The Energy Medicine Yoga Prescription

321 Pages·2017·25.54 MB·English

by  Lauren Walker

This book would not have been possible without the generous support of
Donna Eden, David Feinstein, and their school, Innersource. Their
passion for teaching, sharing, and healing is unbounded, equaled only by
their generosity. What they have given the world is an unprecedented
path of healing, and with their blessings I am honored to adapt and
promote their work through the lens of yoga. The Five Elements Body
Ailments table, the Five Elements Mind Ailments table, and the Five
Elements Self-Inventory have been adapted from the Innersource
curriculum, with their generous permission.
Energy Medicine Yoga is backed by thousands of Innersource-trained
Energy Medicine practitioners all over the world. If you are dealing with
something beyond the scope of self-practice, please contact one of them
at Innersource.net. If you are interested in becoming a certified
Innersource practitioner or EMYoga teacher, please see the resource
section at the back of the book.
For You, for healing
Contents Prescriptions for Your Health
Be the Mountain; Be the Skier
PART 1 Mind: Understanding Energy
1 Energy and Mind-Body Health
2 Working with Your Energy
3 The Five Elements
TABLE 1 Five Elements Body Ailments
TABLE 2 Five Elements Mind Ailments
PART 2 Body: The Energy Medicine Yoga Practices
4 Foundation Practices and the Essential Energy Medicine Yoga Practice
5 Water
6 Wood
7 Fire
8 Earth
9 Metal
PART 3 Spirit: Energy Medicine Yoga Off the Mat
10 Ayurveda and Diet
11 The Power and Magic of EMYoga: True Transformation
Acknowledgments
Notes
Resources
Index
About the Author
Also by Lauren Walker
About Sounds True
Copyright
Praise for The Energy Medicine Yoga Prescription

Prescriptions for Your Health
Learn This Most Important Practice and Break In Your Journal
Start to Change: Start Small
Access Healing Earth Energy
Ground with Spoons
Shift Energy with the Fingers and Toes
Learn Energy Testing
Learn Self-Testing
Learn Tapping
Learn Temporal Tapping
Use the Elements to Balance the Elements
Use the Five Elements Sounds to Help Release Emotion
For Instant Stress Relief, Calm Triple Warmer
Learn to Do Nasya
Self-Abhyanga the EMYoga Way
Try Eating the Ayurvedic Way
For Breast Health
Lower Your Cancer Risks
Practice Gratitude
Tap in Joy
Be the Mountain; Be the Skier
B
y my third winter downhill skiing, I was really learning how to drop in.
In yoga, “dropping in” means to let go of the chattering mind and let yourself be
taken over by the immediacy and intimacy of your practice. In skiing it means to
go over the edge, down into the bowl, down into the gravity of your chosen run
with complete abandon and trust.
The two are nearly identical.
I was finally learning to trust my body, to trust my gear, to trust my instincts.
The snow is different every day: fresh, deep, sticky, graupelly, chicken-heady,
icy, powder—the list to describe the consistency of the snow goes on and on.
Then there’s the ambient weather. Is it actively snowing? Sleeting? Raining?
Graupelling? Sunny? Cloudy? Foggy?
We go down the same mountain, over all its flanks, day after day, hour after
hour. The repetition builds confidence and strength. But there is also pure joy.
The body goes into a joy response that many people liken to orgasm—simply by
sliding down a hill covered in snow.
Energy Medicine Yoga—the marriage of Energy Medicine with a tantra-
based yoga practice—has the same possibility and the same parallel. We come to
our yoga mat day after day, hour after hour. Our energy, like the snow, is also
changeable; every day it’s different. But we do the same moves again and again.
There isn’t anywhere to get to. There’s no prize at the end for the most
downward dogs. It is simply the moment that is sublime. It is like coming home
to a feeling of goodness in our own bodies.
This is the important part: We need to feel good in our lives and in our
bodies just as we are right now. We need to know how to self-soothe and how to
heal. So many of us go for the outside stimuli of drugs, alcohol, shopping, sugar,
or sex when we’re uncomfortable, bored, or tired. If we’re sick, we go for
outside cures: pills, surgery, radiation. But we must learn how to simply and
effectively take care of ourselves from the inside to be healthy and happy.
In my first book, Energy Medicine Yoga, I used the metaphor of grooming
the ski slopes on the mountain as being equivalent to grooming the energies that
run the body. We usually think of grooming in terms of our teeth, hair, makeup,