Energy Medicine’s Radiant Circuits
How to feel more joyful more of the time
"Happiness is our natural state,” asserts neurochemist Candace Pert in Molecules of Emotion. “Bliss,” she tells us, speaking of endorphins and other neurotransmitters that support joy, “is hardwired.” The radiant circuits are the energy counterpart of those molecules. When they are active, you feel happy — a gratifying feeling that wells from deep within independent of what is going on around you. This kind of joy grows from the way the radiant circuits operate when they are functioning as they are meant to function.
If triple warmer mobilizes your “inner militia,” the radiant circuits mobilize your “inner mom.” They support, inspire, strengthen, and cajole all your organs and energy systems to function as a tightly knit family. Whereas triple warmer protects you using the principle of conflict, the radiant circuits protect you using the principle of harmony. Their idea of a good defense is a radiant and well-integrated community of organs, glands, vessels, and energies. Rather than relying on a military approach, the defensive strategy used by the radiant circuits resembles that of community policing, where police officers see their job as helping the local community become strong and naturally resistant to crime.
Unlike the meridians that beat a path to the organs they serve, the radiant circuits can travel anywhere they are needed in the body. When the Chinese sages detected an energy that connected the body’s energy systems but did not flow along the meridian lines, it must have seemed strange to them — hence the original name, the “strange flows.” They have also been called “wondrous wires” because of their ability to turn on the senses, and “psychic circuits” because they are so responsive to what a person intuits or thinks. If you think about a particular place in your body, radiant circuit energy instantly moves there. Radiant circuits are the energetic bridge between a thought and the activity of the brain’s neurotransmitters.
Keeping Your Radiant Circuits Flowing
You can reprogram your nervous system to be more joyful, uplifting and life-affirming through the radiant circuits. The next time you feel fabulous, riveted, connected, or otherwise happy, reinforce this energy by “tapping in” the joy at your third eye, the point between your eyebrows just above the bridge of your nose. Tap with a steady beat for 10-12 seconds. In addition, try these exercises to pump new life into your body by jump-starting your radiant circuits. They can be used individually or in combination.
• Hook Up Your Yin and Your Yang: Unlike the meridians, the radiant circuits have no acupuncture points of their own. But by holding specific yin and yang acupuncture points, all the radiant circuits will be stimulated, which can give you a nice burst of healing energy. My favorite all-purpose yin-yang points are the belly button and third eye, as used in the Hook-up: Hook the middle finger of one hand into your belly button and the middle finger of your other hand between your eyebrows (third eye point). With a firm touch and pulling each finger up slightly, hold for about half a minute. This gets your radiant circuits moving, strengthens your auric field and realigns your nervous system.
• Send Joy Through Your Body: You know how your entire energy comes up when someone you are attracted to walks into the room. That is how quickly your radiant circuits can spring into action. Your internal images can also give a sudden boost to your radiant circuits. Pretendthat you are feeling happy and the impact on your radiant circuits can be instant. Or imagine that someone who makes you feel alive and happy has just greeted you.
•Send Color Through Your Body: Bring to mind a color you love. Imagine the color flowing through and infusing every cell in your body.
• Send Forgiveness Through Your Body: Bring to mind a situation where you hold resentment or anger toward yourself or another person. The energies of resentment and anger are stored in your cells. Until you come to a resolution, you carry that anger and cannot be completely healthy. But in an instant, if you can imagine what it would be like to completely forgive yourself (or another), your radiant circuits will carry that feeling through your entire being. Do it often enough and you will find yourself becoming more forgiving and self-accepting.
• Send Gratitude Through Your Body: Bring to mind something in your life about which you can feel thankful. Gratitude is among the most profound spiritual healers. Send this feeling of gratitude through your body. Say thank you to your heart, your lungs, your kidneys, all your organs. Thank your legs for walking you. Make it a practice to focus several times each day on feelings of gratitude.
• Connecting Heaven and Earth. In addition to activating the spleen and turning on your radiant circuits, this exercise is a powerful stretch that releases excess energies while bringing fresh oxygen to the cells. It opens the meridians, expels toxic energies, and stimulates fresh energy to flow through the joints. Most people tend to collect too much energy rather than having too little. We need to empty ourselves of this surplus or it becomes the etheric equivalent of sludge. Connecting Heaven and Earth is an excellent exercise any time you are starting to feel poorly, perhaps threatened by a cold or the flu. If you do healing work, it moves energies out of your system that you may have picked up from a client.
1. Rub your hands together and shake them off.
2. Place your hands on the front of your thighs with your fingers spread.
3. With a deep inhalation, circle your arms out to your sides.
4. On the exhalation, bring your hands together in front of your chest in a prayer position.
5. Again with a deep inhalation, separate your arms from each other, stretching one high above your head and flattening your hand back, as if pushing something above you. Stretch the other arm down, again flattening your hand as if pushing something toward the earth. Look up to the heavens. Stay in this position for as long as is comfortable.
6. Release your breath through your mouth, returning your hands to the prayer position in front of your heart.
7. Repeat, switching the arm that raises and the arm that lowers. After this first set, do two or more sets.
8. Coming out of this pose the final time, drop your arms and allow your body to fold over at the waist. Hang there with your knees slightly bent as you take two deep breaths. Slowly return to a standing position with a backward roll of the shoulders.
Excerpted and adapted from Donna Eden’s Energy Medicine(Revised Edition). New York: Tarcher/Penguin, 2008.
Donna Eden is among the world’s most sought after spokespersons for energy medicine and her abilities as a healer are legendary. Her bestselling book, Energy Medicine, is the authoritative text in its field. Learn more about her books and classes at http://www.LearnEnergyMedicine.com.
