Although little known in Europe, Body Electronics has been developed since the 1950s by Dr. John Whitman Ray (off-site link) and others. It combines a powerful bodywork called pointholding with a specific way of working with the emotion and memory that surfaces. John Ray found that sound nutritional principles needed to be followed by the recipient in order for the work to be consistently and optimally effective.

 

How Body Electronics Works Physically

Pointholding uses pressure-points held steadily for typically 2-4 hours in each session. Where other modalities such as reflexology and acupressure hold often the same points, they do so for a very short duration on each point. Single points held steadily for this extended time period go through a complete cycle of release with a natural peak and ending which is felt both by giver and recipient. What is valuable about this method is that it gradually brings to the surface emotion and sensory memory of a depth and intensity that other techniques completely miss.

Points for work on the body would be assessed by their level of tenderness when given some pressure, or those points which for example, correspond to the areas most noticeable according to iridology, or points connected to areas of a current emotional experience located in the body. One of these points can then be held, with steady pressure during a Body Electronics pointholding session to access some of the "information" through the point. In fact if there are several people present, as there can be in pointholding groups, several points can be held on one person. The recipient is then guided through the memory and emotion that arises, into the one-sided beliefs connected to them, whilst being encouraged to apply definite principles.

It is known from scientific studies that liquid crystals occur at acupuncture points. When pressured, these crystals release an electrical current by the piezoelectic effect. Such crystals must also occur in many other places in the body judging from the diversity of points that are effective in pointholding. The electrical energy that is released is not just like connecting to a battery. It is living energy containing information as to an area in which we have previously been enmeshed in resistance and gone off track from our true self. This information contains desires and emotions and elicits sensations of all types relevant to the emotional experience. The process to some extent contains its own guide as observing relevant beliefs or memories connected to desires and emotions naturally leads to an increase in the energy connected to the point, felt by both holder and recipient.

 

Self-Responsibility

As a discipline Body Electronics is about self-responsibility. Although points are being held by someone else as they would be in most "therapies", the recipient has to apply certain principles to the physical body and contain and work with the desires which arise. All this amounts to internalisation and an intensification of the experience which leads to its transmutation and resolution. The receipient has to be willing to uncover their own previously resisted fears, angers, apathies, vulnerabilities, griefs and so on together with their connnected one-sided belief-states, and experience them internally without reacting from them in the habitual way of altering the outer world to make things more comfortable. Someone at the stage of looking for a "therapist" or "healer" to do the work for them is not suited to body electronics.

 

The Experience of Pointholding

The process of Body Electronics pointholding goes more or less as follows, each stage lasting at least several minutes:

1. The recipient feels tired, numb, apathetic or disconnected from their physical or emotional selves. The point being held that was initially tender now has much reduced sensation.
2. The recipient wakes up more at the same time as the point starts to regain sensation. The sensation increases to include aching, sharpness and later, an experience of burning. There may be such sensations in an extended area around the point or even in more remote areas. The experience can start to be identified as emotional resistance and linked to memories when the resistance has been active. For example if the resistance felt is grief, we might look to a memory of when someone died. The burning increases due to the correct emotion and linked memories being identified and focused upon.
3. Word-patterns (phrases) connected to the emotion and memory are actively looked for. In the example of the grief, some words initially might be "I miss them." The correct words again intensify the experience coming from the point quite naturally.
4. Word-patterns are repeated to increase the intensity of the emotion (even if the emotion is detachment) and changed accordingly with how the experience shifts - perhaps from one memory to another, or one emotion to another.
5. The burning and other sensations from the point reduces and the recipient can often clearly see the error in the beliefs they have just voiced in the session as well as feel the reduction in emotional content and compulsivity of desires. What comes at the end of the session cannot be rationalised beforehand - it is an experience or realisation containing feelings integrated with intellectual thinking.
6. All this is leading towards the encompassment of a duality within the belief system - encompassing what we have pushed away as "bad" or "nonsense" and so on and denied the validity of in ourselves. Such encompassment may take many many sessions to achieve, depending on the depth of the duality. This process has a profound effect on the emotional and physical bodies.

 

Realisation - A Process of Incarnating the Truth

Body Electronics is essentially about the journey to uncover the truth that pre-exists within us. Whereas many disciplines uphold the gaining of information and skills, in Body Electronics we are naturally coming to realisations as a full feeling inner experience; a "knowing" that things have not been the way we have assumed and can now be perceived differently. The essential cause of related events can be perceived differently and we become less and less one-sided in our beliefs and emotions. Realisation can only come through the process of inner work and not through mere intellectual leaps of understanding. A true realisation is making the truth real, making it resound from the spiritual, through the emotional out to the physical. I can honestly say that most disciplines are not fully incarnating the realisations they get as when such a person comes to pointholding all  they thought they had cleared surfaces again. The body is our gateway to realisation after realisation as through it we can access personal, past-life and collective-archetypal memory to be worked on.

The Requirement for a Supporting Nutrition Programme

Routinely people receiving pointholding become very hungry or tired if they do not have a sufficient intake of key nutrients or a diet adequate for our purposes. Sessions seem to respond well to extra enzymes and a full spectrum of minerals at the very least. Additional enzymes can be obtained through certain foods or high quality enzyme supplements. Minerals are obtained both through elements of the diet and through supplementation.

 

The Requirement for a Supporting Naturopathic Programme

Any good bodywork technique moves stagnant wastes from body tissues into the lymph and blood. We can certainly feel a temporary situation of lowered well-being. Naturopathy is about using a common sense and natural approach to the body and how it functions in health. We commonly have congested blood and lymph after bodywork and need to address the flow of wastes out of the body through its eliminatory channels. The lymph drains into the blood, the blood moves through the liver to process the wastes and the kidneys to come back into balance and eliminate some aromatic compounds. The skin eliminates through sweat, dead cells and sometimes spots. The liver pushes the neturalised wastes into the digestive system to be eliminated. Bodywork commonly creates a situation of this flow of wastes being out of balance. The cells are pushing out more than is eliminated. Naturoapthic techniques address this flow and try to get it back into balance by enhancing the eliminatory ability. If this is achieved, wellbeing returns.

If we use suppressive techniques while we feel this lowered well-being, we are markedly hindering the effectiveness of the bodywork. So there is a requirement for someone deeply involved in body electronics to learn about naturopathy and find the techniques which work for them.