Energy-Based Healing
Most people who seek out integrative care are looking for an approach that goes beyond what is available in conventional medicine, but some are skeptical about the use of energy as part of the healing process. The centerpiece of conventional medicine is the therapeutic use of prescriptions and surgeries, based on laboratory and imaging diagnostics. For many people, integrative medicine widens the scope to include manual therapies – chiropractic, physical therapy, massage, and acupuncture – as well as nutrients, herbs, and supplements, aimed at addressing underlying causes and promoting our intrinsic capacity for health. So why is energy-based healing needed?
In our view, for two reasons.
First, although we generally conceive of ourselves as physical beings that operate based on mechanical, biological, physiological, and biochemical principles, we at times acknowledge that there are other, nonphysical factors that impact our health. Some of our diagnostics are energetically based – electrocardiograms, electroencephalograms, and nerve conduction studies for example – and there are therapeutics that derive from them in affecting electrical conduction through the heart and brain waves. Additionally, psychological factors are widely accepted as important – often we talk about mind/body as a valid conceptualization of health.
We know less about, and tend to be less open to accepting therapies that are based on other energetic approaches. The use of light/laser, sound, electrical current, and electromagnetic treatments are often at the boundaries of current health science. Energy that is more subtle, perhaps conceptualized as spiritual, contributes to healing in ways that we know even less about. Practitioners trained to appreciate such subtle energies, and gifted with the ability to detect and engage with them, offer something that is not otherwise available and is often overlooked in conventional and in some integrative practice. The view of the world that is based on what is available to our physical senses is not sufficient to represent the deeper, inner aspects of our experience, and practitioners who can work in this more spiritual realm have much to offer.
Second, healing is a process that is not limited to curing disease and the signs and symptoms that it manifests, but also encompasses larger life experience. People with serious illness – cancer in particular – often say that the illness changed their lives for the better by bringing them into deeper connection with spirituality. People with illness affecting them in specific areas sometimes find that the illness is calling them to attend to the energy that is represented in that area – the heart as a focal point for love or the throat as a focal point for self-expression, for example. Some patients join our practice unclear about why they have come; six months later, the reason that they sought us out has become obvious through the changes that have occurred in their life trajectory.
What is energy-based healing? In our practice, it involves a consultation in which the practitioner helps the patient enter a state in which energy-based healing can occur. This can be as a result of meditative quieting of the mind. It can create energy flow through the chakra connections points between mind, spirit, and body. It can facilitate identification and untangling of unconscious issues resulting from trauma and other negative life experience. And it can bring healing energy in by uncovering connections between the inner soul and the archetypes, inhabitants, and universal energy of the spiritual world.
We regard energy-based healing as a core part of our integrative practice, and encourage our patients to access it as needed through consultation with Darcy and Heather.