Energy Healing - The New Mainstream
What is energy healing?
Oftentimes energy healing is viewed as a pseudoscience. A “New Age” term thrown around to describe an invisible force creating healing effects on the human body – physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.
But did you know it’s actually so much more?
Seriously.
Energy healing can very simply be defined as a practice where the subtle energetic currents & pathways within the body are activated or opened for the purpose of healing.
According to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH), it’s “the act of channeling and manipulating the energy that courses through your body in order to heal it.”
In Reiki, the energetic healing touch comes from a practitioner’s hands where universal energy flows into the practitioner’s body, into and out of the hands, and into another’s physical and energetic body.
For the skeptics out there, I know. That all can sound a little “woo woo” and out there.
But suspend your disbelief for a minute while we go a little deeper.
We are all energetic beings
Whether you’re religious, spiritual, scientific, or anywhere else on the spectrum of belief, what is true across all ranges of belief is that human beings are energetic beings.
What does that mean?
Well, quite literally, we all possess a unique electromagnetic field surrounding us at all times. You can’t visually see it, but it’s there.
Whether you choose to believe it or not.
To take this a little further, our heart, our brain, our nervous system… our entire human bodies run on electrical currents.
The messages that travel from our nervous system to our brain are carried through electrical currents.
The heart communicates with the brain through electrical currents.
And those same currents of electricity also communicate and interact with not only our personal electromagnetic fields but also those fields of others.
It kinda gives the term ‘vibe’ a whole new meaning, doesn’t it?
HeartMath Institute and Heart Coherence
The HeartMath Institute continues to conduct research on what they call heart coherence. Heart coherence is the intentional practice of bringing the heart and the mind in communication and cohesion with one another.
In simple terms, coherence means you move from fight-flight-freeze-fawn, or any other trauma response or reaction, to calming your nervous system, allowing for clarity and intention.
From The HeartMath Institute website:
“The heart’s electrical field is about 60 times greater in amplitude than the electrical activity generated by the brain. This field, measured in the form of an electrocardiogram (ECG), can be detected anywhere on the surface of the body. Furthermore, the magnetic field produced by the heart is more than 100 times greater in strength than the field generated by the brain and can be detected up to 3 feet away from the body, in all directions, using SQUID-based magnetometers (Figure 6.1). Figure 6.1. The heart’s magnetic field, which is the strongest rhythmic field produced by the human body, not only envelops every cell of the body, but also extends out in all directions into the space around us. The heart’s magnetic field can be measured several feet away from the body by sensitive magnetometers. Research conducted at HMI suggests the heart’s field is an important carrier of information. Prompted by our findings that the timing between pulses of the heart’s magnetic field is modulated by different emotional states, we have performed several studies that show the magnetic signals generated by the heart have the capacity to affect individuals around us.”
Heart coherence and energy healing collide
So what does heart coherence have to do with energy healing?
Well for one, it’s the unseen becoming seen. We have a literal force field surrounding us at all times without any conscious awareness of it. That’s wild!
And it also makes you wonder: if our electromagnetic field is constantly interacting with the external world around us and we are constantly receiving and interpreting messages from our and others’ fields, what impact is that creating? On you individually, on the collective, and every single person you pass by in your everyday life… never mind those you interact with personally.
Now broaden your scope from just human beings to every single living being on the planet.
Energy is constantly communicating with energy.
While humans attempt to group and categorize and identify and delineate and segregate, energy sees no bounds.
While you may see a Reiki practitioner hovering their hands over someone else’s body and see nothing, there is still an energy exchange occurring.
And we can even simplify that a little further.
When you hug someone. Energy exchange.
When you shake someone’s hand. Energy exchange.
When you look at another and form a thought, opinion, or judgment in your mind. Energy exchange.
From that perspective and awareness, is it so far-fetched to believe that the power of human intention, thought, and energy exchange can create healing?
The unseen comes to light
We are rapidly advancing as a species. Science, technology, and even our capacity for empathy, compassion, and understanding, are all growing and expanding.
While not that far into the past we discredited anything we could not visually perceive, we are discovering over and over that there is an entire unseen universe right in front of our eyes (pun intended).
And we’re also learning the greater impact we all have on each other.
While energy healing used to be viewed as pseudoscience, Reiki practitioners are now welcomed into hospitals and alongside patient care and recovery. It is finally being given the credit it’s due.
From the National Cancer Institute, defining ‘energy healing’:
“A form of complementary and alternative medicine based on the belief that a vital energy flows through the human body. The goal of energy healing is to balance the energy flow in the patient. It is used to reduce stress and anxiety and promote well-being. Energy healing is being studied in patients receiving cancer therapy, to find out if it can improve quality of life, boost the immune system, or reduce side effects. Also called energy therapy.”
To explore energy healing further, group classes are a great way to dip your toe, or you can always seek out a practitioner specializing in the energy healing modality that resonates with you best.
“A healer's power stems not from any special ability, but from maintaining the courage and awareness to embody and express the universal healing power that every human being naturally possesses.”
― Eric Micha'el Leventhal
