Finding The River by Sally Topham

Chapter 11

Energy Medicine

Everything we think, feel and see is going to have an effect on the body–mind, which in turn affects our emotions. And anything that affects body–mind–emotions is going to have an effect on the energy body (which is a kind of reflection of the physical body).

The energy body is made up of several inter-related energy systems. Of these, the most widely known ones are (1) the Meridians (the pathways through which the subtle energy flows), (2) the Aura, (the multi-layered energy sheath surrounding the physical body), and (3) the Chakras (the energy centres which spin and draw in Chi from the Universe and distribute it through the meridians).

The quality of Chi flowing through all our energy systems fluctuates from day to day, depending on what’s happening in our lives. As I said in Chapter 10, difficult or traumatic experiences cause disturbances creating a kind of inner “psychic gunge” or blocked Chi. Whenever and wherever this happens, it will cause a knock-on effect in the rest of the energy system. Prolonged blocks and disturbances can eventually damage our mental, emotional and physical health, and can also affect us on a spiritual level as well.

Unfortunately, because we’re all human, we all get blocked from time to time! So every now and again we go into a wobble and sometimes the wobble can feel like an earthquake! That’s part of the human condition. But, it is possible to address some of the effects of these disturbances by doing a kind of inner Feng Shui that supports general health and well-being and also helps us to deal with emotional pain.

So, how do we do that?

Well, you’ve actually already started if you’ve been trying out the techniques and practises I’ve been giving you in this book. However, in addition to the many holistic self-help techniques you’ve learnt so far, there are other, more specific techniques you can employ. The first one I want to tell you about can be used to target the smooth running of the meridians. This can be achieved very simply through the use of an exercise derived from the field of Energy Medicine.

What Is Energy Medicine?

Energy Medicine is a generic term used to describe energy-based therapies which are grounded in the principle that the body, mind and spirit are essentially interconnected. Donna Eden, an internationally recognised pioneer in this particular field, describes it as “…the science and art of optimizing your energies to help your body and mind function at their best”. She goes on to say that, “Energy is the living, vibrating ground of your being, and it is your body’s natural self-healing elixir, its natural medicine. This medicine, this energy medicine, feeds body and soul, and…restores your natural vitality.” (From Energy Medicine for Women by Donna Eden with David Feinstein).

Energy Medicine involves the sending, receiving or moving of energy through all the energy systems. The term Energy Medicine therefore covers a wide range of techniques like Acupuncture, Acupressure, Applied Kinesiology, Endorphin Techniques, Polarity Therapy, Reiki, Reflexology, Shiatsu, and Therapeutic Touch, etc. Magnets, crystals and aromas are sometimes used, as well as movements, postures and hands-on techniques. Exercises like Qi Gong, Tai Chi and Yoga also help to move energy, as do visualisations (including guided meditations), endorphin techniques and EmoTrance.

An Energy Medicine practitioner may also use massage, tapping, and other forms of touch to connect energy centres or points, or trace energy pathways to promote healing. In this way, the practitioner works with the body’s connective tissue that acts as a kind of electrical semi-conductor, thereby bringing about the re-balancing and restoration of energy flow. Energy Medicine techniques facilitate an increase in vitality and well-being, strengthen the immune system, and also serve to clear and balance emotional blocks caused by disruptions in the energy system.

Blocked or suppressed emotions cause the meridian channels to clog up and affect our health. The meridians are like inner rivers and the Chi they transport has a dynamic effect on every vital organ and system in the human body including your cells, moods and thoughts.

There are 12 major meridians running through the subtle anatomy and each one is named after either an organ or a function. These are the:

• Stomach

• Spleen

• Heart (considered to be the “Emperor” of the meridians)

• Small Intestine

• Bladder

• Kidney

• Pericardium—also known as Circulation–Sex. (The Pericardium is a fluid-filled sac that surrounds and protects the heart. The meridian of Circulation–Sex contributes towards this heart protection and also governs the hormones and circulation)

• Triple Warmer (a large meridian linked to our immune system and very much connected to our flight-or-fight-response)

• Gallbladder

• Liver

• Lung, and

• Large Intestine

In addition, there’s the Central Meridian, which helps keep your Central Nervous System working, and the Governing Meridian, which helps pump a fluid known as cerebrospinal fluid around the Central Nervous system, delivering nutrients and removing wastes and toxins. These two meridians are linked with each other.

One of the easiest ways of keeping your energies humming is to trace the channels of your meridians with your hands to encourage the energy to flow freely. Donna Eden tells us that “…by tracing your meridians every day, you can direct the traffic in your energy transportation system. You can communicate to it in a language it understands…keeping the energies flowing along their natural routes.”

On the following pages (see Figure 3, Daily Meridian Tracing Routine) you’ll find the Daily Meridian Tracing Routine which is a series of diagrams and instructions showing you how to trace your meridians. Please don’t be put off by the lengthy explanations! I know it looks like you’re going to have to embark upon a complicated marathon, but in actual fact, tracing your meridians only takes about two minutes to complete!

I recommend you get into the habit of practising this technique every morning before you get dressed. You’ll not only begin to notice a difference in your energy levels, you’ll also find the routine will help to keep you healthy and feeling good.

If you have an obvious problem around a particular meridian energy, like digestive problems (large and small intestine), you can trace that meridian several times a day if you wish.

Another really helpful thing you can do is to flush a meridian that you know is out of balance. As Donna Eden says in her book, Energy Medicine, “Flushing the energy out of a meridian is like backwashing its filter. It is often useful to backwash a meridian before you strengthen it [by tracing it], because this clears it of energetic debris, leaving more space for fresh energy to enter.” She goes on to say, “When you trace a meridian or flush it, the energies of your hands flush the meridian’s energy.”

For example, if you, like me, are asthmatic, it’s a good idea to flush your lung meridian just before you trace it on a daily basis during your regular practise of tracing your meridians. It’s an excellent preventative measure to take and provides good maintenance for that particular meridian. Exercise 33: Flushing a Meridian describes how to do it.

Figure 3: Daily Meridian Tracing Routine

When you trace your meridians, use the palm of your hand (with your palm facing your body) to do the tracing. In this way, you’re utilising your own electromagnetic energies to align the meridian’s energies. Also, by using the whole of the flat of your hand, there’s no question of you missing out bits of the actual meridian lines.

By the Law of Averages, you’re going to hit the spot with one part of your palm or another!

Figure 3A: The Central Meridian

Using your dominant hand, trace a straight line up the middle of your body from your pubic bone to your bottom lip.

Figure 3B: The Governing Meridian

Put one hand on your tail bone and trace up the middle of your back along your spine as high as you can reach. You’ll get to a point where you can’t move your hand any higher. When this happens, try to continue where you left off by reaching with the other hand over your shoulder with the intention of meeting the first hand so you can continue tracing this line up the centre of the back. (Don’t worry if you can’t get the hands to meet. Simply imagine they can and just visualize your hand continuing to trace the line.) With the second hand, carry on tracing the meridian up the neck, over the top of your head, down your nose, and finish at your top lip.

Figure 3C: The Stomach Meridian

Using both hands, place them under the eyes and trace a straight line down your face to your collarbone. Move the hands out slightly and then bring them down straight over your breasts and down to your waist. Come in at your waist and then out at your hips. Then bring the hands straight down your legs and off the second toes of each foot.

Figure 3D: The Spleen Meridian

Use both hands and start at the outside corner of each big toe. Trace lines up the inside of your legs, moving outwards at your hips. Trace up the middle of your rib care until you reach a point slightly above each nipple. Trace down the sides of the body to the bottom of the ribcage.

Figure 3E: The Heart Meridian

Place one hand under the opposite armpit and trace a line from there right down the arm to your little finger and off. (Make sure you trace the line in alignment with your little finger.) Repeat opposite side.

Figure 3F: The Small Intestine Meridian

With one palm facing downwards, use the other hand to trace a line from the little finger of that hand up the outside of the arm and up to your shoulder. When you get there, push “the line” over to the back of your shoulder, then up towards the face, over the cheekbone and back towards the opening in your ear. Repeat opposite side.

Figure 3G: The Bladder Meridian

With the left hand, start in between the eyebrows and trace up and over the crown and down the neck. Bring the hand down as far as it will go and then reach behind you to continue tracing the line along the inside of the left side of the back. Trace over the buttocks, down the leg and calf, and off the little toe.

Now come back up to your brow centre and again trace back over head and down your neck. Bring the hand down as far as it will go and then reach behind you to continue tracing the line, but this time only trace it to just below your waist. Make a sharp hairpin bend upwards and back down again before finishing at the back of your left buttock. (If you can’t reach back behind you high enough to continue tracing the line without “breaking it’, trace it in your mind in the space where you can’t reach.

Figure 3H: The Kidney Meridian

Using both hands, place your middle fingers under the ball of each foot in line with the space between the big toe and the second toe. Drag your fingers back up along the inside of each foot and trace a circle around each inside ankle bone. Carry on straight up the inside of the legs, up the front of the body, and end at the points just underneath the collar bone.

Figure 3I: The Circulation - Sex Meridian

Place the fingers of one hand at the outside edge of the opposite nipple and trace a line up to the shoulder, down the inside of the arm, and off the middle finger. Repeat opposite side.

Figure 3J: The Triple Warmer Meridian

With one palm facing the floor, use the other hand to trace up from the ring finger, up the back side of the arm, across the top of the shoulder, up your neck, around up the back of your ear, and over the top of it. Finish at the temple. Repeat opposite side.

Figure 3K: The Gallbladder Meridian

Using the fingers of both hands, start tracing the line on the outside edge of the eyebrows. Pull the fingers back over the top of the ears. Trace up and forward to your forehead, back over the crown of your head, and down to your shoulders. Remove your hands from your shoulders and move them to the sides of your ribcage. Moving your hands downwards, trace forwards on the ribcage, snake back towards the waist, trace forward on the hips and then straight down the outsides of the legs and off the fourth toes.

Figure 3L: The Liver Meridian

Using both hands, place fingers on the outsides of the big toes and pull back to the ankles. Then trace up the insides of the legs, steering wide at the hips, up the sides of the ribcage, and back underneath your breasts, finishing in line with your nipples.

Figure 3M: The Lung Meridian

Place your right hand over your left lung, trace up and over the shoulder and down the inside of your arm, and off your thumb. Repeat opposite side.

Figure 3N: The Large Intestine Meridian

Place the fingers of one hand on the index finger of the other and trace straight up the arm towards the shoulder. Trace across the neck and on to the upper lip underneath the nose and out again slightly as if you were tracing the outline of a small moustache. Repeat opposite side. Head detail shows little mustache flick.

Exercise 33: Flushing a Meridian

If the main organ or system of one of your meridians causes a temporary or ongoing problem, flushing is an excellent way of re-balancing and maintaining it.

Go back to pages 61–67 to find the diagram that relates to the meridian you’ve selected. Let’s do the Lung Meridian as an example in this case:

On an in-breath, use your open palm to trace the Lung Meridian once in the opposite direction that is indicated on the diagram. Repeat on the opposite side. You might like to imagine that your hands are magnets which are drawing stagnant debris out of your lungs as you do this movement.

On the out-breath, shake your hands to flick off any energetic flack you’ve accumulated on your hands.

Then, trace the Lung Meridian in the direction indicated on the diagram three times. Do this with great intention and deliberation.

Because we live in such a polluted world, flushing the Lung Meridian regularly, even if there aren’t any problems, is a good idea!

Exercise 33 is from Energy Medicine by Donna Eden with David Feinstein.

The movements in Exercise 34 can get your energies moving, clear your head, and help your body to rid itself of toxins which may have accumulated. This one’s called the Spinal Flush.

Exercise 34: The Spinal Flush

In this exercise, you’re working on flushing out the lymphatic system of your body. The lymph works with the immune system in defending the body against anything from a cold to a full-blown disease. Lymph is naturally pumped through the body when you exercise or generally move around, so if you lead a sedentary lifestyle, (and many of us become less active in winter), the lymphatic system is likely to get pretty clogged and this can have an adverse effect on every other system in your body. It can also become congested when you’re ill, stressed or if you’ve been exposed to environmental pollutants like living or working in the heart of a busy city with lots of traffic and noise. The Spinal Flush will cleanse your lymphatic system by sending toxins to the waste removal systems of your body, clear your head and energise you. It’s also very helpful to do it if you think you’re going down with a cold.

The Spinal Flush works on the Neurolymphatic reflex points which run along either side of your spine and affect every one of your meridians. You’re going to be massaging down this spinal area, which you can do using a simple gadget you can easily make for yourself as follows:

Creating your own massage device: This can be done cheaply and effectively by acquiring two fairly hard rubber balls (the sort of exercise balls used by dog-owners that can be purchased from your local pet store or veterinary surgeries are excellent ones to use.) Place the balls in the foot part of a sock and then knot the ankle bit of the sock tightly to keep the balls wedged firmly together. This makes an excellent makeshift massage appliance that you can use to knead down your spine on either side of the vertebrae from the top of your neck to just above the buttocks.

Method: Find yourself a nice flat wall devoid of pictures or other obstructions. Stand against the wall and place the balls behind the area of your neck where it connects with your back and the top of your shoulders. (There’s a big bone there at the top of your spine just where it connects with the neck—that’s the place to start.)

What you’re going to do is to massage down either side of your spine from the top of it to the bottom, and in so doing, flush your lymphatic system and help your body to rid itself of toxins.

Now, lean hard against the balls so they’re jammed between your body and the wall. You’ll find that by doing this, you can exert a firm pressure on either side of your spine. Stand slightly on tiptoe with your knees a bit bent so you can move the balls up and down in this area, keeping whatever pressure is right for you. (Maintain a firm contact by leaning against the balls and the wall all the way through this exercise, otherwise the balls will fall to the floor!) With practise, you’ll be able to inch the balls down your spine by just moving away from the wall a fraction to allow them to slip down to the next set of vertebrae.

You’ll find you can manipulate the balls to roll up and down each section of your spine by bending and stretching the knees and rising up and down on the balls of your feet. It may sound complicated, but actually it won’t take long for you to get the hang of it!

As you move the balls further down towards the centre of your back, you can adjust their position because they sometimes slip sideways a bit. Keep working all the way down until you get to the bottom of your sacrum (which is that flat bit of bone just above your buttocks.)

If you want, you can then repeat the whole process once more.

Please don’t be tempted to substitute tennis balls for dog balls because they’re not hard enough to do a good massage job.

You’ll find some of the points are very painful in that kind of exquisite way you experience sometimes with a good massage. You know: “Aaaaargh! No, don’t stop!” Sometimes really sore points cease being sore quite quickly as you massage them. Other sore areas may take a bit more time to ease. Be prepared to work on the sore areas, but be sensible, and if any are really, really painful (as sometimes happens), don’t torture yourself! If you get into the habit of doing this every day, any extremely sore spots will gradually become less painful. You’ll also find that the sore spots change and new ones show up which you may not have felt before. That’s all perfectly normal.

This do-it-yourself version of Donna Eden’s “Spinal Flush” technique was created by my Energy Medicine teacher, Madison King.

You could also do Spinal Flush with a partner who performs the massage by massaging on either side of your vertebra using their thumbs, knuckles or two fingers together, slowly working from the top of the neck down to the tail bone. On finishing, it’s a good idea for your partner to sweep firmly and quickly down your spine three times with the flat of their hands as a nice way to end the massage. Spinal Flush with a partner is a wonderful way of giving each other some TLC—which never goes amiss.

When you begin to understand your body as an energy system, there is a lot you can do to help keep your energies flowing, which in turn will help you to maintain good health. Our bodies are constantly giving us feedback about how our systems are functioning, so anytime you want to know whether your subtle energies are running healthily, all you have to do is to ask yourself how you feel. “If you feel fabulous, they are! If not, they’re not!” (From Energy Medicine by Donna Eden with David Feinstein).

If you’d like to learn more about working with your energies, balancing your meridians and your chakras, or ways to strengthen your aura and many more things besides, you’ll find a wealth of information in the books written by Donna Eden (see the Further Information and Suggested Reading section at the back of the book). You can learn all kinds of simple energy techniques—from using acupressure points to disperse energy blocks to quick and easy energy exercises—which can strengthen and harmonise your energy systems and help with various problems.

Having seen Donna Eden at a workshop she was teaching in England a few years back, I can tell you that the energy and vitality she exudes is extraordinary. She puts this down to the benefits of the Energy Medicine techniques she has researched and developed and she’s a living testament to its healing and health-giving qualities. I myself have been using a number of her techniques for several years now and have found them absolutely invaluable for helping to ward off illness, keeping my energies humming and refreshing and revitalising the body and mind.