This may come as a surprise to you, but you are not just an organic, bag full of nerves, bones, muscles, tendons, ligaments, and organs. You are “energy.” Yes, you heard me correctly, you as well as all matter in the universe is comprised of energy. Therefore, understanding and treating your “energy body” maybe just as important as the proper nutrition, exercise, and rest to your health and well-being.
Believe it or not, you are energy and because of the recent discoveries with science, energy has been determined to be all there is. Understanding and recognizing that you are an energetic being first and foremost is an important step for you to take while on your personal journey to optimal health, wellness, and fitness.
Because of the scientific discoveries in physics, we now know energy is the foundational, building block of all matter or any substance that has mass or takes up space by having volume. The same energy that composes us is the same energy that composes trees, plants, and animals. Yes, that same energy composes all of creation as we know it. In fact, it is the same energy found throughout our universe. There is no isolated energy of the tree, plant, animals, and humans, but everything is integrated together with the same foundational energy. An energy that is always and constantly flowing, interacting, and changing form.
Life indeed can be defined as an energetic process. Everything from sub-atomic particles to the amino acids, peptides, and the DNA of your cells that make you. The cells that make you resonate with their own unique and signature frequencies.
Albert Einstein was the first to recognize the recipe for the amount of energy necessary to create the appearance of matter as we know it. He found that there are two fundamental physical entities, something material and another immaterial, but only one energy. Everything is energy.
Yes, everything in our world as we know it is energy first and foremost. Anything that you can hold in your hands, no matter how dense, how heavy, and how large. In its most fundamental or core level, everything in our universe can be broken down to a collection of electric charges interacting with a larger background sea of electromagnetic and other energetic fields.
Everyone and everything is constructed of energy, no exceptions. Taking it to more personal level, you are surrounded by a vast sea of energy fields that flow through and/or interact with your energy holding onto and exchanging information. We are all integrated in this vast sea of energy. In fact, there is an incredible, constant “energy dance” that is going on right now inside your body with your energy communicating with all the cells of your body and to the world around you.
In terms of the physical body, it is the energy that differentiates a corpse from a living, human being. A strong “life force” that makes us totally alive, alert, and present. To put it in perspective, your energy which is vibrant and flowing, communicates within you while interacting with the universal energy fields ultimately determining your degree of health or lack of it.
For thousand of years, other cultures have described various forms of the same “life energy.” The Chinese call it “qi or chi” while Indians and Tibetans refer to it as “prana” and the Japenese as “ki.” While these cultures may argue their definition of this “life energy” is unique, we are talking about the same thing. It’s all the same energy.
Your body indeed speaks this energy language with the world around you and the entire universe. Before your physical body gets sick as we know it, it gets sick energetically. Therefore, keeping your energetic body balanced and healthy is a vital and important precursor to keeping your physical body healthy and vibrant.
Just as homeostasis is the codeword for health in the physical body, balance is the codeword for your health in the energy body. Balancing the yin and yang energy is the key to a healthy, vibrant energy body. In fact, your energy body has built in energy channels and centers that distribute the “life energy” to the organs of the body called meridians and chakras.
All life is ruled by the interplay of the two dynamic, polar opposite energy forces that are defined as the yin and yang in Traditional Chinese Medicine. Yin can be described as negative and passive while Yang is positive and active. Again, even though they are described as polar opposites, they are complementary forces, never equal, cycling together in harmony.
Since everything is energy, everything you eat, everything you come in contact with, and everything you are around affects you energetically in some way or another. Even with all the advances in our modern, medical system today, these treatments will be of little use to you if you have disruptions and/or blockages in your energy system. Why do you think acupuncture has been so vital and effective in many cultures outside of our own for thousands of years to restore one’s state of wellness?
Acupuncturists try to stimulate and balance the “life energy” by putting needles into the energy channels called meridians with the goal to bring about a change in one’s energy health. It is based on the premise that a blockage or disturbance in the flow of the body’s “life energy” as we have just discussed or “chi” can cause physical, health issues if not treated. By inserting the needles into specific points along a meridian that are blocked, acupuncturists restore the flow of “chi”, balancing the body’s energy, stimulating healing, and promoting relaxation.
However, the use of needles in acupuncture is not the only way to balance the “chi.” The ancient Chinese practices of “Tai Chi” and “Qi Gong” by combining slow, deliberate and fluid movements, meditation, and breathing can also balance the body’s “life energy” or “chi.” The routines were not designed to build muscle mass, burn calories, or raise one’s heart rate as one does at the gym. But, these movements are designed to enhance your circulation, balance, and alignment. Most importantly, they help to balance your “life energy.”
Tai Chi and Qi Gong are not muscle workouts as one would think, but instead are working with the body’s fascial or connective tissue system. The energy that we have been discussing is actually carried throughout your body via this web of fascia running from the bottom of your feet to the top of your head. In fact, the fascia can be thought of as the fiber optics of the body. It is designed to move energy, envelope and isolate muscles, tendons, organs, and blood vessels and to provide protection and support within the physical body.
Until recently, fascia has been vastly overlooked as a system of the body until Thomas W. Myers and his book “Anatomy Trains” came out that has given its due. Simply put, fascia is the biological fabric that holds our bodies together. In fact, your body is made up of 70 trillion cells, all humming, vibrating, and resonating in relative harmony encased by fascia.
However one may define fascia, it is everywhere within the human body. Birth to death and micro to macro. Listen to this quote by Ida Rolf to fully understand the importance of fascia: “Fascia is the organ of posture. Nobody ever says this; all the talk is about muscles. Yet this is a very important concept, and because this is so important, we as Rolfers understand both the anatomy and physiology, but especially the anatomy of fascia. The body is a web of fascia. A spiderweb is in a plane. This web is in a sphere. We can trace the lines of that web to get an understanding of how what we see in a body works. For example, why, when we work with superficial fascia does this change the tone of the fascia as a whole.”
Fascia indeed is one network both anatomically and embryologically providing the unity, the integration of the human, physical body. But more importantly, it is the conduit, the fiber optics for the movement of energy. The movement of energy within our bodies as well as the movement of energy from the universe outside of our bodies.
The fascial system actually starts about two weeks into human development as a fibrous gel that pervades and surrounds all cells within the developing embryo with its center being at the physical body’s center of gravity around or near one’s umbilicus. From there, it progressively develops into complex layers of fascia in an adult. In fact, there is no discontinuity in the layers of fascia going from the deepest which is the dura of the central nervous system to the most superficial just below the dermis of the skin.
Unfortunately, human anatomy atlases and kinesiology texts tend to reduce the human, physical body down into Newtonian biomechanics of forces, vectors, and levers as if we are just machines with parts. This is a very limited viewpoint explaining only some behaviors of our bodies while obscuring others. Einstein’s relativity, fractal mathematics, synergistic system’s theory, and tensegrity geometry as applied to biological systems is now transforming how we see the human body today.
To explain the importance of fascia and our energy body, I want to share my personal story. As I have mentioned in the past, I have dysfunctional knees causing me intermittent pain from the years as a competitive ski jumper and the falls I experienced while training and competing. Over the years, I have tried to manage my knee dysfunction and pain with exercise focusing on my strength, endurance, flexibility, and alignment by working with the neuromuscular system that affects the joints, tendons, and ligaments. Because of the integrative nature of the physical body, I was also indirectly affecting the fascial system. That is, until I started to learn Tai Chi Chih that would directly affect my fascial system.
Tai Chi Chih is the work of Justin Stone, someone who practiced and taught for many years Tai Chi Chuan which is a martial arts system. Over the years, Justin realized that Tai Chi Chuan was just too difficult for most people to learn. However, he strongly believed in the benefits of the ancient yin-yang system of energy and having observed for himself the gains from the circulation and balancing of “chi”, he developed Tai Chi Chih from the principles of Tai Chi Chuan in 1974 while living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He reduced Tai Chi Chih down to one pose and nineteen movements to generate, circulate, and balance “chi,” the life energy.
Recently, I started instruction in Tai Chi Chih with the ultimate goal of rehabilitating my dysfunctional knees and hopefully avoid future surgical intervention. While learning the initial movements, I noticed that both my knees were cracking and popping more than usual and at times causing more pain. When I was working with the neuromuscular system, my symptoms were different than what I was now experiencing working directly with the fascia through the Tai Chi Chih movements.
Being the analytical person that I am, I started to look for answers on why this was happening. I came to realization that the focus of Tai Chi Chih as well as with Tai Chi, and Qi Gong is on the fascial and energy systems of the body more than the neuromuscular system.
In watching the videos produced by Justin Stone, I remember him always stressing to take the “effort” out of the movement. In short, I understood it as dampening the muscle activity that occurs with each movement. Coming from my athletic background where muscle activity dominated, that was difficult for me. After all, we are taught that human movement is the product of muscle contraction and force.
With the Tai Chi Chih movements, there is a fluidity of movement. A flow that can only come from dampening the force production and work of the muscles in movement by utilizing the integrated tension and control of the fascial system. Have you ever watched a great athlete or a dancer perform their skill with what seems like no effort. Their movements are so fluid and as Justin Stone describes there is “Joy” in their movements. I feel this is because they have been able to tap into the balance of tension provided by their neuromuscular and fascial systems. More importantly by achieving balance between these two systems of posture and movement, they have balanced the flow of their life energy, “chi.”
I am now in about my seventh session of my Tai Chi Chih instruction and happy to report things are changing. I am no longer experiencing the intensity of popping and cracking and the pain is gradually diminishing. I think by working more directly with the fascial system in Tai Chi Chih, some of the fluidity of movement that I have lost because of the compensation stemming from my dysfunctional knees is returning. In that regard, it is truly bringing the “Joy” back to my movements.
Isn’t it time you started to recognize and work with your “energy” body? If you are interested in Tai Chi Chih instruction, call the Tai Chi Chih Center here in Albuquerque at 505-299-2095 or check out their website at taichichihassociation.org. Also starting in January, Ann Rutherford, will begin instruction of a Beginning Tai Chi Chih class. She can be reached at 505-292-5114.
Terry Kern, P.T.