Energy medicine is probably the “real” oldest profession. Knowing how to keep the body’s energies healthy and vital gave our ancestors a tremendous edge for surviving in the wild. Strategies for sensing and correcting energy imbalances by stimulating specific energy points have been passed down through generations in China, as well as in other parts of the world, for at least 5,000 years.
Today, energy medicine is one of the five domains of “complementary and alternative medicine” identified by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Methods used within energy medicine include electrical devices, magnets, crystals, needles, aromas, and herbal or other ingested substances. But the tool used by the largest number of practitioners for moving and harmonizing the body’s energies and fields is the human hand.
Anyone can use their hands to bring balance and harmony to the body’s energy fields. You can tap, massage, pinch, twist, or connect specific energy points on the skin. Because everyone’s hands carry a measurable electromagnetic charge, specific areas of the body can be surrounded with the hands to produce a field effect, or the hands can be used to move and align the body’s energies by tracing specific energy pathways along the skin.
Some methods involving the hands include touching the body, while others involve no touch at all. Try these two experiments and see if you can sense your own ability to feel energy.
Make an X With Your Arms
Bring your palms toward each other until they are about three inches apart. Now twist your arms so they form an X, with your wrists at the center of the X, still about three inches apart. Bring your attention to the space between your wrists. Because your wrists contain several energy centers, the energies will connect, and most people will feel some sensation in the area between their wrists.
Move your wrist about an inch closer and then out a few inches, back-and-forth. What happens to the sensations in the space between your wrists as you change the distance? Do not be concerned if you do not feel the energy, it is there.
The palms of your hands also emit a considerable amount of subtle energy. See if you can feel the energy in the space between your hands if you cup your hands and move them toward and away from each other.
Energy Medicine for Tight Shoulders
Most people carry some tension in their shoulders. Reach your right hand over to your left shoulder and press into any point with your middle finger. Feel around until you find the spot that is most tender (if there is another area of your body you would prefer to focus upon, do so). Give a rating of 0 to 10 to this spot, with zero meaning no tension or tenderness at all and 10 meaning extreme tension or tenderness.
Next, vigorously rub your hands together and shake them off. Now cup your right hand about two inches above the area where you felt the tension and begin to move it over the area in a slow counterclockwise circle, making about a dozen rotations. Notice if you have a sense of energies being exchanged between your hand and your shoulder.
Hold your hand over the area a few more seconds, then relax. What sensations do you feel? Now press the original point with your middle finger and again rate it from 0 to 10. Most people find that the tension diminishes.
While about as simple as a technique could be, these experiments show how readily we can move our energies. Energy medicine begins with such simple tools for reducing tension and fostering healing, and it progresses to more complex protocols for bringing about targeted benefits and addressing serious health challenges.
