Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/1191154
technique ENERGY WORK 104 m a s s a g e & b o d y w o r k j a n u a r y / f e b r u a r y 2 0 2 0 We're all acquainted with allopathic medicine. Many allopathic physicians might even recommend your work as a massage therapist to their patients. What you might not know is there are actually three allopathic healing models, and the principles of the two not currently in vogue might be of great use during your sessions. These alternative ideas are useful because they enable you to serve as an energy practitioner. What does an energy practitioner do? Energy is information that vibrates, and it composes absolutely everything. American Medical Association-approved (A MA- approved) practitioners work with the most accepted form of energy, which is physical. Physical energy is concrete and measurable. An energy practitioner, however, also interacts with subtle energy, the invisible and immeasurable stuff of quantum physics that organizes physical reality. If you alter subtle energies, you can often quickly change what is happening in the physical world and also a client's body. WESTERN ALLOPATHIC MEDICINE The most widely known allopathic medicine is largely based on Western principles. In other words, it offers what you go to the doctor for. As such, your typical medical provider will either treat or repress symptoms using medicine, radiation, or surgery. If I have a broken bone, I certainly want to visit an allopathic physician and get it set. But that doctor isn't going to help me probe for the various reasons I might have broken my bone in the first place, or help me figure out how to heal it faster. Perhaps I injured myself because of emotional reasons or because I took on someone else's issues. Certainly, my doctor isn't going to figure out whether there are homeopathic or other vibrational remedies to ease my pain or quicken the healing process. But these and other energetic approaches, including a few I'll outline to be used in the massage profession, align with the two allopathic templates that never made the A MA "team." THE MICROBE APPROACH: SEEK AND DESTROY The easiest way for me to compare the current allopathic model with two alternative ones is to focus on their approaches to microbes. The A MA means of dealing with a microbial infection can be summarized in a single phrase: seek and destroy. In fact, allopathic researchers usually describe microbes as pathogens or parasitic organisms. Many microbes, including bacteria, viruses, fungi, and protozoa, do cause disease. Why not kill them off if possible? One of the problems with this approach is that thousands of the body's microbial residents actively contribute to our well- being. In fact, most of the microbes in our microbiome, or gut, support good health— assisting with concerns including immunity, digestion, weight control, and disease resistance. We're lucky this is the case, since our microbiome's microbes outnumber our human cells 10 to one. 1 The overall healing strategy of the A MA prototype is based on germ theory, which asserts that microbes or germs are the enemy and must be destroyed. This theory goes back centuries but is frequently credited to Louis Pasteur, who lived in the 19th century. After proposing that microorganisms initiate disease, he experimented with ways to eradicate them, also developing vaccines to boost our immune system. The Other Faces of Allopathic Medicine How They Can Help Your Work By Cyndi Dale