In this book, I invite you to delve beneath the particulars of formal energy medicine modalities to understand the source codes, the language that underlies them. Too often people with chronic illness are drawn to study complementary modalities or nutritional science in a desperate search for wellness, but they end up learning dietary dictums and prescribed practices, rather than how to actually participate in the communications of their body, mind, and spirit. My goal in presenting this language is for you to be able to create your own, personalized energy medicine, in order to truly participate in your own creation of self. My goal in focusing on self-healing is to encourage you to discover how to take healing into your own hands and, in a very individualized way, support your miraculous, inbuilt capacity to heal.
ENERGY DIALOGUE
Energy dialogue is at the heart of successful energy medicine. It quite simply involves being able to get the messages from your body, spirit, and mind and to respond in their idiom — using movement, gesture, light, sound, vibration, imagery, interaction with energy flows, actions, placement in an environment, and more. This is the vocabulary of the language of energy.
The goal of energy dialogue is to participate moment by moment in the ongoing energy communications within you. It is not something to use just when you are sick. It is a practice that allows you to bring your body’s rhythms and expressions, your conscious understanding, and your behaviors into collaboration, creating your spirit’s truest embodiment.
Once you can participate in energy dialogue, you have the basis for activating and supporting your body’s natural ability to heal.
You use energy dialogue much as you use any language. As you proceed through your day, consider all the ways you use language to think or speak. First, there are the monologues and imagined conversations going on in your head. Perhaps you listen to the radio as you get ready for work. You might have conversations with family members or talk to yourself in the mirror. You might interact with the neighbor on your way out the door, and so on. All of this is natural. You probably don’t have to stop and formulate sentences, look up words in a dictionary, do fifteen minutes of language exercises, or struggle to find the right tone of voice or emphasis as you joke, question, respond, or inform.
The goal in learning the language of energy is to participate in the energetic dialogues that are you and to skillfully navigate among the exchanges with energies that are not you. If you are fluent in the language of energy, it becomes second nature to rebalance your energies, to pull in what is needed, and to recognize when something requires conscious attention.
USING ENERGY DIALOGUE THROUGHOUT THE DAY
The energies that make up your body continuously move and swirl and spiral and flow and block and release and swarm and envelop. They put on quite a show. If you have eyes to see, there are patterns to the movement and colors that represent differing vibrations or kinds of movement. There are shapes created by energies moving in collaborative ways. Some healers refer to this massive dance of energies as the energy body, and it has been mapped in various cultures. What is amazing is that, although you can find common features from one body to the next, each energy dance is also individual and unique.
And if you have ears to hear, it’s a counterpoint of sounds, a symphony of exchanges embodying meaning, intention, and recognition. It is choruses engaged in call and response, expressing our truth. And each of us is set to a different, individualized key. There are harmonies and dissonance, melody lines and chords, and elements (like the heart) that set and keep the beat. It is extremely entertaining to tune in and just listen!
Imagine if, as a child, you learned to tune in to this dimension of being. Today, you would see, hear, feel, know, and smell when the patterns shifted or faltered. It would be no big deal to recognize what is needed and supply it, to recognize what is going awry and right it, to participate in that conversation as it is unfolding.
If you had learned this language as a child, your day might look something like this: You would wake up and spend a few minutes just checking in — helping the energies transition from the more muted circulation during sleep to the more active movement of your day. You would know if it’s time to get up or you need more rest. You would feel what pace and rhythm is needed. You might stretch every which way to allow energies space to flow. You would hook up the main energy arteries that run up the front and back of the spine — like getting Main Street cleared of snow. You might tap or drum various junction points in your energy circulation system to get that system circulating more effectively.
As you get out of bed, you would check in to see if you are truly oriented to the energies around you — including those of the earth and sky. You would make sure that your elements are balanced. You might tune in to your spirit, your mind, and your body to make sure those three aspects of your consciousness are accessible to guide your choices as your day unfolds.
Throughout your day, little conversations and adjustments would happen. As you emerged from your car, you would take a moment to shift your sense of pacing, from the rapid speed of travel to a more leisurely stroll that allows you to tune in to the trees and sunshine and get an energy snack from them. You would naturally notice when your body or mind has needs that do not match the demands of the moment. After half a lifetime of self-care, you would probably know how to automatically and gracefully listen, console, adjust, adapt, and reset your energies.
Because the language of energy is your source code, your first language, it will not take you years to gain fluency. Instead, you will awaken to ways you have already been using this language and build on those.
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
Just as we learn language situationally, through interacting with native speakers, you can use this book in a number of ways:
First, just read it straight through as an immersion experience. Let the ideas and frameworks and stories filter in. Learn the language of energy the way you first learned language as an infant: taking in all the sounds and gradually making sense of what you are hearing, all the while constructing your own personal understanding of the world.
Second, use the book as an exploration guide, dipping in and out wherever you feel drawn. Many chapters offer a number of explorations, labeled “Play With It,” that guide you in just playing with the concepts. With these, I often offer illustrative examples of my own experiences as I explored these ideas while writing this book.
Third, work your way systematically through the book, applying the concepts and exercises to your own life. The book is full of healing stories that illustrate different people’s health challenges and approaches to wellness. These are coupled with energy exercises and meditations that provide specific tools.
Finally, throughout the book, the structure, syntax, vocabulary, and usage of the language of energy are linked to how we actually acquire language as children. This is not a foreign tongue to be learned by rote memorization and grammar drills. Instead, it is our baseline idiom that governs how we communicate within and with others. The Language Your Body Speaks will help you to evolve your awareness of the language of energy and your native ability to speak and understand it.
Thinking Outside the Box about Healing
Mother Teresa was visiting a health center in India when she came across a man in extreme spasms. His arms, legs, and torso were all contorted and twisted, and he was in agony. She stepped up to him, took one look — a look I can only describe as pragmatic compassion — and then began stroking him all over his body, firmly and rhythmically. It was not a gentle stroke of consolation, as if to say, There, there, oh suffering one. It was more like the calls of a coxswain, bringing a crew into perfect synchronization. As she stroked, his body unfurled, released, relaxed,