9th Annual Conference

Community medicine exists in a trauma field, both the practice and patients. ACE scores show the impact of early adverse events on long term odds of developing both physical and mental chronic illnesses.

Allopathic training helps us with acute trauma and we can treat many things with pharmaceuticals or surgery, but it does not yet give us tools for treatment of the personal and social trauma we encounter in underserved populations that can underlie illness and impair resilience, as well as our ability to provide care. The high intensity of primary care and the inability to change outcomes and handle the stress of treating such challenging patients can lead to provider burnout.

Eastern traditions like acupuncture and more recent modalities like Hearth Math, and mindfulness attempt to get to root causes of imbalances that impact the experience of chronic pain and illness. They often have an energetic foundation and the emerging field of energy medicine offers tools to help.

I propose to create a framework for how energy modalities work by giving a brief background in what I call our biophysics and energy anatomy. I will also review the physiology of stress, how it impacts our immune system, neurophysiology and chronic disorders, including pain. I will discuss how energy structures and their function are affected by the stress response.

The majority of the presentation will, however, be experiential, giving participants a set of tools and exercises like tapping and movement, organized in a daily routine to balance the basic energy organization of the body, followed by some specific exercises focused on recognizing and correcting the stress response, and treating pain non-pharmaceutically. I will demonstrate energy testing and teach basic muscle testing for clinicians in the longer presentation format. These simple routines can be used in primary care visits and taught to both patients and providers to manage stress and pain, and to build resilience.

The Presenter leads multiple shared medical visits , including an ongoing Energy and Wellness group, teaching energy medicine to patients and staff. She is an advanced Eden Energy Medicine practitioner with 10 years of clinical practice and teaches Foundations, the first year of training in the EEM certification program. She has done FQHC staff wellness trainings and participated in presentations on group visits and other topics in the community.

energy medicine, self care for patients and providers, stress management, chronic pain, group visit or individual care

Skill-based training or Experiential workshop: provide an opportunity to acquire and practice a new skill and to observe and refine teaching techniques for this skill

This session is appropriate for all audiences and skill levels