Stop a moment to consider the importance of energy. Everything is energy. It affects how you think, how you feel, how you interact with others, and how you manage your entire life. When you have more energy and when your body is energetically tuned-up, you are positioned to enjoy your life and tackle any challenges that might arise.

Some interesting principles of energy include:

• Energy wants to move and needs space to move
• Energy moves in patterns
• Energy forms habits and can be repatterned to form healthier habits
• Energy has priorities, and these priorities are consistent
• Energy is affected by thoughts, the environment, and the people we come into contact with

The great news is that there are ways of working with your energy so that you and your body’s energies are working for you instead of against you. You can become more focused/less distracted, you can change habits, you can improve your mood, and so much more.

One way to work with energy is through an Energy Medicine Yoga® practice. Energy Medicine Yoga is an integrative practice, uniting the ancient healing methods of energy medicine (updated and revised through the work of Donna Eden) and the time-honored tradition of yoga.  This magical union works to align and balance the body’s nine energy systems that form the foundation of our health. 

Classic yoga postures are interwoven with ancient traditional healing modalities including working with the meridian system, tapping, self-massage, holds to calm and regulate the body’s stress responses, and much more.  These techniques are your gateway to communicating with the body in its own language, activating its natural healing intelligence.  By focusing on your body as pure energy, you are empowered to transform and flow through life radiant and vibrant.     

Each EMYoga class starts with a practice called the Wake Up. The Wake Up helps get the energies of your body moving forward and crossing over—the two most important directions of energy in the body. You can do this practice every day, just by itself, to start to feel how energy works in the body. In the EMYoga class, it is practiced at the beginning to enhance the rest of the asana practice. 

The Wake Up consists of the Four Thumps, Silence, Cross Crawl, the Zip Up, and the Hook Up. While that might sound a little weird to you if you haven’t ever practiced energy medicine, here is a video for you to give it a try.  The Wake Up only takes 3 – 4 minutes and should be done daily for best results. 

If you’d like to dive a little deeper, join me every Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. for an in person EMYoga class at alleyCat Yoga Center through May 17. You will leave you feeling refreshed and renewed. 

Since alleyCat Yoga is closing after May 20 and I will be out of town from May 22 – June 12, there will be a little break in my EMYoga class offering. But I will be starting a hybrid class (in person and online) starting Wednesday, June 14. I will be fresh off a four-day Energy Medicine training in Asheville, NC, so I will be full of great new information and excitement for these healing practices. Let me know if you’d like to be put on my email list for that class.

Check out the new Energy Medicine page on my website with resources like the Wake Up, a link to Lauren Walker’s books on Energy Medicine Yoga and her other resources, as well as a couple of Five Element Personality quizzes that you can take to learn more about your own primary and secondary elements.

Learning about your elements can give you a deeper understanding of your body, emotions, mental capacities, and motivations.  Even though I am a psychologist, the five elements help me empathize with the various personality traits that people exhibit when I see them through the lens of the five elements. Most strikingly, I began to understand the main reason why my husband and I would get into a conflict. Now that we see what’s happening, we both just laugh about it.

“If you want to affect the physical matter that is your body and the invisible matter that is your mind and your soul,” says Lauren Walker, “the most effective practice you can learn is how to work with your own energy.”