Conrad Sichler M.D.

“Energy Medicine” is a general term for a type of hands-on healing that shares much in common with the more widely known therapies Reiki and Therapeutic Touch. While each of these healing practices has different roots and somewhat different philosophical approaches, there are more similarities than differences.

Each starts with the idea that there is more to life, in both sickness and health than what most people can see and touch physically. Modern medicine has made tremendous advances in the past century or so, mostly in treating the body’s physical side. But if one looks at a physical body one second before and one second after the moment of death, almost nothing has changed from a purely physical point of view. And yet a huge change has clearly occurred. Can healers and therapists of energy medicine work with that energy/soul/spirit/flow that animates our bodies?

The reality is that many people are doing this all of the time, even without necessarily consciously realizing it. Whenever a lover or friend or parent or child or pet touches another being with affection, care, or concern, chances are that there is energy that is being transmitted. A healer is often simply using this energy professionally in a more aware, conscious, and directed way.

This is not just an abstract idea. Scientists at UCLA and other respected institutions have studied healers who have the ability to see the human aura, or energy field, and have determined the exact wavelengths of energy that are being transmitted or worked with by healers when they use particular colours of energy, be they red or blue or orange, or other colours.

One interesting fact that many people don’t realize is that this energetic and colourful understanding of our bodies is hidden in our language, in things that we say every day. For instance, when someone is “feeling blue”, an aura reader will see mostly a blue aura around that person. And when someone is “seeing red”, in the sense of feeling angry, an aura reader can often observe a bolt of red energy run from their hips right up to their head and eyes.

It is not necessary for a healer or an interested patient to see auras in order to have a positive effect during an energy medicine treatment. People who can’t see auras can train themselves to feel the difference between different types and colours of energy fields, as well as use different textures of energy in their treatments for different effects.

How does energy medicine help patients? Whenever a person has an experience that they can’t process, resolve, and let go at the time, it may appear as a blockage in their energetic field. If that blockage persists for long enough, it may eventually express itself as physical disease. Conventional medicine is approaching an understanding of this in some areas. For instance, there are many scientific studies proving that heart disease is made better by the open-hearted experience of laughter and social connection, and made significantly worse by the closing down of the heart in depression.

When a healer runs energy through a patient, sometimes some of these blockages are released. This is a similar process to what people sometimes experience during massage treatments, where the working of a particular part of the body can lead to certain feelings coming up, and often being released.

Why can’t we just clear these blockages on our own? One simple answer is that if we could have, it would have already happened! Not only do we need other people in our lives socially and spiritually, but a healer may be different enough from a patient to expose them to kinds of energy that they themselves lack. In so doing, they can provide a boost for the patient to overcome a challenge that they cannot manage on their own. Plus, when someone is sick with chronic disease, they have less energy overall to face the ups and downs of life.

None of this is terribly new. Every system of medicine besides modern scientific medicine uses energetic ways of understanding the body and treating disease. From an integrative medicine perspective, conventional and energy medicine is a great fit, like a coming together of old friends whose company can each enrich, teach, and encourage the other.

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An Exercise:

One of the most common features of the energy fields of many Western people is our lack of grounding. This appears as a lack of energy and awareness in the legs and feet, and has many associations. Physical exercise is one great way to get reconnected with the ground, as people get more in touch with their own bodies. Being grounded implies that a person is aware and conscious of their own reality and that they know where they stand, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Being “quick on one’s feet” can imply that someone is so in touch with what is going on that they can make quick and fine adjustments to what they are doing in response to a rapidly changing situation. When we’re not in this aware state, we’re more likely to stumble, both literally and more generally in our lives!

How conscious are you of your feet and legs? Do you feel that they are there? When you walk, do you feel the impact of your feet on the ground? Can you tune into the spring in your tissues that propels you into your next step?

To get more in touch with this feeling, you may want to try a yoga posture called Mountain Pose. To do it, you stand with your feet about shoulder width apart, or slightly more. The knees are straight but not locked, the hips slightly tilted forward, and the buttocks very slightly tensed (A teacher of mine once said “Imagine you are gently holding a walnut between your buttocks!”). Pull the trunk up and out of the pelvis, pull the shoulders back so that the chest is out, and imagine that the top of your head is connected by a fine string to the ceiling so that it is held straight. There are a few possible different hand positions, but the one I prefer has the arms slightly away from the sides of the body, fingers together and pointed towards the ground.

Mountain Pose should feel stable and solid, like a mountain. Try and hold the posture for about two or three minutes. Do this each day for two to three weeks and notice how you feel different!