Intro to Energy Medicine

Every living being on Earth is full of energies – energies that direct us, motivate us, and keep us going.  Both electromagnetic energies and more subtle energies form the dynamic infrastructure of the physical body. Energy Medicine recognizes this energy as a vital and living force that greatly impacts a person’s health and happiness.  When energies become weak, disturbed, or out of balance – your body is also unbalanced.  Energy Medicine is a system of care that addresses physical illness, emotional or mental disorders, and helps to promote wellness.

For a body to be healthy, it needs its energies to move freely in specific patterns and to maintain balance with other energies.  Flow, balance, and harmony can be restored and maintained with massaging specific energy points on the skin and exercises and postures designed for specific energetic efforts.  Focused use of the mind can move specific energies.  Surrounding an area with healing energies of another person can also impact the body’s energy.

Energy Medicine can be used to help with medical conditions in several ways.  The first would be to refocus the body’s energies into a good flow, harmony, and balance as mentioned previously.  Energy Medicine focuses on the entire body as a system, rather than targeting one specific area.  In this way, the body’s overall energies are addressed.  An Energy Medicine practitioner can help to get overall body energy into a strong and healthy flow.  A practitioner may give an individual exercises and methods to help strengthen and balance energies such as yoga, meditation, and massage.

A practitioner can also help to assess the body’s energies and the manner in which they are affecting or contributing to a medical condition.  Based on the assessment, an individualized and specific treatment plan can be created.  A practitioner can also suggest daily routine changes to help improve movement of the body’s energies.

Applying the principles of Energy Medicine to medical and emotional problems is the first step toward a healthy and happy body and life.  A practitioner can help you to make changes to energies that can affect your overall outlook on the world around you – improved optimism, reduced pain in the body, and general happiness levels increase.  Working with an Energy Medicine practitioner to improve your body’s energy is a step in the right direction for you and your body.

Stop the Inner Critic!

We all have that little voice in our heads.  You know the one – that inner critic that nags at you and worries away at your confidence and happiness, that pipes up with sneering remarks after a silly blunder or before a big step in life.  Don’t you just HATE that inner voice?  When we let that inner critic influence our decisions or our daily life, that’s called self-sabotage. Self-sabotaging in a nutshell is simply acting against your own best interest.  It’s that little critical voice in the back of your head that tells you that you aren’t smart enough, funny enough, pretty enough, lacking in SOME way.

We all self-sabotage in one way or another; whether its in some small way, such as thinking you’re not good enough to ask for a promotion or in a bigger way such as picking an argument with your significant other for no reason when everything is going “too well”. The good news is, you don’t have to listen to your inner critic.  You can change your thought patterns, and thus your self-sabotaging behavior.  As Roderick Thorpe, the American novelist, puts it: “We have to learn to be our own best friends because we fall too easily into the trap of being our own worst enemies.”

The first step to becoming your own best friend – confront the inner critic.  Okay, I know this is the scary part but to overcome it, you have to face it!  Imagine yourself as a knight armored to face a fire breathing dragon if that helps, or imagine the inner critic as a grumpy Muppet (that’s what I do ☺ ).  Listen to all of those terrible untrue things the inner critic is telling you.  Write them down.  All of them. Read them again.  Maybe twice, if necessary.  This could be as little as a ten minute process for you or you might consider taking a few days – carry a notebook with you and write down every negative thought that comes to mind.

NOW KILL THE INNER CRITIC!  Slay the dragon!  Burn the paper where you wrote down the negative thoughts!  Flush it down the toilet! Bury it! Maybe just throwing it away will suffice, but acknowledge that the inner critic is wrong, that you are good and worthy, and then make up your mind to never let the inner critic triumph again!

Which leads us to the second step (hey, this should be fairly easy after you just slay a dragon, right?!), relearning how to think about yourself.  Cognitive therapists recommend keeping a negative thought journal where you track the thought and then refute it with evidence as to why it’s not true and why you won’t listen to it.  For example: “I think I look fat in this dress BUT my husband thinks it looks great on me and I received several compliments while wearing it so that must not be true”.

 A negative thoughts journal may not be the right choice for you, just keep in mind with whatever method you choose that the point is to confront the inner critic and nip it in the bud before it leads to self-sabotage. Relearning how to think about yourself is as simple as recognizing the fallacy of your negative thoughts.

Never forget: YOU ARE AWESOME, AMAZING, AND WONDERFUL.