By Master Stephen Co

Master Stephen Co will be presenting Your Hands Can Heal You, a Pranic Healing Weekend Intensive.

While mainstream medicine has been slow---and often outright reluctant---to accept the principles of energy medicine, some medical researchers have conducted experiments that support its basic tenets. There are fascinating investigations into the regeneration ability of simple, less-evolved life forms that strongly support the notion of an energetic template or mold. Newts can regenerate a new eye, including an optic nerve, in about 40 days. Goldfish and salamanders can regenerate spinal fibers. Humans have some regenerative capability. The human liver can replace a portion of its mass lost due to injury through what medical science calls compensatory hypertrophy, the ability of cells to increase their rate of division and replace the lost tissue. And damage to or dysfunction of one kidney frequently leads to enlargement of the other. With this in mind, the following principles are used in Pranic Healing:

• Life can heal itself.
• Healing is a self-regenerating ability.
• Healing is a self-regenerating force and an intelligence can direct it.
• Healing is a larger energetic template that directs cells to grow and differentiate.

Parna is essential to self-healing. These simple laws underpin the energy and healing work in Pranic Healing© as developed by Grandmaster Choa Kok Sui.

When energy flows through the body properly, you are in a state of health. This is the most fundamental truth about prana, the body, the mind, and our health. If the aura is clean, the meridians clear, and the chakras balanced and functioning properly, the body is in a state of physical and mental health.

When there is an energetic disturbance in the body, a disease state is created. When the body's energy is disrupted in some way, when it is prevented from flowing smoothly through the meridians, to and from the chakras, and to and from the organs, a health problem is present (or about to be present). There are two types of energetic disturbances: congestion, which is an accumulation of either excess or dirty prana; and depletion, which is a deficiency of prana. These energetic disturbances can be either general (occurring throughout the entire aura) or local (occurring in a specific area, chakra or meridian). For the body to be returned to a state of health, these energetic disturbances must be corrected.

You can sense, increase, and direct the body's supply of prana to improve your health---if you have the proper training. Prana is a living force; it has consciousness. It can be built up and consciously controlled. There is a saying in chi kung practice: "The chi follows the yi." Chi is, as explained earlier, a synonym for universal life force. We don't have a perfectly equivalent word for yi in English, but it refers to the mind or intent. Thus, the rough translation is: "energy follows thought"; prana goes where you intend it to go. You want to build up a surplus of prana and direct it to improve your health.

The body always moves toward homeostasis. Homeostasis is a Greek word meaning a state of stability or equanimity between different but interdependent groups or elements of an organism. All systems in nature move toward balance. The body, too, seeks a balanced energetic level. Why? This state of equilibrium, or health, is our natural state. Our body naturally seeks health.

Illnesses manifest in the energy body before they manifest in the physical body. The energy body is the template or mold for the physical body; it surrounds and interpenetrates the physical body. Thus, health problems occur first as irregularities or disturbances in the energy body before they become symptoms or full-blown health problems in the physical body. By treating problems at the energetic level, you heal the physical body. Additionally, through regular energy-generation exercises and proactive steps to keep the energy body clean, you help prevent physical ailments from occurring and greatly diminish their effects if they do physically manifest.

Healing occurs first in the energy body before it becomes apparent in the physical body. When energy healing is applied to the aura, there can often be very rapid and dramatic positive results in the physical body. But, there can also be a slight lag time before the healing manifests in the physical body. The length of this lag time depends on factors such as the healer's experience and proficiency, the complexity and severity of the health problem, and the current energy level of the person with the affliction.

One of the major root causes of the energetic disturbances that cause many physical ailments is frequently negative thoughts and emotions stored in the body. Thoughts, emotions, beliefs, and memories contain real energy that is stored unconsciously in the physical body. (Consider: How do you know when you're nervous, angry, or fearful? Not through intellectual awareness. Only by feeling a physical manifestation in your body—for example, stomach spasms, a tight neck, an increased heart rate, a sudden urge to go to the bathroom, heavy perspiration, etc.). Negative emotions themselves do not cause problems; our resistance to feeling them and releasing their energy in a constructive way causes the problem.

When you avoid feeling negative emotions and beliefs, your body's musculature physically constricts and holds onto them. Held tightly in the body over a period of time, these negative emotions, limiting beliefs, and traumatic memories form blockages and energetic disturbances that lead to physical health problems. Certainly, your health can be affected adversely by external factors such as bacteria and viruses, as well as poor life choices, bad habits, and accidents. But many health problems result from an energetic disturbance that is ultimately caused by the unconscious mind trapping a negative emotion or limiting belief in the body.

Your body seeks to heal itself and return to health---it is our natural state. You can develop skills to help regain or maintain your health. It is a self-regenerating, energetic template that you can learn to do---using only your own two hands.