What is Energy?

Recently I was in one of my classes and the topic was energy. My teacher asked us "what is energy?" I thought this should be a cinch for me to answer... After all I studied computer engineering for 4 years including classes in physics, chemistry and electrical engineering. As I listened to my teacher, I was amazed to discover what I did and did not know about energy.

According to the dictionary, energy is "a fundamental entity of nature that is transferred between parts of a system in the production of physical change within the system and usually regarded as the capacity for doing work."^[1] In other words it can get transferred and it can do work. So that's what energy can do, but what IS it?

There are different forms of energy including radiant, chemical, thermal, mechanical (kinetic or potential), electric, nuclear and electromagnetic. Energy can be changed from one form into another. So that's where energy can be found or what it can look like, but what IS it?

Then there's the famous E=mc². Almost everyone can spout out the formula but considerably fewer people actually know what it means. Without actually describing the formula itself, it basically explains how all matter (matter = anything that takes up space) is just a form of energy. Energy is energy and matter is energy... everything is energy. So everything is energy, but what IS it?

I'm not really here to give you any answers on this point, but to get you thinking about energy. As "good" as science is, it doesn't have all the answers in this area. There may be forms of energy we haven't quite figured out how to measure yet. Sometimes when people hear about energy healing they get scared; but if on some level everything is energy, then healing on an energetic level makes some sort of sense. The universe of energy is only beginning to be discovered and I can't wait to see where it leads us!

[1] Merriam-Webster, s.v. "Energy," http://www.merriam-webster.com/ (accessed March 27, 2011).

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Body Scanning: Learn About your Body

It's amazing how little most of us are aware of our bodies! As you sit reading this right now, can you list every part of your body that is holding tension? Unless you have a lot of practice paying attention to your body, I bet you would miss a few spots.

Body scanning is the practice of paying attention to your body. I prefer to start at my head and work my way down, but you could also start at your feet and work your way up. Pay attention to every muscle group as you go: forehead, eyes, cheeks, jaw, neck, shoulders, upper back, and so on and so on. As you pay focus on each muscle group, notice how it feels. Is it tense, relaxed, somewhere in the middle? Do you feel any pain there? If you want to relax the muscle group, take a deep breath and imagine the stress and tension leaving the area.

What can just paying attention do for you? Well, it's a matter of self-awareness and learning to relax more fully. For one, the time you spend paying attention to your body is time you aren't worrying about what you have to do for the rest of the day or that your socks didn't match today. Over time, if you continue to practice body scanning, you will more easily be able to identify stress in your body and when you might need some relaxation. Believe it or not, the benefits might eventually extend past relaxation. Becoming more knowledgeable about your body, you will be more aware of the things in your life that serve your body and those that don't.

If you want to go one step further with body scanning, you can engage in Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR) where you intentionally relax every set of muscles as you are bringing awareness to them. If you find that you are easily distracted and can't complete a body scan, you can find recordings that will help guide you through the exercise. If you want to do it for free or like things a little more personalized, write up a script, put some soothing music on and record a friend reading your script.

If you are experiencing challenges, you can see a holistic health practitioner to help you through the process. Body scanning can help you relax the very first time you try it and can help you become more aware of yourself as you continue to practice regularly.

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Emotional Sensitivity

I don't remember a lot of details about my childhood, but I do remember that other kids used to call me a "baby." Unfortunately, those experiences affected me a lot, to the point that when I was 12 years old I decided that the best way to keep moving with the world would be to become emotionless. Unaware of what kind of consequences I would be bringing onto myself, I prayed for lack of emotion.

Now I understand emotion a little better. While I may have looked like a baby to some, I was really just emotionally sensitive and without the tools I needed to deal with it. What does that mean, emotional sensitivity? I'm finding it difficult to find an actual definition, but as I see it emotional sensitivity involves how strongly your emotions feel to you. Everyone's experience of emotion is different which can make this concept a little harder to understand. If an emotion is a reaction to a thought, one person's reaction may be very strong and another person's reaction less so. Emotional reactions are probably a factor of physiology (differences from brain to brain), as well as psychology and environment (life experiences change the way we experience emotion), and even energetic (everyone's sensitivity to energy is different).

So what does emotional sensitivity look like? Some people may cry over what seems like nothing to those who are less sensitive, others may use anger to compensate, and there are any number of other possible reactions. Some emotionally sensitive people not only react strongly to their own emotions but are strongly affected by the emotions of others. It may be more difficult for sensitive people to handle criticism. Sometimes emotional sensitivity comes along with other types of sensitivity: sensitivity to loud noise, to crowds, to strong tastes and smells, to physical textures, etc.

An adult equivalent to calling someone a baby is calling them oversensitive. It's not easy (or perhaps even advisable) to try to reduce your level of emotional sensitivity. In my opinion, it's more realistic to learn to appreciate and deal with your particular emotional sensitivity. Take note of all the ways that you are sensitive to things. Then you might be able to find ways to cope with each sensitivity in a unique and creative way. Visualization techniques, flower essences, journal-writing, prayer and Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) are just a few of the tools emotionally sensitive people can use.

Though it may be hard for some people to believe, emotional sensitivity can be a gift. Used wisely it can help you learn about your environment and even help you help other people. The key is learning how to accept and deal with your emotions appropriately. Do you think you are emotionally sensitive?

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Unconscious Mind: Friend or Foe?

Do you remember how hard it was to drive the very first time you got into the driver's seat? Then, years later, you don't even think about driving. Think of the expression "it's like riding a bicycle." Even if you haven't ridden a bicycle in years, you still know how to do it. Imagine how much harder life would be if you had to consciously remember how to do everything from throwing a baseball to even walking!

All those things you learn so well but don't forget live in your unconscious mind (see my previous post on the basics of the conscious and unconscious mind). How do these things get into your unconscious mind? Well, basically conscious repetition and practice. After seeing something enough times, your unconscious basically says: "OK, I got it... I can take it from here!" And your unconscious doesn't only pick up physical duties, but mental ones as well. While part of driving is about how to move your hands and feet and when, another part that your unconscious helps you with is mental tasks such as remembering how far you like to stay behind another vehicle and what certain signs mean to you.

Knowing all that, you could say that your unconscious mind is your best friend! But beware: your best friend has a shadow side! Useful, happy things like sports, driving, and sudoku puzzles are not the only things people tend to practice over and over again. Maybe when you are a little kid, someone you trust calls you useless. You think about it and since you're sure this person knows more than you do, you start to think of yourself as useless. Day after day, you think "I'm useless..." and day after day, your unconscious is listening. Eventually, you grow a little wiser and you eventually decide that you are useful for something after all. You start trying to take better care of yourself but something seems to be holding you back. You say to yourself "I'm useful!" Well, your unconscious mind takes note - Useful:1, useless:4,579. The unconscious mind can't tell the difference between what the conscious mind thinks is good or bad, but it can keep track of how often throughout your life you have thought something and how thoroughly you believed that thought.

This unconscious help applies to physical addictions as well. For a smoker, not only does the body physically want cigarettes, the unconscious mind has been programmed that the thing to do when stress is detected is to pick up that cigarette. Same goes for food addictions: if your grandmother made you chocolate chip cookies every time you were sad, your unconscious might help you develop a sugar craving whenever you feel bad.

So what's the significance of all this? For one, it means that it's wise to be conscious of what you say, think, and do. But there's no reason to panic: it will probably take time for your unconscious mind to help you pay attention to your thoughts. There are also several practices out there that can help you change your unconscious mental patterns without just repeatedly thinking something over and over again (and that works best when you really believe what you're thinking). Once again, I'll cover those another time!

Are you aware of the ways that your unconscious mind is "sabotaging" your life?

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Breathe for Life

When I used to work as a computer programmer, I would sometimes sit at my desk for hours at a time, concentrating so strongly and keeping so busy that I would barely be breathing. With all that I know now about health, I'm not only not surprised that I was sick and tired all the time, I'm not sure how I wasn't even more ill!

Most people in North America breathe from the upper chest area, rather than from the belly, which is the way we breathe as small children.^[1] This shallow chest breathing can result in something called overbreathing, which in turn causes a pH imbalance in the body, which can lead to a number of problems.^[2] Immediate problems caused by bad breathing include changes in heart rate, anxiety, fatigue, headache, dry mouth, attention deficit, trembling, sense of disconnectedness, muscle spasms, and many, many more.^[2] More prolonged bad breathing can contribute to ADD and ADHD, memory issues, anger, performance anxiety, panic attacks, depression, generalized anxiety, burnout, hypertension, migraines, irritable bowel syndrome, sleep disturbances, and so on and so on.^[2] You could say that bad breathing is just plain bad for your health.

So what does it take to turn bad breathing into good breathing? There are many different breathing exercises that can help, but the simplest one is to spend a little time every day paying attention to your breathing and re-learning how to breathe from your belly. This is often called diaphragmatic breathing.^[1]

Learning proper breathing is one of the easiest things you can do to improve your health without spending any money. It will probably be beneficial too! Then again, if you do want to spend a little money to get a little help, most holistic health practitioners would be able to help you.

Just remember, breathe deeply and slowly from the belly. It's great for your health!

[1] Brian Luke Seaward. Managing Stress: Principles and Strategies for Health and Well-Being (5th ed.) (Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett Publishers, 2006).
[2] Peter M. Litchfield. Good Breathing, Bad Breathing, 2006. Accessed February 23, 2011 from http://www.bp.edu/Good and Bad Breathing.pdf
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