Magic or Physics? Energy Healing and the Great Mysteries of our Universe

"When we know how miracles work, they become technology", Greg Bradon, The Divine Matrix

I always liked walking barefoot. As a child, I would wander around in South Africa with my grandma, feeling the ground beneath my feet. Last year, I trundled all the way back to the car at a music festival carrying my shoes, enjoying the squelch of mud between my toes. The Kogi tribe, buried deep in the rainforests of Colombia, refuse to wear shoes, they say it breaks their connection with nature. Nearing the close of 2017, I found myself standing barefoot in tall, aged, blades of grass in a circle of a group of fourteen, holding hands, in the Goan mountains. The energy in the earth is very gentle and grounding - if you ever find yourself in a panic, remove your shoes and stand on the earth, breathing deeply; you'll feel calmer. As I closed my eyes, I could feel energy gently circulating around the group, flowing through my hands in an anticlockwise direction, and I thought, "This is the most Pagan, hippy thing I've ever done; but I'm ready".

I was on a Tantra retreat on the recommendation of a Turkish girl I met during the Vipassana course in Sri Lanka. After being dumped by her fiancé, who ran off with a mutual friend, and then getting fired from her job the very next day, she went on a week’s course with the same crowd in Turkey, and said the experience was so transformational that she’d had the most amazing summer of her life. The purpose of this retreat was to raise our blissful healing energy through meditation and breath work, clear blockages in the body's energy flow, and ultimately to use this energy to fire our New Year's dream into the cosmos for it to manifest. 

On my quest to leave my pyjamas in history, it seemed important to follow energy to its source and to understand that the World as we see it is an illusion. As modern science has demonstrated, all phenomena is in an unceasing state of transformation and evolution from one form of energy to another. Our own body and mind are also energy, and according to Lama Yeshe in Introduction to Tantra, “Whether we are healthy or ill, mentally balanced or beserk, depends on whether our mental and physical energies are harmonious or not. Through the practice of Tantra, all of our energies, including the subtle yet powerful energies we are not ordinarily aware of, are harnessed to accomplish the greatest of all transformations”. Yeshe writes that it is a spiritual practice that Westerners can get on board with, because it relies on direct experience rather than blind faith. My intention for the week was to raise my fire, by which I meant, come out of my shell, tap into my full potential and gain energy.

The course delved into ancient Tibetan Buddhist philosophy that stems from a time of matriarchy five thousand to eight thousand years ago. A fundamental premise that stood out for me because of its relevance today, is that all humans are suffering a great wounding due to gender construction.  From an early age, we are all forced to deny aspects of our being. Women are taught to give and surrender their needs. Men are taught to take, not to cry openly or express emotions. Most people can't speak what they're really thinking, and they feel guilty about taking or expressing what they want. Both women and men possess feminine qualities and masculine qualities: They are inherent and co-emerge within all of us, continuously. By stepping into your mature masculine and mature feminine power, life becomes easy, simple, cooperative and balanced. The whole world will ultimately benefit, since we are currently suffering under patriarchy, as there’s too much yang and not enough yin.

Since our vulnerabilities were to be fully on display during the week, and we were to expose ourselves to the core, one of the first exercises involved breaking down the barriers and taking off our "masks" or pretences. Working with a partner, we were tasked with staring into the other's eyes for about five minutes. It was possibly the most uncomfortable I've ever been, but daring myself to do deeper into the bright blue eyes, watching the discomfort ebb and flow, was also intense, gratifying, transgressive.

Because there would be contact involved, it was crucial to discuss boundaries, being direct and honest, and equally to accept the truth of others. We practiced asking for consent before placing your hands on someone’s shoulders or forehead, and equally giving or refusing consent. For some people, it is impossible to look someone in the face and say "No”, to be assertive about your needs, to know that you matter. When you have the power to do this, you have the power to retain your energy for yourself. When I learnt to identify and protect my boundaries, something shifted in me. A major turning point was also learning to take. It took me some time to understand what taking from others meant. But when holding a pair of hands, sensing their energy, I closed my eyes and took emotionally what I wanted from them, I experienced intense flashbacks and mental images.

It took two to three days for me to raise my fire. Everyone noticed a complete transformation. I became extremely energized. You can raise your body’s subtle energy through meditation and breath work. You are activating your chakras, the body’s seven energy centres, including sexual energy, which is the most powerful form of energy in the body. It’s the energy that creates new life, the same energy that created the universe, and both the Tantric masters and Marvin Gaye understood it’s healing properties. Even a novice can experience subtle energy by being close to others radiating it. We practiced sitting back to back and flowing energy through one another. In another exercise, I unwittingly took energy from my partner and he went very weak for some time. We all use the expression that people can drain you, but until you can feel and manipulate subtle energy, you won’t know how true this is.

The most impressive event occurred midway through the course, we watched the convener deliver energy healing on one of the group. The process took almost an hour. Her hands danced above the chosen volunteer as he lay back with his eyes closed. Sometimes she touched him, but much of the time she worked on his energy field. He was soothed, jolted, jerked and emitted tears.

In the evening, it was our turn to perform. I wondered what I was doing being trusted with this. Moreover, what was I likely to be able to do? But apparently energy healing, like singing, is something anyone can do; but only a few people are really good at it. The aim is to clear blockages in the energy flow, caused by bad experiences, stress and ill health. Your partner sets an intention for the healing and you intuitively work on the body and energy field, imagining what they need and sensing the body. I had been uneasy about working with others in the beginning, but now I could see everyone's vulnerabilities and feel compassion: everyone has an inner child just wanting protection.

My partner asked to open himself up to love. He lay down and I pulled a blanket over his clothes. The convenor was holding the space, meditating and radiating energy around the room. I am sure without this, nothing much would have happened. When I first removed the cloth and hovered my hands over him, not much was happening. I touched my partner’s heart, his throat chakra, hovered over his body, and drove energy upwards towards his head. He started drifting into a dream. Bit by bit, things in the room started to pick up. Legs and arms were in the air, people were screaming blood curdling screams. Someone was almost vomiting up his traumas, spitting up into tissues. I suddenly became overwhelmed, I felt the urge to leave. I looked at the door, and the others, and at the person lying seemingly unconscious beneath me. I couldn’t leave him in this vulnerable state. I kept going. I could see the effects, and I felt in the next moment like my ego took over; it felt powerful, as if by magic. I started pumping energy faster and harder and watched with interest the veins in his forehead rippling as energy rushed into his head. Maybe the more intensity, the better? Not so, our convener came over and told me to calm it down, “It’s too much for him”. I stared at my hands, unable to believe what was happening. I also had been looking around the room, distracted by other pairs, “You must pay attention only to your partner, give him love”. I rested my hand gently on his heart and focused. I started channelling green light into him as I had been instructed, from my heart down my arm and into his heart and looked at the peace that came into his face as he slept. “I want to do more of this”, I thought, “I want to give people this relief”.

It was time to swap. I stated my intention, “I want to be physically and mentally well. I think need to clear trauma”. I lay down and closed my eyes and slowly became aware of hands hovering above me. I felt energy within slightly rising, and helped it along by breathing deeply and mentally pulling energy up my spine towards my head and flowing it down again. Then I started getting flashbacks, taking me back to fifteen years ago, half my life ago. The images rolled over me like waves one after the other, after the other. Hands were moving over my body's energy field and occasionally making contact, on my forehead, on my stomach, my arms, my feet. I knew I had to surrender fully, I repeated it three times, “Surrender surrender surrender”. I let go; the room, and with it all thought, disappeared. Suddenly my legs were in the air and I didn't know how they got there, but each one was being held, and I was screaming. I didn't feel self-conscious because the person next to me was screaming too. Then the convener was there, soothing my forehead and whispering to me. My hands had contorted and the flow of energy had got trapped and locked in them, I couldn't open them. Then my hands were being prized open and flattened into the floor. Apparently, energy can lock in places where you typically hold tension. In a flash, all was calm and I was lying straight and flat. Our convener was saying, “You can cry now”. But I didn't feel like crying, there was no feeling, “Let go, cry”. Her hand placed on my forehead and she commanded, “Cry”. I responded. Tears flowed out and my face crumpled. I could feel my partner’s tears without opening my eyes.

I learnt that, done well, one energy healing session can be equivalent to three years of psychotherapy. We often think of bad experiences as existing only in the mind, but there’s more evidence that they also rest in the body. When a stressful event occurs and you get tension in your shoulder, it forms a memory in that place. When knots are released during massage, they often trigger the same mental image as when they formed.

Outside of classes, we lounged by the infinity pool, with a backdrop of a waterfall amidst mountains, ate well at the vegetarian buffet and bonded as a group. Happiness is like an orgasm; it's so easy to achieve if you know how to get there. You experience bliss in nature, in your connections with others, in your lightness of being. At the New Year’s Eve ritual, I’m not sure if I successfully fired my dream into the cosmos, it might have got stuck halfway up, but I know it is held firmly within me.

I enjoyed embracing a practice I didn't understand. I enjoyed opening up to the spirituality, the language, the beauty of it all. I may have awakened the sacred divine within me, or I may have just had some fun. As the week went on, I wondered, is it exploring a spiritual side, or is it just being more human? Giving space to senses, feelings and intuition. I feel more whole. The retreat spoke to a side of me that isn't normally allowed out of Pandora's box.

Magic, physics or a big placebo?

I wanted to absorb myself in the experience exactly as it was offered, but my inner rationalist couldn’t help wanting to explore what this energy is all about. The problem is, scientists can’t really agree on it. There aren’t yet instruments capable of exploring subtle energy fully because the frequency is so high. Recently, new equipment has been able to detect a lower electromagnetic current in acupuncture points than in surrounding tissues, and HeartMath studies show that the heart’s powerful electromagnetic field can be detected and measured several feet away from a person’s body (read more). Energy healing in its many forms, such as Qigong, contact healing and Reiki has proven efficacious and hospitals are now offering it as a complementary medicine, but some doctors are still not convinced it amounts to more than a placebo. I imagine in a clinical environment, distracted by overcooked carrots, stale meat and mashed potato puree, the practice looks visibly more innocuous than I have witnessed. Even so, energy healers have reduced the size of tumours and the practice is reported to be equally effective on animals.

Some scientists think they have cracked it by pointing to quantum physics. Quantum, defined as a discrete quantity of electromagnetic energy, is the very stuff our world is made of. It is thought that humans do not only get energy from water, food and oxygen, but also from the cosmos. If it wasn't for our chakras (energy centres), we wouldn't be alive. In this view, healing techniques, as well as, love, happiness, pranayama and meditation, carry a quantum positive charge, which removes negative charges and energy blockages to balance the body's energy. To back this up, one of the most significant recent findings of the Heart Math institute is that intentionally generated positive emotions can change the coding of the heart’s electromagnetic field (read more).

Quantum energy, the tiniest denizens of the universe, behave in seemingly impossible ways. They defy gravity, can be in two places at once, turn in two directions at the same time, can travel much faster than the speed of light and can even disappear and reappear somewhere totally different. Until recently, it was thought that these bizarre quantum behaviours don’t have much of an impact on the macroscopic world as we know it, where “classical” physics rules the roost. But recently scientists have been saying that everything in the universe is connected and that the universe itself may be conscious (NBC). The Kogi tribe have passed this knowledge down for generations, they call the universe "Aluna", meaning mother (read more). For interest’s sake, check out this Guardian article, "I felt my twin sister's labour pains".

Theories around quantum mechanics get even wackier, with some scientists suggesting there a link between the human mind and quantum physics (BBC). Research in this area has been slow, with many mainstream scientists too afraid to touch the subject of quantum consciousness with a barge pole, because it breaks the established laws of physics, "Quantum consciousness is widely derided as mystical woo, but it just will not go away" (BBC). What follows is that healing may work with the mind as well as hands. Distance healing, which has reportedly worked through walls and across countries, is also being investigated. A study published in the British Journal of Psychology examined thirty-five studies that looked at whether the intention of one person can interact with and influence the physiology of another person. They found a statistically significant positive difference across the studies (NCBI). Atheists have found the notion of people praying into thin air barking mad, but I find the idea that there may be a scientific basis for prayer after all extremely amusing - that we might even have a human instinct to pray. The possibility of it is heart-warming enough to make your photons buzz. For more on this topic, check out “The Divine Matrix” by Gregg Braden, which attempts to bridge the gap between prayer, magic and physics.

People say the future is robots, but the future is also surely energy. When scientists understand quantum mechanics, it could change everything. The Tibetan Buddhists say they kept their practice secret, because when you manipulate energy, it's a power that can be used for evil as well as good. In the end, I’ve experienced something quite mystical and esoteric that’s on the edge of scientific research, and all I know is that if they'd started our physics lessons at school with what we don't know rather than what we do know, I would have found it a lot more interesting. Squinting, I can hardly see the difference between magic and physics - isn't the Universe magical? Aren't you magical? Somehow, denouncing the existence of magic is impossible, since the universe itself is already the most magical thing it’s possible to conceptualise. In the end, I came away to discover more about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and somehow left with a sense that the universe is more mysterious than many of us realize. Conscious or not, it always has more up its sleeve than meets the naked eye.

After the course ended, I escaped to the seaside in Arambol with a fellow student. Basking in freedom from the intensity of the retreat and the glow of the moonlight, we began to laugh, uncontrollably ... Laughter at everything that had happened... Clutching my stomach and almost crying, I laughed at the moon, in a moment of unbridled lunacy. I feel so free. Free from neediness. Free from wanting. Free from everything. How do I crawl back up Alice's rabbit hole into normalness now?

I rose before the sun did, and went strolling along the beach. I had the urge to walk further, and then my legs had the impulse to run. I hadn’t experienced a symptom in a week, and now my legs felt so light, so easy, like some kind of blockage had been released. I felt power in my thighs for the first time since I could remember. I only ran a hundred yards, and then stopped in the sand; the dogs on the beach circled around me. And they came up and jumped and nuzzled. All they want is love, I thought.