Lauren Walker’s new book is titled The Energy to Heal: Find Lasting Freedom from Stress & Trauma Through Energy Medicine Yoga. As its title would suggest, the book is a fully fledged manual to a particular kind of yoga therapeutic practice Walker has invented, called EMYoga (the titular Energy Medicine Yoga). But the book is so much more than just a display and detailed walkthrough of Ms. Walker’s invention and its craft. It’s a meditation on trauma, humanity, and something that uses its core focal point to highlight other, innovative issues implemented into the specific practices Walker has perfected over the years. “You can only take so much stress before you go over the edge.
RELATED URL: https://www.energymedicineyoga.net/
Over the edge is trauma—the result of events you can’t cope with. And that trauma is stored energetically within your body. This traumatic energy negatively affects your health on every level,” she writes in this vein. “The main thing that keeps a person from being free from trauma or stress is the mind. How you think about something determines how it affects you. For the most part, your emotions are the things that are keeping you stuck. And your emotions, for the most part, are the things that are causing you stress. And that stress breaks you down, leading to physical ailments. Even a physical trauma, once over, won’t be healed until you complete and release your emotional response to it.”
Part of what makes Walker feel so trustworthy is a sense of genuine charm and hospitality radiating through the pages. You really feel like, on a tone scale, you get a chance to know her and where she’s coming from – not just professionally, but personally. This is reflected in things as subtle as the book’s opening acknowledgements, where Walker highlights her gratitude and sense of influence from her parents. “My mother, Rachel Walker, is…a mold-shattering, pioneering woman, who encapsulates the idea of courage in the face of the unknown. From being at the forefront of the women’s movement she has taught me, both overtly and by example, that you must follow your own inner rhythm, no matter how dangerous, unaccepted, or scary it might be,” she says. “My father, who always wanted to be a writer but who was stuck in his own trauma field, I can only describe as a Spirit Walker. He lit a spark in me that is still burning bright, and everything I do in the world is to make him proud. I hope I’ve succeeded, Dad.”
AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/Energy-Heal-Lasting-Freedom-Medicine/dp/0738769495
It’s this sense of something extra that makes the reader feel emotionally invested in what Walker promotes, not just intellectually intrigued. It’s an effective strategy, as ironically enough the left-brain aspects of the read are all about opening one’s self up energetically, and on a decidedly spiritualistic kind of level. Walker follows this not just in describing the process, but in specific tone and word choice, only further cementing a sense she has nothing to hide – and you have everything to gain.
Garth Thomas