First of all, I will draw a line in the sand. You know how there is often a big divide between the methods of Western medicine and holistic or energy medicine? Western medicine is a great blessing when we have emergency health conditions such as heart attacks, traumatic injuries or disabling depression. Yet, modern medicine has many limitations also. It is not so effective for preventing illness or effectively treating a wide range of chronic diseases. This is because it rarely addresses the deepest root of pain and disease. There are also often side effects of medical treatment that can be as bad as, or worse, than the disease.
There is a similar line in the sand in comparing invasive medical and esthetic treatments. In medical oncology, cancers are usually treated with aggressive regimes of toxic chemicals (chemotherapy), radiation or surgery. These methods do save lives, but often cause a host of toxic and painful side effects. Let's take a look at how this parallels many esthetic procedures.
In order to provide demanding consumers with the rapid beautification results they are looking for, many technologies have been developed that basically work by applying invasive stimulation to the skin and body. These methods often work by traumatizing the skin surface with abrasives (dermabrasion), intense light (IPL), strong electro-stim or chemical peels. The idea is that new, fresh cells will grow back after the tissues are injured, thus making a person look younger. Plastic surgery is also commonly used to reform people's faces. It can create scar tissues that block energy flow in the face, ironically accelerating the aging process in the long run.
Yes, these methods can produce short-term results, and in spite of the pain and inflammation often caused by these methods, millions of people willingly seek them out. It is true that people will often skimp on medical care but somehow find the money to buy an appearance of youth through facial rejuvenation.
A Better Way?
There is a rejuvenation system called ELR that combines gentle pulsed microcurrent therapy combined with an array of colors of therapeutic light. The stimulation is applied through sets of acupuncture points on the face and in some cases, other parts of the body. The electrical currents and intensity of light is much lower and gentler than what is used in the equipment in most spas. So, can gentle currents and light work as well as the much more intense ones? It can, and the reason is found in the principle of "Less is More."
Our bodies are very sensitive transceivers of energy. That means we are always radiating energy and receiving it from our environment and those around us. This is one reason it feels so good to be out in nature – the vibrations of the natural planet are much more soothing and harmonious to us than what we are surrounded by in the cities. Our bodies are surrounded by an energetic field often called the aura which usually contains colors output by the functions of our organs and energy chakras. Our energy fields are exquisitely sensitive to the energies around us, even if we are not consciously aware of it.
It is accurate to say we are "spiritual beings having a physical experience." We have this dual experience. This is where the line in the sand I wrote about earlier comes in. We can seek medical or esthetic procedures that mainly focus on altering our physical bodies, or we can choose methods that work on balancing our energy fields and frequencies. So, how to choose?
Fortunately, you can have the best of both worlds with ELR and other vibrational energy esthetic systems. Microcurrent therapy is gentle but it does cause rapid, noticeable changes in the muscles and tissues of the body. It can provide rapid results through direct physical actions because our muscle cells and all bodily tissues are regulated by innate electrical currents. Therefore, they respond to externally applied currents immediately. Color light therapy works on a more subtle level than microcurrent, but still helps produce very rapid results due to its resonance with the functions of cells, meridians and chakras. There is a wealth of recent research on the medical and psychological effects of various colors.
This combination of frequency-specific microcurrent and color light provides one of the most effective methods for lifting and toning the body. It is able to work on both the physical and energetic levels.
Microcurrent and light therapy do respond powerfully to what you can call "intent." It is ciearly not just a mechanical procedure – the love and care the therapist puts into their work makes a difference. This is true of all our arts. Therefore, it is well worth it for practitioners to take regular time for rejuvenating themselves and clarifying their own consciousness. Learning to direct intent is a fruit of this.
Those clients who also take good care of themselves and do personal rejuvenation practices such as yoga or meditation will likely enjoy even better and longer lasting results. These practices help you develop and cultivate your own energy centers and stop energy leaks that lead to pain, disease and premature aging. The combination of doing your own inner work and receiving microcurrent and light facial rejuvenation is a powerful way to heal and rejuvenate yourself.
Chronic pain afflicts over 20% of the adult population. Sadly, most MDs have essentially no education in treating pain, beyond offering a few toxic medications. Then they tend to steer people with pain away from those health practitioners who are trained. This puts the acupuncture community on the front lines for addressing this epidemic.
When the body is going through a stressful event, the sympathetic system is activated. This activation will help the body with a life-threatening situation. If this state is activated for prolonged periods of time, it starts to consume energy. These traumatic events that generate stressors in the autonomic nervous system (ANS) will eventually become internalized.
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One of the things that makes acupuncture so difficult to measure is that the medicine actually does contain some esoteric aspects. There have been numerous studies that demonstrate the neurochemical reasoning behind why acupuncture points stimulate the autonomic nervous system to enact change However, not all the benefits of TCM can easily be measured by randomized, controlled trials. But does that make them fundamentally and definitively untrue?
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