What is Energy Medicine and What Does it Have to do With Me?

Unedited Video Transcription

It’s within the acorn. It’s what compels the acorn into becoming an oak. It’s within the zygote, compelling it to become an embryo, a baby, a child, a teen, and an adult. It’s within this planet Earth. And it’s what the stars burn.

Energy vibrates, and it vibrates at varying frequencies. When energy is vibrating, lower, low and slow. It shows up as matter. Rocks, wood, plants, and animals bodies. When energy is vibrating at a faster rate, it’s more difficult to detect with our senses, as well as with our technology. But we see it in sunlight. We see it in the heat rising from hot pavement. We hear it in sound, and we feel it any motion.

The mechanism that propels energy is polarity, rising, falling, pushing, pulling, expanding and contracting, light and dark, warm and cold. All seemingly opposites. But in fact, just different poles on the same spectrum of the one lifeforce impulse. One cannot be sustained or exist without the other. And each polarity is always relative to the other. We see this in this pulse in the cycles of nature. We see it in the contracted and contained energy of the seed moving outward into the plant it’s destined to become. We see it in the expanding stages of sprout and leaf and fruit. And in the contracting stages of harvest, decay, and compost.

We see it in the cycle of the day, as the sun makes its way across our sky. We see it, and we feel it in our environment as it responds to the sun. Cool, and still in the morning, to active and warm in the afternoon, and back to cool and still in the evening. We experience this pulse on micro and macro levels within our bodies and throughout our lives. It shows up in our lifecycle as we morph from that zygote into the agent human. We feel it on a daily basis, as we sync with nature’s changes, rising, becoming active, winding down, and resting. And we feel it moment by moment in the expanding and contracting of our lungs. And in the expanding and contracting of our heart muscle. We’re tired; we become energized. We thirst, and we are hydrated. We hunger, and we are satiated.

This pulse of polarity is called Yin Yang and Chinese, not yin and yang as we say in English. But yin yang, one thing, one energy, two polarities. The etymology of the word duality comes from Latin dualities, which means containing two, suggesting that there is one thing made up of two parts always relative to each other and never purely one or the other. Often, you’ll hear these polarities, labeled as masculine and feminine or positive and negative. I try to avoid these terms, especially masculine and feminine when describing these polarities, because, as I said, they’re always relative to each other and never purely one or the other.

Yin Yang is so much bigger than the terms masculine and feminine can describe. I’ll occasionally use the terms positive and negative. But it really wanted to be perfectly clear that in doing so I’m referring to an electromagnetic charge, not a judgment of good or bad. Whenever possible, I prefer to describe the nature of what the energy is doing, expanding or contracting, hot, cold, light or dark, active or passive, giving or receiving.

When considering the nature of yin yang as it animates the human body, it’s important to remember that the Young side of the spectrum works in short bursts of energy. Whereas the Yin side of the spectrum moves slower and slower and much more steady.

Yang takes action and then withdraws into rest and refresh until action is needed again. While Yin steadily maintains its supportive pulse, I like to say that Yin is the currency of Yang, or being is the currency of doing those active bursts of yang energy rely on there being a reserve of yin energy to spend. This is why it’s crucial to replenish our Yin energies with time in nature, with authentic rests and with contemplation and creativity.

This is going to be an important distinction later on when you learn more about two particular flows of yin yang called triple warmer and spleen. So in relationship to our sun, our planet Earth is more Yin, it does not beam light out or heat out into space as the sun does. The earth is much more cool and nourishing relative to the sun’s hot activity. Though the earth herself has two poles, the overall charge on the surface of the planet is negative. There is a field of negative electrons that cover the surface of the earth. The light that reaches us from our sun has a positive charge, which is pulled in by the negative charge of the planet.

These two polarities, which are constantly attracted to each other, move through all living things on the planet, including us. In Chinese medicine, the body is looked at with the arms raise the palms facing forward, the legs widened, and feet turned out, which is the stance of active vitality. In western medicine, the body has been studied primarily from the perspective of the cadaver parts without that lifeforce energy moving through it. In order to better understand how the lifeforce impulse moves through and energizes our bodies, it behooves us to take a look at that a closer look at that stance of vitality.

To begin with, our bodies also have poles with positive and negative charges. The bottoms of our feet have a more positive charge, which is track two and pull up on the overall negative charge on the surface of the planet. The tops of our heads have a more negative polarity, which attracts to and pulls in the positive charge ions coming down from the sun.

We have pathways in our body, which carry these lifeforce impulses from above and from below as they make their way toward each other, and which transports that vital energy into all of our organs and our physical systems. These pathways are called meridians. And then identified as either a yin pathway, which carries the energy up, or a young pathway which carries the energy down. The Yin energy needs to be able to move freely from the feet up the inside of the legs up the front of the torso, up the inside of the arms, and off the fingertips, where they merge with the young energy. The yang energy needs to be able to move down freely from the fingertips and from the face down the back or the shell side of our body and off our feet, where it merges with the yin energy.

Energy wants to move. And if those pathways are obstructed, the yin yang energy cannot easily flow through the body in order to meet and merge with its polar opposite. This inhibits the energy’s ability to serve the organs and the functions that it would otherwise be serving. This is one of the primary origins of disease in the body. The inability of that lifeforce impulse to move freely and easily through the meridian channels, as well as through other subtle energy systems. assessing and addressing the flow of the energy in the meridians is a big part of restoring balance and healing in the body. One of these techniques engages acupressure points which are interspersed along the meridian pathways. These points are like little transformers and provide access to the energy within the channel. Another way to influence this energy is to trace the pathways of the meridians using your electromagnetically charged hands to influence the flow of Qi.

There are many ways that the yin yang energy can be obstructed and inhibited in its movement, the primary one being a disconnection from the earth. In our modern day and age, and in our Western culture, it’s more and more rare to be literally touching nature. Most modern humans wear rubber-soled shoes, they walk on sidewalks, they write in vehicles, and they spend the bulk of their time in buildings, without spending time outdoors. With our hands and feet actually touching the ground, we lose out on all those rich negative electrons which blanket the surface of the planet and which provide our body with antioxidant properties, helping to neutralize free radicals in the body.

For true vitality, our energies need to vibrate in harmony with the Earth’s vibration. This is why the act of grounding is the first and foremost step in organizing the human biofield, the subtle energy body that surrounds and penetrates the human body. For some people, this can be achieved by simply standing barefoot on the ground for 10 minutes at a time, maybe at least once a day. For other people whose energies have become scrambled or incoherent and can no longer connect with the Earth’s vibration. Simple intervention with energy men and tech medicine techniques can restore the flows of yin yang and synchronize the body’s energies with the energies of the Earth, thereby providing the physical system with a steady sustenance of the lifeforce impulse.

As I said earlier, Energy wants to move. And in order to do that, energy needs space to move, and it wants to move in specific patterns. The art of energy healing is knowing what those patterns are, and knowing how to create space in the body, so that energy can move freely, and knowing how to influence the lifeforce impulse to reorganize itself within those patterns of optimal function. The meridian system is just one of those patterns of movement that energy follows some of the other energy systems at play in the body which have specific patterns of movement, or the chakras, the aura, and the Celtic weave. The movement of energy within any of these systems can be adversely affected by stress, trauma, and other challenging influences in our environment.

The good news is that that lifeforce impulse can adapt on the spot to keep functioning, I’ll be it in a compromised manner. The bad news is that under prolonged adaptation, the energy can lose its ability to return to its preferred patterns of movement, resulting in less than optimal function of the body-mind system, fatigue, foggy thinking, lack of inspiration in coordination, pain and illness are familiar symptoms of energy not being able to move in its specific and preferred pattern.

We are wholly conduits for the sacred dance of yin yang and this dance is the pulse of creation. With the use of energy medicine techniques, we can dissolve obstructions and restore coherence of the lifeforce impulse as it moves through our body, resulting in vitality, clear thinking, and an increased capacity for joy. I hope you’ll come and study energy medicine with me at one point or another sooner than later.