Post 7: Energy and Flow — The Two Currents of Life
Energy is not an abstract idea. You feel it every day. The rush of excitement in your chest, the heaviness in your gut when you’re afraid, the tingling in your skin when you know you’re safe, the magnetic pull of love, the electric charge of anger. Energy is the language beneath all others. Before words, before thought, life moves through currents that we sense as vibration, warmth, tightness, openness, or flow. The ancients mapped these experiences as rivers of force within the body, and today science is beginning to catch up.
When we speak of energy, two primal qualities keep appearing across cultures: the electrical and the magnetic, the outgoing and the incoming, the activating and the receptive. In Vedic sources, these are iḍā and piṅgalā nāḍīs — lunar and solar channels that spiral along the spine, weaving balance into the central column. In Chinese medicine they are yin and yang, two halves of one current. Indigenous traditions speak of Earth and Sky, contraction and expansion, fire and water. These are not distant metaphors; they are ways of describing what we feel inside ourselves when balance is present — or missing.
Ancient wisdom: rivers of current
Vedic and Tantric texts describe 72,000 nāḍīs, subtle channels for prāṇa, the vital force. Among them, iḍā (cooling, lunar, magnetic) and piṅgalā (heating, solar, electric) are emphasized. When both are balanced, energy flows into the central channel, and awareness opens.
In Daoist practice, qi circulates through meridians, harmonizing yin and yang. Practices like qigong and tai chi refine perception until practitioners can feel qi moving as tingling, heat, or waves through the body.
Sufi mystics describe the lataif, subtle centers in the chest, brow, and crown. Their awakening was experienced as shifts in feeling — sweetness, lightness, or expansion in the heart.
Indigenous peoples speak of mana, wakan tanka, or other names for life force, often experienced as vibration in the land, in breath, and in the body itself.
Across cultures, the teaching is consistent: energy is real because it is felt. Balance is known not in theory, but in experience.
Modern science: rediscovering the electric and magnetic body
What the ancients described through sensation, modern research is beginning to validate:
Bioelectric currents: Robert Becker’s The Body Electric showed how small currents guide healing. Patients reported warmth or tingling — the same sensations described in acupuncture and marma work.
Heart as field: HeartMath Institute found the heart generates the strongest electromagnetic field of the body, measurable beyond the skin. People often describe “feeling” someone’s presence before words are spoken — now explained by resonance with the heart’s field.
Fascia and sensation: Research shows fascia is piezoelectric, generating currents when stretched. This explains why yoga postures or bodywork bring both physical release and emotional waves: the tissue itself conducts energy and memory.
Acupuncture and meridians: fMRI scans reveal that stimulating acupoints changes brain activity. Subjectively, patients describe warmth spreading, heaviness lifting, or clarity returning.
Breath and brainwaves: Neuroscience confirms slow nasal breathing regulates brain oscillations, shifting us into calm states. Traditions long said the same: prāṇa is carried by breath, and you can feel the difference between scattered and centered simply by how you breathe.
The polarity of electric and magnetic, iḍā and piṅgalā, yin and yang, sympathetic and parasympathetic — these are not abstractions. They are patterns of felt experience, and science is slowly finding language to describe what people have always known in their bodies.
Many paths to harmonize energy
Healing practices across cultures are ways of feeling energy and restoring flow:
Yoga and Prāṇāyāma: Notice the calm after alternate nostril breathing, the fire of bhastrikā, or the coolness of śītalī — each shifts the felt sense of the body.
Qigong and Tai Chi: Slow, spiraling movement trains awareness until qi is felt as tingling in the hands or waves in the spine.
Acupuncture and Marma therapy: Pressure on a single point can release tears, heat, or deep relaxation — sensations that mark energy moving.
Reiki and touch: Many describe warmth or magnetism flowing through the hands, felt directly on the skin.
Meditation and Prayer: Stillness opens perception to subtle feelings — peace, presence, or expansion.
Nature and Ceremony: Bare feet on the earth, immersion in water, or sitting by fire all bring felt shifts in energy, remembered in the body.
How I work in Sacred Ceremony
I have studied many of these practices and honor the wisdom each carries. In Sacred Ceremony, I listen to the field. Sometimes the current is too electric, sharp and charged. Sometimes it is too magnetic, heavy and binding. I feel where it is, and I absorb and transmute what is stuck so balance can return. The body itself shows what is ready to move.
Ceremony is not about charts or theories. It is about feeling the current directly — warmth leaving, breath deepening, tears releasing, lightness returning. I work both electrically and magnetically, just as traditions have described for millennia. The wisdom is ancient, but in ceremony it is alive and personal.
Closing invitation
Energy is not something to believe in; it is something to feel. The tingling in your hands, the warmth in your chest, the weight that lifts after a deep sigh — these are not random. They are signs of life-force shifting and finding balance. Traditions from India, China, Sufism, and Indigenous peoples named it prāṇa, qi, mana, or wakan tanka. Science now measures it in currents, fields, and waves. But the proof has always been in the body: you know it when you feel it.
If you want to explore this, you might try yoga, qigong, acupuncture, or meditation. Or you may feel called to ceremony, where the currents are met and transformed in a sacred container. However you walk the path, remember that healing is not about learning energy but about feeling it — and letting it flow again.
TW
Further Reading: Key References
Title: The Body Electric
Author: Robert O. Becker
What you’ll learn: How bioelectric currents guide healing, regeneration, and body function.
Why read it: A groundbreaking book showing that the body’s energy fields are central to health and healing.
Amazon
Title: Anatomy Trains
Author: Thomas W. Myers
What you’ll learn: How fascia connects the body in continuous lines, conducting tension, memory, and sensation.
Why read it: Reveals how movement, posture, and touch affect the body’s energetic and structural integrity.
Amazon
Title: Fascia: The Tensional Network of the Human Body
Authors: Robert Schleip, Thomas W. Findley, Leon Chaitow, Peter Huijing (eds.)
What you’ll learn: A comprehensive scientific exploration of fascia as a sensory, adaptive, and electrically active tissue.
Why read it: Offers cutting-edge science connecting fascia to energy, memory, and healing.
Amazon
Title: The Root of Chinese Qigong
Author: Jwing-Ming Yang
What you’ll learn: The theory and practice of qi as understood in Chinese medicine and martial arts.
Why read it: Explains qi flow in clear, practical language, connecting ancient tradition with modern readers.
Amazon
Title: The Web That Has No Weaver
Author: Ted J. Kaptchuk
What you’ll learn: A Western introduction to Chinese medicine, qi, and the philosophy of balance.
Why read it: Accessible and poetic, it helps Western readers understand how Eastern systems view energy and healing.
Amazon
Title: Light on Prāṇāyāma
Author: B.K.S. Iyengar
What you’ll learn: Detailed practices of yogic breathing, including effects on iḍā and piṅgalā nāḍīs.
Why read it: A masterwork on how breath directs prāṇa, the life-force, in the Vedic tradition.
Amazon
Title: Energy Medicine: The Scientific Basis
Author: James L. Oschman
What you’ll learn: A scientific framework for understanding subtle energies, biofields, and healing modalities.
Why read it: Bridges ancient healing practices with modern biophysics.
Amazon
Title: The Root of Yoga
Authors: James Mallinson & Mark Singleton
What you’ll learn: A translation and commentary on key Sanskrit sources describing subtle body practices.
Why read it: Scholarly but accessible, grounding chakra and nāḍī concepts in their earliest contexts.
Amazon
