Life Energy and Vitality

What is life force?
Can you recharge it?
What is the main source?

What is life energy? In the current climate of increasing awareness about holistic healing, you must have heard the word “Prana” or the word “Chi”. If not, you have probably heard the term “Élan vital” that was coined since 1907 by the French philosopher Henri Bergson. This term is commonly translated as "vital force" or “vital impetus” and is closely linked to consciousness.

As Dr. John Diamond explains it: "Life energy... causes us to grow... enables us to heal... enters our body through the breath... flows through the acupuncture meridians and vitalizes the organs and tissues. Through your mental powers you have the ability to rebalance the flow of life energy throughout your body and thus combat disease and keep yourself well. Life energy is breath. Life energy is spirit”.

All is energy. As Albert Einstein underlined when explaining his famous formula E=mc2: “"It followed from the special theory of relativity that mass and energy are both but different manifestations of the same thing…". And as Deepak Chopra adds, in quantum physics terms: “... the basic unit of matter called an atom is not a solid entity, it's a hierarchy of states of information and energy...”.

While modern science is already recognizing this truth, it has long been known by spiritual seers and meta-physicians. Ancient healers where well aware of the properties of this energy and applied it in the healing realm. Hippocrates –the father of modern medicine- spoke of the “vis medricatrix nature” (the healing power of nature). The traditional Chinese Medicine and the Ayurveda in India were founded thousands of years ago on principles related to of how energy works in the human body. Those principles were discovered through a deep observation of the cosmos, nature and the human body. Oriental techniques like Tai Chi, Qigong, Yoga, Reiki and Aiki –to name a few- work all on the flow of energy through the body.

So the modern concept of energy healing involves a holistic approach oriented to removing blockages in the human body’s energy field, in order to restore your original well being and health. Healing is making something whole, returning it to its natural harmonious state, in alignment with the source. And that source is energy.

This life energy is in everything around us. Just observe nature with its perfect balance of the fourth elements: earth, water, fire and air. Now, if we resort to a cosmology of five elements, as in the Tantric philosophy of ancient India and Tibet, we realize that there is a fifth element known as Akasha or Ether.

To the Tantric masters, we all have our origin in this Akashic realm. This realm is our source. This is where our essence comes from. Our main field of energy comes from this realm. This is our spiritual essence. This is our seed. It is our spiritual matrix. And for spiritual seers, the energy that comes from this source has to do with our individual life purpose. It is the energy that comes “from the top”, so to speak. On the other hand, the energy that we normally focus upon in our daily lives has more to do with what we call “vitality”. This is the kind of energy that is rechargeable through sleep, right food, natural remedies, exercise, etc. It is the energy that “comes from below”, so to speak.

And of course, our thoughts and emotions have a very important impact in our life energy. To raise our life energy we need to cultivate only positive mental and emotional attitudes. And many tools like meditation and other healing techniques are available to everybody in order to reduce stress, balance the acupuncture meridians, balance the two brain hemispheres, activate the thymus gland, and balance the chakras, in order to restore the flow of life energy.

An important realization that we commonly miss is that our daily life energy and vitality is “recharged” when we do things that we really like to do and enjoy. When we find joy –true joy- our vitality is increased. This is measurable through Kinesiology and other ways of measuring your life energy and ultimately through your own feelings of well-being.