What if we’re not broken, we’re just unplugged?
I’m going to advocate for something that feels out of character for me: plugging in, rather than unplugging. The popularity of forest bathing, tech-free retreats and the like are part of a well-established movement to get people to unplug from their phones and numerous other screens, and reconnect with nature, themselves and each other. This is good. I am for this.
But today I want to talk about plugging in.
What if the underlying source of our cultural malaise, our widespread mental health crises and chronic illness, and our high levels of anxiety, burnout and depression is actually that we’re already unplugged and in fact need to plug back in?
I’m not talking about plugging back into our digital prosthetics. We spend more than enough time — and usually far too much — with our attentions plugged into our phones and laptops and game consoles.
I’m talking about plugging into the ultimate internet, the superhighway of all of the information in the known universe: energy. And especially: bioelectricity. And even more specifically: the human electrome.
Of course, everything is made of various forms and densities of energy — probably even consciousness itself [cite Woolacott]. We cannot be fully unplugged from bioelectricity or the human electrome and still be alive and breathing. Bioelectricity is life force. “It is hard to overstate how wholly and utterly your every movement, perception, and thought are controlled by electrical signals,” science journalist Sally Adee writes in her 2023 book We Are Electric: The New Science of Our Body’s Electrome (p8). I like this statement because it’s true, but I cringe at this statement because of its mechanistic, cybernetic take on the human experience. Can we really be reduced to electrical signals?
If electrical signals are energy and energy is consciousness (we’ll unpack this juicy and still controversial topic in a separate blog post), then yes we can be. And it’s not a reduction at all; it’s a return to what might be the ultimate truth: that everything we are is an expression of consciousness. From neuroscientists to quantum physicists to cellular biologists [cite Levin, Woollacott, etc], scientists are starting to connect some really important dots about the nature of life — and about energy being, effectively, the language of consciousness. (Nikola Tesla said it beautifully in __[year]: “If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.”[cite]) Again, we’ll dive more deeply into this soon, tracing the edges of some of the most compelling recent scientific findings to see the vaguely coherent picture that is emerging. It’s a doozy. For now, let’s focus on a notably smaller but nonetheless complex scale: the human body and bioelectricity.
Your body, writes James Oschman, depends on electricity. “In terms of vibrations, the human body can be compared to a symphony orchestra.” (Oschman p#) That symphony orchestra is increasingly understood as an electrome, a concept coined in 2016 by Dutch biologist Arnold de Loof to describe “the totality of all ionic currents of any living entity, from the cellular to the organismal level” [cite Adee p 292 and/or original]. (If you need a refresher — or a primer, as I did — on chemistry and biology and how bioelectricity is created, read the enjoyable and previously referenced We Are Electric.)
Scientists posit that every single thing that happens within a living organism can be associated with measurable electrical activity. Simon Winchester explains, “the electrome has no mass at all, nor any weight; it is simply the electricity that courses through your body and its 40 trillion cells, and which transmits encoded signals through and between everything, head to toe.” [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/28/books/review/we-are-electric-sally-adee.html]. Dis-ease and ultimately the death of a single cell — or, eventually, an entire organism — ensues when it looses its ability to conduct bioelectricity. Cancer, Adee explains, can be understood as cells losing their ability to conduct bioelectricity as healthy cells do [cite]. Hence a great deal of scientific research is being devoted to the emerging field of “electroceuticals”[link].
While there are exciting advancements in medical research and technology underway, working with the human energy system is nothing new; it may be as old as humans. The globalization of Reiki is an easy target for comic relief [link], but in Western history Jesus and his disciples were just some of the historical celebrities known for their ability to perform healing “miracles” with their hands. “Healing hands” methods like Reiki have been shown in a number of studies not only to reduce pain but also to reduce heart rate and blood pressure, and increase parasymphathetic autonomic activity — in other words, nervous system regulation [cite. Some sources here: https://www.reiki.org/articles/science-reiki]. A calmer nervous system, research shows, leads to improved health and wellbeing — just as stress, anxiety, or otherwise disregulated nervous systems lead to worse health outcomes and shorter life spans [cites]. “In a study of 5,716 middle-aged people, those with the highest self-regulation abilities were over 50 times more likely to be alive and without chronic disease 15 years later than those with the lowest self-regulation scores.”[heartmath, 63] Self-regulation is, in essence, working with the nervous system — the superhighway of the human energy system — to course-correct the healthy flow of bioelectricity.
In the U.S., acupuncture is perhaps the most widely accepted form of working with the electrome to improve health and wellbeing; it’s backed by extensive medical research [link] and several thousands of years of practice (across Asia and elsewhere) moving energy in the body to help the body heal itself. In acupuncture, health is understood as balance in the body, and the open flow of energy — qi, ki, or life force — throughout it, so that the body can properly function as its own healer. Disease and illness arise from imbalances and lack of flow, or stagnation, of energy throughout the body. [might add a quote from Adee or Levin here in terms of how Western science is now coming to understand this] This makes sense from a Western biological perspective as well; the proper functioning of cells and organs in the body depends upon their ability to communicate amongst themselves and with the rest of the body; bioeletricity is the communication mechanism through which that occurs. Bioelectricity is perhaps the first and most fundamental language of the body; it is our energetic intelligence and our first love language. It is a language of creation and recreation. [could include frog story from Levin here]
So, it’s not a huge leap to wonder if the source of our anxiety, depression, and/or chronic illness is actually, at its root, a disconnection in our electrome — a short in our electrical circuits. Or perhaps several shorts. Of course there are systemic factors that make us more likely to blow a fuse or two; an economy of workaholism, a culture of disembodiment and mind/body separation, 24/7 (over)stimulation, to name just a few. In future posts we’ll dive into more of these and how we might individually and collectively work to repair some of these shorts and bring our energetic intelligence back online — and therefore our expanded consciousness, intuition, and ability to experience love, joy, and other expansive states. More on that soon.
What I am advocating for here is a conscious plugging (back) in to our human energy systems, our electromes — and into the world around us. For tuning into our innate energetic intelligence — because the energy that travels throughout our body and interacts with the world around us is intelligent [link to other blog post] — in order to open up our full capacity to run creative energy and life force through our beautiful, powerful, highly intelligent bodies.
I want to turn on. I want to turn you ON. Or more accurately, I want you to turn yourself on. The more of us who learn — or remember — how to plug consciously into the power of our energy systems, the more wellness, joy, peace, and ease we will experience. I know this because I’ve done it for myself. And I continue to do it. The more we plug back in and turn on, the more we will heal ourselves and our planet as we know it.
— Melissa Brough, PhD, RMT, May 21, 2024
