Energy Medicine Yoga: Amplify the Healing Power of Your Yoga Practice

Walker combines two of her passions—yoga and energy medicine—in this detailed, generously illustrated, but sometimes inaccessible guide to balancing the body’s natural energy for better health and well-being. While most readers will be familiar with yoga, energy medicine is less widely understood. According to Walker, this field, which includes such techniques as acupuncture, tai chi, and Reiki, is based on the idea that the body is a “living system of energy” that must be balanced and maintained. Combining energy medicine and yoga, says Walker, is meant “to harness our own life force and both transform ourselves to our highest good and accept ourselves in our innate perfection.” Part I offers an eight-week introduction to concepts like radiant circuits, vayus, bandhas, meridians, electrics, and chakras. Walker stresses the importance of each, which may frustrate people looking to address specific ailments. It’s not clear, for instance, what distinguishes the triple-warmer spleen hug from the head-to-knee pose with spleen strengthening, or the hang with gait clearing from the forward bend with meridian trace. Part II includes further options for customizing the reader’s individual yoga regimen with energy work. Though people with extensive experience in yoga or energy medicine should be intrigued, general readers may be daunted even by Walker’s introductory program. (Oct.)