For years people have believed in the immutable power of genetics as the primary factor in human behavior and condition. While the debate between nature and nurture  continues, isolated genes have been given credit for ADD and heart disease and dyslexia and cancer and a whole range of dis-eases. I have often heard people use family history as immutable evidence of not being able to change being overweight  or some other issue in their life. However, the dogma of DNA as the immutable determiner  is now being challenged in the fields of energy psychology and energy medicine. 

"Scientists are discovering the precise pathways by which changes in human conscousness produce changes in human bodies. As we think our thoughts and feel our feelings, our bodies respond with a complex array of shifts. Each thought or feeling unleashes a  particular cascade of biochemicals in our organs. Each experience triggers genetic changes in our cells" writes Dawson Church, in his book, The Genie in Your Genes. If experiencing trauma triggers genetic change, must the healing of trauma also effect genetic re-organization? And if each thought or feeling sets off biochemical changes what happens to those of us who live with a daily barrage of unpleasant reactivity due to stressful work or living environments? 

Back in the day, I learned a technique called Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) that evoked an accelerated processing of a targeted trauma memory. At that time, it was  acknowledged that current understanding of neurobiology did not provide a scientifically exact explanation as to how it worked but many of us who used it in our clinical practice really didn't care because it was effective in reducing trauma symptoms in our clients. Today we have Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) and Tappas Accupressure Technique (TAT)that offer ways to effect internal changes that seem at times almost magical in their effectiveness. Having recently  resolved an issue using EFT that had been problematic for 15 years and unresponsive to a multitude of other  treatment approaches, I will testify as to the impressive power of these methods. And if "Magic is no more than a change in consciousness," as Jamie Sams and David Carson propose, then magic these techniques are in their ability to produce change in our physiological as well as psychological being.


What a magical world we live in today. With new understanding of energy medicine and energy psychology we are finding tools to support our ability to manifest the changes we desire. What it takes is to choose where you put your attention, open your mind, and begin. Not to say that it is always easy, as most of us have a lot of programming to overcome. But it is starting to seem pretty simple, and it can start with the intention and practice of choosing love over fear. And then opening to the tools and resources that are available to you.

In order to change a behavioral pattern it is necessary to address the mental and emotional habits that support the status quo. We tend to think the same thoughts, reenact the same emotional scenarios, and do the same things over and over. Neural pathways become well established highways and the unconscious mind continues to repeat the sequence for the comfort of familiarity and the illusion of safety. I learned this as a psychotherapist and am learning it again in my Alexander Technique lessons as I continue to focus on the interaction of body and mind and spirit. 

 If our pattern involves an object we develop electromagnetic circuitry in the exchange of energy. Often we give that object (whether it is a person or a substance or a role) power by believing we need it, that it will make us feel better. With over-identification,  we can become dependent, passive, lose connection with our intuition and our self esteem. It is more our emotional needs that drive the addictive pattern, and they are often unconscious. As an example, many of us who felt out of control in our past developed habits of being right, doing things perfectly, winning, or controlling / caretaking others only to find that these patterns took control of us. And sometimes when the stress of these driving patterns became too intense, we often medicated ourselves with alcohol or food or sex and then became controlled by these addictions, again manifesting the very thing we feared. 

The easiest way I know to make the unconscious more conscious is via observation without judgement. In Alexander lessons we pay attention to how we sit, how we move, how we think and feel. We inhibit the undesirable old pattern of misuse and re-direct in a new way to restore ease of use and motion. If we notice that fear triggers an automatic response pattern of crunching shoulders, what happens to our body if we consciously choose to think about opening and widening the shoulders? To take it a step further, what happens to the fear if we make the unconscious energy conscious and re-direct it to a new  pathway? Stephen Wolinsky in his book Quantum Consciousness, wrote "in order for anything to exist in the physical universe, it must have energy". So our real power lies in recognizing and re-directing that energy into pathways that better serve us. Our real power lies in the choices we make in this moment about where we put our attention and what actions we take in response. It is not so much about what happens to us in this life, but rather how we choose to deal with it.