Shamanism for the Age of Science: Awakening the Energy Body - Kenneth Smith 2018

Bioenergetics
A World of Energy

In the history of human development, there have been moments during which group awareness expanded and the world turned on its ear. These moments have often stretched over decades if not centuries, as new ways of looking at the world—viewing it as round instead of flat or revolving around the Sun rather than vice versa—have gradually found their way from idea to wide acceptance to established fact.

Reality is “simply” a matter of perception, of organizing an immense number of bits of data into a coherent form that both awakens and limits our sense of the world. Like taking a compass reading, our orientation to life provides the parameters of what is considered to be possible. For someone who sees the world as flat, a voyage across an ocean to distant lands is not possible, because it would mean falling to one’s certain doom. The attempt is not even made. On the other hand, a worldview that incorporates the accurate movement of heavenly bodies allows for the possibility of safe navigation across seas and oceans and even traveling to the moon and back. In the light of new perceptions daring souls accept the challenge to go beyond what others say just can’t be. And this sets the stage for others to join in.

We live in a defining moment of human history, a moment where the entire world, including us, is now seen as being made of energy. A quantum physicist will certainly tell you this, and be able to back up this claim with all the appropriate facts and figures. A laying-on-of-hands healer, an acupuncturist, or a homeopath will tell you the same thing, albeit in different ways based on their training. A traditionally trained biologist or medical doctor who is now on the cutting edge of his or her discipline may also portray the world in these terms.

The ramifications of this shift in worldview are beyond current imagination. It will usher in new paradigms of psychology, health, ecology, business, and technology. All areas of human endeavor will be transformed, as it will require a complete reassessment of actualities and possibilities. The implications of this revised worldview for health and healing alone are staggering. However, a survey of the various aspects of the changes that will result from the recognition that we—and the world—are comprised first and foremost of energy is outside the focus of this book. Instead, it tackles the anatomy and psychological mechanics of the energy body. This has application to any circumstance, any lifestyle, as it forms the backdrop for understanding changes in reality on any scale.

The energy body model presented here not only represents a unifying umbrella for all bioenergetic modalities and technologies but also offers a means to address personal and group circumstances, including those of creativity, health, and consciousness. As part of our natural being, the energy body not only connects us with our daily world but determines the complete range of our perceptions and behavior. Thus a substantial reorientation of conditions within the energy body results in a foundational shift in perceiving reality. The emphasis on healing in this chapter serves to show the practical bottom-line potential of this inquiry.

Bioenergetics

Bioenergy is at the foundation of a sweeping new field of inquiry, which suggests that the world is comprised of energy and that physical objects manifest a result of this energy. A branch of biophysics, the multidisciplinary field of bioenergetics¹ is “the study of the flow and transformation of energy in and between living organisms and between living organisms and their environment.”² As the term indicates, it deals with biology (the study of all life) and energy (perhaps the underlying structure of all life) and where these two intersect. The meeting area between biology and energy is immense, extending beyond imagination. As virtually every area of human activity and every nook and cranny of our world is touched by bioenergy, it can form the basis of an entirely new cosmology.

Initially, the term bioenergetics was defined as “a form of psychology based on the use of kinesthetics and muscle testing to assess energy flow and levels,” so the field first took hold based on physical anatomy. Physician Alexander Lowen popularized it with his book Bioenergetics. More recently, in his book Energy Psychology, psychologist Fred Gallo shows how the discipline has grown by revealing connections between cognition, energy, and behavior, and placing the movement and blockages of energy squarely in the center of why disorders manifest.³

The idea of energy playing a role within the body is well established. The principal communication mechanism of the central nervous system is electrical, brain waves are measured by frequency, and energy is at the root of metabolism. Elucidation of the role of energy within the body is becoming more enhanced. The specialty of biophysics evolved as a natural result of physicists furthering their research into all areas where energy plays a role. This discipline has grown to include topics including cellular communication, neurobiology, and the role of photons and electrons within the human body. At the same time, the world of technology is birthing devices that reveal and alter biologic energy fields, and even interact with the matrix of environmental energy.

From these types of investigation, we are rapidly increasing our appreciation of the fact that energy fields cause a wide variety of physical occurrences. In his landmark text, Energy Medicine: The Scientific Basis, biophysicist James Oschman points out that DNA’s response to pulsing magnetic fields has been well documented. He also describes an extracellular matrix found throughout the body and its multifaceted relation to energy fields. This matrix “exerts specific and important influences upon cellular dynamics, just as much as hormones and neurotransmitters.”⁴

While bioenergetics is a modern term, it has deep historical bindings. For example, as part of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) acupuncture has been practiced for at least 2,000 years with some now dating its inception up to 5,000 years ago. At the heart of acupuncture are meridians, channels that form energetic circuits throughout the body. This flow is not unlike the movement of blood through the circulatory system, which requires proper regulation for health. Meridians are also the biological connection with qi, or life energy.⁵ Needles are inserted into the skin along the channel routes in order to restore and regulate the natural flow of energy. Since acupuncture is performed with minimal invasiveness, adverse side effects are also minimal—a valuable consideration given the frequent toll taken by the side effects of pharmaceuticals.

Chakras comprise yet another energetic circuit within the body. In a basic view, chakras are energy centers occurring along the length of the spine, each accounting for a different mode of perception. The root chakra at the base of the spine, for instance, is often viewed as relating to physicality, whereas the crown chakra located at the top of the head corresponds to spiritual orientation. Many laying-on-of-hands practices, as with Reiki, use the chakra framework, which was developed in Eastern cultures thousands of years ago.⁶

A more recent model of energetic healing is found in homeopathy. In 1810, its inventor, physician Samuel Hahnemann, published the formative treatise, Organon of the Medical Art, in which he detailed the practice of using small amounts of a substance that corresponds to a disease in order to treat it, a “like cures like” principle. Through succussing, during which the solution is vigorously shaken, as well as repeatedly diluting the solution, the physical molecules are gradually removed until only an energetic trace remains, establishing another principle of “less is more.” According to Hahnemann, this potentizes the formulation, which acts directly on the “vital force,” the underlying energy of the patient. This causes the physical body to respond and heal.⁷

Homeopathy is credited with reducing the suffering experienced during the infectious disease plagues that swept Europe during the 1800s. Toward the end of that century, as scientific models of biology and chemistry gained popularity, homeopathy began to be viewed by many as quackery. Reflecting a revival of interest in the United States, however, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), part of the National Institutes of Health, is now providing grants for the scientific evaluation of homeopathy. In Europe the practice of homeopathy is returning to its earlier popularity, typified by centers like the Paracelsus Clinic in Lustmuhle, Switzerland, which uses homeopathy as a main therapy in treating cancer and other illnesses from a biological medicine perspective.⁸

In the early 1900s, Royal Rife discovered a cancer virus, an accomplishment not verified by medical science until the late 1950s. He went on to find a specific electromagnetic frequency that, when targeted at cancer cells, caused their destruction, setting the stage for later considerations that every organism has its own electromagnetic signature or waveform associated with its genetic makeup. Rife’s work was considered controversial, to say the least, with many agencies working to suppress it, but today it remains a focus of reference within the field of bioenergetics.⁹

A principal, and most compelling, feature separating many of these therapies from the allopathic biomedical model is that bioenergybased modes of healing often require an examination of the total person and view illness as an expression of disharmony both internally and externally. Treatment in the Western allopathic model, on the other hand, is intended to antagonize the disease, which is seen as something separate from the patient. Often symptoms alone are attacked, causing harmful side effects, whereas in holistic models adverse side effects are purposefully minimized if not eliminated. I’m not arguing that one perspective is better than the other, as I think both models have value according to the situation.

As Clark Manning and Louis Vanrenan, authors of Bioenergetic Medicines East and West, point out, one of the difficulties for a new field like this is the lack of instrumentation to adequately measure effects and results.¹⁰ Scientific tools to measure chakras, meridians, and associated energy systems have been slow to develop since these avenues of energy haven’t found widespread acceptance in scientific thought. Chakras remain on the fringes of simple mention, let alone scientific study.

Although biologists are accumulating extensive data relating to different energetic processes such as cellular signaling, this pertains to accepted scientific inquiry. CAM methodologies such as homeopathy and acupuncture haven’t been adequately measured, verified, and accepted by the broad medical science community. One reason technological invention lags, then, is because rigorous definitions of the energies to be measured are lacking.

NCCAM holds that energy-based therapies deal with two types of energy fields: veritable and putative. Veritable fields are those that can be measured and include visible light, magnetism, and portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. Putative fields are those that have yet to be measured and include energies such as the vital force and qi.¹¹ Lack of instrumentation pertaining to CAM-related biofields is being addressed on several fronts, though.

At the leading edge of this type of innovation is the SQUID (superconducting quantum interference device) magnetometer, a highly sensitive technology that can map biomagnetic fields produced by physiological processes within the body. Its development was spearheaded by J. E. Zimmerman, once a Ford Motor Company scientist. SQUID was the first practical electronic instrument to detect interference between the energy waves of matter and is currently considered one of the best detectors of magnetic flux. In conjunction with SQUID technology, special rooms to shield environmental energies have been built in order to examine extremely subtle magnetic fields of the brain and other areas of the body.¹²

Another invention comes from Konstantin Korotkov, a physics professor at Russia’s St. Petersburg State Technical University. An expert in the field of bioelectrography, Korotkov developed a computerized device that permits what he refers to as Gas Discharge Visualization (GDV). Based on Kirlian photography, GDV allows the observation of human energy fields, and can help in observing the changes in energy in a variety of situations, including when therapies are administered.¹³

Still another emerging technology with great promise for diagnosing physical and mental illness is Polycontrast Interference Photography (PIP). Invented by British researcher Harry Oldfield, it consists of a digital camera and proprietary software that tracks the energy emitted when two waveforms intersect. The resulting photonic discharge provides a picture that illuminates areas of disease and health. Chakras, meridians, and physiologic states are easily discernible, as are the effects of personal intention and a range of environmental influences. Oldfield has collaborated in the United States with physician Brian Dailey and in India with investigator Thornton Streeter, Director of The Centre for Biofield Sciences. In one study the crown chakra of a person diagnosed as psychotic was clearly split. In another profile, PIP mapped an experienced meditator’s shifts as he went from normal waking consciousness into deep meditation and back to waking.¹⁴ As with GDV studies, PIP measurements remain in the putative category as it isn’t clear what energies are being monitored.

Bioenergetics is also now defined as the study of metabolic activity at the cellular level. Based on this, scientists at leading universities are demonstrating the role of energetic flow and transformation in disease and healing. The University of Colorado’s Institute of Bioenergetics at Colorado Springs, for example, is building “a multidisciplinary approach to understanding cellular metabolism and cellular communication with the intention of treating or curing serious diseases.”¹⁵ The area of cellular signaling (how cells communicate) is also evolving from the study of physical processes—a hormone docking with a cellular receptor, for instance, which in turn sets a cascade of events into motion—to investigating energetic signaling where the first cause of the physical cascade is energetic in nature.

Another area of exploration is taking place in the laboratory of John McMichael, immunologist, virologist, and founder of Beech Tree Labs and The Institute for Therapeutic Discovery.¹⁶ Decades of laboratory and preclinical studies have shown the value of a class of formulations that use low levels of naturally-occurring molecules—proteins and DNA, for instance—to potentially treat a wide range of disorders. The dosages are far above those used in homeopathy but far lower than those used in most current pharmaceuticals. Mounting scientific data regarding which receptors are influenced and which genes are up- or down-regulated (turned on or off) indicate this platform might result in a new understanding of how the body works.

After McMichael’s novel invention for treating depression demonstrated efficacy in validated animal studies, scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill also discovered that it didn’t act through the biopathways associated with modern antidepressants. These findings drove speculation that the agent might work through a form of energetic communication that tells the body to restore balance. McMichael himself holds open the possibility that there may be an energetic circuit comprised of receptors in cells or in the extracellular matrix that plays a role in the restoration of homeodynamics (a more descriptive term for homeostasis), the body’s natural harmony. As a result, his research now targets sub-molecular processes.

Also on the cutting edge of bioenergetics is nonlocal healing where the well-focused intent of an individual or a group may significantly affect the health of someone thousands of miles away. While this practice is often placed in a spiritual or religious category, the mechanism of nonlocal healing is usually viewed as energy-related, whether it is focused through dowsing, prayer, or other means. Among those who scientifically examine this mechanism of healing are physician Larry Dossey and research scientist Marilyn Mandala Schlitz of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, who have found promising albeit inconsistent results, a common circumstance when investigating putative energies.¹⁷ Intentionality, the conscious application of intent, is often thought to be the common denominator of how the various approaches to nonlocal healing focus energy. Scientific mapping of intent remains on the horizon.

If healing practices and hardwired technologies—which cut to the essence of the human condition—are an effect of energy and require looking at the entire person as well as environmental influences, then the quantum physicist’s “unified field” and the mystic’s experience that “all is one” come together to suggest a common world. This brings us closer to the shared components of the human experience regardless of race, gender, or creed. While there has been an enormous amount of research on the energetics of living systems, for the most part this research has not been viewed in the context of Western European philosophical concepts and practices. This is changing. Science is catching up to what Toltecs have been saying about the world, and to the healing practices TCM has been offering the world, for centuries. It seems obvious, then, that the healing therapies of bioenergetics—often referred to as “energy medicine”—are quite diverse, have deep historical roots, and comprise an emerging multidisciplinary arena in the modern world of science.

If energy is in any way a determinant for biological actions and reactions, then new models, new variables for investigation, and new technologies for healing and wellness will continue to sprout. At the same time, these revelations are not casting an entirely new net of awareness over the scientific world. They are based on preceding knowledge. “The emerging concepts do not require us to abandon our sophisticated understandings of physiology, biochemistry, or molecular biology,” maintains Oschman. “Instead they extend our picture of living processes, and of healing, to finer levels of structure and function.”¹⁸

The human body constantly receives and emits magnetic electrical information and other types of energy-based signals. From taking in the Sun’s energy and converting it to Vitamin D, to sound affecting regions of the brain, to receptors in the eye that detect photons, the body has an array of energy-detection apparatuses. Chemical reactions are set into motion by energy. Furthermore, there are over a hundred years of research behind the modern field of electromyography, the tracking of electrical currents behind muscle movement, which shows this type of activity occurs naturally within the body.¹⁹

Oschman, a recognized leader in the field of biophysics, says, “We are in a period of dramatic change in the healthcare system. Energy Medicine has a huge role to play in this process. The reason is that conventional Western medicine is the only medical system in history that has virtually ignored energetics. Energetic concepts are part of nearly all of the complementary and alternative therapies that the public is enthusiastically moving toward.” Quoting Albert Szent-Györgyi (who won a Nobel Prize in 1937 for his synthesis of vitamin C), Oschman continues, “’In every culture and in every medical tradition before ours, healing was accomplished by moving energy.’”²⁰

As physicist Milo Wolff points out, “Nothing happens in nature without an energy exchange. Communication or acquisition of knowledge of any kind occurs only with an energetic transfer. There are no exceptions. This is a rule of nature.”²¹