ENERGY
FROM OUR BOOK: The book can be purchased HERE.
So You’re Interested in a Resonant Energy Device
“Natural forces within us are the true healers of disease.” – Hippocrates
Understanding Energy: Physics & Human Experience
In the world of classical physics, the broad definition of energy is a physical system’s capacity for doing work. In the world of human behavior, this capacity generally links to qualities such as liveliness, strength and spirit.
Historically, the means by which a society accomplishes work – the type of energy it employs, from steam power to nuclear power – is one of its defining characteristics and most significant concerns. On a smaller scale (and more import to us because of this book’s subject matter), the way a particular body uses energy, along with the amount of energy that body innately possesses, is one of its essential characteristics.
Personal Energy & Well-Being
The perception of one’s own energy links to one’s overall sense of well-being, both physical and mental. Even if someone is not in a recognizable state of ill health, if that person’s energy is low or somehow off, he or she won’t feel lively and won’t be satisfied with the business of living. In the Western world, although we know our own energy as the something we have plenty of when we are able to move our body with ease, work hard, think clearly, and play pleasurably, that something is not especially well defined. Therefore, for the most part, we conduct our relationship with our energy on a subconscious level.
Energy Fluctuations & Influences
We accept that we have a specific, innate measure and quality of energy that allows us, on a typical day, to achieve particular amounts of certain tasks. We work in the garden for three hours before exhaustion and backache set in; ride a bike on a flat surface for four hours (as opposed to up a steep hill for three minutes); study Italian for one hour; engage in an emotional disagreement for 17 minutes.
We also recognize not many days are typical and that our energy fluctuates a great deal, sometimes for no apparent reason. At other times, we are affected when certain variables are introduced, such as joy versus tedium, water as opposed to coffee, a good night’s rest or the lack of it, a hilarious companion compared to a judgmental one, a bowl of organic steamed vegetables or a block of red meat, a pleasant surprise or a disappointment, or a shot of wheatgrass instead of a shot of tequila. For the most part, we understand that energy comes and goes. We are disappointed when we should have it, but don’t and delighted when we shouldn’t have it, but do. Sometimes we spend it wantonly until it is entirely gone. At other times, we attempt to save it.
The Mechanical View of the Human Body
For most of us in the West, in spite of all the subliminal attention we pay to our sense of our energy, our conscious belief is that the real workings of our bodies are governed by mechanical and chemical processes we neither understand nor believe we can influence to any great extent.
The body as a machine has mesmerized Western doctors (and their patients) since Isaac Newton’s time. In part, this view prevails because it is easier to apply the same laws to living beings and nonliving matter.
As orthopedic surgeon and groundbreaking research scientist Robert O. Becker (The Body Electric) has said of himself and his cohorts, “Of course, we all knew that life was more a process than a structure, but we tended to forget this, because a structure was so much easier to study.”
Vitalism: Life as Process
Still, throughout history, many notable scientists, philosophers and artists have focused their minds less on the static structures of living matter and more on the vital but enigmatic processes of life.
It wasn’t until the late 19th century that studying life as a process and not a machine became formally known as vitalism in the West. Aristotle claimed that neither physical nor chemical forces shape and support matter and that mechanism cannot explain life. He called the animating force entelecheia.
Many distinguished scientists and philosophers further developed this idea, including German physician Samuel Hahnemann, whose “like cures like” became the basis for homeopathy and Nobelprize-winning French philosopher Henri Bergson, who called the force the “élan vital.” Biologist T. H. Huxley, a great supporter of Darwin’s theory of evolution, likened the non-material element to great art.
A View of Living Nature
“In traveling from one end to the other of the scale of life,” Huxley said, “we are taught one lesson, that living nature is not a mechanism but a poem; not a mere rough engine-house for the due keeping of pleasure and pain machines, but a palace whose foundations, indeed, are laid on the strictest and safest mechanical principles, but whose superstructure is a manifestation of the highest and noblest art.”
Energy Fluctuations & Influences
We accept that we have a specific, innate measure and quality of energy that allows us, on a typical day, to achieve particular amounts of certain tasks. We work in the garden for three hours before exhaustion and backache set in; ride a bike on a flat surface for four hours (as opposed to up a steep hill for three minutes); study Italian for one hour; engage in an emotional disagreement for 17 minutes.
We also recognize not many days are typical and that our energy fluctuates a great deal, sometimes for no apparent reason. At other times, we are affected when certain variables are introduced, such as joy versus tedium, water as opposed to coffee, a good night’s rest or the lack of it, a hilarious companion compared to a judgmental one, a bowl of organic steamed vegetables or a block of red meat, a pleasant surprise or a disappointment, or a shot of wheatgrass instead of a shot of tequila. For the most part, we understand that energy comes and goes. We are disappointed when we should have it, but don’t and delighted when we shouldn’t have it, but do. Sometimes we spend it wantonly until it is entirely gone. At other times, we attempt to save it.
Eastern Traditions of Energy
Since then, but especially since the 1960s, people from an even wider variety of disciplines, including philosophy, physics, biochemistry, physiology, mysticism and anthropology, have acknowledged the distinction between organic and inorganic matter, exploring new ideas about the relationship of matter and energy. In current pop culture, “May the Force be with you” from Star Wars is perhaps the most well known expression of today’s vitalism.
In today’s sometimes bafflingly diverse world of complementary and alternative medicine, a belief in vitalism (although the movement, as such, is dead) is one of the key unifying principles. It is set apart from orthodox Western medicine, which simply gives this non-material element or vital force the label energy. Although somewhat new to the West, energy concepts have an ancient basis in the East. Chinese traditions call this vital energy Qi or Ch’i. Dr. Richard Gerber, in his seminal book Vibrational Medicine, describes ch’i as a “substance that the body… an energy of both nutritive and cellular organizational characteristics which supersede the energetic contributions of ingested food and air.”
Ch’i, Prana, Chakras & the Aura
In Chinese traditions, Ch’i enters the body by way of tiny, distinct gateways on the surface of the skin – the acupuncture points – and flows along the meridian system to the body’s organs, providing life’s essential energy.
In the ancient Indian system of healing known as Ayurveda, this subtle, life-sustaining energy is prana, and enters our bodies as we breathe. According to Tantra, a tradition closely linked to Ayurveda, the body possesses seven whirling centers of concentrated energy known as chakras, from the Sanskrit meaning wheels. Like the meridians, the chakras take in high-frequency subtle energies and transform them into a serviceable form. In this tradition, the chakras are junctions between mind and matter, and store emotionally significant life experiences.
An aura, on the other hand, is a shell of energy or an energy field that emanates from and surrounds the body. It both shields the body from energies with which it does not resonate, and welcomes energies with which it does.
The Holistic Approach in Alternative Medicine
TIn most alternative healthcare modalities, the practitioner and the medicine act as facilitator for these variously described healing forces of nature that are accessed via several different traditions. Also important are the practitioner’s focus and patient’s environment, mental state, dietary habits, overall physical condition, employment, likes and dislikes, and so on. There are many influencing factors.
This holistic approach is a throwback to an earlier time, a time before the grand advances in orthodox medicine in terms of drugs and surgery. It illustrates the other chief difference between alternative and conventional medicine: the latter focuses on symptom-relief at all costs.
The Decline of Medical Art
According to Robert O. Becker, before the discovery of penicillin and other antibiotics, “medicine had been an art.” The masterpiece – a cure – resulted from the patient’s will combined with the physician’s intuition and skill in using remedies culled from millennia of observant trial and error.
In the last two centuries, medicine more and more has come to be a science, or more accurately the application of one science, namely biochemistry. Medical techniques have come to be tested as much against current concepts in biochemistry as against their empirical results. Techniques that don’t fit such chemical concepts – even if they work – have been abandoned as pseudoscientific or downright fraudulent…
The Rise of the Holistic Health Movement
In the 1950s, one might travel through several towns before coming across a health-food store or a naturopath, much further in the vast middle of the country, and one might travel over an ocean before finding someone who even knew what acupuncture was. Today, of course, that is no longer the case.
Cultural Shifts & Scientific Support
The change came about largely as the result of the great social, cultural and political disturbances of the 1960s, although some very interesting things were going on in the world of science that supported the change, as well.
In 1962, California’s newly opened Esalen Institute afforded a local forum for the exploration of what Aldous Huxley called the “human potential,” the world of unrealized human capabilities that lies beyond our five senses.
Expanding the View of Energy & Healing
Western society is slowly changing—broadening its understanding of health, healing, and the human experience. As more people explore the connections between energy, consciousness, and physical well-being, the boundaries between science, tradition, and intuition begin to blur. This growing openness empowers individuals to take part in their own healing and to rediscover what ancient systems have long known: the body is not just a machine, but a living field of energy—resilient, responsive, and deeply interconnected with the world around it.
WANT TO LEARN MORE?