies” by Richard Gerber MD
