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August 9, 2007
* This article was originally published in the June/July 2007 issue of
Massage & Bodywork magazine. It’s reprinted with permission from Associated
Bodywork & Massage Professionals.
Realizing Energies—Answers for the Taking*
By Karrie Osborn
She knew it was out there—she felt it in herself and, later, in
her clients. There was an answer, a possibility, waiting.
“I felt strongly there was some other potential that was
untapped,” says Nancy Risley, founder of the Polarity Realization Institute in
Ipswich, Massachusetts.
From working through past traumas to releasing somatic pain, the
energy potential is there to help us in so many ways, Risley says. “We just need
to tap into it and use it.” And that’s what she did in creating RYSE—Realizing
Your Sublime Energies, a process that facilitates the full realization of our
innate energy systems for better health and well-being.
A Seeker Seeks
From the beginning, Risley knew there was more to this world than
what most perceived. She says children have a gift of insight, but it’s usually
lost with age and time. “For some reason I kept it,” she says. As an intuitive
child, Risley’s desire to understand that part of herself kept her looking for
answers. “I had some wonderful teachers,” she recounts today. “I was a seeker
and I had an opportunity to seek.”
In the 1970s, Risley studied everything she could on energetic
patterns, although most of the information at that time focused on chakras and
the aura. When she came upon the work of Randolph Stone—creator of Polarity
therapy—which further developed these other energetic concepts, it became the
perfect vehicle for the path Risley was traveling. “Dr. Stone taught that these
were moving and dynamic energetic patterns.” Risley says. “Health was
experienced when healthy energy moved through these patterns unimpeded, illness
or disease when the pattern was blocked.”
Risley says it was Stone’s melding of ayurvedic medicine and
philosophy that helped her understand the laws of motion and the attraction of
energy to create form.
“Simultaneously, I was intrigued with and rigorously practiced meditation to
move energy. In meditation, my perception of the energetic systems was
heightened, as well as my understanding of the way the energy moved through
blocks. If energy got stuck in a block, it produced an uncomfortable physical or
emotional pain which could last indefinitely until the energy—or rather the
consciousness of a certain level of clarity—was moved.” Risley says she realized
early on that by focusing on the energy itself, there was a direct and precise
way to “touch” and move or change the energy to get it flowing freely. “There
was no need to wait for it to build and maybe push through the block or not.”
The process for this explorer involved building her own “psychic
muscle,” she explains, which, like anything else, took practice and development.
When Risley would go back to her thriving private practice and translate this
knowledge, she found new insight. “Any area of ‘stuckness’ a client
experienced—physical, emotional, or in the realm of manifestation in their
lives—showed up clearly in their energetic patterns. Changing the pattern
alleviated the pain and created a forward motion in their lives. Simple.”
By viewing the energy pattern through the right paradigm, Risley
says the pattern was easily perceived and changed. She began changing her work
to meld with this higher intention of health.
“I wanted success for my clients in all areas of their lives,”
she says. “Even though our professional relationship started out because of
their neck or back pain, it would then grow to the personal empowerment issues
and personal empowerment always touches on what is working and not working in
all areas of life. And I would soon learn that all of that showed itself clearly
within the energetic systems of the body.
“Every session I had with new clients, I would tell them that this is the way
I work. My goal is to bring you to where our mutual goals are, but I need the
freedom to do that.” For those who only wanted a “back rub,” Risley would refer
them on, knowing both would be missing an opportunity. Instead, she focused on
those clients who were hungry to find answers.
The Birth of RYSE
Risley considers herself an energy researcher. “It’s what thrills
me,” she says. So the journey that culminated in the birth of RYSE was, for her,
an adventure.
She began to see a bigger energetic picture after she tied Stone’s polarity
and ayurvedic philosophies and the natural laws of energy to some of her own
perceptions. “I could not have developed RYSE without Stone’s principles,”
Risley says in homage.
The drive to push harder to find her answers came about because
of three things, Risley says. The first was a desire to take her clients to
their next level of accomplishment and well-being and knowing it was possible.
“The second was my own personal choice to keep stretching and
finding an effective ‘truth’ in the work I was doing and creating. I was
following a feeling that there is a way to get this all to another level. I just
needed to find out what it was. Every session drove me closer to what I needed
to find.”
The third motivation for Risley was knowing that tying these
things into her bodywork sessions would be “fantastically results-based” for her
clients.
And so RYSE was born. “Its unique quality is that it identifies
how to use your systems,” Risley says. “If used correctly, it is akin to
identifying an extra ‘arm’ that you can use to ‘create’ in your life.” The basic
premise of RYSE is simple, she says: “We can perceive and affect our sublime
energy systems through focused awareness.”
In her 1999 book, RYSE: Tools for Life, Risley says sublime
energetic systems are the “anatomy of the spirit,” a phrase she credits to
best-selling author and medical intuitive Carolyn Myss. These systems are the
anatomy of the life force, Risley says. Healthy, energetic systems feed
creativity, excitement, passion, and joy. Unhealthy systems do just the
opposite.
These energy systems include the chakras, aura, the ida and
pingala (ayurvedic concepts of the positive and negative currents that flow
between the chakras and work as a cleansing system of the sublime energy
anatomy), and the air pattern, which also provides balance and cleansing in the
larger energetic system.
When we utilize these innate systems within us, it connects us to
our highest potential, Risley explains. These systems are the map of our
life-force expression, “the expression of our truth,” she says. When these
energy systems are healthy, everything in our lives vibrates or resonates in
line with them. When these systems are in disarray, our life force is in
disarray, too. RYSE gives us the opportunity to put things back in order again
and live fully. Whether it be a somatic, emotional, or spiritual hurdle, Risley
says RYSE offers the opportunity to overcome it and move on.
She explains it this way: “The proper management of this system
adds great clarity and insight to your life. For example, it puts you in the
‘zone’ if you are an athlete, or it puts you ‘on’ if you need to be present and
working with people.” And more importantly, she says, “it aids you in your own
personal transformation process.”
Part of that comes from the empowerment felt after these energy patterns are
cleared and restructured, a critical piece of the RYSE work.
Clearing and Restructuring
Unbalanced energy systems reflex into the rest of the body and
have a huge impact on the nervous and glandular systems, Risley says. This is
why, after first identifying the health of the energy systems, the clearing and
restructuring process is crucial to regaining health.
Risley says clear energy systems work to keep unwanted energy
from entering our being. In the same vein, they keep our “necessary life-force
energy” from draining or leaking out.
If we’re not in a balanced, aligned place, disruptions in the
energy pattern occur and the creative process is taken over by discomfort,
Risley says. This discomfort may show itself as a lingering depression, a stuck
feeling, guilt, or an inability to act. Looking into an energy system, Risley
says problems show up as disruptions, damage, dirt or murkiness, leaks, and
misalignments in the chakras, aura, and other subtle energy patterns.
“From the energetic perspective, we ask how do you attract more
of what you want and less of what you don’t want,” Risley says of the clearing
and restructuring work. “You change the pattern that is attracting what you
don’t want. You enhance the pattern that is attracting what you do want. This
change is physical and stems from a physical knowledge base. The comprehension
of this pattern is being able to perceive through a different lens that we all
have within us. It simply needs to be identified.”
Risley explains that sublime energetic systems belong to all of
us, and all energy is connected. “Sometimes the connections are nourishing and
healthy; other connections drag you back into old patterns, or tie you
unproductively to old relationships. These energy systems need aligning and
clearing and attention.” She says you can change the patterns by introducing new
energy system habits. “With conscious habits you are actually aligning your
energy system to be the way you want it to be ... When your energetic systems
are in repair, you will begin to resonate with your highest potential.”
When people get to this point, a world of possibilities opens up.
Risley shares a client’s story as an example of RYSE in action. “June” had
suffered from a low-level lingering depression, and described herself as being
“stuck,” although she couldn’t identify the reason why. “When she was creative,
she was very creative. But often she was unable to express her creativity.” In
addition June had sugar cravings and low self-esteem. “All of these symptoms
were important,” Risley says. “The depression was a signal of being blocked from
creating her life or full potential.” While working with June at a RYSE
workshop, Risley says she saw that her heart chakra was clogged and pressed
open. “It is through the heart chakra that we experience the signal of the soul
or the life force,” she says. “This can also be seen as the signal that we are
not fulfilling our blueprint or highest potential.” With June’s heart chakra in
this condition, she was unable to get the signals strongly enough to recognize
them. Risley worked on June’s heart chakra to remove its block and helped her
begin the healing process.
Along the same lines, Risley says to imagine a client who is
having trouble standing up for herself or is unable to commit to who she is. By
identifying the health of the client’s energy systems, the practitioner will
likely see a center chakra that is either broken, blown out, clogged, or going
backward. This client might have spent years in therapy or assertiveness
training working on the issue, yet she will always fall back into the old
pattern. When the chakra is cleared and repaired, Risley says the client almost
immediately will be able to stand up for herself and hold her power better than
she could before. She can then apply her previous trainings and work more
effectively.
The reason most people hang on to their faulty patterns is they
don’t know how to fix them, Risley says. RYSE not only fixes them, but does so
quickly. “An adept RYSE practitioner is able to move the block differently and
faster than it is moved in the body.” In fact, unlike other forms of bodywork
that might elicit an emotional release from clients, Risley says RYSE will
usually make clients feel euphoric, putting them in a deeper, more secure inner
state. When the block is moved, it is replaced with a far better quality of
energy. “RYSE can move emotional blocks without emotional releases,” she says.
RYSE allows the practitioner to do major work on the various
patterns that make up human lives and then give the experience of what it feels
like “to be in an aligned and clear space from which to manifest our highest
potential.” Risley says just as she built her own “psychic muscle,” to reap the
fullest benefits from RYSE, it’s important to use it on a regular basis. Don’t
wait until you need it, she says, it will be much harder to do. “Once you have
dropped into the lower vibrational state associated with blocked or unclear
energy patterns, it is extremely hard to get things working without assistance.”
With practice and development of that psychic muscle, Risley says
the RYSE exercises will eventually become spontaneous with life’s ebbs and
flows. While some people find balance “checking in” on their energetic selves
once or twice a day with RYSE exercises, others clear themselves eight times a
day. It’s all about what each person needs. “These energetic components are very
deep and their removal is generally significant,” Risley says. “When these
patterns are dysfunctional, they take energy; when healthy, they give energy.”
When the energy systems are clear, balanced, and healthy, Risley
says life force comes pouring in through the chakras, as well as all the other
subtle energy systems, and “blueprints” are realized.
Putting RYSE in the World
After successfully using this technique with her own clients for
years, Risley knew she needed to teach RYSE to other practitioners and started
doing so in the late 1980s. In fact, RYSE was developed, in part, as a burnout
prevention tool, she says. In her own practice, Risley says she was a “healer’s
healer,” attracting doctors (especially cardiologists), counselors,
acupuncturists, massage therapists, polarity therapists, etc. “They came to me
because they saw that this can protect them,” she says. Risley’s clients were
able to see how their own clients and patients were affecting them and their
energy systems, and wanted to learn how to best allay those effects.
The benefits of putting RYSE into the world were
two-fold—therapists could use RYSE to clear their own energy systems, keeping
them fresh for each day’s battery of clients/patients, and clients could benefit
when RYSE was incorporated into their sessions for maximum empowerment and
realization.
For those who practice RYSE, Risley says they gain an awareness
of themselves. They see the energetic blocks and are able to fix them and
prevent things from “getting caught.” The more someone does RYSE work, the more
adept they become at quickly identifying their issues and moving them through
the energetic system. “Then they can learn to go into more depth and use this in
every aspect of their lives.”
Since it is done with awareness, Risley says RYSE can easily flow
into any bodywork session—be it traditional Swedish massage, reiki, or anything
in between. “It can be easily integrated into a massage or bodywork session for
spot problems,” she says.
“It is very powerful to end any session with an overall RYSE clearing and
repair, which takes about two to three minutes when performed by a competent
practitioner.”
In her own life, Risley says RYSE has done everything from
helping her grow from one school to five, to realizing that teaching this work
is her passion and blueprint for life.
For the timid, this energy researcher reminds us that the process
is naturally simple. “The sublime energetic systems are either in the condition
to hold and enhance your life force, give you energy, and activate your
creativity, or they are creating a negative pole which is draining your energies
into it. Through the work in RYSE, your energetic systems are being cleared to
give you energy and allow you to realize your full potential and have the life
you want.”
Karrie Osborn is the contributing editor for Massage & Bodywork
magazine. Contact her at
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For more information on RYSE, visit
www.ryse.com.
Principles of Energy
Forming the underpinnings of RYSE are what Risley calls the
principles of energy. Here are a few of those principles and their relationship
to the RYSE process.
* The Principle of Resonance. Like attracts like. “The principle
of resonance is fundamental to energy system understanding,” Risley writes. “The
energetic systems act by resonance, which is similar to the concept of
magnetism. Resonance is another way of referring to the fact that like energy
attracts to itself.” She says just as a magnet will attract to metal, energy
attracts to resonance. “Heavy, clogged energy attracts more heavy energy, and
clear, vital energy attracts more clear, vital energy.”
* You Have a Blueprint of Your Highest Potential. Just like the
blueprint of our physical bodies being held in our DNA, Risley says we also hold
an energetic blueprint of our highest potential. When we can no longer access
that blueprint because of clogged energy, our need for wholeness, growth, and
transformation can’t be realized.
* Energy Comes Before Form. Risley says that change happens in
the energetic spectrum before manifesting in the physical spectrum. The
energetic systems are a blueprint of our nervous system, emotions, and physical
body. Before change can occur in these areas, energy must shift first.
* The Law of Entrainment. This principle is what allows the
chakra system and other energetic systems to change instantly, Risley says.
“Everything naturally follows and takes on the qualities of the strongest
energy.” For example, imagine a room full of people asked to clap in rhythm. By
the third clap, everyone is in tune to the same rhythm. “The
strongest energy wins out,” she says. “This is something we all instinctively
know, and it becomes very important in energy work.” When the strongest energy
is that of alignment and balance, it will win out over “hurt” energy, she
explains. “However, if it is not (the strongest), we can entrain with hurt
energy—and we do, providing we have some level of resonance with this energy.
This is why it is important to remove the resonant blocked energy from our
system, so that it does not draw more blocked energy into itself and pull us
down.”
Perceive Your Energy
In addition to being in your highest vibrational state to do RYSE
exercises, you must also be able to perceive your sublime energetic systems.
Nancy Risley offers this exercise:
1. Close your eyes and think of a rose.
2. Open your eyes.
Did you imagine a rose? Did you see it in your mind’s eye? If so,
you are visual and this is how you will perceive your chakras. At first, it may
seem as though you are making these up. However, it is how your subconscious
communicates with you. If you did not see a rose in your mind’s eye but felt the
rose, you are kinesthetic. You will feel your energetic system. If you heard the
rose, you are auditory. When doing the RYSE exercises, you may hear things click
into place or into clarity, or you may hear an inner voice telling you, you’re
done.
—from RYSE: Tools for Life (ClearPoint Education, 1999)
by Nancy Risley
Leslie A. Young, PhD, (Editor in Chief of Massage & Bodywork magazine and
Vice President of Communication for its publisher, Associated Bodywork & Massage
Professionals,) grants reprint permission for the following article to Pat
Michaud and Nancy Risley of PRI Educational Development Company and Spa Tech
Institute (formerly Polarity Realization Institute).
Michaud and Risley are free to use the article in massage and aesthetics
books PRI Ed. Dev. Co. creates specifically for Spa Tech Institute, and also for
various marketing purposes at Spa Tech Institute. ABMP appreciates credit being
given to the author as well as to Massage & Bodywork magazine. |
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