Rhys Method® Energy Medicine:
A New Paradigm!

The History of Energy Medicine

Energy Medicine is in the process of transforming the way health and wellness are approached and practiced in the world.

 

The New Age Movement in the later part of the 20th Century led to more interest in holistic health practices which opened the door for a broader acceptance of what is often referred to as alternative medicine. Many healers have found that alternative is not a name that breeds confidence, so many are now replacing it with the term Energy Medicine as the new way of referring to anything other than mainstream allopathic treatment.

 

Fifty years ago, if you were an acupuncturist, chiropractor, massage therapist or nutritionist/herbalist, you would have been considered an Alternative Medical Practitioner. Now, these professions are considered mainstream health practices, and because of their success, the door has been opened to even deeper levels of energetic healing.

 

These deeper energetic healing modalities are coming from all parts of the world and are each unique in the ways they awaken true health in the client. From the Far East, we have access to ancient yogic traditions, chakra awareness, acupuncture, pranic or aura healing as well as chi energy awareness and internal disciplines such as Chi-Gong and the different martial arts. Indigenous tribes from all over the world have contributed shamanic gifts, rituals, and a healing connection to nature. From the United States, body structure and movement have been studied and have given birth to such modalities as chiropractic, massage, physical therapy, bioenergetics, Rolfing, and the Alexander Technique just to name a few.

 

From Europe and the United States, the study of the electromagnetic field of the body has shown that the body is electrical in nature and that it operates as a whole system and not just as individual parts. Scans have been created that map the body’s function down to the cellular level. Because of this new understanding, scientists are now proposing that we move back to the understanding that it is actually the primary care doctor seeing the bodily systems as a whole, rather than the specialist, who is far more likely to help a client achieve a lifetime of wellness.

 

Science has also mapped brain function and created a much more unified approach to allopathic medicine through gene study, herbal pharmacology and some newer approaches to traditional psychotherapy. Scientists have been studying the massive power of the placebo and nocebo effect as well as the power of a doctor’s or a healer’s words. Through their studies, they have discovered that both may trigger either an immune response or a deeper illness. And finally, even religious faith healing and prayer are now being seen as powerful forms of medicine.

 

These modalities and more like them are falling under the umbrella of Energy Medicine. The claim of each is some level of “cure” for what ails us–from cancer, back aches, and heart problems, to stress-related illnesses, emotional trauma, anxiety and mental disorders.

 

Even though the medical and pharmaceutical lobbyists and the NIH (National Institutes of Health) are doing their damnedest to slow the flood, people are choosing complimentary and allopathic medicine alternatives for their health by the hundreds of millions in the United States and by the billions worldwide. They find that these modalities, techniques and remedies, which include prayer and laying on of hands, work and so are using them in the hope of healing and not just curing an ailment.

 

Curing vs. Healing

Three things have fueled a new look at an age-old debate of what is “curing” and what is “healing” that science won hands down over 200 years: 1) a massive desire to find cures for illness; 2) the internet and mass proliferation of information about different alternative methods used throughout the world; and 3) good old entrepreneurial spirit that brings new products for health and wellness to the masses.

 

Of course, this is not an easy debate to resolve. Science and medicine have prolonged life expectancies by almost twenty years worldwide in the last century alone, but the question is, “Is that healing or something else?” For example, Bob has a malignant liver tumor that is the result of self-abuse in the form of smoking, drinking, living a stress-filled life, and eating junk food. He goes to a surgeon who takes half his liver out and then follows up with chemotherapy and radiation. After a year, Bob’s surgeon looks at the MRI of his liver and pronounces him “cured,” because Bob is no longer in danger of the tumor killing him. So the question is, “Is he healed as well?” Or is his body simply cured of the current crisis, made weaker in the process, and then simply sent back to await his next possible heath crisis in fear?

 

“Healing” is also very tricky. A cure can be quantified, but healing cannot. Healing is related more to a deeper awareness or awakening from the inside out, where an illness or infirmity is seen both at the physical level and the level of their soul and deeper purpose. Bob’s illness at the healing level was simply showing him where he unconsciously made a split from his inner soul wisdom as being his primary guide in making his life choices. His innate body wisdom probably had been speaking to Bob for years through digestive issues, stress, anger, back pain and body deterioration. His accepted cultural system of ignoring it, i.e., taking pain killers, watching TV, striving harder at work, and self medicating with drugs and alcohol needed to be brought into focus before he killed himself.
At the healing level, major illness is the calling card of the soul once the more subtle hints have been ignored. If, after surgery, Bob decides he wants to enjoy his life and begins the process of self awareness and self-love of his body, mind and soul, he has been healed. Healing is represented by the awakening to the joy of being alive and the sacredness of the life within us as the primary guide in our choices to live a purposeful life.

 

More and more studies are showing that happiness is declining in the world–not increasing. And even though medicine is extending lives, people are not happier. Is this because they are not healing and feeling more empowered and in control of their health? If they were, wouldn’t happiness also be on the rise? This is the conundrum that must be resolved if societies and their prevailing beliefs about health are going to move beyond a simplistic survival mentality.

 

Definition of Curing and Healing

To define the terms, curing is simply “ to bring around: provide a cure for, make healthy again. Or, a remedy: a medicine or therapy that cures disease or relieve pain or ailment”” Though cure is often associated with healing, it is not healing. Healing, goes much further than just “relief from an ailment.” Healing is defined as “the natural process by which the body repairs itself; to make healthy, whole, or sound” and so is much broader in is effects. Healing has within it an empowerment and deeper self awareness and strengthening of the body, mind and spirit. Healing is a powerful awakening by the individual to understand that who they are is infinitely more powerful than any infirmity inhabiting their body.

 

Healing can occur, and often does, in bodies that are completely failing. When this happens, the individual decides to live whatever life they have left fearlessly and with self acceptance and integrity. Or they may also decide to live and persevere even with great obstacles. These individuals serve as models for the rest of us who often create problems in our lives to justify our procrastination and self-criticism. The actor Christopher Reeves who played Superman in the movies became a real superman when he had to live in a paralyzed state after a horseback riding accident. He demonstrated that life and attitude are choices and demonstrated the core of healing.

 

Being Sick is Bad!

There is a basic misunderstanding at the core of our current medical practices that states that, “Being sick is bad,” and if you are sick there is something wrong because “people aren’t supposed to be sick.” This belief negates the body’s intelligence in creating illness specifically to guide a person back on track in their lives. The reality is that people have been getting sick for as long as there have been people.

 

Every human being is in less than perfect health at times during their lives with physical limitations of the human body, joints and spine, as well as emotional and mental illness, possible genetic variants, viruses and bacterial infection. For the people who are healing, they will see their illnesses as life challenges that strengthen their resolve to live more vibrantly and will build a stronger immune system and sense of their own empowerment from it.

 

Those who choose either consciously or unconsciously not to heal accept the invalid belief that they are supposed to be sick and become victims of life– disempowered and with weakened immune systems every time they are sick. This rejection of illness equates to self rejection, which in and of itself causes stress and illness.

Technique-Based Medicine

With the “victimized by illness” approach, the patient sees the illness as a process from the outside in that it needs an applied medical technique in order to cure or fix it. People see themselves as patients of a practitioner who has been trained in a seemingly magical technique that can fix their problems. The goal in traditional or scientific-based medicine is to simply establish a technique that will more often than not alleviate the presenting symptoms.

 

The problem with this system is that after each illness, the individual is less confident in their own ability to heal and more reliant on medical techniques. They are generally not taught how they contribute to the illness by being resistant to life or even what not resisting life would look like. This medical dependency can create more mental and physical stress as the patient focuses more and more on the avoidance of a debilitating illness rather than on living a vibrant life with a body that is confident in its ability to stay healthy.

 

Stress is a major cause of illness, and it has the effect of constricting the body’s natural immune function, flexibility and ability to fight off illness on its own. This becomes a cycle that dis-empowers rather than empowers the individual.

 

Healing is not a resistance to illness; healing is not a technique. Illness is a part of life, and everything we resist weakens us. Healing teaches the person to embrace all of life, even illness. Illness should be seen as an immune system strengthener. Life challenges that build a sense of empowerment and strong self-reliance build healthy, empowered people.

 

The goal in Energy Medicine is far greater than a cure, or relief of symptoms. Its goal is a deeper and richer experience of life itself that includes the full array of life experiences.

 

Reconnecting Energy Medicine and Healing

To date, the term Energy Medicine has been used to describe all forms of non-traditional treatments and alternative health care that include meditation and visualization, acupuncture, herbal remedies, massage, sound healing, bio-energetics, Shamanism, various Gestalt talk therapies, and hands-on-healing techniques such as chiropractic, massage, acupressure, Rolfing, Kinesiology, Zero Point, Reiki, Emotional Freedom Technique, Cranial Sacral Therapy and Full Spectrum Light Healing to name just a few of the hundreds that are available. All of these are valid methods of releasing pain, bringing the body back into balance around an illness, or as a method of going deeper into states of awareness when a person has locked memories or trauma, but they are not Energy Medicine. They are the techniques that are used to release illness, but in and of themselves, they are no more than a quick-fix cure. Only a healer can bring someone into the joy of living their life purpose with the ability to live a full and vibrant life.

 

The term Energy Medicine needs a new definition. The misinterpretation currently held by many people is that Energy Medicine and healing represent one of the above external techniques, surgeries, therapies or pills that are applied to a person who is seen as ill or “broken,” and which cures a symptom in the body. This is how most medical practices–both holistic and allopathic–are currently being viewed and practiced and is the source of this misunderstanding.

 

At the Rhys Thomas Institute of Energy Medicine, the new definition of Energy Medicine begins with understanding the energetic cause of illness—when we forget the truth of our soul. The soul or source of energetic life and consciousness contained within each person, can never be sick, hurt, in an argument, lose a loved one, lose its mind, have any malady and cannot die. Your soul has never abandoned you and has unconditionally loved, guided and supported you with its infinite wells of energy, whether you were conscious of its vibration and the feel of the power of its raw life force within you or not.

 

In the Far East, they call this energy chi, and it is known that when it vibrantly courses through your body, you are hardy and live life fully. Eastern Medicine has known for 10,000 years that when your chi is low, you get sick and/or die. In the United States, we are not even taught that the soul is your life force. At best, we are taught that the soul is a mental or religious concept, and once in the realm of the mind, it is lost to us as a life force. The soul is a permeating feeling of expansion and being full of life–not a mental construct or something to pray to as if it existed separately from the body.

 

Illness is Forgetting the Self

Energetically, illness is almost always in some way related to forgetting the primary pleasure of life, knowing who we are at a deep soul level and having a purpose. When we forget who we really are, we lose our spiritual rudder, and it triggers an underlying stress and feeling of emptiness and loss that can never be filled or healed.

 

This emptiness is what the lack of Chi feels like and can only be filled by re-connecting with our soul and deeper purpose. But since we do not understand this, we let our minds and ego come up with a million secondary pleasures to distract us from the inner emptiness, but they can never replace the real thing. We try to fill it from outside sources such as food, relationships, sex, power, money, work, spirituality, success and failure.

 

Without knowing who we really are, often our life choices of what we do and who we try to be go against our natural inner rhythms and life force and create a constant resistance. That resistance to our truth is a resistance to the life force that keeps us healthy and flowing. Wherever there is resistance, there is a likelihood of illness or pain in the body, or an emotional or mental reaction, which is the soul’s way of telling us that we have gotten off track. By truly listening to our bodies and what they have to tell us, we can avoid surgeries and medications that only treat the symptoms not the cause.

Life Purpose + Healing Technique = Energy Medicine Practitioner

So what is Energy Medicine? It is a system of training practitioners to heal the core issues or wounds and the loss of life force energy energetically in a client. In order to accomplish this, the practitioner must first have awakened to their own life purpose. Their healing gift is simply to be their genuine self and allow their profession to enhance their natural healing skills rather than to create an identity out of their profession.

 

The healer or medical person who is living their life purpose fearlessly and expresses their true self naturally vibrates an energy that is so natural, genuine and comforting that their clients instinctively begin to feel safe being themselves as well. This may not seem that important, but liking and honoring who you are physically, mentally and spiritually is one of the most powerful and lasting weapons against illness available.

 

In the Far East, men and women of knowledge who have spent a lifetime discovering their souls and true essences are called masters. Just being in their presence is all it takes to begin the awakening process within the pupil or patient. This knowledge has been lost in Western culture.

 

In order to be an Energy Medicine Practitioner, you must do the necessary work to know and live your life purpose. That life purpose is never a job or a relationship or anything outside you. A life purpose is a quality of being that all leaders and healers exhibit. There is an intrinsic knowing that the true gift and catalytic element in life is their individual uniqueness and fearless ability to be just who they are and nothing more.

 

As a model of humanity that is both humble and noble, an Energy Medicine Practitioner moves beyond the realm of a learned technician who will fix the client, to create a healing environment where the client does not feel judged and is able to awaken to their own life purpose. Of course, their current malady then makes great sense to them once they remember who they truly are. A healer empowers the client, while a technician cures the client but leaves them feeling dependent.

 

This basic element of Energy Medicine is so simple that it has gotten lost. To remind someone in a direct, non-judgmental way, that who they are is so much more than simply their illness begins a process of healing that is life transforming rather than simply a relief of suffering.

 

The greatest malady of humanity is forgetting who we are and feeling lost in the world or feeling stuck in the world in a way that is not of our choice. Healing is to remember the self; a healer knows that even on their deathbed, remembering the self relieves the suffering. The soul can deal with life, health, illness and death gracefully. Coming to that level of awareness creates the best opportunity to heal and live fully in each moment.

 

The Rhys Method® Profiles teach you how to see your life purpose. The Rhys Method® Chakras teach you how to clear and open the twelve channels of consciousness within you from which your life purpose speaks to you. The Rhys Method® Crystal Bowls and healing techniques teach you how to feel and interpret the information from those twelve levels in each moment, so you can experience your soul and life purpose as the most powerful guiding force in your life.

 

These methods are at the core of a much fuller body of work taught at the Rhys Thomas Institute of Energy Medicine.

Continue to Rhys Method® Full Spectrum Healing for more information …