Cynthia Dale - The Subtle Body Practice Manual: A Comprehensive Guide to Energy Healing

A Comprehensive Guide to Energy Healing

CYNDI DALE

This book is dedicated to the healers, sages, and seers
who have carried the torch of hope through the centuries.

We face the extraordinary possibility of fashioning a health care system that emphasizes life instead of death, and unity and oneness instead of fragmentation, darkness, and isolation.

LARRY DOSSEY, MD

W hether licensed or layperson, we are all healers. Our roles shift and change depending on a myriad of factors, such as our state of health, the health of those around us, the season of our lives, and whether we have chosen healing as a vocation. But at one time or another, each of us takes our turn as healer and self-healer, as practitioner and patient.

Looking deeper, we can observe that we are all self-healers all the time. Even when we are helping others under the aegis of being a trained practitioner, every training program and each client session is another opportunity to work on ourselves, to detoxify and rebuild in body, mind, and spirit so that we might be clearer conduits for subtle energies.

It was this understanding that led to the writing and publication of The Subtle Body: An Encyclopedia of Your Energetic Anatomy, my compendium outlining the subtle energy anatomy. A detailed accounting of the invisible energies that underpin physical reality and our physical bodies, The Subtle Body is a comprehensive resource from which healers of all persuasions and experience levels can build a strong knowledge base. It lays a solid foundation for comprehending the intricacies of subtle energy medicine and understanding the modalities and tools that are used around the world to evoke our innate healing abilities.

This book, The Subtle Body Practice Manual, is the natural extension of that original resource guidea hands-on companion about putting subtle energy medicine to work with ease, elegance, and effectiveness. You can use it alone or in conjunction with The Subtle Body. The Subtle Body provides you with the what, and The Subtle Body Practice Manual provides you with the how. And because The Subtle Body is so rich with scientific and spiritual research, I have limited such discourse here in The Subtle Body Practice Manual. Unless otherwise noted, references to research and scientific data can be found in The Subtle Body.

Every day, our human family contends with minor ailments, major illnesses, emotional distress, mental upsets, and sometimes the need for a simple energy boost. There are many ways to address our issues when we get off balance. This books carefully chosen tools and techniques can be immediately useful to both the self-healer and the experienced healing professional. As healing is the purpose and goal of this information, it is useful to examine what healing really is, especially when its viewed through the lens of subtle energy practices.

What is the true nature of healing? is one of the most important questions we can contemplate as practitioners or self-healers working with subtle energy. In effect, all practitioners, whether their approach is conventional or holistic, are energy healers, and so we must all ask this question at some point. The answer will prove to be our North Star, guiding the way through all kinds of terrain along the healing journey (whether that journey is a one-hour session or a years-long partnership between healer and client).

As we venture into the subtler realms, one of the most important distinctions we can make is between healing and curing. To cure is to focus on the eradication of symptoms, whereas to heal is to emphasize and support a persons inherent state of wholeness. The subtle energy practitioner starts from the premise that a person is always whole at the deepest level, no matter whateven if they are missing a limb, wrestling with depression or cancer, or trying to shake off a nasty cold. A practitioner of any type who is focused on curing is likely to place an emphasis on diagnostics and relieving symptoms. A subtle energy practitioner, on the other hand, will work with a person to gain reliefand possibly releasefrom the cause of their symptoms.

Subtle energy healers work to help themselves or others recognize and embrace their innate wholeness, regardless of appearances or even the outcome of treatment. Instead of achieving wholeness, healing is a matter of remembering and recovering the wholeness that already is. Whether we are working with others or on ourselves, it is incumbent upon us that we not attempt to make all supposed frailties disappear. Subtle energy tools and techniques are far more effective when we understand that wholeness doesnt equal perfection. I have been fortunate to see with my own eyes the remarkable shifts that can take placethe movement toward wellnesswhen people feel supported in an environment of compassion and acceptance.

Understanding and believing in wholeness is a deeply optimistic state, one that we may encounter with our podiatrist or our reflexologist, and one we seek to acknowledge within ourselves. The trust in our natural ability to return to balance just may be the invisible bridge (the subtle energy bridge) that connects the best of allopathic medicine with the brilliant field of healing that used to be called, not so very long ago, alternative.

An acupuncturist steps back and nods his head. Your problem is caused by an energy block in the liver, he says, pointing out the stagnant liver chi in your toe.

A physician peers at the x-ray and nods her head. See whats going on here? She points to the picture of the organ just under your ribs. Thats your liver. Thats where your issue lies.

Who is right? Is it the acupuncturist, whose perspective of the liver is linked to an intricate flow of energy throughout your body, one that somehow mysteriously involves your toes? Or is it the conventional doctor, who views your liver as a single organ unto itself, one that sits quietly beneath your ribs, minding its own business?

Well, both of them are right. Our organsin fact, many parts of usanchor somewhere physically. But they are also energetic, which means that they connect to other parts of ourselves in ways that are hard to measure, see, or prove. The subtle aspects of our organs are part of the energy anatomy that we will explore in , they can also work with concrete systems, like those in the physical body.

Because of our Western cultural conditioning, most people dont typically think of their general practitioner, gynecologist, or dermatologist as subtle energy practitioners. (The doctors may not think of themselves this way either.) Contrary to popular opinion, allopathic medicineor what we often call Western medicine or conventional medicineis actually an energy-based practice. Surgery and prescription medicines work on our physical energy systems, while x-rays and ECGs (electrocardiograms) measure the energetic patterns present in our bodies. Since our bodies are made up of energy, any practice or method that involves the body is a subtle energy practice. Subtle energy medicine cant be claimed by holistic practitioners, naturopathic doctors, and alternative healers alone. Therefore, we in the helping and healing professions can officially let go of the us and them, dualistic perspective and join forces. Knowing that all medicine is really subtle energy medicine can result in greater benefits and brighter outcomes for everyone concernedpractitioners, physicians, healers, patients, clients, and those who love them.