The basic notion here is that human beings are multidimensional organisms, not simply pieces of physical machinery. We possess a gross physical anat-omy, as well as a subtle energetic anatomy. The former is dissected in the pathology lab, the latter in the meditation retreat. In the yogic version of this concept, these levels of vibrational structure are called koshas, sheaths.3 The physical body is called the food sheath, because it is composed of rearranged food components. This name is in itself a quite powerful reframing of our beliefs about who we really are. You'e not what you eat. Your physical body is what you eat, but you are more than just a physical body. The next most subtle layer is called the energy or breath sheath (pranamaya kosha) because it is composed of an organized network of prana energy derived from our breath. Though most ordinary people are not able to directly perceive this sheath, it is considered in Yoga to be nearly as dense as the physical body itself. Then there is the layer of emotions (known in the West as the astral body), and then a layer of thoughts (the mental body), and finally the highest frequency layer of spiritual essence (the causal body, or soul).
Chinese medicine tends to focus primarily on the pranic sheath, the densest of these subtle layers. It manipulates the prana or qi (also spelled chi) via acupuncture needles to help this energy flow freely through the body's distribution network that we know as the acupuncture meridians.
Tai chi (movement) and qi gong (imagery) are other major methods of enhancing this energy flow. Both are clearly trance-like in nature, as practi-tioners become absorbed in a state of complete internal focus. Yoga philos-ophy also recognizes these same meridians (calling them nadis), and cleanses them through specialized breathing techniques and imagery meditations which focus and direct the flow of energy to desired regions of the body.
This breath technology will be discussed further in Chapter 6; it can directly alter hemispheric activation patterns and induce trance phenomena nonver-bally simply by regulating the flow of prana.
By analogy, we could use the language of physics to say that human beings are composed of several layers of varying density. Just as H20 can
exist as a solid (ice), a liquid (water), or a gas (steam), depending on the rate of thermal vibration of its H20 molecules, so our physical bodies are con-densed and solid in nature, while our emotional and mental bodies are more liquefied, and our purest spiritual awareness is vapor-like and insubstantial.
But all three dimensions are still different forms of the same underlying element: pure consciousness.
In India more than China, great importance was also placed on the major distribution centers within this network of nested energy bodies. These energy centers were called chakras, or wheels, and are involved with the absorption, transformation, and distribution of this universal pranic energy.
Their locations have been systematized over the centuries only on the basis of meditative experiences and introspection, since no gross anatomical dis-section was allowed in the Hindu tradition. Western physicians have only recently discovered a series of striking correspondences between the location of these subjective energy centers and the anatomic structures known as endocrine glands.4
The small ductless endocrine glands, seem to be exact parallels in struc-ture and function to the chakras, and may serve as the transducers which take life energy of varying frequencies and convert it into biochemical signals of the appropriate order (i.e., the hormone products that are made by each endocrine gland). The accompanying chart (Figure 3.1) shows some of the correspondences between endocrine gland, hormone product, energy center, and dominant emotional frequency. Again, the multidimensional nature of this spectrum is key.
Figure 3.1 Energy center correspondences.
It is amazing that introspection was accurate enough to assign these seven centers to the same bodily locations that medieval anatomists discov-ered centuries later. Even the location of several endocrine glands whose functions were considered mysterious if not vestigial until recently (the pineal gland and the thymus) fits in cleanly with the chakra model. But even more intriguing is the notion that a psychospiritual function is asso-ciated with each center, in a hierarchy from the lower centers (which deal
with physical survival) to the higher centers (which modulate refined emo-tions like love and bliss). Again, there is the sense that each major emotion has an energetic frequency: the lower or coarser emotions of selfishness have a lower vibration than the selfless ones of truth and love. That is why colors have also been assigned to each center in Figure 3.1, as another way of reinforcing the spectrum or continuum view of consciousness: a range of vibrational frequencies running from pure unitary consciousness to dense physical matter. Einstein's e = mc2 becomes the mathematical restatement of this interconvertibility of spiritual energy and matter.
Some of the recently discovered biochemical functions of the endocrine glands are eerily reminiscent of the ancient mystical functions ascribed to the chakras. These functional correspondences actually help to validate the chakra model by being so statistically unlikely. For example, it is not difficult to ascribe sexual feelings to the genital areas, as even the most non-introspective person has felt the rush of erotic life energy to this area during times of arousal. Why, though, is it so common to describe the sensation of sudden insight as a light bulb going off inside one's head; why is an upsurge of love felt behind the sternum; why is fear felt as butterflies in the stomach? The heart beats faster in fear, therefore a simple somatic referent would locate fear to the heart, too.
I believe that these linguistic idioms contain a deep proprioceptive wis-dom because they capture subtle but commonplace energetic experiences that corroborate the chakra map. The image of a light bulb of intuition is the modern description of the opening of the mystic third eye; heartwarming love is the 4th chakra opening; butterflies in the stomach area is a sudden rush of 3rd chakra energy for personal power.
And consider the biologic functions of each center. Personal power is collected in the gut (the hara, in martial arts), just as pancreatic insulin from this same solar plexus area helps us to collect the glucose that biochemically fuels all our physical actions. Adrenaline's fight or flight survival reaction is triggered by activation of a root chakra that generates energy for physical survival. The mystic enlightenment that comes with an open crown chakra parallels recent work on circadian rhythms: the pineal gland is now known to translate day/night sunlight rhythms into hormone fluctuations, and there-fore links each individual to the rhythms of the solar system, just as the ancients took enlightenment to be a merger of the individual with the universe.
This detailed outline of subtle anatomy has not been a detour from our original topic since it underlies both energy healing and hypnosis by explaining their mechanism of action. But in order to connect these two therapies by an energy-based mechanism, we need to propose a method of energy transfer. For that, we turn to the coupled oscillation of two vibrating objects: resonance. A familiar example is how one tuning fork will vibrate in sympathy with another struck fork; an open guitar string vibrates in response to a sung musical note of the same pitch or frequency. Our lan-guage even has many idiomatic expressions for a similar kind of resonance between feelings or thoughts: an idea rings a bell, a person has a nice vibe, two people are on the same wavelength, a stranger's entreaty can strike a
sympathetic chord. We all know the resonance process by which emotions are spread: a conference room can be contaminated by the anger of one forceful member, laughter is contagious, and a group can rise to the heights of an inspirational leader. These images all "ring true" because they reflect our unconscious understanding that awareness is a field of resonant energy.
Significantly, vibratory frequencies can also be carried by physical struc-tures in the body. Some cellular components (i.e., intracellular microtubules) actually look like tiny resonant tuning forks, while some tissue structures (i.e., the bone matrix and the collagen in connective fascia) have an electrical and crystalline nature that can transmit resonant frequencies. Researchers have even postulated that bones function via piezo-electricity,5 much like a crystal radio set that converts the physical micromovements of sound waves into electromagnetic waves by its piezo-electric crystals. Similarly, when a person walks, the mechanical strain on the bones causes the hydroxy-apatite biocrystals in the bony matrix to transmit tiny electrical currents. These microcurrents then function as informational signals that regulate the bone's growth and structural formation. In a similar way, each region of the body will electromagnetically resonate at the frequency of its nearest chakra, the overall keynote for each bodily region.
A diseased organ may become uncoupled from its healthy natural main-tenance frequency in many ways: by exposure to toxins, stress (for example, the low frequency vibration of constant fear), poor nutrition, etc. But an organ can become healthy again if it is exposed to the matrix energy of a healthy organ. This does not mean that an ailing stomach can be healed by placing it near a healthy one. Rather, if the stomach's energy blueprint can be re-primed to vibrate at the proper energetic frequency, then the physical outgrowth or manifestation of this subtle energy field will be a newly healthy organ. Remember that the physical structures of the body are believed to be the solid precipitation of matter in alignment with the subtle organizing electromagnetic fields,6 just as the iron filings aligned with the bar magnet's lines of force in a school science lab. Rupert Sheldrake's abstract notion of preformative morphogenetic fields may have their physical foundation in this type of biomagnetism.7
Thus, if the body's electromagnetic energy field becomes disordered, the correlated organ will soon follow suit and manifest a physical disease. This might explain the claim that the onset of physical illness can be predicted by antecedent change in the energy aura, detected by Kirlian photography or clairvoyant perception. If energy really does follow thought, as the mystics say, then no one will be surprised to learn that most diseases can have emotional roots, since negative emotions block the full force of broad spec-trum life energy. Energy healing can be seen as a process in which the healer brings about sympathetic resonance b e t w e e n his o w n finely t u n e d b o d y / m i n d energetic system and that of the patient. The healer himself becomes the instrument of healing. And one of the most important steps that can enhance this resonant energy exchange between two people is the state of focused attentiveness we call hypnosis.