Polarity Therapy is an energetic healing modality. In a Polarity Therapy session, a safe space is created where energy can be balanced, and change and healing are allowed to happen in whatever way is needed to restore harmony and natural health. Polarity Therapy works with any aspect of the human system related to a person's "dis-ease" or "dis-comfort."
Each session is unique and tailored to the specific needs of the client. The client remains clothed and lays on a standard massage table. The client's energy is scanned or "read" to determine imbalances, and healing contact can be through verbal interaction or bodywork, or both. Very light energetic contacts that may not even touch the body may be used. Often there is direct physical contact using various levels of touch: light, vigorous and rocking, or deep. These systemic or intuitive contacts stimulate or balance the flow of energy between the positive and negative energy points or poles. Energetically, a Polarity Therapy practitioner follows the client's lead and readiness for what will happen. This is to ensure maximum comfort and a feeling of safety for the client and to facilitate the most effective treatment choices at the time.
In a Polarity Therapy session, techniques and principles may also be given for building health, such as homework assignments or exercises. Clients may learn affirmations, meditations, visualizations, or other techniques that help them cultivate positive thought patterns and increase the energy flow.
Polarity Therapy may also be combined with massage. A specific combination of the two modalities can create a session that is deeply relaxing and nurturing. Applied at the end of a massage session, Polarity Therapy can help some people reach a deeper state of relaxation. Sometimes I also use Polarity Therapy during the course of a remedial massage session to help release energy trapped in muscles.
Each person's energy is unique, therefore sessions bring different experiences and results depending upon the individual. During a typical session, a client may reach a state of deep relaxation, or feel tingling or a sense of expansion. The body may feel as if it is lengthening and even widening (and it often is). The breath may deepen, as the diaphragm comes out of a former, more frozen condition.
The mental/emotional body may respond as well. Spontaneous understandings and insights may arise. A client's mood often improves. Be aware that emotional states and physical conditions may surface or temporarily intensify during or after Polarity Therapy sessions. This is because sometimes an energetic shift brings about emotional releases, which are often characterized by deep sighs, anger, laughter, fear or tears. Polarity Therapy works with such releases in a way that is both safe and effective for long-term health.
Polarity Therapy techniques center around three basic ideas. The first is that the body has electromagnetic energy centers (or chakras) that act as transformers for currents around and within the body. Second, the energies of the body have qualities similar to those of the basic natural elements, i.e. earth, water, fire, air, and ether, which are related to basic physical properties, i.e. solid, liquid, heat, gas, and plasma. Third, each part of the body relates to every other part. Polarity Therapy uses those three ideas, working with many of the energy pathways in the human field, to restore vitality or balance the electro-magnetic fields that flow through and around the body.
In times of stress or illness, these electromagnetic fields become imbalanced or blocked, and the currents cease to flow normally. These imbalances manifest as tension and discomfort, or physical, emotional, or mental symptoms. After locating areas that are energetically blocked, contact restores the flow of energy to a healthy balance.
Polarity Therapy was developed by Dr. Randolph Stone (1890-1981), a naturopath, osteopath, and chiropractor. Frustrated by the limitations of Western medicine, Dr. Stone traveled to the Orient to seek its healing wisdom. From what he learned, he synthesized the wisdom of ancient healing arts with the energy theories of modern physics to form a philosophy and practice based on both eastern and western holistic health modalities. The foundation of Polarity Therapy thus includes reflexology, acupuncture, yoga, Ayurveda, Chinese and western medicines, and massage.
You've heard of the North Pole and South Pole? The human body has a North or Positive Pole at the head and a South or Negative Pole at the feet. Positive and negative don't have to do with good or bad; they are just opposite like night and day and represent the poles of the flow of electro-magnetic currents through the body. Just as electric currents move between the negative and positive terminals of an electric battery, energy moves through the body.
Try rubbing your hands together and then hold them slightly apart. Do you feel anything like heat, tingling, pulsation or itching? One hand is a Positive Pole and the other a Negative. Similarly, a practitioner's hands, when laid on a client's body, facilitate the flow of the current between the two poles of the magnetic fields.
During a session, a person learns to become more aware of his/her body and to find his/her own inner resources for healing. The rewards for doing this for oneself can be life changing and life enhancing. Polarity Therapy can often help people make a shift towards health where they have been previously limited, or help a person change old emotional patterns.
Polarity Therapy can address and often improve any kind of distress or dis-ease, including conditions that have not been helped by conventional medicine. In cases where symptoms do not disappear, clients frequently admit, "I feel much better," and have a healthier sense of self and deeper experience of life. Changes may be subtle yet deeply felt. But then again, sometimes changes happen in ways which are wonderfully unexpected and very apparent. In general, sessions are deeply relaxing and leave a person with a feeling of wholeness, integration, and connection.
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Website Claimer and Disclaimer: In the holistic healing model, each person is responsible for one's own health and makes one's own choices in healing. The information in this website is provided for your information and education. It is not medical advice. Any application of the information is at your own discretion. If you feel you need to do so, consult with your physician or other knowledgeable health care practitioner before or while making use of this information.
Website Copyright 2004 - 2008
by Jan DeCourtney, CMT
