Energy Medicine and Intuition
Caroline Myss firmly believes that intuitive or symbolic sight is not a gift but a skill – a skill based in self-esteem. Having self-esteem means holding onto your own power, not looking to others for approval or acceptance. One of the keys to unlocking our own intuition is think in the words, concepts and principles of energy and energy medicine. In this chapter Dr. Myss teaches us about the human energy field and how to read it.
The Human Energy Field.
Everything that is alive pulsates with energy and all of this energy contains information. Even scientists validate this claim: the human body generates electricity because living tissue generates energy. Your physical body is surrounded by an energy field that extends as far as your outstretched arms and the full length of your body. It is both an information center and a highly sensitive perceptual system. We are constantly “in communication” with everything around us through this system, which is a kind of conscious electricity that transmits and receives messages to and from other people’s bodies. These messages from and within the energy field are what intuitives perceive.
Practitioners of energy medicine believe that the human energy field contains and reflects each individual’s energy. It surrounds us and carries with us the emotional energy created by our internal and external experiences – both positive and negative. This emotional force influences the physical tissue within our bodies. In this way your biography – that is the experiences that make up your life – becomes your biology.
Experiences that carry emotional energy in our systems include: past and present relationships, both personal and professional, profound or traumatic experiences and memories and belief patterns and attitudes including all spiritual and superstitious beliefs. The emotions from these experiences become encoded in our biological systems and contribute to the formation of our cell tissue. These energy impressions form an energy language which carries literal and symbolic information that a medical intuitive can read.
We automatically and unconsciously categorize every experience as positive, negative or neutral. Positive and negative experiences register a memory in the cell tissue as well as in the energy field. Neurobiologist Candace Pert has proven that these experiences or emotions trigger chemicals – neuropeptides – the chemicals triggered by emotions – are thoughts converted into matter. Our emotions reside physically in our bodies and interact with our cells and tissues. Your mind is in every cell of your body.
Reading the Field
In addition to reading specific dramatic childhood experiences, sometimes an intuitive can pick up on superstitions, personal habits, behavior patterns, moral beliefs and preference and aversions. Sometimes these impressions can be literal or symbolic.
Our emotional energy converts into biological matter through a very highly complex process. Just as radio stations operate according to specific energy wavelengths, each organ in the body is calibrated to absorb and process specific emotional and psychological energies. That is, each area of the body transmits energy on a specific, detailed frequency and when we are healthy, all are “in tune”.
Energy or vibrational medicine is not new. It resembles the most ancient medical practices and beliefs from Chinese medicine to indigenous shamanic practices to virtually every folk or alternative therapy.
While Dr. Myss has trouble describing exactly how she personally acquires energy information, she can parse the language for you so that you can begin to see and feel the human energy field, begin to understand its corresponding spiritual anatomy, begin to know the sources of your personal power and begin to develop your own intuition.
As a rule a person’s energy system transmits only the information that is essential to bring the conscious mind to an awareness of the imbalance or disease. Our energy will always seek health, in spite of what we may do to ourselves physically. One important fact to keep in mind about our energy is that energy does not and cannot lie.
Stay with your First Impression
When you receive an intuitive impression about yourself or the person you are reading, pay attention to whatever image comes up. It is important to tell people the truth, not what they want to hear.
Have a Reflective State of Mind
There is no one formula by which you can develop your intuition. Some people develop it through meditation, or as a result of mastering a certain talent or sport. It is not necessary to lead a “spiritual lifestyle.” Caroline Myss claims that she was a cigarette smoking, coffee drinking intuitive. The most important thing to practice, she says, is to maintain a reflective or meditative attitude.
Objectivity is Key
There is a difference between personal and impersonal impressions. Dr. Myss’ definition of a clear impression is that it has no emotional energy connected to it whatsoever. If she feels an emotional connection to an impression, then she considers that impression to be contaminated.
For Caroline, impressions are neither auditory or visual. Rather they are like quick mental images that contain a very subtle electrical current.
The First Principle: Biography becomes Biology
According to energy medicine, we are all living history books. Our bodies contain our histories – every chapter, line and verse of every event and relationship in our lives. As our lives unfold, our biological health becomes a living breathing biographical statement that conveys our strengths, weaknesses, hopes and fears.
The Second principle: Personal Power is Necessary for Health
Holistic and conventional medicine take two different approaches toward power: active and passive. The chemical treatments of conventional medicine require no conscious participation on the part of the patient, but a holistic technique like visualization is enhanced by an active, involved patient. An energy connection occurs between the consciousness of the patient and the healing capacity of the therapy and sometimes even of the therapist. When a person is passive – with an attitude of “just do it to me” – they does not fully heal; they may recover, but they may never fully deal with the source of their illness.
Dr. Myss identifies two power types in individuals; she calls them “acquisitioners” and “active power types.”
Acquisitioners are people who lose power to other people whom they see are stronger or more powerful than themselves and they may feel that they need that person or persons to “take care of them.” They have surrendered their power. Acquisitioners may also give over their power and find their sense of self-worth in external symbols of power such as their job or career, money, authority, title, beauty, security.
Active power types are very different from acquisitioners. They are self-motivators. They believe self-care is a priority and their energy circuits are attached to awareness, strength and emotional stamina. A self-motivator is able to do whatever is required to maintain the balance of body, mind and soul.
The Third Principle: You Alone Can Help Yourself Heal
Energy medicine is a holistic philosophy that teaches, “I am responsible for the creation of my health. I therefore participated, at some level, in the creation of this illness. I can participate in the healing of this illness by healing myself, which means simultaneously healing my emotional, psychological, physical and spiritual being.
Healing and curing are not the same thing. A “cure” occurs when one has successfully controlled or abated the physical progression of an illness. Curing a physical illness, however, does not necessarily mean that the emotional and psychological stresses that were a part of the illness were also alleviated. In this case it is highly possible, and often probable, that an illness will recur.
The process of curing is passive; that is, the patient is inclined to give his or her authority over to the physician and prescribed treatment instead of actively challenging the illness and reclaiming health. Healing, on the other hand, is an active and internal process that includes investigating one’s attitudes, memories and beliefs with the desire to release all negative patterns that prevent one’s full emotional and spiritual recovery. This internal review inevitably leads one to review one’s external circumstances in an effort to recreate one’s life in a way that serves activation of will – the will to see and accept truths about one’s life and how one has used one’s energies; and the will to begin to use energy for the creation of love, self-esteem and health.
Healing requires taking action. It is not a passive event.