In Eastern systems of healing, there is a major emphasis on observing and assisting the flow of energy. Illness occurs when there is a blockage, or an imbalance, or a lack of, or too much energy in a certain area. Healing therefore occurs when the blockage is removed, the balance restored, excess released, or insufficiency augmented.
Good health can be described as a condition in which there is an uninterrupted flow of energy throughout the whole body. This is also true for mental and emotional health - the absence of energy patterns that cause stagnation and inhibit the natural freedom of the mind, heart and belly. The causes of physical ailments and energy blockages are often these very same mental and emotional patterns, or negative energies, such as stress, depression, anxiety and other thoughts and feelings that seem to lodge themselves and repeat automatically - our conditioned responses. In yoga philosophy called samskaras, and in Pali, sanskaras. These are conditioned grooves our thoughts and emotions follow.
Every experience we have that has an emotional charge, whether positive or negative, creates a memory. (Strangely, memories feel like home, and we tend to recreate the feelings and relationships that represent them). Some memories remain, and some fade away. Just like a line drawn in water that disappears immediately, some impressions are fleeting. Like a line drawn on the beach sand, some impressions and memories are not there for long, but some are like a line carved in rock, and remain for years or a lifetime. At the end of your day, you might only remember some things that happened to you, and at the end of the week, less. At the end of the month or year, only certain impressions remain, those charged with emotional energy, often ego reactions. After many years, there are some aspects of your childhood that still affect you, and some believe at the end of your life, you will carry with you any impressions or experiences that were the most powerful and that remain in your consciousness.
Emotions that are not expressed or processed, but merely swallowed and suppressed are the dominant cause of energetic cysts, but other compounding causes are environmental toxins (food, air, water), lack of exercise, and bad posture and breathing habits.
If you believe in past lives, (is there a past and a future?), it is then clear that we are born with some “scars”, or karma, that may cause problems, but can be healed or worked through with various forms of energy medicine, massage, meditation, and emotional process work. (Past lives or parallel lives may be one way of experiencing epi-genetic memories of your ancestors or the akashic memories of the human race).
Some might see our personal afflictions as collective or universal burdens that we carry for humanity. (If the individual/separate self does not exist, what is it that re-incarnates? The Buddhist understanding of "emptiness" suggests that one does not have an identity outside of the oneness).
Some who choose to be healers in this life will incarnate into a situation where they are able to experience a disease first hand, via DNA or a toxic family environment. They then become an expert in that field, and once they heal themselves of that disease, (or pattern of abuse or low self-esteem, etc,) they become a healer of that disease. E.g. a person who has never been depressed cannot really help a person who is depressed.
Notwithstanding the fact that we do seem to incarnate with "stuff" to deal with - karmic patterns, we also can be aware of the influences that affect our lives and consciousness from the moment of conception, including the act of conception itself, the gestation period in the womb, (the womb environment, toxins or lack of nutrition, and the emotional and mental state of the mother), and the birth experience itself.
Childhood experiences are fundamentally important in shaping our later lives. Famously the Jesuits proclaimed: give me the child until the age of 7 and I will give you the man. As healers of humans and human society, we should be deeply concerned that children are raised so as not to become mentally and emotionally scarred. The extended family structure of the past and of present indigenous societies are more conducive to children growing up with enough attention and love, often from aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents if per chance one or both of the parents are not able to be present. The modern western-style nuclear family is often deficient in providing the atmosphere of a wider connected society of people who care for one another.
And thus we are dealing with multiple types of "scar tissue", especially mental and emotional, that affect the flow of electro-magnetic energy in our bodies and "light bodies".
Called bio-electricity in some Western studies, Prana in India, Chi in China, Ki in Japan, and many other names in other indigenous cultures, we are talking about the life force which animates our bodies. Our fundamental approach in energy medicine is to become aware of the world of energy in and around our bodies, minds and feelings. Words and concepts such as the aura, chakras, energy lines, meridians, etheric field, all describe this energy field on the personal level, and on the wider universal level, the matrix, the quantum field, and even called the Mind of God, by Einstein.
This quantum field, of sub-atomic energy, has been shown to respond to the thoughts and expectations of researching scientists. It is influenced by all the other levels of energy, from gross to subtle. Everything is interrelated and entangled. Everything affects everything else, but can also be separated into different systems, fields or levels of energy. Different states or levels of density can be demonstrated as the different state of ice, water and steam of the same element - H2O. The Chakra system also describes the different densities of reality, the different matrices we engage in during our earthly existence.
Energy Medicine is multi-faceted, and our goal is to assist the client in removing the causes of ailments by clearing the energy lines/nadis/meridians, energizing and balancing the chakras, cleaning and healing the aura and ultimately helping them to understand what thoughts, feelings, beliefs and other aspects of their lifestyle are contributing to their condition.