commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lewis_Hine_Po...

My 40 Year Flirtation with Energy Medicine:

Confessions of a Scientific Skeptic

Jed Diamond, Ph.D. has been a health-care professional for the last 45 years.
He is the author of 9 books, including Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places,
Male Menopause, The Irritable Male Syndrome, and Mr. Mean: Saving Your
Relationship from the Irritable Male Syndrome . He offers counseling to men,
women, and couples in his office in California or by phone with people throughout
the U.S. and around the world. To receive a Free E-book on Men’s Health and a
free subscription to Jed’s e-newsletter go to http://facebook.com/menalivenow. If
you enjoy my articles, please subscribe. I write to everyone who joins my Scribd
team. My new book, my 10th, Tapping Power: A Man’s Guide to Eliminating
Pain, Stress, Anger, Depression and Other Ills Using the Revolutionary
Tools of Energy Psychology, is due for publication in the fall, 2011 or spring
2012.

I grew up in a family that relied on things that you could see, touch, and

construct. My mother was the office manager for a company called “Tubular

Structures” that made very solid scaffolding out of pipe--the kind you see big

burly men climbing up and down as they paint houses and fix upper story

windows. My step-father was a welder, carpenter, and all around handyman. He

could build anything and made me a fabulous tree house when I was nine years

old.

But there was another side to our family history that we rarely talked about.

My biological father was a writer, poet, and stage actor. When I was five years

old, he tried to commit suicide and was hospitalized at Camarillo State Mental

Hospital, north of Los Angeles. I tried to understand what happened to him. But

my five year old mind couldn’t grasp the idea that he had been taken down by a
mysterious “nervous breakdown” that I certainly couldn’t see and no one seemed

to be able to explain. I never saw him again until the day I graduated college.

Looking back I realize that my life has been shaped by these two competing

forces:

(1) The world of things we can engage and manipulate with our five senses,

the “tubular structures” of the world.

(2) The world of energy and spirit that can cause “nervous breakdowns,” as

well as inspired writing and beautiful poetry.

My mother always had a fear that I would turn out like my father and “lose my

mind.” She encouraged me to pursue a scientific education that she hoped

would lead me to safety and a good solid profession (“I wouldn’t mind,” she told

me, “if you decided to be a doctor.”)

I got the message and went on to college with a pre-med course of study. I

majored in zoology, biology, and biochemistry. I graduated Magna Cum Laude

and got a four year, full-tuition fellowship to U.C. San Francisco Medical School.

My future was assured. There was only one glitch. My long lost father showed

up at my college graduation and we spent the summer together prior to my

starting medical school in the fall.

I learned that he had escaped from the mental hospital after being locked up

for more than seven years (escape was not an easy feat in those days), and had

become a street puppeteer. I was drawn to his world of feelings, emotions, and

“crazy ideas”--on the spur of the moment we jumped on a bus in Los Angeles

and went to San Diego to see a Shakespeare play. At the same time, he also
scared me to death. I knew enough psychology to be aware that he had more

than a touch of “madness” in him.

I did, indeed, start medical school in the fall, but dropped out after three

weeks. It must have seemed an irrational thing to do, because they required me

to see a psychiatrist before they would allow me to leave. Most people would do

most anything to get in to one of the top medical schools in the country, and get a

free ride the whole way. Here I was giving the money back and leaving for points

unknown. Pretty crazy, I’ll admit, but it was one of the best decisions I ever

made.

Kicked in the Head by a Horse: Healing the Energy Body?

I decided to attend U.C. Berkeley and graduated with a master’s degree in

Social Work in 1968. I got married, landed a great job as a counselor at a local

hospital, and rented a wonderful house in Pinole, a rural suburb in the East-bay,

across the bridge from San Francisco. Our neighbors had horses that they let us

ride whenever we wanted. Life settled into a blissful routine.

The first summer we were there, we invited our closest friends from college

for a visit. They had a four year old son who was cute as a bug and

adventurous. While we were recounting stories of success, the little boy

wandered off and climbed under a fence into the corral where the horses were.

Before we could catch up to him, a skittish horse kicked him.

By the time the boy’s father reached him he was screaming in anguish with a

red welt rising on his forehead. His mother immediately reached out for the boy.

She comforted him with her words and held one hand up about three inches from
his head and passed her hand back and forth over the wound, while the Dad

called for an ambulance. The boy seemed to relax and eventually stopped

crying.

I asked her what she was doing. I wondered how waving her hand over the

boy could be helpful. She kept her hand moving slowly and told me, “Its ‘energy

medicine.’ I’m healing his ‘energy body.’” I nodded like I understood what she

was saying. She turned her attention back to her son and I gave my wife a look

that said, “We love her, but what she’s doing is nuts. You can’t heal your son by

waving at him.”

Well, things turned out O.K. The boy was checked out at the local hospital

and there didn’t seem to be any permanent damage. My scientific mind

concluded that he must not have really been hurt. I relegated “energy medicine”

to some new age mumbo jumbo and forgot all about it.

Can the Mind Heal the Body?

One of my buddies from medical school was working on a research project

on “healing at a distance” and wanted me to participate. I told him over and over

again that I wasn’t interested and didn’t believe in distance healing, whatever that

was. He was persistent. To get him off my back I finally agreed to do an

afternoon “training” workshop. We spent a couple of hours doing simple

meditations and visualizations. I couldn’t see how they could be helpful, but they

were relaxing.

Then he had us work in pairs. He had a deck of index cards and we each

were asked to pick one. One person closed their eyes and did the relaxation
exercise and got into a meditative state. The other person read what was on the

card. Each card had a number, the sex, and age of a patient. We were asked to

visualize what the problem might be and to send healing energy to the person.

I couldn’t believe I was really doing this. It seemed ridiculous to me. But I

dutifully did as I was directed. I wanted to humor my friend. I imagined what my

45 year old female subject might look like and imagined myself “scanning” down

her body with my hands to “see” what was wrong with her. I truly wanted to get

this over with so I could go home. Nothing unusual happened as I went down the

front of the body and I proceeded to scan the back of her head on my way down

her body.

When I got to the small of her back, my hands turned icy cold. It was like they

had suddenly been plunged into freezing water. I must have gone pale because

my partner asked me what the matter was. I blurted out, “Something’s wrong

with her 4th lumbar vertebrae.” My partner seemed calm and replied, “Well, pray

for her healing,” which I did my best to do, even though I was still startled that my

hands had gone cold in that one spot.

After we were done, my friend who was leading the workshop told us what the

ailment was for each person we had prayed for. When he read the number on

my card and said, “this woman has undergone surgery for a ruptured disk at her

4th lumbar vertebrae,” I nearly fell out of my seat. My scientific mind began

working out how I could have known where the woman’s problem was located. It

didn’t make sense. All I had known was her age and her sex and a number on
the card. My partner didn’t know her ailment so couldn’t have inadvertently

tipped me off.

Not all those in the class had gotten the ailment correct, but a number of us

had. Later we would learn that those who were prayed for actually healed better

than those who had not. You might think this would have made a believer out of

me. It actually scared me to death. I wasn’t ready to expand my mind that far. I

quickly “forgot” the whole thing and my old friend and I drifted apart.

Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) for My Painfully Stiff Shoulder

Years later I seriously injured my shoulder playing basketball with some

young guys in my neighborhood. After taking advantage of all the things modern

medicine had to offer (mostly drugs), I was referred for acupuncture treatment

since my shoulder was still stiff and painful. By now I was a bit more open to

complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) approaches.

I believed it might help with my shoulder pain, but the problem was that I was

afraid of needles—which may have been part of the reason I dropped out of

medical school. Telling me they were tiny and thin and wouldn’t hurt, didn’t make

my fear go away. I asked my doctor, somewhat facetiously, if there might be

something like acupuncture, but without the needles.

“Actually, there is,” she told me. “It’s called Emotional Freedom Techniques.

I’ve never tried it myself, but I have a patient who swears that it helps.” She gave

me the contact information for a local practitioner and I made an appointment. I

was guided through some simple techniques and found my pain quickly began to
lesson. In a few sessions, the pain was gone and my full range of motion had

returned. I didn’t quite believe it, but it actually worked.

Connecting to the Earth

I’ve always loved walking. When I was young I couldn’t wait to get out of

school for the summer so I could take off my shoes and walk. The first week was

always tough, because my feet were so tender, but I would quickly build up

calluses and off I’d go. I was a happy kid, in spite of my father’s absence, and

only later did I come to recognize the healing power of walking on the earth.

I found out that walking could lift my moods when I would become depressed.

Walking in nature never failed to calm my mind and raise my spirits. Later I

found running was a great stress reliever. When I read the book, Earthing: The

most important health discovery ever? I learned about the science behind the

healing that occurs when we are connected to the earth.

Heart Coherence

I was doing one of my short runs (3 miles) when my heart began to pound like

it was coming out of my chest. I slowed to a walk. But my heart kept pounding.

Suddenly my head felt like it was about to explode and the pain was so great I

was literally knocked off my feet. I was stunned. I didn’t know what was

happening, but I was scared. The pain eased and I walked home. I called my

doctor and after conducting a number of tests, I learned I had a rare adrenal

tumor.

I learned that feeling like my head was about to explode was literally true.

When the tumor pushes on the adrenal gland, a huge amount of adrenaline is
sent into the blood stream, blood pressure goes through the roof, and most

people die from a brain hemorrhage. I was lucky. I didn’t die, had the tumor

removed, and recovered quickly.

Although I was “cured,” I wanted to know why I had gotten this and what I

could do to prevent future problems. My surgeons and other doctors told me it

“just happened.” There was nothing I could have done to prevent it and nothing I

could do in the future. “You should just go back to your normal life,” they told me.

My own meditations told me that my “adrenaline attack” was a message from

my inner wisdom telling me to slow down. My wife and I decided to move to the

country and I learned simple techniques for keeping my heart and brain in

balance.

Emotionally Focused Couple Work

Although life in the country was peaceful and we both were glad we got given

up big city life, there were still stresses in our relationship. I often became

irritable and my wife felt hurt and would withdraw. Her withdrawal would often

trigger fear in me and I would respond by becoming more irritable. It was a

vicious cycle that we couldn’t seem to break.

Over a period of months I learned about “irritable male syndrome” and “male-

type depression” which I’ll discuss in future chapters. And I also learned about

“emotionally focused couple work.” I had been attending a conference with many

of the luminaries in the field of psychology and healing. Though many were

good, the person who I most connected with was a slightly build woman from

Canada named Sue Johnson.

 She cited researchers who asked men with a history of angina and high

blood pressure, “Does your wife show her love?” Those who answered “No”

suffered almost twice as many angina episodes during the next five years as did

those who replied, “Yes.” She went on to describe her own studies and the

program she had developed. She told us that emotional security was the key to

a lifetime of love.

Hearing her talk was like a light going on in my heart. Much of modern

psychotherapy has told people that there is something childish or emotionally

immature about being attached to an adult lover. We have used terms like

codependent, needy, and wimpy to describe people who express those needs.

Like many, I grew up feeling that I didn’t get enough love and nurturing from

my parents. I vowed to be a different kind of father than my father had been for

me and I think I succeeded pretty well. But I believed that once we grew up we

didn’t need that same kind of nurturing. “I’m an adult now, I should be able to

take care of myself and stand on my own two feet,” I would think to myself. “If I

act ‘needy’ I’m not being a real man.” Emotionally Focused Couples Work

teaches us how to get, and give, the love we all need.

The Healing Code

When the book was nearly finished a friend gave me a copy of The Healing

Code by Alexander Loyd, Ph.D and Ben Johnson, M.D. “I think you’ll like this,”

he told me. “It speaks to a lot of the issues you discuss in your book, particularly

on the way stress affects our health.” I read the book and found it definitely fit
with my own ideas and offered a very clear understanding of how Energy

Medicine and Energy Psychology work.

I called Dr. Loyd and talked with him extensively about his work. It is clear to

me that he is a caring and compassionate man who was looking for help for his

depressed wife when he found some of the answers he was looking for in the

ideas he came to call “the healing codes.”

In this book I will be showing you how to put these tools to work for you so

that you can get the most out of your life and can become a better man, a better

husband, and a better father. So, if you’re ready, let’s move ahead.