Energy healing

This approach to healing is based on the view that a special energy moves through all living things - a life energy that is the creative impetus for the universe, for all matter, and for the moment to moment feelings of each human being.  This energy moves in pulsating rhythms that make up the seasons, the stages of the life cycle, the developmental phases of growth, the tidal rhythms of breath, the drumbeat of the heart, and the vibratory dance of the smallest particles inside each cell.  Seen in terms of energy, the body consists of:

• energy centres (chakras), 
• energy pathways (meridians), and 
• energy fields (auras). 

According to this school of thought, when energy circulates freely, people are healthy, happy, in touch with themselves, in direct energy-level communication with one another, and in tune with the universe.

Each theory of healing has an explanation for the nature of human difficulty and disease.  In this theory, for a multitude of reasons, life-energy readily becomes blocked in human beings.  The channels through which it flows can be stopped up, weakening the energy in one part of the body, building it to excessive levels in another. 

Each healing system also proposes a cure:  When life-energy is blocked, it must be freed in order to bring about a healing of the problems caused by that blockage - problems that include acute and chronic diseases, personality disorders, mood afflictions, psychological aberrations, anger, frustration, depression, cruelty, addiction, anxiety, indecisiveness, and all the adaptations we make to these conditions. 

Life-energy may be released and rebalanced through a number of means. Acupuncturists use needles, pressure, and the precise application of heat to balance the flow of "chi" through elaborately mapped pathways called "meridians." 

Reiki manipulates and moves energy with the hands, not to remove muscular tension in a mechanical sense, but to clear the deep energy pathways of the body.  The "healing hands" movement among holistic nurses uses touch and also works with the energy field that surrounds the body.

In the ancient method of the laying on of hands, healing energy is transmitted from one person to another by touch, to reenergize or rebalance the afflicted part.  When the energy of healing hands is transmitted to others at a distance, it is then called Distance Healing.