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Read on for a basic understanding of what the heck “Energy Healing” even is.
🖤In gratitude to my many teachers who laid these foundations for me. May this information open your mind and heart, so that you too may experience the thrill and deep comfort of getting to know yourself and greater reality. 🖤
Everything is Energy and Matter is Mostly Space Filled with Information Fields
We know that everything is made up of energy. The body is made of energy. As most of us learned in school, the body is made of molecules which are made of atoms. Inside of the atom, there is mostly just empty space between the electrons that orbit the nucleus, and the nucleus. In fact it’s close to 99.9% empty space. This is like a grape within a football stadium, where the football stadium is the atom and the grape is the nucleus, where the “matter” is. That’s right, the grape (nucleus) is the only part of the entire football stadium (atom) that is “matter”. I keep putting matter in quotations because it’s not really matter the way we think of it; as a solid thing - more on this soon. The point is, there is a vast distance where there’s nothing but electromagnetic energy between the electrons and nucleus. The majority of the atom is space. Or, try this classic thought experiment to grasp the concept. Imagine if you took the energy of all of humanity, removed the space inside of the atoms that comprises each human body, and condensed this physical volume into one single thing; you could fit ALL of humanity into a sugar cube. That is how much of “matter” is actually just space. Whoa!
Now, when we think of the electron that moves around the nucleus like planets circling the sun, these electrons are not really particles, they’re usually in a wave function. Quantum physicists call this a “probability wave”. When we actually observe it, we collapse this wave function and it becomes a particle. Even the matter that we are made of, the stuff inside the nucleus, is not solid. The nucleus is filled with smaller subatomic particles that quantum physicists call “quarks”. These also are not real particles, but are interactions in information fields. They are vibrating. If you really think about it then, everything is energy and vibration. In fact, you have never really touched anything, where matter meets matter. It’s not possible because the distances are so vast. What you are feeling when you touch something or yourself, are clouds of electrons repelling each other. So you see, we are just really energy beings, our whole body is energy and vibration.
The Intelligent Body… Emitting Light
Next, a bit about your body. Your body is made up of 30-70 trillion cells, with each cell creating around 100,000 chemical reactions every second. When you multiply this, you get a number that is so large, you can’t even comprehend it. That astronomical number helps to illustrate the wisdom or IQ of your body. But that’s just a part of it. As we just noted, cells communicate chemically at astounding speeds. But, they also communicate with light so each cell knows what the other cell is doing, and everything can be coordinated in the body. This light in a cell is called a biophoton. Researchers who have measured this light describe it as coherent and have found that the patterns of light emitted by a healthy cell and an unhealthy cell, are different. Suffice it to say, your cells are working in coordination creating tissues that comprise organs, which connect into organ systems, that all work together to make up your body. In other words your body is a function of complex, coordinated action. Your body is incredibly intelligent! Go ahead and trust it.
There’s More Than Meets the Eye - Life Through the Human Filter
A word or two here on consciousness and perception. Your brain and sensory organs are indeed powerful and important as part of your intelligent body. However, the information that you can perceive with the five physical senses and what your brain “knows” is a drop in the bucket compared to the broader reality. Take for example, the way a butterfly tastes with its feet and views the world through compound eyes, which is like seeing through 17,000 mini eyes that can view the ultraviolet spectrum. Or, consider the multiple invisible signals inundating the space around us that we use for our daily lives, like wifi, radio, satellite, bluetooth. It takes specific technology to pick up on and express these signals as sound and images. The examples go on, but I won’t. There are clearly real perceptual limitations associated with the filter that is the human body and brain. It’s like the totality of existence is Mount Everest and what we perceive is a golf ball. So remember, you’re looking through a pin-hole!
Layers or Dimensions of Healing
On to the nitty-gritty of healing; body AND soul. We have different layers of healing: the Spiritual, Mental, Emotional, Energetic, and Physical layers. All these layers are interconnected and work together harmoniously, but it is helpful to distinguish these layers or dimensions when you are healing because illness can start on one or all of these layers and also healing can happen on all of these layers.
For example, in the physical, when an intervention such as nutrition, medication, or exercise works, our intelligent body heals. But when healing does not occur in response to an intervention or multiple interventions, it’s likely that healing needs to be done on another layer, such as the energetic, mental or spiritual dimension. Indeed, much of chronic illness may be due to imbalances on layers other than the physical one. Western medicine is incredibly helpful in diagnosing and treating emergent and acute illness and injury such as heart attack and broken bones. But when medication is used to simply suppress symptoms and more and more medications are needed over time, sometimes to treat the side effects of the first medications, this is not healing. The body continues to exhibit imbalance and a lack of coherence or coordination between cells, organs, and systems. When physical interventions fail, other interventions are indicated. This is why thousands of years of human healing technologies throughout history have traditionally addressed the multidimensional reality of health, to intervene on all the layers, from the physical to the spiritual.
The Power of Thought and Emotion
Emotions and thoughts affect your well being. In medicine it’s called psychoneuroimmunology, which is a long word that means what you think and feel has a direct effect on your immune and nervous systems. When someone is stressed emotionally or has a critical belief about themselves or a situation, it is more likely that they will become ill than when they are not stressed or if they hold supportive beliefs.
Emotions create real time physical changes, like when the cheeks flush, the heart rate or breath rate changes, or the muscles or viscera tighten or relax. And we all know that when you are stressed, it’s much easier to catch a cold. Indeed, research has found that your heart’s electromagnetic field and your body’s physiology changes constantly in response to emotions. More on this later.
As for thoughts, they are constant and habitual, determined largely by whatever you believe. Beliefs are like filters through which you see the world. Especially when it comes to your health and well being. Think of the placebo effect that demonstrates the power of your mind and your beliefs. When you believe you are taking a pill to help with a particular symptom, but the pill is actually just a sugar pill, your body changes as if you were given a real chemical. Just because the belief is there, the body responds. The opposite is also true and is called the no-cebo effect. This describes how if you believe that a pill will harm you, you can have all the side effects even when you have just taken a sugar pill. This is the power of the mind and your thoughts. Emotions and thoughts loop together into patterns based on beliefs that you may or may not be aware you hold. Noticing false critical beliefs, then restoring true supportive beliefs and their accompanying emotion-thought patterns, has immediate healing impacts in your body and life.
Body break! That’s a lot to absorb. Stand up, exhale loudly and shake it off for a minute before you go gaga.
Energetic Anatomy 101
For thousands of years humans have mapped and worked with energetic anatomy to support health and happiness. Here’s a quick overview of your energy system. You’ve likely heard of many of these parts. First, we have the biofield or aura that surrounds the body like a cellular wall, allowing in beneficial energy while keeping out what is detrimental. Within the body there are reservoirs of life force energy, or dan tian, that also act as generators to run power to the system. There are energy centers or chakras, that are like transformers or distribution nodes that serve various parts of the body, organs, and life experience. And finally, there is a central line and smaller lines of energetic flow, like wiring that connect the generators, energy centers, and body, called the meridians.
Back to Fields of Light, Energy, and Information
You aren’t the only one with a field around you. Energetic fields exist around organs, plants, animals, the Earth, you name it. And just like your field is full of smaller fields that surround organs, we are all part of one, larger field that shares information like the cells in your body communicating with one another. This is the field of consciousness. Consciousness can also be described as information in the form of light and energy or, if you prefer, as spirit. Just as you can discern a cell from the tissue, organ, or body it composes, you can differentiate each living thing’s biofield from the larger field. Or you can think of the whole field as one thing. Wow! When I said your aura is like a cellular wall it is, but in truth your biofield surrounds AND infiltrates your body. Your field actually is what creates your body, becoming physical where your skin begins, just like the chair under you. While as you move further out from the body, it becomes subtle, like the wifi signal moving through your room.
Speaking of electromagnetic fields, did you know that your heart has the largest field in your body? It is 5,000 times stronger than the electromagnetic field of your brain and extends out into the world three to four feet, contacting people, places, and situations before you or your brain perceives them. In fact, a scientific study has shown that your heart senses, and your body responds to, images that are pleasant or disturbing 2 to 14 seconds BEFORE you see the image. Fascinating and powerful stuff!
Spirit, the “Je Ne Sais Quoi” of Life
The spirit animates the body. When the body dies, the spirit leaves the body. Or maybe it’s the other way around; when the spirit leaves the body, the body dies. Who actually knows. But the spirit is the “je ne sais quoi” that animates and enlivens, the stuff that makes each one of us specifically, uniquely, ourselves. As mentioned in the previous section, spirit can also be called consciousness and is at once sacred and mundane as it is subtle and physical, creating and existing simultaneously. The element of spirit, soul or consciousness holds qualities of awareness, presence, and love. Depending on what you believe, this might not land quite right. But when we’re talking about this as a dimension of healing, it’s useful to assume that the un-seen realm of spiritual existence, or consciousness, permeates everything and may act as a blueprint for, or author of our lives, bodies, and experiences. In this layer of healing or illness, we notice themes, repeating lessons, or story-lines that hold power within us and our lives. Another trademark of this dimension, is the desire for development and expansion towards a more authentic expression of the self and deeper connection with and support of the entirety of existence. Healing in the spiritual layer often brings about lasting, faster, and sometimes miraculous effects as it influences all the other layers (mental, emotional, energetic, and physical).
Experience it for Yourself
So, there you have it, energy healing is multidimensional. It affects the body, energy system, emotions, thoughts, and consciousness or spirit. In energy healing, we open the door to deeper, faster, and longer lasting change as we engage on all the layers. It works well in unison with medical, psychological, and wellness interventions for a comprehensive approach to health. Try it out!