Energy Medicine is likely the oldest form of healing used by humans and has appeared in every culture that I am aware of. In the West Energy Medicine is by far the most neglected and unknown form of healing. This is very sad since it is the most available, safest and least inexpensive from of treatment. There are multiple reasons for this situation related mostly to ignorance of its nature and effectiveness. In the West form of energy, like the chemical form of a drug itself an energetic force in the body, is emphasized whereas the more active and more subtle aspects of energy are lost in focus due to this emphasis.
Physicist have known for a very long time that our five senses detect energy alone. At the basic level there is no physically identifiable particles only vibrations. When physicists look for matter, the physical, they detect nothing but vibration down to the most fantastically small levels that they can define. Students of human biology and physiology, who focus on the senses, remain constrained by the illusory “physical” aspects of these energies.
In fact some experts do not use the term “energy medicine” at all but the alternative term “vibrational medicine” or even “lightwork” to show that the actual mechanisms behind the healing power of these methods are as difficult to pin down as the molecular shapes that vibrate microscopically beyond the sight of our most sensitive instruments. As a trained Molecular Biologist I share the understanding of my colleagues that all of the physical is but subtle vibration. What is truly wonderful is that each and every human being has as their inheritance the basic ability to manipulate these energies for healing.
Mentally we narrowly sense this vibrational energy as nothing more than mass or weight, light, sounds, physical vibration or a chemical structure. But it is so much more than that. We can start to understand this system of healing by substituting the words “vibrational energies,” with the Eastern term of “Chi” or “Qi.” At the most basic level now both modern physicists and ancient healers agree that we can identify a basic creative energy or Chi that is undifferentiated. Beyond that level this Chi is somehow modified into atomic vibrational forms, light or sound.
There is food, air, water and even “Earth Chi” with identifiable familiar characteristics. We constantly take into our bodies many forms of Chi where it becomes “You Chi” or “Me Chi.” Once inside the human body various forms of differentiated Chi create tissue, blood, bone, nerve and other organs. This Chi as it is human gains aspects of consciousness and can become Compassion Chi, Love Chi or even Spiritual Chi all forms with a detectable vibrational feel. Some scientists wish to reduce these energies to brain activity or psychological events robbing themselves and others of the most effective tools we have to fully experience these Chi forms.
There are as many types of chi as there are things because everything is chi. When we try to heal with Western techniques we are actually really manipulating chi in a familiar manner. When we use Qi with the understanding that comes mostly from other cultures the action that results is more mysterious and unfamiliar but still effective. Whatever level of understanding we choose from the “scientific” subatomic to the unfathomable spiritual nature of our being wisdom and direct human experience has shown that all manner of Chi forms can be manipulated, and are constantly being manipulated by us as complex organisms, to maintain and restore health.
Energy chi fills the space we exist in and there is nothing else here. Let the physicist search for the undifferentiated chi that has not yet become thought or air. For now, take a simple deep breathe of air. Feel the flow into your lungs as the unstoppable oxygen chi speeds into you bloodstream. At the mental level that Chi is the element the ancients called the element of air. There is no doubt that the most remarkably easy way to convert air Chi into human Chi is to breathe. On the mental and spiritual levels when we feel this Chi the ancient cultures believe we can connect with the mental, spiritual and consciousness aspects of that element along with sensing the sacred physical body aspect of the air for healing. We convert water chi by drinking water, air chi by breathing air, food chi by eating food into human chi and once we have it becomes us. We absorb the Chi as physical, energetic, mental, spiritual and consciousness aspects whether we are aware of this or not.
Other less obvious forms of chi have noticeable effects on human chi. We continuously absorb the Earth element chi of our planet and the heart element chi of love in a real and detectable way from the day we are born. We can progressively lose connectedness and balance with Chi unnecessarily and for no apparent reason other than our ignorance of the availability of Chi itself. Once external Chi is absorbed it is human chi it is transformed transforms us. Earth chi transforms us with a sense of stability and we can transform our food Chi into physical body parts that invigorates our acts of compassion to others. There is no limit beyond that which we ourselves impose as to how that Chi can be worked with.
Most Westerners are familiar with the concept of acupuncture where needles, heat or pressure is used to modify the flow of human Chi along energetic highways that the ancient physicians mapped in the body as the “meridians.” Once thought to be solely in the realm of the imagination sensitive microscopes can now identify tubules in human tissue where the Chi manipulated by acupuncture flows. Western scientific medical research has now proven that acupuncture is effective in the treatment of recognized defined medical disease states. In the East the Chakras, best understood as Chi intake and processing machinery are an intimate part of a multi-cultural understanding of our moment to moment interaction with the subtle energetic vibrations of our environment.
The acupuncture system of Chinese Medicine, the most familiar form of Chi manipulation to the Western mind, is not the only method by which we can externally manipulate energetic vibrations for healing. Acupuncture is a highly systematized technique of “Chi Gong” which simply means manipulation of energy. Many Americans have seen “Tai Chi” a system of physical body movements perfected over many centuries that anyone can learn, enjoy and use for its medicinal effects. In China millions use these movements to restore and maintain health. After completing training in Traditional Chinese Medicine Doctors will often continue specialized training in Medical Chi Gong learning how to use their own bodies as tools of energy manipulation for healing of patients. Since 2002 I have had excellent training in a Tibetan form of medical Chi Gong.
Some people will confuse this medical technology with the American religious culture of “Laying On Of Hands.” This tradition has been tainted because of its use by charlatans and it confuses people since it is associated with a set of religious beliefs. I use medical Chi Gong because it has proven to be effective for my patients and have no desire to impose any belief system on my patients. To be frank and direct Medical Chi Gong is the most effective, cheapest and least harmful of any technique I have ever used, it can resolve problems not easily reached by any other technique and can be easily and quickly taught to almost any patient. I believe its healing potential is limitless. When we talk of energy medicine we are then talking of methods that have no limitation in effect because they deal with an aspect of nature that is all-pervasive and un-limitless.
My introduction to this form of healing began in 2003 when as a graduate of the University of Arizona School of Medicine Associate Program in Integrative Medicine I was introduced to Rosalyn L. Bruyere as part of a National Institute of Health experiment designed to study whether physicians could be taught a form of Medical Qi Gong and whether the effects could be measured. Rosalyn Bruyere is likely the most extensively scientifically studied energy healer in the United States, has participated in multiple studies of energy medicine some affiliated with institutions as prestigious as Johns Hopkins, and the teacher of the more well recognized teacher Barbra Brennan Her grateful clients Cher, Dick Butkus and Martin Scorcese. She is an Oracle for the indigenous Tibetan Bon Buddhist culture, a Hopi Medicine woman, a Dutch Reform Reverend and an internationally recognized authority on the Egyptian Mystery Schools.
As an Electrical Engineer and dedicated teacher of hundreds of physician and non-physician healers she is an energy medicine practitioner of exceptional skill and knowledge.
Since 2003 I have trained with this remarkable healer honing my skills with every treatment still constantly amazed and grateful for the results we are blessed with. I hope you choose to make Medical Qi Gong treatment or training part of our efforts to optimize your health.
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The term we will use for energy is “chi.” When we try to heal with Western techniques we are manipulating chi in a manner familiar to billions of fellow humans. Both are effective but some more easily applied depending on the circumstance, talent of the healer and state of the patient. Somewhere beyond our detection by scientific instruments and beyond the mind and calculations of our most talented physicists both West and East now visualize only pure energy. They try to understand this with their consciousness which itself can be recognized as energy or chi. As you read that last sentence the chi of your consciousness changed, followed by the chi of your mind, then brain and then body. Physical effects perhaps measurable were produced. If you felt the solid, stable chi of the Earth your body chi would change, followed by the brain, then the mind and the consciousness.
Energy chi fills the space we exist in and there is nothing else here. Let the physicist search for the undifferentiated chi that has not yet become thought or air. For now, take a simple deep breathe of air. Feel the flow into your lungs as the unstoppable oxygen chi speeds into you bloodstream. At the mental level that chi is the element the ancients called air. There is no doubt that the most remarkably easy way to convert air chi into human chi is to breathe. On the mental and spiritual levels when we feel this chi the ancient cultures believe we can connect with the mental, spiritual and consciousness aspects of that element along with sensing the sacred physical body aspect of the air for healing. We convert water chi by drinking water, air chi by breathing air, food chi by eating food into human chi and once we have it becomes us. We absorb the chi as physical, energetic, mental, spiritual and consciousness aspects whether we are aware of this or not.
Other less obvious forms of chi have noticeable effects on human chi. We continuously absorb the Earth element chi of our planet and the heart element chi of love in a real and detectable way from the day we are born. We can progressively lose connectedness and balance with chi unnecessarily and for no apparent reason other than our ignorance of the availability of Chi itself. Once any form of chi, for instance water, air, love or Earth chi, enters a person it becomes human chi. It is you chi and me chi. Once it is human chi it is transformative and transforming both. Earth chi transforms us with a sense of stability and we can transform our food into physical works or compassion to others. There is no limit beyond that human as to how that chi can be worked with.
To introduce you to the understandable aspects of chi it is good to realize that energy flows and so does chi. Chi is very much like water in this aspect. If you have ever been at the beach you may have dug a hole in the sand and watched it fill with water. This is a chi event and reveals a basic truth about all chi. Chi flows like water and loves space.
The Beach
It flows like water and it loves space.
There is much to be said for the solid.
It is a good place to stand Feeling firm
On easy Earth feet a good place to start
Clean clear ocean air fills all my lungs
The sweet living salt of earth in the air
Hear the power of sea moving the land
The wind of its spin powering the waves
The fire of the sun can lift the drink
Into the air off the swells into space
Rocky globe pulls the rain from the sky
The solid is good and space it is its lover
I am a lover too of space a lover of sky
I am a breather of vast blue making us one
I stand on the ground and we are not empty
I think in the flow and we are not hard
It is fun to move the sand digging a cave
An offering to space familiar water will fill
The place does not think it is moving here
On the beach all is moving elements converge
The earth flows like water in lava and sand
Whatever moves is a fine friend of space
She is everywhere still and they converse so
Much is said for the solid a good place to stand
Cultures more versed in development of the mind, spirit and consciousness have more respect for the healing nature of chi in these forms, feel and see them in these aspects and have spent thousands of years developing them as tools of healing and enlightenment. This poem attempts to use the imagination aspect of human consciousness to reconnect you to the elements of chi that can be found at an ocean beach. At some level you felt it and hopefully images populated your mind. If you had actually had all the physical feelings, mental imagery and consciousness of the beach while reading this poem there would be no possible way to determine if you had actually visited one or not. Whatever “healing” the chi of a beach would have had on you would have bloomed in full force just as surely as a cool drink of water quenches the thirst and refreshes as well as healing dehydration at a physical level. This is what the ancients are saying. If you are a scientist feel free to try to measure it I prefer a day at the beach.
Chi flows and produces detectable changes in the senses. When chi flow is increased it is generally sensed as a vibration in the body or sometimes as an unusual heat. Very low chi flow is often felt as a lack of sensation. Lack of food chi is hunger, water lack is thirst. Lack of Earth chi is a sense of instability, water a lack of comfort, fire a lack of passion or drive, air a lack of flexibility and space a lack of love or compassion. Just as eyes sense the chi of light our consciousness or spirit senses the loving chi of space. The ancients developed systems where the consciousness aspects of chi could through reconnection be transformed into the spiritual, mental and physical to produce healing on all levels. In the West over the last twenty years the field of “Neuropyschoimmunology” investigates and develops treatments based upon mind affecting nerve and nerve affecting bodily organ function extending scientific knowledge closer and closer to the consciousness body connection.
In the energy medicine traditions of the East much if not all of the technical work has been fleshed out beyond the mind chi into consciousness chi affecting body chi and all three interconnected. They have seen the healing effects of these techniques and seem to have little interest in “scientific” western confirmation of their value. Whether sensed as a physical event, emotional change or spiritual uplifting or expansion of consciousness chi manipulation techniques of all sorts produce change. The human aura can be seen with both electronic instrumentation and the human eye and what we feel with others can also be sensed with something extraordinary. Our minds or spirits sense the flow in many ways if we become attuned to and aware of chi in different forms. The intake from the senses is but a peek through the curtain at a universe of energy physical and spiritual.
In 2003 I was in a group of Physicians tested under a grant from the National Institutes of Health in an experiment to determine if an energy healer could teach Doctors to use “subtle energies” or chi. What I have confirmed is no surprise to those who have also studied energy medicine and healing. Energy healing is standard human equipment and chi can be used by anyone and everyone for healing. The most conspicuous cultural manifestation of this truth is the hundreds of millions of practitioners of “Tai Chi” which roughly translates to movement or manipulation of energy. This ancient set of body movements can be learned by the masses and specific movements of the body can be sequenced for almost any purpose from the martial arts to healing specific ailments and diseases.
At the time I started learning “energy medicine” I was unaware that I was learning various forms of “Medical Chi Gong” developed by masters of energy manipulation from different cultures filtered through a Western lens. I have a book 1400 pages long describing the anatomy, physiology and medical uses of Medical Chi Gong in the Chinese Tradition which some Chinese Medical Doctors spend years learning. Thankfully energy medicine is fairly easily learned evolving into forms like “Reiki” in the West. Nurses use “Healing Touch” methods to help patients in the hospital. Some Osteopathically trained Western Doctors of Medicine use Craniosacral Manipulation that also incorporates aspects of energy medicine. When I give a pharmaceutical medicine, nutrient or herb I am simply supplying a molecular energetic shape to influence the healing powers of the body. I use and teach the forms I have learned, work best for me and what I can quickly teach for my patients.
Very rarely patients will object to this form of treatment on religious grounds the most developed techniques springing from Eastern Cultures with non-Christian understanding of creation and spirituality. Most are familiar with acupuncture or Shiatsu and understand that this is a more specific form of the same type of medical intervention using manipulation of the chi distribution system along the meridians. Whether they object to actual technical mechanics or form of energy using for inducing healing change I am certain that their body will use Chi to heal because there is simply nothing else.
There are spiritual aspects to Medical Chi Gong that often come as surprises to those using and receiving it. But Medical Chi Gong is not “Faith Healing” although what happens in churches to induce healing often directly involves faith and the movement of Chi that is accelerated by it. As a Christian I personally find it helpful to pray and call on higher powers as do my patients during Chi Gong and at other challenging points in my life. I have no actual idea and clearly no proof that something involving beings of compassion with consciousness directly work with or through myself or my patients but prefer to think so. Even that being said I regard Chi Gong as a purely medicinal procedure not dependent on the presence or absence of any belief system or external powers.
What happens during Chi Gong may not be felt, though it almost always is, and is sometimes seen. I worked with a nurse who throughout her life could easily visualize the Chi that surrounds the human body. Personally I have to go into a trance like state to maintain a continuous view of what was for her obvious and entirely evident throughout her daily life. When two people feel or see Chi they can come to agreement on its form and distribution and I was thankful to have someone who could confirm our sense of what was happening during a treatment. I try to teach my patients to feel the flow of Chi because some sense of what it is and that it does exist helps them not only understand the method and treatment I employ but how they might manipulate their own energies.
Immediately following my training at the NIH sponsored study on returning to work with my patients an elderly woman came to my office with pneumonia. She had coughed so forcefully that she had broken a rib and due to the pain was no longer able to cough to remove her secretions and infection. People often die under these circumstances and I feared that she would die even with the best of standard medical care. At that point all I had been taught was to run Chi through my arms and hands like a water hose and I was very uncertain that I had any ability to learn what I had been shown. Within seconds of “running Chi” ie using medical Chi Gong on the painful area of her chest simply applying my hands to the spot completely relieved her pain permanently. I was hooked.
While it doesn’t always “work” and appears to be dependent on the state of the patient and talent of the healer I have now used Medical Chi Gong as I have been taught and what I have learned over the last 8 years to affect healing in hundreds of patients often as easily since.
It is not entirely clear how and through what mechanisms externally manipulated Chi as medical Chi Gong heals and affects organ function. Most of the time the dysfunctional part I work with has a lack of Chi flow that is detectable and correctable resulting in improved function when the treatment session is completed. There is an old saying: Chi follows blood and blood follows Chi.” This makes a great deal of sense to me and explains a lot of what happens. Low blood flow to organs is scientifically known to cause pain and dysfunction by increasing blood flow, you can decide if it is blood or Chi, tends to correct the problem.
Chi forms can become unbalanced in nature, too much wind in a storm or too much water in a flood. Chi forms can be unbalanced physically. Most commonly I see or feel low overall Chi states or localized Chi blockages of flow that resolve with Chi Gong with often immediate relief. These localized Chi blockages can be felt by practitioners like myself and often by the patient and remarkable changes result when they are felt to be resolved.
So let’s review. Chi is energy and everything is energy so everything is Chi. When detectable by humans by the five senses Chi has obvious forms but a wide variety of energies from the physical to the spiritual existing as Chi are available for use and can be detected as form or feeling. Science chases form but can only detect energy as vibration.