Photo by Jaap Buijs CreativeCommons

What Your Doctor Won’t Tell You:

The 6 Secrets of Energy Medicine
Jed Diamond, Ph.D. has been a health-care professional for the last
45 years. He is the author of 9 books, including Looking for Love in
All the Wrong Places, Male Menopause, The Irritable Male
Syndrome, and Mr. Mean: Saving Your Relationship from the
Irritable Male Syndrome . He offers counseling to men, women, and
couples in his office in California or by phone with people throughout
the U.S. and around the world. To receive a Free E-book on Men’s
Health and a free subscription to Jed’s e-newsletter go to
www.MenAlive.com.

I wrote an article recently called Energy Medicine for Men: The

Ultimate Power Tool for Guys Who Want Their Lives to Work. Here
is more about Energy Medicine and how you can use it in your life.

I graduated from U.C. Santa Barbara and began medical school at

U.C. San Francisco in 1965. My desire to help people goes back as
far as I can remember. I’m sure it’s related to the fact that my father
tried to commit suicide when I was 5 years old. I felt responsible. My
father became increasingly depressed when he couldn’t find work
and he was unable to support the family. In my childhood mind, I
thought “if I hadn’t been born, he wouldn’t have a family to support
and therefore I must be responsible for his wanting to end his life.”

I became a psychotherapist, in some ways, to work out my guilt

feelings and to find out what goes on in a person’s mind that would
induce them to kill themselves. In a broader sense I wanted to
understand why men are the way they are (and hence women are the
way they are) and if there is any way we can learn to live happily ever
after.

I don’t have the answers yet, but I’ve been enjoying the journey.
Medicine and the healing arts have changed a great deal since I
began learning about them in 1965. But you aren’t likely to hear
about information from your family doctor or from the
medical/pharmaceutical complex of which he (or increasingly, she) is
a part.

The Wizard of Oz: A Doctor Named Mehmet Bridges East and West

Most people have seen the smiling Dr. Oz on the Oprah Winfrey
show or on his own T.V. program The Dr. Oz Show. He is
personable, caring, and perfectly bridges the East and the West.

Mehmet Cengiz Oz was born June 11, 1960 in Cleveland, Ohio to

Turkish parents Suna and Mustafa who had immigrated from Konya,
Turkey. Dr. Oz is fluent in both English and Turkish and is a holder of
both Turkish and American citizenship. His academic credentials are
impeccable. In 1982 he received his undergraduate degree from
Harvard University and in 1986, he obtained a joint M.D. and MBA
degree from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and
The Wharton School.

He has authored six New York Times best sellers including You:
The Owner’s Manual, You: The Smart Patient, YOU: On a Diet, YOU:
Staying Young, YOU: Being Beautiful as well as the award winning
Healing from the Heart.

However, he’s not just an engaging television personality and well

read author. He is Vice-Chair and Professor of Surgery at Columbia
University. He directs the Cardiovascular Institute and performs
around 250 heart operations annually. He also heads the
Complementary Medicine Program at New York-Presbyterian
Hospital.

"Alternative medicine needs to deal with the body's energy—

something that traditional Western medicine generally does not,” says
Dr. Oz. “We're beginning now to understand things that we know in
our hearts are true but we could never measure. As we get better at
understanding how little we know about the body, we begin to realize
that the next big frontier in medicine is energy medicine. It's not the
mechanistic part of the joints moving. It's not the chemistry of our
body. It's understanding for the first time how energy influences how
we feel."
 Dr. Oz practices what he preaches. At New York Presbyterian
Hospital/Columbia Medical Center, every patient recovering from
heart surgery is offered massage therapy and cranial touch therapy
thanks to Oz's advocacy. The goal is to stimulate the flow of energy
in hopes that something from Eastern medicine can make a
difference in the West. "I think that we're beginning to globalize
medicine now," Oz said. "You have to take Eastern approaches and
bring them to the West, and share West with the East."

What is Energy Medicine?

Energy medicine is one of the domains of “complementary and

alternative medicine” (CAM) identified by the National Center for
Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) which is part of
the National Institutes of Health.

Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is a group of

diverse medical and health care systems, practices, and products
that are not generally considered to be part of conventional medicine.

• Complementary medicine is used together with conventional

medicine. An example of a complementary therapy is using
aromatherapy to help lessen a patient’s discomfort following
surgery.

• Alternative medicine is used in place of conventional

medicine. An example of an alternative therapy is using a
special diet to treat cancer instead of undergoing surgery,
radiation, or chemotherapy that has been recommended by a
conventional doctor.

Two of the pioneers in Energy Medicine, David Feinstein, Ph.D.

and Donna Eden offer a good summary of this emerging field in a
recent article, Six Pillars of Energy Medicine: Clinical Strengths of a
Complementary Paradigm:

“While energy medicine is still a microdot on the health care

landscape in terms of utilization, public recognition, and the economic
resources allocated to its development, Norman Shealy, M.D., the
founding president of the American Holistic Medical Association, has
predicted based on striking clinical and emerging scientific findings
that ‘energy medicine is the future of medicine.’

“Energy medicine is based on the supposition that illness results

from disturbances in the body’s energies and energy fields and can
be addressed via interventions into those energies and energy fields.

“It is one of five domains of "complementary and alternative

medicine" identified by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), with
others including biologically based practices (such as the ingestion of
herbs, vitamins, minerals, and amino acids), manipulative and body-
based practices (such as chiropractic, osteopathy, massage, rolfing,
and reflexology), and mind-body medicine (such as hypnosis, visual
imagery, meditation, and biofeedback). NIH also recognizes whole
medical systems, which may incorporate elements of the above, such
as traditional Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic medicine, naturopathy,
homeopathy, and various indigenous healing traditions.”

The Six Pillars of Energy Medicine.

Feinstein and Eden go on to describe the 6 pillars of energy

medicine. Conventional medicine, at its foundation, focuses on the
biochemistry of cells, tissue, and organs. Energy medicine, at its
foundation, focuses on the fields that organize and control the growth
and repair of cells, tissues, and organs, and on ways of influencing
those fields.

This affords energy medicine several strengths in comparison with

the conventional medical model. Six of these strengths can, in fact,
be thought of as the pillars that establish energy medicine as a
significant development in health care. Table 1 provides an overview
of these six pillars, the premises that support them, and an example
for each of how its strength might be utilized in a clinical situation.
Table 1
Six Pillars of Energy Medicine (EM)

Pillar Premise Practice

1. REACH: EM optimizes the Disturbances in the
EM can address energies that energy flow of a patient
biological processes surround, permeate, with multiple sclerosis
at their energetic and support body can be corrected by
foundations so is structure (e.g., cells, holding, tapping, or
able to impact the organs, blood, lymph) massaging specific
full spectrum of and body function energy points, bringing
physical conditions (e.g., immunity, about changes in the
respiration, disease process rather
cardiovascular). EM than the symptom
methods also suppression of most
influence gene MS treatments.
expression.

2. EFFICIENCY: EM techniques Balancing and

EM regulates address systemic as strengthening the
biological processes well as specific energies that surround
with precision, disease factors, send and permeate the heart
speed, and flexibility signals that are of a post-coronary
hundreds of times patient leads to an
faster than chemical internal environment
signals, and provide that better supports
instant feedback to healing and repair.
the practitioner so
interventions can be
adjusted for intended
outcomes.
3. PRACTICALITY: EM utilizes specific Assessing disturbances
EM fosters healing movements, postures, in the energy flow to
and prevents illness and hands-on the kidneys of a patient
with methods that approaches that do with renal failure allows
can be readily, not require high-tech interventions that are
economically, and equipment and do not more flexible and
non-invasively result in unintended precise than
applied side-effects. medication or surgery
and can be used
preventively,
circumventing damage
to a vulnerable organ.

4. PATIENT EM procedures can Cirrhosis patients can

EMPOWERMENT: be self-administered on a daily basis utilize
EM includes to assess systems techniques that
methods that can be that are out of balance the energies
utilized on an at- balance, implement that impact the liver
home, self-help corrective actions, and and enhance its ability
basis, fostering a build resilient energy to heal.
stronger patient and patterns throughout
practitioner the body.
partnership in the
healing process
5. QUANTUM EM explores fields Cancer patients can be
COMPATIBILITY: that influence shown how the
EM adopts non- consciousness and energies of their
linear concepts work over a distance thoughts and imagery
consistent with ("macroscopic affect their healing, and
distant healing, the quantum they can be taught
healing impact of interactions"), techniques which
prayer, and the role postulating why engage the healing
of intention in intention and power of focused
healing expectation have intention.
salient outcomes, as
illustrated in the
placebo effect and
distant healing.

6. HOLISTIC EM is based on the Ulcerative colitis

ORIENTATION: principle that the patients can be shown
EM strengthens the body, mind, and spirit how psychological
integration of body, are integrally conflicts may
mind, and spirit, connected, and it exacerbate their
leading not only to a promotes their symptoms and can be
focus on healing, harmonious provided therapies
but to achieving integration. which quickly alter the
greater well-being, energetic foundations
peace, and passion of those conflicts.
for life

Feinstein and Eden conclude by asking, “What does this disregard

for the role of energy in regulating biological processes mean for
contemporary medicine?”

It means more invasive procedures that are at the same time less
able to target underlying causal mechanisms and less able to affect,
with precision, the mechanisms it can influence. For instance, when
electromagnetic imbalances stimulate the body to produce a chemical
to restore balance, such as estrogen or progesterone, the chemical is
produced in the precise quantities needed and only where needed.
 Energy interventions designed to produce more estrogen or
progesterone produce electromagnetic signals that cause the body to
create the needed hormone using its own natural mechanisms. When
medications enter the bloodstream, on the other hand, their dosage is
based on averages and guesswork, and they travel to and impact
parts of the body that are not intended, resulting for instance in the
disastrous increases in heart disease, strokes, and breast cancer
among women who have undergone hormone replacement therapy.

Blandly called "side effects," between 100,000 and 300,000 people

in the United States die each year from medications taken as
prescribed, and unintended effects of medical treatment are by some
estimates our leading cause of death. A team that surveyed
government health statistics over the past decade concluded, "When
the number one killer in a society is the health care system, then that
system has no excuse except to address its own urgent shortcomings
. . . beginning at its very foundations."

For more information about Energy Medicine and the work of

David Feinstein and Donna Eden, visit them at:

Energy Medicine with Donna Eden--

http://www.innersource.net/em/

Energy Psychology with David Feinstein—

http://www.innersource.net/ep/

To learn more about my work:

www.MenAlive.com