Lauren Walker - Energy medicine yoga : amplify the healing power of your yoga practice

for Ricky and Rachel

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

by Donna Eden

W ith its single three-word title, Energy Medicine Yoga manages to condense two very large domainsenergy medicine and yoga. One of the root meanings of yoga is to yoke, to combine, to form a union between two separate entities. In some renditions, this is thought of as achieving a union of breath and body; in others, of body and consciousness; in still others, of human consciousness and the realm of divinity . Moving to a quadruple entendre, the purpose of this book is also to create a yoga, a union of two disciplines that are usually practiced independently. I am honored to be asked to greet you on this journey into Energy Medicine Yoga by first putting energy medicine, as it pertains to this book, into context.

Albert Szent-Gyrgyi, a Nobel Laureate in Medicine, reflected that in every culture and every medical tradition before ours, healing was accomplished by moving energy. Our culture is developing a thoroughly fresh approach to healing by reclaiming this ancient knowledge for working with the bodys energies in a manner that is fully informed by modern scientific knowledge. Christiane Northrup, MD, explains: In the medicine of the future, as I envision it, working with the patients energy field will be the first intervention. Surgery will be a last resort. Drugs will be a last resort. They will still have their place, but shifting the energy patterns that caused the disease will be the first line of treatment. According to Stanford physicist William Tiller, Modern medicine is rapidly approaching an age where energy will be considered the main factor in the diagnosis and treatment of disease. Mehmet Oz, MD, has famously suggested: Energy medicine is the last great frontier in medicine.

Because there are already so many approaches to energy medicine, and this book focuses on the one with which I am associated, I need to begin by sharing a bit about how I came to the methods I use. My approach to energy medicine actually grew out of a series of personal health challenges. I was born with vulnerabilities that resulted in asthma and severe allergies. I contracted tuberculosis at age three and was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at sixteen. As my body deteriorated and my organs began to break down, I had a heart attack at twenty-seven and was not expected to live beyond my early thirties. Nonetheless, I had a few things going for me. I had managed to birth two beautiful daughters by my mid-twenties, and I had a natural attunement to the subtle energies in the human body, able to see and sense them in myself and in others.

After several doctors told me to get my affairs in order, my determination to not leave my daughters joined with my facility with energy, driving me to figure out the steps I needed to take to heal myself. In bed and often unable to walk, I focused on where the energies in my body seemed stuck or painful and devised ways to soothe those energies and get them moving. To everyones surprise, I grew stronger and healthier after medical avenues had been abandoned. By my mid-thirties, I was in the best health of my life, and I wanted to aid others who were suffering from serious illnesses. This became the guiding purpose of my life.

Only after I had become involved in the health challenges of those who sought my help did I begin to study the healing traditions of other cultures. I learned that the bodys energies have been mapped by many systems, and I was fascinated to discover that these maps often correspond with the way I see energies moving when a client is on my table.

Three systems that stood out for me were 1) the Celtic healing arts that had been passed down orally and with which I had an intuitive connection, 2) drawings and descriptions of energy pathways by ancient Chinese physicians, and 3) yoga techniques and principles that have been practiced for millennia. In yoga are found postures ( asanas ) and breathing techniques ( pranayama ) to restore, maintain, and direct the vital energies of the life force. Fused with these practices were descriptions of vortexes of energy, called chakras , and channels along which energy flows, called nadis , both of which I could see and had been regulating with my clients.

I began to call the method I was developing energy medicine, realizing that it was not so much a new system but rather another approach for working with the same vital energies that had been the focus of many healing and spiritual traditions before it. One of my students, the author of this book, was already an accomplished yoga practitioner and teacher, and she began integrating methods I was teaching her into her yoga practice. When I learned of this, I became very interested to see how she was approaching it. Now after having read this book, I am extraordinarily impressed with the synthesis she has created.

Yoga is, of course, among the oldest existing systems for enhancing the health of the bodys energy systems. Since my approach to working with the bodys energies grew out of overcoming my own maladies, it addresses physical illness in ways that are much more focused than a typical yoga routine. It includes strategies for assessing the performance of every organ and every other system of the body, healing their disorders, and optimizing their functioning. Through my clients and students, I have learned that these methods are valuable not only for overcoming illness but also for maintaining health and increasing vitality.

In marrying energy medicine techniques with time-honored yoga postures and positions, Lauren Walker has created a brilliant system that draws on the strengths of each discipline, and you are the beneficiary. Energy Medicine Yoga teaches you a basic yoga routine. But every step of the wayfrom warm-up to cool-downis interlaced with specific techniques that enhance the physical and mental benefits of the posture. Whether you are a beginner learning both energy medicine and yoga from the book, a seasoned yoga practitioner wanting to bring the benefits of energy medicine into your routines, or already proficient in energy medicine and interested in combining its benefits with the benefits of yoga, this work is a powerful resource.

I asked Lauren how she had the gumption to try to improve on a system that had been revered by generation after generation for thousands of years. She told me that as her own footing as a yoga teacher was developing, she started taking classes from some of the most well-known yoga teachers and began to look at their impact on students through the perspective she had cultivated during her energy medicine training. From that vantage point, she felt that their classes werent shifting the students energies except at the most basic level. Even a yoga class that exhausts you or exhilarates you, she told me, doesnt work with the underlying energy levels. So she set out to introduce energy medicine into her own yoga practice to accomplish this, and she has succeeded magnificently.

The core of the book presents an eight-week program that teaches you, a week at a time, specific sets of postures and energy medicine skills which, in , are mercifully woven together into a daily practice that can be done in a mere twenty minutes. Energy medicine is not a simple discipline to master. The body has multiple energy systems. You are familiar with some of them, such as the chakras, aura, and meridians, but others such as the radiant circuits and Celtic Weave have not made it into our common vocabulary. Lauren breaks down this complexity by introducing a new system (or two or three) each week and showing you concrete benefits of working with that system.

The book is, in fact, laced with detailed ways that energy medicine techniques can enhance a yoga practice. Ill mention only a few. Energy Medicine Yoga begins with a two-minute Wake-up routine to get your energies moving in the right direction so that you will already be in a flow when you begin the physical postures. Because yoga stretches youliterally and figurativelyyou come up against pain, tension, or soreness when you are doing the practices correctly. Lauren teaches an energy medicine technique that works with reflex points that get the bodys energies moving in areas where they are congealed. Such congealed energies are a major cause of your bodys daily aches and pains. If you clear them before your yoga stretches, you have made space for the energy to flow so the stretch can go a bit further and with a bit less tenderness. That is the cats meow as your yoga practice advances. Another area where energy medicine and yoga team up nicely involves emotions that may emerge during a yoga practice. Yoga teachers are well aware that different parts of the body may hold memories or emotions that can be released during yoga postures. The back may hold feelings of being weighted down. The hips may hold unresolved sexual feelings. While the release of these feelings may be cathartic, they may also be overwhelming and persist long after the yoga session. Lauren teaches you another set of reflex points used in energy medicine that can be applied when unexpected emotion or the residue of past trauma is released and you are left feeling agitated and unresolved.