I know “energy healing” is the kind of phrase that makes certain people immediately reach for their skepticism. And honestly? I respect that. I was a pretty grounded, anatomy-first kind of therapist for a long time. If you’d told me ten years ago that I’d be training in something called Polarity Therapy and writing a blog post about energetic bodywork, I probably would have smiled politely and changed the subject.
So when I say I get the skepticism, I mean it from the inside.
But here’s what happened. The longer I worked with bodies, the more I kept running into something I didn’t have a clean language for. Moments in a session where the tissue would suddenly release, not because I’d applied more pressure or found a better angle, but because something else shifted. Clients who described feeling a warmth or a current moving through an area I wasn’t even touching. People who came in reporting that the work had changed something they couldn’t quite name, something that went deeper than muscle soreness or range of motion.
I started paying close attention to that. And eventually, I started training in it.
What Polarity Therapy Actually Is
Polarity Therapy is a system of bodywork developed by Dr. Randolph Stone, an osteopath and naturopath who spent decades studying the relationship between energy, structure, and health. The foundational premise is that the body has an energetic field, and that health, at its deepest level, is a function of the free and balanced flow of energy through that field. When energy becomes blocked or stagnant through physical injury, emotional stress, chronic tension, or trauma, the physical body eventually reflects that disruption.
The work involves hands-on contact that can range from deep to extremely light, and sometimes hands held just off the body entirely. The goal isn’t to fix a specific muscle or release a specific adhesion, though those things often happen as a result. The goal is to help the body’s energetic system return to a state of greater balance and flow.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
- Assessing the body’s energetic patterns before and throughout the session, not just the physical tissue
- Using specific contacts and holds that correspond to different energy currents and centers in the body
- Combining this with manual work so the physical and energetic layers are being addressed simultaneously
- Slowing way down in areas where something deeper needs space to shift, sometimes to the point where it looks like nothing is happening from the outside while quite a lot is happening underneath
Why I Started Taking This Seriously
I didn’t come to energy work through belief. I came to it through observation.
Over years of practice, I kept noticing a consistent pattern: the sessions that produced the most profound results weren’t always the ones where I applied the most technique. They were the ones where I slowed down, paid attention to something subtler, and followed it. The tissue would release in ways that didn’t fully make sense through a purely mechanical lens. Clients would describe experiences during the session that went beyond muscle relaxation into something quieter and harder to name. I’d finish a session feeling like something genuinely important had happened, even when I couldn’t fully account for it in anatomical terms.
At some point, ignoring that pattern started feeling less like good science and more like stubbornness. So I started studying.
I began training in Polarity Therapy because it offered a framework for what I was already observing, and because Dr. Stone’s background in osteopathy and naturopathy meant the system was built on rigorous study rather than pure intuition. It gave me language, technique, and context for a layer of the work that had been present all along but unnamed. And honestly, it made me a better therapist almost immediately, not because I started doing something dramatically different, but because I started paying attention to things I’d been half-noticing for years without knowing what to do with them. The results shifted. The depth of release shifted. And clients started describing something different coming off the table.
Did You Know? Polarity Therapy was developed over several decades by Dr. Randolph Stone, who held degrees in osteopathy, chiropractic, and naturopathic medicine. His research drew on both Western anatomy and Eastern energy systems, making Polarity one of the earliest integrative bodywork modalities. It has been recognized by the National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork as a legitimate continuing education discipline.
What It Feels Like From the Table
This is the part that’s hardest to describe and most useful to hear, so I’m going to try.
The most common thing clients say after receiving energy work as part of a session is some version of: “I felt something shift and I couldn’t tell you exactly what it was, but I feel different.” More specifically, people describe:
- A sensation of warmth or gentle current moving through areas that had been numb or stuck
- A sense of expansion in the chest or ribcage, like something that had been compressed finally had room to breathe
- Emotional release that arrives quietly and unexpectedly, as areas of stored tension soften
- A deeper quality of stillness than they experience with massage alone, a kind of settling that goes below the muscle level
- Feeling more integrated, like the different parts of the body are communicating with each other again rather than operating in disconnected fragments
None of this requires you to believe anything in particular or adopt any kind of spiritual framework. What I find, both in my training and in my practice, is that the body responds to this work regardless of whether the person on the table has a conceptual model for what’s happening. The response is physiological, even if our language for it is still catching up. The skeptic who showed up curious and left surprised is genuinely one of my favorite types of client.
For the Skeptic Specifically
I want to speak directly to the part of you reading this with one eyebrow raised, because you deserve a straight answer rather than a sales pitch.
Here’s what I’m not claiming:
- That energy work is magic
- That it replaces skilled manual technique
- That you have to believe in it for it to work
- That every session will produce a dramatic, describable experience
- That I have a perfect scientific explanation for every mechanism involved
Here’s what I am saying:
- The body has dimensions that purely mechanical approaches don’t fully address
- Slowing down and working with subtler signals consistently produces results that speed and pressure alone don’t
- Clients who’ve received the integrated approach, physical and energetic work combined, regularly report a qualitative difference they didn’t expect
- The research on touch, nervous system regulation, and the body’s electrical and energetic properties is growing, and it points toward something real even when it doesn’t yet have tidy explanations for all of it
If you’ve had massage before and it helped but never quite got all the way there, if there’s something you’ve been carrying that feels like it lives deeper than muscle, consider that there might be a layer of the work you haven’t accessed yet. That’s not woo. That’s just an honest assessment of what different tools can reach.
Insider Tip from Amy: If you’re curious about the energy work component of my sessions but not sure you want to commit to it, here’s the honest answer: it’s already woven in. I don’t offer it as a separate add-on because it’s not separate from how I work. Every session is integrative. The physical work and the energetic attentiveness happen simultaneously, and the results reflect that combination. If you want to talk through what that means for your specific situation before you book, I’m always happy to have that conversation first.
What Happens in the Body When the Energetic Layer Is Also Being Addressed
This is something I find genuinely difficult to explain in a way that satisfies both the scientifically minded and the experientially oriented, so I’m going to try to do both at once.
When I work with the energetic layer alongside the physical, clients consistently report that certain areas release more completely than they do with manual work alone. Not faster necessarily, but more fully. Like the tissue let go of something it had been holding at a level that pressure and movement alone weren’t quite reaching. The nervous system tends to settle more deeply. The breath tends to shift without me directing it. And clients often describe a quality of stillness at the end of the session that feels different from standard post-massage relaxation. Less like muscles that got rubbed and more like a system that genuinely came to rest.
From a physiological standpoint, what I believe is happening, though the research is still catching up with the practice, is that attending to the energetic field changes the quality of contact and presence in a way the nervous system registers. It’s the difference between touch that’s technically skilled and touch that’s also deeply attentive. The body responds to both. But it responds differently to each. And for some bodies, particularly those that have been in protection mode for a long time, that quality of attentiveness is what finally communicates that it’s safe to fully let go. The technique opens a door. The presence is what makes the body willing to walk through it.
How I’m Incorporating It Into Sessions Right Now
I want to be transparent about where I am in this training, because honesty matters more than sounding further along than I am.
I’m currently in the process of training in Polarity Therapy. I’m not presenting myself as a fully certified Polarity practitioner yet. What I am doing is weaving the principles and techniques I’ve learned so far into sessions in ways that feel appropriate, responsive, and genuinely useful to the people I’m working with.
For some clients, this looks like:
- A slower, more settling opening using lighter contact that helps the nervous system register safety before the deeper work begins
- Specific holds and contacts during the session that address energetic patterns alongside the physical ones
- More attentiveness to breath patterns, temperature shifts, and the subtle quality of how an area responds to contact
For other clients, particularly those dealing with significant stress, emotional overwhelm, or a history of trauma, the energetic work becomes more central to the session. Not because the physical work isn’t needed, but because the body is telling me it needs something different before it’s ready to receive deeper pressure. The energetic layer creates the conditions for the physical work to land more fully and more lastingly than it would otherwise. I’ve had sessions where slowing down and attending to the energetic piece first saved us 30 minutes of trying to work through tissue that had no intention of releasing until it felt genuinely met.
A Final Word for the Undecided
If you’ve read this whole post and you’re still somewhere in the “interesting but I’m not sure I buy it” zone, that’s completely fine. You don’t have to resolve your skepticism before you book. You don’t have to arrive with a framework or an open mind or any particular expectation about what energy work is or does.
You just have to show up and notice what you notice. The work will do what it does. Your nervous system will respond the way it responds. And if something shifts in a way you didn’t expect, you can figure out what to call it later. The label matters a lot less than the result.
If you want to ask questions before you come in, reach out through evergreenwellnessspa.com. I’m easy to get in touch with and genuinely enjoy talking about this stuff, probably more than is entirely normal.