September/October 1999 Featured Stories
The Body Electric
How Vibrational Therapies Work
by Miriam Knight
E=mc2 is probably the most well-known scientific formula
in the world. With it Albert Einstein demonstrated that energy and matter
are two equivalent forms of the stuff of the universe. All matter, including
the human body, is composed of this primal energy, and the salient characteristic
of energy is that it moves or vibrates. The rate at which each substance
vibrates is its frequency. In his excellent book of the same name, Richard
Gerber, MD uses the term Vibrational Medicine to refer to therapies
that work on the energy aspect of the body.
A vast arsenal of vibrational or subtle energy therapies has emerged,
some ancient and some new. The more familiar ones include acupuncture,
homeopathy, Reiki, spiritual healing, therapeutic touch, electro-crystal
therapy, flower essences, gem elixirs, magnetic healing and devices,
crystal healing, color therapy and thought essences. They all have the
same aim, which is to assist the individual to achieve a constant and
unimpeded energy flow throughout the many levels of the physical and
spiritual bodies.
Orthodox medicine has begun, grudgingly, to accept that some vibrational
therapies such as acupuncture work, but the reason they work is not
explicable within the old Newtonian model of the body as a complex machine.
Allopathic medicine has acknowledged that there is a causal connection
between stress and illness, although why some people are more susceptible
than others is still a mystery. One really needs to turn to Quantum
Theory for an explanation, namely, that all matter, including the body
and all its processes, is a phenomenon of vibrational energy. Thought
is probably the most important of these processes. You may have heard
the expression, "energy follows thought." It is thought, conscious
or subconscious, that generates all of the gross activity and most of
the subtle activity of the body.
We have all heard of the Placebo Effect, where patients in a clinical
trial may get better even when they have not received any of the active
substance being tested. Stated otherwise, the Placebo Effect is simply
the body healing itself when it thinks it is supposed to get better.
What has probably happened is that the individual HAS GIVEN PERMISSION
TO ITS BODY TO HEAL. This is an important point, which may also explain
why other people don't heal. At some level, they may not be allowing
themselves to heal. There may be subtle psychological issues around
self-worth or dependency or a myriad of other things. The fact is that
thoughts and emotions affect the body's energy field. We have all experienced
feelings of fatigue which miraculously disappeared when an exciting
activity was on offer, or a total shift in energy level after receiving
a phone call from that special person. Energy follows thought.
So where does vibrational medicine come in? There is a growing
school of thought that dates back to ancient times that holds that disease
(dis-ease) is the result of imbalance in the body's energy systems.
When some of the body's energy pathways are blocked, this causes circulatory
stagnation in the cells and organs which provides food for viruses and
bacteria. Furthermore, it is suggested that viruses and bacteria do
not cause disease, but feed off it. This would explain why, amongst
a large group of people carrying the same viral or bacterial load, only
a few will actually come down with a given disease.
Other kinds of disease (or imbalance) do not feed viruses or bacteria
but rather cause physical weakness or pain (migraines, arthritis and
other auto-immune diseases, for example). The problem here is when the
symptom is perceived as the disease itself. Then prescription drugs
will be used which may have some effect on the symptom, but will not
cure the disease and are likely to have undesirable side effects.
The common goal of vibrational therapies is to get the energy circulating
in a correct pattern rather than stagnating behind a blockage or leaking
away.
Rebalancing the energy system by whatever means helps enormously,
but human beings are complex, and there are likely to be a number of
interrelated causes as to why the body went out of balance in the first
place. The location of imbalances indicates the kinds of issues the
individual is struggling with. So, for example, someone with back pain
may be struggling with issues dealing with quite basic concerns about
security, survival or the ability to stand up for oneself. This is why
it is so important to look at the individual as a whole and to try to
understand how the condition arose and whether the causative factors
can be reversed through a change of thought patterns or lifestyle.
Old memory patterns that are locked in can often be released through
visualization or hypnotic regression. The goal is to help individuals
achieve a high level of wellness by recognizing their own role in the
creation of the state of dis-ease and accepting the responsibility for
changing the old patterns. Vibrational therapies help during this process
by relieving symptoms, but we therapists cannot cure the underlying
cause. We can only support and assist you to cure yourself.
Miriam Knight is a psychologist and energy therapist working
in NW Portland. Her practice includes energy field analysis, energy
rebalancing with resonating crystals, Reiki and healing visualization.
She also works in conjunction with her husband Geoffrey Knight,
a clinical hypnotherapist. She can be contacted at 503-246-7300
or by e-mail to MiriKnight@cs.com.