by Dr Patrick MacManaway
“We are what we eat”. A well-worn phrase, but a true one. Our physical constitution depends absolutely on the provision from external sources of all of the various nutrients – be they water, protein, fat, carbohydrate, mineral or vitamin – that our body requires both for short term metabolism and for long term growth, repair and adaptation.
Similarly,
although less obviously, we are what we breath – the constant exchange
of air via lungs and bloodstream internalizes, binds or solubilizes and
distributes our gaseous environment throughout our body as a constant
and essential process, maintaining appropriate pH balance, partial pressures
and oxidative potential both inside and outside every cell.
Less obvious still, but just as inevitable and essential for the maintenance
of the body, is the constant exchange of etheric energy – of “chi”,
“prana” or “num” between the internal and the
external environment.
Much
of the focus of holistic therapeutics is on extending our awareness of
the body beyond the biochemical, biomechanical model, embracing the reality
of each person as an interwoven complex of body, mind and spirit, with
patterns of health and dis-ease moving between and influencing each level,
the “above and below” mirroring and patterning each other
and allowing powerful healing to occur throughout the system with even
the gentlest and least intrusive of therapeutic attention.
The mystery traditions hold that spirit moves into matter for self-expression,
experience of all manner of relationship, and consequent self awareness,
development and evolution. Patterns and energy forms held by the individual
spirit are expressed from the higher vibrational bodies through the increasingly
dense levels of consciousness down into the mental, emotional, etheric
and finally physical bodies, where the soul can experience itself in an
intense and inevitably self-reflective fashion. Imbalances and traumas
held in any of the vibrational bodies will gradually move into matter,
becoming manifest in the physical body and the outer worldly life where
issues can be experienced and interacted with in a tangible form.
Healing can therefore often be most effectively directed towards the source
of the trauma and imbalance rather than at the more obvious, outer level,
and herein lies the virtue of therapeutic strategies that address the
more subtle, patterning levels of the human consciousness complex.
Ultimately, all levels can be brought into balance through healing directed
towards the subtle energies of the spirit itself, although this may in
some cases involve a longer and less immediately dramatic shift in outer
circumstances than the “magic bullets” of a more symptomatically-oriented
approach.
These concepts are no longer new to us, and the language of holism as
applied to the individual is becoming more widespread and sophisticated.
We are still more culturally conscious and skilled with the relationship
between body and mind than we are with the interface with spirit however,
and this is especially true in the context of environmental parameters
influencing health.
It is not sufficient to look at the individual alone and out of context
with their environment when addressing health, healing and wellness. We
exist in relationship to every aspect of our lives and environment – to
place, to circumstance and to other people. Biological membranes are semi-permeable.
There is no real isolation from that which is around us – rather
a constant exchange occurs. We are what we eat – nutrition is an
essential and grossly overlooked aspect of healthcare and wellness strategies.
We are what we breath. These things we understand and embrace, even though
we may be lazy in acting on their implications. But the third element
of spirit – elusive and often given only lip-service even in allegedly
holistic therapeutic models, is almost entirely neglected in the environmental
context.
Metaphysically speaking, the body of the earth is no different from the
body of a person. That is to say, as well as having a tangible, physical
body, it also has an etheric body, an emotional body, a mental body, and
higher spiritual bodies. The individual human is in relationship with
each one of these at our own, corresponding level. This is also true at
the community and cultural level, in which the collective energetic consciousness
of the human community interacts with the energy field of place.
Primal and indigenous cultures had a keen awareness of and a rich relationship
with the spirit and consciousness of place, and took this into consideration
above and beyond all other factors in directing the focus and activity
of the community.
The consequence at a cultural level of having shifted our paradigm in
relating to place as something having only a physical, material nature
is apparent in the environmental crisis that surrounds us on all sides.
Any amount of reducing consumption, recycling and re-using will not solve
our problems – nothing less than a paradigm shift to reconnect with
the spirit and consciousness of our environment will bring us back into
right relationship. At an individual level, the consequence of “wrong
relationship” with place is that of geopathic stress.
Geopathic stress is typically defined as prolonged, repeated exposure
to damaging earth energies. Consequences include disease and dysfunction
of a repeating or chronic nature, unresponsive to therapeutic intervention
and typically showing up after a move to a new domestic or work location.
Sleeping long and waking tired, and other dysfunctions of biological rhythms
is typical. Geopathic stress is most easily identified and assessed through
dowsing, kinesiology or vega analysis, and the energy fields causing it
relate to various tangible and intangible elements in the earths structure,
both physical and energetic. Essentially, earth energies are the “chi
paths” or meridians of the earth’s energetic body –
similar to those worked with by Traditional Chinese Medical practitioners
in the practice of acupuncture. These planetary chi paths have gone by
many names – they are dragons, they are spirit paths, they are song
lines, they are energy leys or ley lines, they are the shamanic “lines
of the world”. They also follow underground water courses, faults
and fractures, and mineral and crystal seams.
Energetically aware cultures have sought out power centres, where the
earth’s energies are strongly focused, for spiritual practices including
healing and divination. By contrast, they place their domestic sites where
the dragons breath is sweet and gentle.
Spending extended periods of time in the path of either strong or grumpy
dragons creates stress and trauma to the equivalent energy body of the
individual, with consequent imbalances developing in the mental, emotional
and physical bodies. In addition to the direct effect of the earth’s
energies on the human etheric body, place memory – mostly human
psychic and emotional residue – impacts the human emotional body,
and our higher spiritual bodies can also be affected by spirit presences,
both human and non-human that may be place associated.
Healing and energy balancing can be directed towards place and environment
in exactly the same way as towards an individual, and indeed many therapeutic
techniques need little adaptation for use in working with landscape.
What is mostly lacking is the awareness of this level of relationship
at all. In growing back into this awareness, there are two cautionary
considerations. Firstly, energy fields that are harmful to a person may
allow other species to thrive. Fruiting trees and many domesticated animals
are injuriously affected by the ‘yin chi” associated with
underground water for example, perhaps the source of 85% or so of geopathic
stress as it affects humans. Medicinal herbs, members of the nightshade
family, burrowing animals, bees and insects and everything that lives
in your compost heap simply adores such energy. Geopathic stress is a
condition of unaware relationship, of people placing themselves in what
are for them adverse locations. It is certainly possible to change and
balance such energies to render them harmless to humans, however if we
do this on a planetary scale we will be creating desert conditions for
many other species, with awful karmic consequences for ourselves. Balance,
balance, balance. Secondly, it is important to be aware that while the
spirit of place does not have the pro-active consciousness of free will
granted to humans, it has vastly more psychic mass and inertia than we
do individually. Healers are well aware of the potential for their own
energies to become imbalanced or traumatized through interacting with
the imbalances and traumas of their patients and clients. This potential
is vastly greater when working with imbalance and trauma in the landscape,
and collaborative efforts, such as Fountain Groups, where healing is directed
into the landscape by groups sitting together in meditation with healing
intent, are very valuable in offering support and increasing effectiveness.
The practice of relating to and working with earth energies and the Spirit
of Place is called geomancy – literally translating as “divination
of the earth”. There are many ancient traditions of geomancy, including
that of the Native American and the ancient Celt, the Greek and the Roman,
the increasingly popularised Chinese tradition of Feng Shui, and the Hindu
tradition of the Vastu Veda. All of these are codes of practice relating
to their own culture and time period, and much can be learned by their
study. Our challenge today is to reconnect, re-engage, and create a contemporary
geomantic paradigm, based on the central, generic and universal principles,
contemporary to our own culture in language and symbolism, vibrant, vital
and accessible to all.
Training in developing awareness of and skills in working with earth energies
are available from the British Society of Dowsers, from schools of geomancy
and from individual practitioners. This is an important, emerging field
– not in itself new, but a recovery of something ancient, universal
and essential. The impact of this reconnection, at both the individual
and the collective level, will have profound and healing effect on human
consciousness.
© 2005 Dr Patrick Macmanaway & BSD EEG