Spinal Energetics is a healing system that uses mixture of eastern and western healing disciplines to help realign the energies of the body. It’s also the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen in 20 years of writing about health.
Dr Sarah Jane, a Melbourne-based chiropractor and counsellor, and the founder of Spinal Energetics, is standing against a wall in a Sydney yoga studio. Dressed in a blue and white floaty dress and wedge heels she looks more like she should be off for a chic brunch than helping someone deal with their emotional or physical complaints. But here she is; moving around, twitching her hands and making a noise like ‘phht’ – and, despite being at least two metres away from her, her assistant, Kirsty, lying on a massage bed in the middle of the room, is moving, twitching and bending their body in response to whichever the part of her energy field Dr Sarah says she’s connecting with.
It’s like watching one of those horror movies where a mad puppeteer gets control of someone’s body – but it’s real.
If you’re a bit of a cynic, like me, you might be thinking that Kirsty is just moving around randomly so we all think Dr Sarah is a genius – but, then she works on someone I know, and that I know she only met an hour ago. While the reaction isn’t as extreme, as they don’t have the same connection as Dr Sarah and Kirsty do, she’s also moving in co-ordination with Dr Sarah’s commands – even when she’s not actually being touched. And afterwards she can’t explain why she’s was doing so!
While it looks and sounds a bit spooky, the process isn’t painful; when people do feel something it’s more like an electrical tingle or feeling of warmth. Some people cry, others can’t stop laughing, but the feeling afterwards is one of lightness and a sense of calm.
So, what the heck is actually going on? I can’t tell you for certain, but, here’s the theory. As so many eastern medical practises do, Spinal Energetics works on the idea that we have an electrical field around our body that, when balanced, keeps our health and wellbeing in check. Dr Sarah says she can feel this and spot areas where it’s too strong or too weak. By, balancing the flow of that field she puts your body into a state where it can start to heal itself.
Spinal Energetics also taps into the nervous system aiming to reduce the fight or flight state that many of us spend our lives in, and restore a calm, sympathetic nervous state which releases physical and mental tension stored in the body – some of which might have been affecting our health subconsciously for years.
It can be used for reducing stress, raising energy, dealing with emotional issues and helping reduce physical problems like pain or fatigue.
Admittedly, as Dr Sarah talks about how she connects with the energy field and what she can tell about people when she does so (everything from if they’d had a recent break up, how their gut works and whether they’ve ever taken magic mushrooms) we’re all wondering what happens when she goes into the supermarket. Is she surrounded by imbalanced energies crying out for help (I’m thinking the healing version of Whoopi Goldberg in Ghost)? … but she explains that she turns on the ability to do it when she walks into work, and turns it off when she leaves.
Admittedly with a BA in psychology, an interest in neuroscience, a five-year degree in Chiropractics and her current study for a Masters’ degree in Chinese Medicine, my shonky psychic analogy is probably not a comparison she’d welcome. There’s years of training and knowledge gone into the creation of this process. Energy alignment and tension release are the principle behind many healing practises including reiki, Kundalini Activation Process and Trauma Release Exercises, elements of which Dr Sarah combined with psychological techniques and other disciplines to create the method. And, because it is a product of established knowledge and education, rather than any kind of power possessed only by Dr Sarah Jane, she’s now training other practitioners to do it in Australia, so, you might even be able to find someone practising it near you soon too.
As someone who’s been battling an injury that’s resisting healing for a while now, I was keen to see what would happen, but Dr Sarah Jane wouldn’t treat me in the type of one-off session she was offering the day I met her. Spinal Energetics opens a lot of physical and emotional boxes and, when someone has a longer-term issue like mine, she didn’t want to start poking around without knowing she could close things again! Considering even when she came up to me afterwards and gave me a hug I burst into tears, I think she was probably right! I’m still desperate to have a go though.
For more details on Dr Sarah Jane, visit her website
