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How’s Your Energy? How Are Your Relationships?

How’s Your Energy? How Are Your Relationships?

You are more than your physical body. You are more than your mind and emotions. According to the Shamans of Peru, it is the “light body” surrounding each of us that creates and maintains our physical form. If that sounds rather “out there” – good! Many of us could use a shake-up in the way we see ourselves and the world. Limited perception is the root of many physical and mental-emotional issues.

As a practitioner of acupuncture and Chinese Medicine, I have a lot of experience helping people deal with physical, mental and emotional ailments. Chinese Medicine in general is a system that looks at the body as an energetic mechanism. There are acknowledged “energy channels” that support the form and function of all our internal organs.

Emotionally, there’s an energy that makes us want to live, giving us passion, motivation and the ability to act. There’s another type of energy that allows us to rest, digest, sleep and receive. There’s also energy systems that empower us to process mentally, have memory and reason.

The Ancients, in observing human beings, realized when there was physical or mental-emotional symptoms of pain or disease, there was already a problem in one of the energy systems of the body. Physical symptoms are a manifestation of an energetic problem. Does this mean, our thoughts create our form? Somewhat, but not exactly. Our energy bodies create our thoughts, emotions and our physical form.

So what is energy? For some, it is a difficult concept to grasp. Some of us only trust what we can see. Understandable. There are many ways to see energy however. We must learn to see in ways different from merely seeing form. We must use all of our senses.

To the ancient Chinese (as well as many other ancient traditions worldwide), everything is a manifestation of energy. We all know this. It is basic physics. Some energy is dense and can be seen as form: like a table, a tree or an arm. Other energy is less dense: like water and blood. Examples of the least dense energy is air, vapor and “qi”: the energy that flows through the body causing the heart to beat and the lungs to respirate.

We can get very stuck on what we see. For many of us, this is what creates the majority of our problems in life.

My acupuncture teacher often likes to describe “qi” (the energy or “lifeforce” of the body) as relationship. We, as humans, are always in relationship. It is the essence of being alive. We have relationship with the air we breathe, the food we eat, the people we surround ourselves with, ourselves. Ideally, these relationships nourish us, promoting greater wellness, a sense of belonging and richness. However, some of us have difficult relationships to one or more of these things. Allergies indicate a problem in our relationship with the air and the external environment. Insomnia can come from relationship problems within ourselves: the inability to reach a state of surrender within. And so on and so forth.

We can blame the problems on the trees, our spouse, the food we are eating, our job ect. However it’s not really any of these things that is making is unwell. It’s our relationship to them that is the issue.

 

Not to say some things in life are not toxic. Some are. But we all know, certain things make some of us sick, while other people are unaffected by them.

When treating a person’s “qi” with energetic medicine like acupuncture, the first step is discovering where the relationships are getting stuck. Is the immune energy weak? Or is it hyperactive? Are the hormones deficient, or are they stuck? Is there difficulty processing sensory-mental stimuli? Is there residue from a trauma from the past, clouding present perception?

We can assess a person’s “qi” through clues the body provides. We can also read the “qi” via the pulse. Qi shows itself everywhere. Even the tone of the voice and odor of the skin provides clues to the trained practitioner. You can tell an awful lot about a person just from being in their presence.

For thousands of years, Chinese Medicine has been treating all aspects of the human form and function, from musculoskeletal problems to internal organic dysfunction to mental illness through working on the “energy body.”

We live inside an electromagnetic field. Acupuncture is a therapy that reads and adjusts this field, affecting the entirety of the body-mind continuum. A metal needle placed into this electromagnetic field in the right way can create strong changes quickly. It is the reason acupuncture has remained an actively used therapy for over 2000 years throughout the entire world.

How’s your energy? And how are (all of) your relationships?

Nicholas Sieben, MS, L.Ac.

nicholas@nicholassieben.com

Nicholas is a healer who uses acupuncture and reiki to help awaken and heal. His mission is to promote greater freedom of body, mind and spirit through compassionate self-awareness. Through the use of ancient medical practices and the spiritual philosophies of Taoism and Buddhism, Nicholas helps illuminate the path to healing. He is a student of the renown Taoist priest and Chinese Medical Master Jeffrey Yuen. He completed his acupuncture studies under Mr. Yuen at the Swedish Institute College of Health Sciences, and received a B.A. from Brandeis University in Sociology and Philosophy. He has a practice in New York City.

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