Energy medicine – how it works and what methods are used
What is Energy Medicine?
Energy medicine is based on the traditional medical systems of China and India, assumes the existence of a universal life force, and combines this with Western approaches to energetic ideas, as described by Wilhelm Reich, C.G. Jung, Alexander Lowen elaborated.
Energy medicine works empirically, d.h. the direct experience of the life force, its charge of flowing in the body becomes a daily practice for the therapist but also for the patient. Breathing and meditation exercises form an important basis of the practice in conjunction with traditional methods such as acupuncture or Qi Gong.
In contrast to Western medicine, which tries to suppress unpleasant feelings, tension, inner turmoil or pain, z.B. through sedatives and painkillers, energy medicine is about expanding and deepening the consciousness into the symptoms. About the awareness and finally understanding of the previously unconscious deep-seated feelings and thought patterns in these blockages comes to their resolution.
Here, the conscious experience, z.B. of a tension or pain, whose exact location, size, quality, color, and origin are of crucial importance to the resolution process.
Health disorders and diseases are based, according to the ideas of energy medicine, on a disturbance of this life force, also called blockage.
Quite similar concepts form the basis of Chinese medicine already in ancient times. Here, with the help of acupuncture, one balances the life currents flowing through the pathways, the meridians [6, 11].
In Indian medicine, too, there has been the idea of a universal life force for over 2000 years, in this case prana or kundalini, which is absorbed through the breath, produces the functions in the living body and can be influenced with the help of breathing and meditation exercises. The basic ideas of the developing energy medicine are thus already to be found in the most important historical medical systems.
Also in the West there were until ca. 100 years, so z.B. in the medicine of the Romantic period, the idea of a life force, the C.W. Hufeland in his main work „The art of prolonging human life“ describes in detail [1]. In this century, C.G. Jung ideas of an energetics of the psyche [4].
Wilhelm Reich thought to have discovered an „orgone energy“ and founded the vegetotherapy, which forms the basis of the bioenergetics of Alexander Lowen, an „energetic body therapy“, which found a wide dissemination in the past 30 years.
Also the therapy form founded by Dolores Krieger in New York „Therapeutic Touch“, which is practiced by over 7000 nurses in the USA, has a direct contact with the life energy as a basis [5]. The method of „Therapeutic Touch“ has been intensively scientifically researched in the past years and thus numerous therapy effects could be confirmed.
Which methods does the „new“ developing energy medicine apply??
First, classical methods of balancing energy, as in Chinese medicine – acupuncture and qi gong – play an essential role. With the help of acupuncture, energetic blockages can be removed and the imbalance of life energy in the organs and meridians can be balanced.
The basis of this therapy is a Chinese diagnosis, which arrives at energetic diagnoses through a formal categorization of findings and symptoms, so z.B. Weakness of the qi of the lungs [6]. In contrast to this more formal diagnosis of Chinese medicine, energy medicine is developing a direct diagnosis of energy disorders based on sensitization and intuition. Here the focus is not on the Chinese meridian and organ system, but the Indian chakra system.
Chakras are the energy centers of Indian medicine, which have fixed functions similar to the Chinese organs. In the human body there are seven main chakras in the center of the body – from the top of the skull to the perineum – which correspond to important acupuncture points of Chinese medicine. Also an assignment to the Chinese organs or. Functional circles is possible.
Over the dissolution of energetic blockades in the Chakras, also with the therapist, an increasing sensitization becomes possible and so the direct Diagnosing energy blockages. In parallel with the diagnostic detection of blockages, various energy therapy methods“allow to dissolve or transform these blockages.
One of these therapy methods is the ART (Awareness Release Technique) by the American doctor R.T. Jaffe, which, with the help of visualization of blockages, causes their dissolution through the deepening of consciousness [2, 7].
When blockages are released in energy medicine therapy, life energy can flow more freely in the chakras but also in the meridians and organs. The disturbed functions are restored, also an increased vitality becomes then possible.
Literature:
1. Hufeland CW (1987) The art of prolonging human life. Facsimile edition, Rökan Edition, Karlsruhe, Germany
2. Jaffe RT (1990) Energy mastery seminars. Script
3. Jaffe RT (1991) School of energy mastery. Sedona, Arizona
4. Jung CG (1948) On psychic energy and the nature of dreams. Rascher, Zurich
5. Krieger D (1979) The therapeutic touch, how to use hands to help to heal. Pentrice hall Press, New York London Toronto
6. Stux G, Stiller N, Pomeranz B (1999) Acupuncture – Textbook and Atlas. 5. Circulation. Springer-Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg New York
7. Stux G (1992) Acupuncture and ART Therapeutikon 6/1-2:42- 43
8. Stux G (1992) What is energy medicine?? Therapeutikon 6/4:171- 172
9. Stux G (1992) What is life energy?? Report from the Düsseldorf Acupuncture Symposium.
10. Stux G (1993) Chakras Acupuncture. Therapeuticon 7/3:110- 111
11. Stux G (1993) Life energy Qi. Therapeutikon 7/5:217- 218
Author: Dr. med. Gabriel Stux
Acupuncture Center Düsseldorf
island road 34
40479 Düsseldorf
