Article Tags: integrative medicine clinic | healing | education
ENERGY MEDICINE
“If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.” Nikola Tesla
As many of you know, after I completed my official training in conventional Western Medicine in 1973, I moved to the small N. Cal coastal town of Bolinas where I began to study Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and other natural modes of healing. This was really my introduction to the whole idea of healing based on energy rather than just anatomy and physiology, and it changed my ideas about what medicine could be and sent me into my studies related to deeper imbalances and causes of disease.
If you want to hear more about this from me in person then please check out the Youtube video of my August FREE CLASS HERE
TCM is based on the concept of natural energy called Chi that pervades all of Nature and travels through our bodies in subtle channels called meridians. The healthy flow of Chi is what supports the body’s functioning and good health. If it is blocked or interrupted as a result of outer or inner conditions, then we begin to experience disease/dis-ease. We can use several therapeutic approaches to re-balance the flow of current, such as acupuncture as well as herbs and even exercise regimes like Tai Chi or Qigong.
My time in Bolinas was also when I really began to reconnect with Mother Nature on a deeper level and I studied other traditional forms of healing including herbology, various bodywork therapies and mind-body medicine. In many ways this was my apprenticeship in what I have come to call NEW Medicine – the integration of Natural, Eastern and Western approaches to healing.
What is Energy Medicine?
We are bio-electric beings; maybe bio-electro-magnetic beings would be more accurate. While this aspect of reality is not yet widely explored for treatment options in modern medicine, we are already using invisible parts of the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum for diagnosis such as X-rays and CAT scans, as well magnetism for diagnosis as in the MRI. Of course, we already have EKG (electrocardiograms) plus electrical stimulation for wound and bone healing, but it makes sense that eventually we will further develop medical therapies and treatments that use EM energies directly.
Energy medicine is a broad term describing systems and methods of evaluating and sometimes treating the body in its many dimensions. Some are sophisticated, modern devices and instruments that measure electromagnetic points within and around the body, and test for responses. Some use acupuncture points to test the body. Examples of these instruments are the Electro-Interstitial Scanner (EIS) and EAV (Electro-Acupuncture according to Vohl, a German scientist).
Many aspects of energy medicine assess what is out of balance to provide specific diagnoses about what’s wrong in the body, from deeper infections, to immunization reactive patterns, to organ strengths and weaknesses. Assessing the energetic patterns of the body makes sense for the future of medicine, and this system aligns with Eastern Medicine, in that the energy (Chi) flowing through the meridians is important to health and also that problems are seen to begin at the energetic levels before they become physical. Thus, assessing and correcting these patterns and balancing the energies in the body are more subtle ways to maintain health. This may be needed on an ongoing basis for maintenance or support of an existing injury or condition. Western medicine and science, of course, look skeptically at these forms of energy testing and therapy as non-scientific. Still, I fully believe Energy Medicine and Bioelectric treatment will be part of the Future of Medicine.
Sound and Light Therapy
Sound, light, and color are pure energies/vibrations, and they can influence and move body energies. The better we activate our body energies, the clearer and more vital we will feel. That’s what acupuncture does—helps us move our electromagnetic energy. Sound and color therapy can also help in this. I have been involved with sound therapy for 40 years, having developed “Sonopuncture,” the use of medical tuning forks applied to the acupuncture system. (These are aluminum alloy forks, tuned to various musical notes, designed to allow a continuous vibration to stimulate these energy points and circulation.) Each fork as a specific vibration in cycles-per-second, which are of course a part of the sound and color spectrum. It’s all about energy and vibration.
Sonopuncture, like Acupuncture, is based on an understanding of elemental imbalance and what specific points to use for improving balance, a treatment that I have referred to as Sound Tune-ups. People typically experience the vibration moving through the body and even along specific meridian channels. They can also feel an overall calming, peaceful feeling. Sound is a pure energy and can help heal. This also means using music and sweet, harmonious sounds to help soothe us.
Light and Color Therapy
Everything is energy: even the colors we see are part of this energetic spectrum. Light, as in daylight, is also important and helps balance our cycles of light and dark, summer and winter. We are all affected by where we live on the planet and the kind of light/dark cycles and seasons that surround us. Many people use light boxes during the colder, darker months to treat depression and SAD (Seasonal Affect Disorder), and it can be helpful for resetting our body clock, brain chemicals, and neurotransmitters.
Color therapy has also been used since the beginning of time. Indeed, we use it daily in the clothes we choose to wear, in the foods we eat, and in the colors with which we surround ourselves. But there is also a specific form of treatment, which associates each ailment as a certain color imbalance. By the use of a white light shown through colored gels, the parts of the body affected are color-treated. I have written more about this in the chapter about Summer Light in my book, Staying Healthy with the Seasons.
Those interested in a simple use of specific color vibrations for balancing the body systems can also prepare solarized, color-energized waters by leaving water in the sunlight in colored glass bottles for a day or two. From this you will receive predominantly that color vibration in your water. Drinking this water can actually be used to balance certain disharmonies, though subtle it may be. For summer, the cooling blue and green bottles are good to keep available. These are some easy ways to begin exploring a very complex topic that is treated very deeply in the Eastern healing systems based on the chakras, yoga and so on.
Homeopathy
Homeopathy is based on the idea of “like treats like” (thus the term homeo). For example, if you get a bee sting, you are treated with minute dilutions of bee venom. This is the opposite of more conventional allopathic model, which tends to suppress symptoms by “opposite” treatment. Within Homeopathy it is believed that the more diluted a substance/remedy is, the stronger its effects. Stronger dilutions have actually no active ingredient, but only the energetic pattern (vibration) of the original substance.
How can a little sugar (lactose powder) pill that contains no molecules of a supposedly active substance have any healing effect? Although many people, scientists included, have a hard time believing that such a substance could affect bodily or emotional changes, there are millions of people who claim great benefit from using homeopathy. It has many adherents who experience benefits and claim its good results, especially in European countries where it is taught in some medical schools and is especially popular in the UK, where it has been covered by universal health care since 1948.
According to the Western Medicine evidence-based approach, homeopathy is usually considered a placebo. Yet, the fact that placebos sometimes produce beneficial effects in patients, or test subjects, when there is no active substance present is its own mystery and suggests a powerful mind-body healing connection that deserves more research. From my perspective homeopathy is really a type of “resonance” or “vibrational” medicine for the body – shifting the imbalanced energies into a new state of harmony.
Electro-pollution
A core concept of my healing philosophy and practice is to both enhance whatever will promote healing while removing or minimizing whatever is harmful, correcting any deficiencies and toxicities. So, in regard to Energy Medicine we also need to consider potential harm caused by electro-pollution in its various forms.
It may be hard to accept that something we cannot see (although we can often feel/sense), something that all of us depend on daily at home and work, might be a significant problem in our modern lives—yet electricity may fit into this category. I have been concerned for many years that excessive exposure to environmental electricity, electromagnetic radiation (EMR), and now Wifi everywhere is possibly a danger to some people’s health and may even be a factor in carcinogenesis. Foresighted scientists throughout the world are now showing us that EMR may indeed be one of the newest threats of our modern age. Of course, some people are more sensitive to this, while others hardly notice.
I suggest you pay attention to the effects that EMFs have on you. For example, if you have trouble sleeping, you may have too much electromagnetic stresses on you in your bedroom, or in the hours before bed that you play or work on your computer. I know my sleep improved when I removed my TV and digital clock from my bedroom. We also know that the so-called “blue light” emitted by the screens of computers and phones can disrupt sleep patterns.
Swimming and water bathing can help to balance and de-magnetize us from our nearly continuous electromagnetic exposure, and we need to keep our currents current and ground ourselves on the Earth; one good way is with standing barefoot on the green grass, dirt or the beach.
Mind-Body
Finally, Energy Medicine also brings the Psyche into play, and the Mind-Body-Health connection is another core message of the Integrative Medicine that I practice and teach. Thousands of studies correlate mental activities, stresses and attitudes with health behaviors and disease outcomes. Our thoughts, feelings and emotions are all energies that affect our wellbeing so we need to attend to them with a healing attitude. Modern studies on the dire health consequences of chronic stress are just the beginning of conventional Western medicine’s understanding of this area. Mindfulness meditation for stress reduction and pain management is now commonplace, yoga studios are everywhere, and I imagine that other “energy exercises” like Tai Chi and Qigong, already widely practiced in Asia, will find their way into our healthcare landscape, especially with their focus on longevity and healthy aging.
Often the future resurrects the past and ancient ways are found to be useful, healing and wise.
Stay Healthy,
Dr. Elson