What is Energy Psychology? "All of life is electrical," according to Nobel Prize winner (Chemistry 1993) Rod MacKinnon, a biophysicist at Rockefeller University an a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. Energy Psychology is the name of a newly emerging family of non-invasive and powerful techniques that appear to help rebalance and optimize the body's electrical system. Combining Western psychological wisdom with Eastern medicine that specializes in treating the body's electical system, these mind/body methods are also unusually easy to learn. For all of these reasons, Energy Psychology methods may well prove to be the most useful self-help, coaching and psychotherapy procedures of the 21st century. If you've ever heard of a treatment method commonly known as "tapping," you have heard of Energy Psychology. Energy Psychology methods appear to assist with a wide range of psychospiritual issues through directly intervening with and rebalancing aspects of our personal energy system. Energy Psychology methods seem to be particularly effective at helping people: - Neutralize distress and limiting beliefs
- Resolve trauma and other baggage
- Harvest gifts from undesired or undigested life experiences
- Upgrade the capacity for peak performance and peak states of being
- More effectively manifestintentions
The most well-known Energy Psychology methods include Emotional Freedom Techniques (TFT), Thought Field Therapy (TFT), Healing Touch (HT) and Brain Gym, but there are many others as well. Methods such as HeartMath, Donna Eden's Energy Medicine, and Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing (EMDR), among others, can be considered close relatives of Energy Psychology methods. How Do They Work? The answer to this question is still being researched, but here is at least one part of the answer. Just as we have a circulatory system, a nervous system, an endocrine system and a lymphatic system, we also appear to have an additional system that helps regulate all of these. This additional system has been well-known to practitioners of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) for thousands of years and appears to be primarily electromagnetic. The most well-known aspects of our energy system (also referred to as the Human Vibrational Matrix) include the electromagnetic envelope surrounding and permeating the body (the Biofield), centers of energy concentration (the Chakras) and energy-information pathways (the Meridians and their associated acupoints). Are They Legitimate? Some professionals who have been improperly trained in these methods, and some professionals whose world views of healing are threatened by these methods have tried to discredit these methods. Though tend to talk as though they are experts in these methods they either know very little about them or they have a political axe to grind. Either way, you may be wisest to take their allegations with a grain of salt no matter how much they spin their arguments to make them sound legitimate. In reality, these newly emerging methods already appear to meet the American Psychological Association's criteria for their "probably efficacious" designation. For more information about various Energy Psychology methods and the research evidence that points to their effectiveness, visit the international non-profit Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology (ACEP) website. ACEP's purpose is to to promote collaboration among innovators, researchers and practitioners of all the various Energy Psychology methods in order to establish the credibility of these treatments. |