Energy Medicine and the Human Energy Systems
"Conventional medicine, at its foundation, focuses on the biochemistry of cells, tissue and organs. Energy Medicine, at its foundation, focuses on the energy fields of the body that organize and control the growth and repair of cells, tissues and organs. Changing impaired energy patterns may be the most efficient, least invasive way to improve the health of organs, cells and psyche."
-David Feinstein, Ph.D
"Energy Medicine heals the body by activating its natural healing energies. You heal the body by restoring energies that have become weak, disturbed or out of balance. Energy Medicine utilizes techniques from healing traditions such as acupuncture, yoga, kinesiology and qi gong. Flow, balance and harmony can be non-invasively restored and maintained within an energy system by tapping, connecting specific energy points (acupoints) on the skin, by tracing or swirling the hand over the skin along specific energy pathways, through exercises or postures designed for specific energetic effects, by focused use of the mind to move specific energies and/or by surrounding an area with healing energies." - Innersource.net
Energy Medicine Basics For Health and Vitality
- Energy must move.
- Energy tends to follow specific patterns.
- Energy must cross over at all levels.
- Energy must be in harmony and balance with other energies.
- Energy that does not follow the above principals -stagnant, disrupted,
homolateral or in disharmony with the rest of the body's energy- will lead to
physical or emotional imbalance.
"Energy Medicine is the science and the art of optimizing your energies to help your body and mind function at their best. Supporting your chemistry by managing your energies is the fast track for helping your body adapt to the challenges of the 21st century.” -Donna Eden
We are all familiar with the organ systems in our bodies such as the digestive, the respiratory or the cardiovascular systems. A very new concept in our culture is that we are not only a physical body, but we are also an energy body that can be categorized into different systems that are interconnected and work together to keep us alive, balanced and healthy.
Here is a description of the nine basic Energy Systems of the Energy Body anatomy as described by Donna Eden.
1) The Meridians: In the way an artery carries blood, a meridian carries energy. The flow of the meridian energy pathways is as critical as the flow of blood. No energy, no life. Meridians affect every organ and every physiological system including the immune, nervous, endocrine, circulatory, respiratory, digestive, skeletal, muscular and lymphatic systems. If a meridian's energy is obstructed or unregulated, the system it feeds is jeopardized. The meridians include fourteen tangible channels that carry energy into, through and out of your body. Your meridian pathways also connect hundreds of tiny, distinct reservoirs of heat and electromagnetic energy along the surface of the skin. These are your acupuncture points, and they can be stimulated with needles or physical pressure to release or redistribute energy along the meridian pathway.
2) The Chakras: The word chakra translates from the Sanskrit as disk, vortex or wheel. The chakras are concentrated centers of energy. Each major chakra in the human body is a center of swirling energy positioned at one of seven points, from the base of your spine to the top of your head. Where the meridians deliver their energy to the organs, the chakras bathe the organs in their energies. Each chakra supplies energy to specific organs, corresponds to a distinct aspect of your personality and resonates (respectively, from the bottom to the top chakra) with one of seven universal principles having to do with survival, creativity, identity, love, expression, comprehension or transcendence. Your chakras also code your experiences in their energies, just as memories are chemically coded in your neurons. An imprint of every emotionally significant event you have experienced is believed to be recorded in your chakra energies.
3) The Aura: Your aura is a multi-layered shell of energy that emanates from your body and interacts with the energies of your environment. It is itself a protective atmosphere that surrounds you, filtering out many of the energies you encounter and drawing in others that you need. Like a space suit, your aura protects you from harmful energies. Like a radio antenna, it brings in energies with which it resonates. The aura is a conduit, a two-way antenna that brings in energy from the environment to your chakras and that sends energy from your chakras outward. When you feel happy, attractive and spirited, your aura may fill an entire room. When you are sad, despondent and somber, your aura crashes in on you, forming an energetic shell that isolates you from the world.
4) The Basic Grid: The basic grid is your body’s foundational energy. Like the chassis of a car, all the other energy systems ride on the energy of the basic grid. For instance, when you are lying down, it would appear to a seer, such as Donna Eden, that each of your chakras sits upon this foundational energy. Grid energy is sturdy and fundamental.
But severe trauma can damage and deform the grid and when this occurs, it does not usually repair itself spontaneously. Rather, the other energy systems adjust themselves to the damaged grid, much as a personality may be formed around early traumatic experiences. Repairing a person’s basic grid is one of the most advanced and intense forms of energy therapy.
5) The Celtic Weave: The body’s energies spin, spiral, curve, twist, crisscross and weave themselves into patterns of magnificent beauty. The equilibrium of this kaleidoscope of colors and shapes is maintained by an energy system known by different names to energy healers throughout the world. In the East, it has been called the "Tibetan energy ring." In yoga tradition, it is represented by two curved lines that cross seven times, symbolically encasing the seven chakras. To Donna Eden, the pattern looks like the old Celtic drawings of a spiraling, sideways infinity sign, never beginning and never ending and sometimes forming a triple spiral. Like an invisible thread that keeps all the energy systems functioning as a single unit, the Celtic weave networks throughout and around the body in spiraling figure-eight patterns.
6) The Five Rhythms: Your meridians, chakras, aura and other essential energies are influenced by a more pervasive energy system. Donna Eden does not see it as a separate energy but rather as a rhythm that runs through all the others, leaving its vibratory imprint on physical attributes, health patterns and personality traits. Mapped long ago in traditional Chinese medicine, all of life was categorized into five "elements", "movements" or "seasons" (there is no perfect translation; all three terms have been used, suggesting qualities of being both cyclical and substantial). These energies were considered the building blocks of the universe, providing a basis for understanding how the world works, how societies organize themselves and what the human body needs to maintain health. Metaphors for describing these five distinct rhythms have drawn from concrete, observable elements of nature (water, wood, fire, earth and metal) and from the seasons (winter, spring, summer, Indian summer and autumn). Like the background music during a movie, the person's primary rhythm, in combination with the changing rhythms of life's seasons, directs the tone and mood of the entire energy system and sets the atmosphere of the life being lived.
7) The Triple Warmer: Triple warmer is the meridian that networks the energies of the immune system to attack an invader, and it mobilizes the body’s energies in an emergency for the fight-or-flight-or-freeze response. In carrying out these critical functions, it operates in ways that are so beyond the range of any other meridian that some consider it a system unto itself. Its energies work in conjunction with the hypothalamus gland, which is the body’s thermostat. The hypothalamus is also the instigator of the body’s emergency response. Like an army, triple warmer mobilizes during threat or perceived threat, coordinating all the other energy systems to activate the immune response, govern the fight/flight/ freeze mechanism and establish and maintain habitual responses to threat.
8) The Radiant Circuits: The radiant circuits function to ensure that all the other energy systems are working for the common good. They redistribute energies to where they are most needed, responding to any health challenges the body might encounter. Where the meridians are tied to fixed pathways and specific organs, the radiant energies operate as fluid fields, embodying a distinct spontaneous intelligence. Like hyperlinks on a website, they jump instantly to wherever they are needed, bringing revitalization, joy and spiritual connection.
9) The Electrics: The electrics are an energy that seems to emerge from the electrical dimension of the other energy systems. They are not an independent energy system like the meridians, chakras or aura, but they are rather intimately related to all the major energy systems: separate from each but also an aspect of each, something like the way liquid is separate from, yet part of each of your organs. The electrics serve as a bridge that connects all the energy systems at the basic level of the body's electricity. In terms of whole-body healing, it is the way the electrics connect all the systems. If energy fields such as the aura and chakra align the organs and other energies by surrounding them, the electrics move right through them, connecting and coordinating them at the tangible dimension of their electrical nature.
Borrowed from: Energy Medicine and Energy Medicine for Women by Donna Eden & David Feinstein, Ph.D. (Tarcher/Penguin Putnam, 2008).
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"Conventional medicine, at its foundation, focuses on the biochemistry of cells, tissue and organs. Energy Medicine, at its foundation, focuses on the energy fields of the body that organize and control the growth and repair of cells, tissues and organs. Changing impaired energy patterns may be the most efficient, least invasive way to improve the health of organs, cells and psyche."
-David Feinstein, Ph.D
"Energy Medicine heals the body by activating its natural healing energies. You heal the body by restoring energies that have become weak, disturbed or out of balance. Energy Medicine utilizes techniques from healing traditions such as acupuncture, yoga, kinesiology and qi gong. Flow, balance and harmony can be non-invasively restored and maintained within an energy system by tapping, connecting specific energy points (acupoints) on the skin, by tracing or swirling the hand over the skin along specific energy pathways, through exercises or postures designed for specific energetic effects, by focused use of the mind to move specific energies and/or by surrounding an area with healing energies." - Innersource.net
Energy Medicine Basics For Health and Vitality
- Energy must move.
- Energy tends to follow specific patterns.
- Energy must cross over at all levels.
- Energy must be in harmony and balance with other energies.
- Energy that does not follow the above principals -stagnant, disrupted,
homolateral or in disharmony with the rest of the body's energy- will lead to
physical or emotional imbalance.
"Energy Medicine is the science and the art of optimizing your energies to help your body and mind function at their best. Supporting your chemistry by managing your energies is the fast track for helping your body adapt to the challenges of the 21st century.” -Donna Eden
We are all familiar with the organ systems in our bodies such as the digestive, the respiratory or the cardiovascular systems. A very new concept in our culture is that we are not only a physical body, but we are also an energy body that can be categorized into different systems that are interconnected and work together to keep us alive, balanced and healthy.
Here is a description of the nine basic Energy Systems of the Energy Body anatomy as described by Donna Eden.
1) The Meridians: In the way an artery carries blood, a meridian carries energy. The flow of the meridian energy pathways is as critical as the flow of blood. No energy, no life. Meridians affect every organ and every physiological system including the immune, nervous, endocrine, circulatory, respiratory, digestive, skeletal, muscular and lymphatic systems. If a meridian's energy is obstructed or unregulated, the system it feeds is jeopardized. The meridians include fourteen tangible channels that carry energy into, through and out of your body. Your meridian pathways also connect hundreds of tiny, distinct reservoirs of heat and electromagnetic energy along the surface of the skin. These are your acupuncture points, and they can be stimulated with needles or physical pressure to release or redistribute energy along the meridian pathway.
2) The Chakras: The word chakra translates from the Sanskrit as disk, vortex or wheel. The chakras are concentrated centers of energy. Each major chakra in the human body is a center of swirling energy positioned at one of seven points, from the base of your spine to the top of your head. Where the meridians deliver their energy to the organs, the chakras bathe the organs in their energies. Each chakra supplies energy to specific organs, corresponds to a distinct aspect of your personality and resonates (respectively, from the bottom to the top chakra) with one of seven universal principles having to do with survival, creativity, identity, love, expression, comprehension or transcendence. Your chakras also code your experiences in their energies, just as memories are chemically coded in your neurons. An imprint of every emotionally significant event you have experienced is believed to be recorded in your chakra energies.
3) The Aura: Your aura is a multi-layered shell of energy that emanates from your body and interacts with the energies of your environment. It is itself a protective atmosphere that surrounds you, filtering out many of the energies you encounter and drawing in others that you need. Like a space suit, your aura protects you from harmful energies. Like a radio antenna, it brings in energies with which it resonates. The aura is a conduit, a two-way antenna that brings in energy from the environment to your chakras and that sends energy from your chakras outward. When you feel happy, attractive and spirited, your aura may fill an entire room. When you are sad, despondent and somber, your aura crashes in on you, forming an energetic shell that isolates you from the world.
4) The Basic Grid: The basic grid is your body’s foundational energy. Like the chassis of a car, all the other energy systems ride on the energy of the basic grid. For instance, when you are lying down, it would appear to a seer, such as Donna Eden, that each of your chakras sits upon this foundational energy. Grid energy is sturdy and fundamental.
But severe trauma can damage and deform the grid and when this occurs, it does not usually repair itself spontaneously. Rather, the other energy systems adjust themselves to the damaged grid, much as a personality may be formed around early traumatic experiences. Repairing a person’s basic grid is one of the most advanced and intense forms of energy therapy.
5) The Celtic Weave: The body’s energies spin, spiral, curve, twist, crisscross and weave themselves into patterns of magnificent beauty. The equilibrium of this kaleidoscope of colors and shapes is maintained by an energy system known by different names to energy healers throughout the world. In the East, it has been called the "Tibetan energy ring." In yoga tradition, it is represented by two curved lines that cross seven times, symbolically encasing the seven chakras. To Donna Eden, the pattern looks like the old Celtic drawings of a spiraling, sideways infinity sign, never beginning and never ending and sometimes forming a triple spiral. Like an invisible thread that keeps all the energy systems functioning as a single unit, the Celtic weave networks throughout and around the body in spiraling figure-eight patterns.
6) The Five Rhythms: Your meridians, chakras, aura and other essential energies are influenced by a more pervasive energy system. Donna Eden does not see it as a separate energy but rather as a rhythm that runs through all the others, leaving its vibratory imprint on physical attributes, health patterns and personality traits. Mapped long ago in traditional Chinese medicine, all of life was categorized into five "elements", "movements" or "seasons" (there is no perfect translation; all three terms have been used, suggesting qualities of being both cyclical and substantial). These energies were considered the building blocks of the universe, providing a basis for understanding how the world works, how societies organize themselves and what the human body needs to maintain health. Metaphors for describing these five distinct rhythms have drawn from concrete, observable elements of nature (water, wood, fire, earth and metal) and from the seasons (winter, spring, summer, Indian summer and autumn). Like the background music during a movie, the person's primary rhythm, in combination with the changing rhythms of life's seasons, directs the tone and mood of the entire energy system and sets the atmosphere of the life being lived.
7) The Triple Warmer: Triple warmer is the meridian that networks the energies of the immune system to attack an invader, and it mobilizes the body’s energies in an emergency for the fight-or-flight-or-freeze response. In carrying out these critical functions, it operates in ways that are so beyond the range of any other meridian that some consider it a system unto itself. Its energies work in conjunction with the hypothalamus gland, which is the body’s thermostat. The hypothalamus is also the instigator of the body’s emergency response. Like an army, triple warmer mobilizes during threat or perceived threat, coordinating all the other energy systems to activate the immune response, govern the fight/flight/ freeze mechanism and establish and maintain habitual responses to threat.
8) The Radiant Circuits: The radiant circuits function to ensure that all the other energy systems are working for the common good. They redistribute energies to where they are most needed, responding to any health challenges the body might encounter. Where the meridians are tied to fixed pathways and specific organs, the radiant energies operate as fluid fields, embodying a distinct spontaneous intelligence. Like hyperlinks on a website, they jump instantly to wherever they are needed, bringing revitalization, joy and spiritual connection.
9) The Electrics: The electrics are an energy that seems to emerge from the electrical dimension of the other energy systems. They are not an independent energy system like the meridians, chakras or aura, but they are rather intimately related to all the major energy systems: separate from each but also an aspect of each, something like the way liquid is separate from, yet part of each of your organs. The electrics serve as a bridge that connects all the energy systems at the basic level of the body's electricity. In terms of whole-body healing, it is the way the electrics connect all the systems. If energy fields such as the aura and chakra align the organs and other energies by surrounding them, the electrics move right through them, connecting and coordinating them at the tangible dimension of their electrical nature.
Borrowed from: Energy Medicine and Energy Medicine for Women by Donna Eden & David Feinstein, Ph.D. (Tarcher/Penguin Putnam, 2008).
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