Book Review: The Energy to Heal

The Energy to Heal, written by yoga and meditation teacher Lauren Walker, is a guide to how harnessing the body’s energy can help us heal from physical and emotional trauma. Using a mixture of yoga and energy work combined with the five elements, this book teaches you how to respond to triggers rather than reacting. Published in 2022, Walker incorporates dozens of illustrations, hands-on practices, yoga nidra, and more to create a holistic approach to healing. 

Walker knows first-hand what it’s like to experience something traumatic. After the death of her best friend and ex-fiancé at the hands of the Canadian Police, Walker hit rock bottom. “I spent a full year in shock, rage, and grief before I realized I was going to live. And since I was going to live, I’d have to figure out a way to do it better than what I’d been doing,” she writes. After finding freedom and peace, Walker knew she must share what she’d learned to help others in the aftermath of trauma. “What if I could reach even one person and help them out of their pain? What if I could reach more?”

Walker uses Energy Medicine Yoga (EMYoga), a program she created herself to address how the body responds to trauma. Grounded in science and founded on ancient healing practices, EMYoga taps into the built-in operating system of the body. It’s all about power, not pills. You have the power, Walker says, to “work with your mind, body, and energy to reprogram it from holding on to difficult patterns and chemical releases.”

Walker first introduces the practice of “OMG points.” You clasp your palm to your forehead as if taking your own temperature (also a pose often taken in movies when a character is shocked – hence the name). Walker explains when you have a stress response, the blood leaves your forebrain and heads to your limbs to prepare you to fight or flee, starting a process in the body that kicks out stress hormones. By gently holding your forehead, you draw blood to the area, calming your thoughts and decision-making skills. This interrupts the stress cycle that normally takes over the body and brings a sense of grounding and security. While it’s a simple posture, that’s the beauty of EMYoga: “It’s the most natural, intuitive expression of your energy,” writes Walker. “Your energy knows what to do even if your conscious mind doesn’t.”

If you’re still doubting how we can harness our own energy, Walker dives deep on explaining what energy is and how it’s medicine. Through easily readable scientific data, Walker clarifies that energy (also called chi, qi, prana, or life force) makes up everything in the universe . “Although you feel solid, you are actually a latticework of energy systems. You are vibration and light.” 

EMYoga uses nine energy systems all interconnected to work through trauma, including the aura, chakras, and the five elements. While the book touches on all of them, Walker focuses the most on the ancient Chinese medicine of five elements, also called the “five rhythms” (fire, earth, metal, water, and wood). Each person has all of these elements inside them, Walker explains, with one or two dominating elements. Each element ties to different parts of the physical body as well as the emotional body, and can be helpful in processing trauma. “If you have trauma or stress that is causing physical symptoms,” writes Walker, “it is helpful to know what…element to turn to for respite.” By using the 5E Star tool, Walker shows you how to incorporate the five elements through processing fear, anger, anxiety, worry, and sadness.

Within Energy Medicine Yoga, Walker gently guides the reader how to process, move through, and release stress and triggers. With a chapter focused on each element, Walker provides guided practices, breathing techniques, and EFT (emotion-focused therapy) to give you the power – and courage – to heal. Perfect for experienced yogis and teachers as well as those who are new to the practice, Energy Medicine Yoga is a timely book on how to approach healing trauma from within.