part0007

In other words, your definition of healing is probably different from anyone else’s because your personal wellness picture is uniquely yours. Likewise, your definition of healing may be a moving target throughout your life. For our purposes, I’ll define healing in a way that meets this moving target. Healing is creating shifts that bring about positive changes in wellness that serve the highest and greatest good.

Energy healing is a broad term describing techniques and practices that change the energetic vibration of something to facilitate balance. Each of these techniques affects life force energy—sometimes called prana or chi —by removing blockages and balancing excessive vibration to create unobstructed, balanced energy flow. We use energy healing to remove dis-ease by correcting imbalances in our physical (body and mind) or etheric (emotions and spirit) energies.

Unfortunately, many dismiss energy healing because it differs from the practice of Western medicine, which focuses on the physical realm: It treats your body and mind (the physical) but fails to treat your etheric (emotional and spiritual) self. Western medicine diagnoses and treats you as a series of malfunctioning biological parts. When you experience symptoms, you receive physical treatment or take medication. In this model, you are minimally active in your care.

When dis-ease occurs, the energy healer seeks to correct imbalances. In this process, you are essential to your own care. Healers facilitate or channel healing energy, but it’s ultimately up to you to engage meaningfully in the energy balancing practices. As a result, when I work with people in my energy healing practices, I prefer to call them “healing partners.” Your role in your healing is far more important than mine ever will be. Without your willing intention to engage in the process of healing, it is unlikely you’ll improve.

Energy healing can have an impact that extends beyond you. As I’ll explain later in this chapter, when two objects vibrating at different frequencies are in proximity, they move toward a middle vibrational point, where they lock into phase and vibrate at a new frequency. In other words, your vibrational frequency has the potential to raise or lower the frequency of other living beings, objects, and places when you are nearby, because their energy and yours will move to meet somewhere in the middle.

For our purposes, when discussing energy healing, I am talking about any activity you engage in that will shift your vibrational frequency. As I previously mentioned, healing doesn’t necessarily mean getting rid of illness; instead, it refers to making vibrational shifts in your own energetic systems to create balance and harmony, remove blockages, reduce overactive energy, and increase underactive vibration. I use the terms vibration and energy interchangeably; all energy is vibration, and every part of you, physical or etheric, is made up of oscillating strands of energy (envision the swinging motion of a pendulum). Therefore, when you change and balance vibration, you create a shift that helps your entire being experience more harmony and balance. These shifts always serve your highest and greatest good.

As we move forward, I will discuss various modalities that can help create this energetic balance, from hands-on techniques like tapping or simple touch, to using sound as a vibrational tool, to using other items that have a higher vibration, such as essential oils and crystals. Likewise, activities like affirmation, meditation, and visualization are healing tools that change your vibrational state by helping you overcome the persistent thoughts arising from programming and unrecognized beliefs that keep you from healing.

Vibration is the movement of energy. Everything in the universe consists of energy vibrating at different frequencies (speeds), including how life force energy oscillates in different parts of your etheric and physical bodies. In sound, the frequency of the vibration determines the tone you hear. In vision, the frequency of the vibration is the color you perceive the object to be.

COMPLEMENTARY MEDICINE, NOT ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE

Energy healing isn’t an alternative to proper medical care; nor does it work at cross-purposes with your medical care. Rather, it allows you to be an active partner in your own healing. For example, if you have a wound that requires stitches, seek appropriate medical treatment first. If your appendix bursts, you need surgery. Then, once you’re on the road to recovery, use energy healing as complementary care to help your body, mind, and spirit heal.

Be sure to continue medical treatment while you focus your energy healing efforts on uncovering vibrational causes. For example, I continue to take thyroid medication for Hashimoto’s thyroiditis because blood tests show I need medicine. This situation may change as I continue to work on healing the vibrational issues that underlie the condition, but, for now, medical treatment is the best way to support my health. With vibrational healing, however, I’ve noticed many of the symptoms that used to bother me, even while on medication, have lessened or gone away.

Mainstream medical studies are beginning to show that complementary forms of healing can supplement patient care. Here are just a few examples: A study reported in Journal of Affective Disorders shows that acupuncture was effective in treating depression, and as reported in HealthCMI , studies show acupuncture, particularly, can help reduce depression after a stroke. Studies published in Translational Neurodegeneration reveal that acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine are effective in helping with memory in Alzheimer’s patients.

In energy healing, when we use an object such as a singing bowl, an essential oil, or a crystal, we are using entrainment to bring our vibration into alignment with the vibration of the object. Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens discovered entrainment in the 1600s when he hung two pendulum clocks near one another that were moving at different frequencies. After a short time, the pendulums began to sway together. This experiment is repeatable. You can find videos of multiple mechanical objects locking into phase in this way on my website, AuthorKarenFrazier.com .

Entrainment is how energy healing works. When you place an object vibrating at one frequency near an object vibrating at a different frequency, they lock into phase: one vibrates higher, and the other vibrates lower. It’s why, in this book, you’ll be working with high-vibration objects and thoughts—so that as you do, your energy will meet the thought or object’s energy in the middle.

Energy can become overactive, underactive, or completely blocked for many reasons, such as illness, injury, negative thoughts, subconscious projections, unrecognized beliefs, childhood issues or trauma, misunderstandings, relationship problems, past-life trauma, chemical toxicity, poor nutrition, lack of movement, emotional pain, spiritual confusion, and many other issues. In fact, virtually any negative experience in your physical or etheric body can cause energy to become unbalanced or even blocked. The longer you go without correcting or removing what is causing the imbalance, the more out of balance your energies become.

Eastern philosophies teach that energy needs to be balanced between polar opposites, such as yin and yang, dark and light, or feminine and masculine, as well as among the five elemental energies: earth, metal, wood, water, and air. In other philosophies, such as Ayurveda, you may see these elements called something slightly different, such as fire, water, earth, air, and ether (or aether). Everything, including your physical and etheric bodies, optimally contains a balance of both polar energies and elemental energies. When these energies are out of balance, the result is dis-ease.

Symptoms may be physical, emotional, mental, circumstantial, or spiritual. Initially, symptoms are usually something simple and relatively minor, such as a mild headache, a disturbing dream, or a vague feeling of discomfort or sadness. However, as the imbalance becomes more serious, symptoms grow stronger and louder. When an imbalance has gone unaddressed for a long period and becomes severe, your Divine guidance system may send extreme symptoms, which I call the “universal two-by-four” (the universe smacks you upside the head with a two-by-four so that you pay attention). Examples of these symptoms include a heart attack, a job loss, a major depression, or a “dark night of the soul.” Typically, the more severe your symptoms, the more serious the imbalance is and the sooner you need to correct it.

In Western society, we often react to symptoms by either ignoring them or doing something (such as taking medication) to remove or suppress them. However, symptoms are like your Divine guidance system’s smoke detector. Treating the symptoms without trying to find the cause is akin to removing the batteries from your smoke detector to stop it from beeping, instead of trying to discover and remove the cause of the smoke. Eventually the whole building is going to burn to the ground.

Often, we assume we know what a symptom means because of where or how it occurs. But sometimes a symptom and cause appear unrelated. If foot pain occurs due to a blockage of the sciatic nerve, treating the foot would be pointless because the imbalance is elsewhere in the body. Once you begin to recognize how the body, mind, and spirit work together through the energy body and its various parts, you can begin to trace symptoms to their root, where the imbalance exists.

You are pure energy. Some of that energy manifests as your physical body, and some manifests as your spiritual or etheric body. Physically manifested beings (which is what we are when we inhabit a human body) have specific energy systems that connect the physical to the etheric. Within these systems, you can create balance and harmony to bring about healing. And although you don’t need to be an energy body scholar to begin the process of your own energy healing, getting familiar with the basics of these systems is helpful. I will teach you when and how to work with each system in the daily routines in chapter 3 and the condition-specific remedies in chapter 4 .

I love working with chakras because they are one of the easiest energy systems to identify and visualize. Chakras are whirling wheels of energy that run roughly along your spinal column and connect your physical body to your etheric body. Each of the chakras has a different vibrational frequency that corresponds to different colors and tones (sounds). Likewise, your chakras correspond to different physical aspects of your body (those areas roughly located near or just downstream or upstream from each chakra), and imbalances in certain chakras can create physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, or situational dis-ease.

The word chakra comes from the Sanskrit cakra , which means “wheel.” Chakras were first described in the Vedas, ancient Hindu scriptures written in Sanskrit that date somewhere between 1500 BCE and 500 BCE. Similar concepts of energy centers are also discussed in various other traditions, including Jewish mysticism (Kabbalah) and Buddhism.

The various energy healing tools discussed in the next chapter can help rebalance energy so it flows freely through the chakras, restoring your life force and removing dis-ease from your physical and etheric bodies. A guide to energy healing tools that work well with each chakra is included near the end of the book (see here ), so you can use it as a quick reference for rebalancing.

Physical issues associated with the root chakra include leg and foot issues, sciatica, lower back pain, immune system problems, and hemorrhoids. Emotional and spiritual issues with root chakra imbalance might include identity problems, safety and security issues, the inability to stand up for yourself, depression, and fear of abandonment.

Physical issues associated with the sacral chakra include problems with the sexual organs, intestines, and pelvic region. Emotional and spiritual issues associated with this chakra include an inability to form creative ideas, issues related to sexuality, difficulty with prosperity, and issues of control and personal power.

Physically, your solar plexus chakra affects your stomach, liver, spleen, kidneys, and gallbladder as well as your lower mid-back region. Physical issues arising from imbalance might include diabetes, adrenal exhaustion, kidney stones, ulcers, and acid reflux, whereas emotional and spiritual issues might include exhaustion, poor self-esteem, narcissism and egotism, other personality issues, social awkwardness, and eating disorders.

Physical areas associated with the heart chakra include the heart, lungs, circulatory system, and upper thoracic region. Physical issues arising from imbalance might include lung and heart disease, blood vessel disease and circulation problems, and breast issues. Emotional and spiritual issues associated with imbalance include the inability to forgive, stuck grief, anger, bitterness, and loneliness.

Physically, the throat chakra affects the areas of the throat, upper chest, mouth, esophagus, gums, teeth, and ears. Physical issues associated with throat chakra imbalance include thyroid problems, gum disease, dental problems, and temporomandibular joint disorder (TMJ). Mental, emotional, and spiritual issues might include judgment and criticism, the inability to speak one’s truth, poor self-expression, an unwillingness to surrender personal will to Divine will, and poor decision-making skills.

Imbalances in the crown chakra might cause physical issues such as systemic health problems, bone problems, skin disorders, and various mental health imbalances. Emotional and spiritual issues associated with imbalance might include a poor sense of ethics, lack of trust, and lack of belief in anything greater than oneself.

The word aura means “wind” or “breath.” It describes the energy field that surrounds you and emanates from you (and other objects and beings). According to the Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism , the idea of auras actually originated during the Spiritualist era of the late 1800s in the Theosophical Society, which proposed that bands of energy surround living beings in layers of bright colors that roughly correspond to chakra colors. Aura colors can change day to day or minute to minute as they reflect your current state of physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being. Some psychics are able to see auras and aura colors, and aura photographs use biodynamic feedback and LED lights to visualize how colors might look surrounding the subject.

We won’t do much work with auras in this book, although I can offer a quick energy technique to sweep your aura if you’re feeling “off.” While you sit or stand, have someone place their hands at the crown of your head, but a few inches above the surface of your skin. Starting there, have them run their hands all the way down to your feet. They should sweep on all sides of the body, flicking any energy from their fingers into the earth and ending with touching the floor, to ground you and them and disconnect your energy from theirs.

All matter consists of different types of elemental energies. There are five elemental energies that need to be in balance within organisms or spaces in order to create harmony, balance, and well-being. Polarity therapy, a hands-on wellness practice to balance energies, focuses on the four classical elements (earth, water, air, and fire) proposed in ancient Greece, along with a fifth element, ether, which was added later by Aristotle. These five elements also roughly correspond to the five elements (wood, fire, earth, metal, and water) in Taoism, a Chinese philosophy.