Overall opinion
This book really did not contribute much to the sum of occult knowledge. In fact there was little benefit in being written. It provided a number of ways to use the body to dowse information from the subconscious. The focus was healing trapped emotions in the energy body, but its method of dealing with such things leads people away from actually experiencing the energy body and directly interacting with it and instead using muscular tensions to estimate what is going on.
The author doesn’t seemed to have had much faith in his own book. Rather than letting the reader experience it working for themself he insists on padding it countless annecdotes. However some of his writing suggests he has a fleeting acquaintance with the truth. Not only is he not a good source of information he can’t be relied on to provide his sources well either.
If emotions become trapped in the energy body they are better freed by regularly practising qi-gong / energy work and releasing all blockages.
The process of expelling emotions is better handled through counselling and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and not through the techniques in this book. Sadly I am going to conclude that this book is not worth buying for any serious practising magician. I bought it without reading its content while working on Water and wanting to accept, understand and release my emotions more to help me with my process. Sadly it was quickly disregarded and I only returned to it to complete this review.
Below are some notes made while reading the book.
What is this book about?
The Emotion Code explores the idea that feelings and emotions can become trapped in our bodies. Sometimes we experience feelings and they are stuck somewhere in our subtle body and impact the energy flow there. Whether or not this is true it might be a good source of information about energy work and emotions so I began it while working on water and my emotions. What the book writes about is not a new idea, in fact, I have come across the idea before. A friend of mine often mentions it and is intrigued by the healing potential of such a technique.
Can emotion get trapped in the body? Well there’s a book about it, but there’re many books about the end of the world coming in 2012, so just because there is a book does not mean it is true. It is however important to consider the possibility! I have noticed that while I was repeated gaslighted as a child and people get upset when I speak my truth, I often felt the need to hold back my voice and for the past 10 years or so I have continually had throat issues. Alternatively, I let my voice loose here and speak my truth without fear of people’s reaction.
Sway Test
This was an interesting chapter to explore. I had noticed when I was a child in Christian prayer groups when people stood up and were prayed for they would often sway weirdly and sometimes fall over. This was taken as a sign of “the LORD” working his miraculous healing power. Since then on a few occassions I have noticed a similar affect when no “LORD” was asked or welcomed to be present. A state of sway could still be achieved.
My own attempts to trigger try this were not as faithful to the results the book was suggesting. The idea was that when you closed your eyes and stood still for a while you could eventually begin to sway subtly. The more you expect it, the more it happens. Supposedly true or happy statements would encourage you to sway forward while false or sad statements would encourage you to sway backwards more. I focused on “I am generally happy with my life.” Which for me seems true and also something I am proud of, in the world where it seems a large percentage suffers with depression. I noticed in the swinging I was forward, this made sense. I went back for a sec, but mostly forward. Then I focused on my dead grandmother and swang forward, which didn’t reflect my feelings. My missed my last chance to talk to my grandma while she was alive because I was selfishly taking care of my own needs, which deeply saddens me and I focused on that. Still, I swayed forward even though I was expecting myself to rock back. I kept going for a while and eventually I could make myself sway backwards, but the point was to reach a state where this happens naturally.
It feels like you’re relearning to do some dowsing with a pendulum all over again. I guess this book is for people who are true beginners when it comes to energy work. When you can already perceive it then you don’t need these techniques, you can just focus on the energy and over time you experience it more and more deeply receiving information about it.
B.S. claim of Energy Medicine from 4000BC
The author writes about “beliefs” concerning energy medicine from 4000BC. This is utter bullshit! The oldest writing in the world dates to about 3000BC and the oldest writing we can actually decifer is from about 2600BC. We cannot tell what their beliefs concerning anything were in 4000BC. If we had them writing down their views or we could determine they were acting in a way that indicated a certain belief, we could conclude something, but we don’t have that. The archeological evidence left is not suitable to derive any beliefs about energy medicine from 4000BC. I could be wrong so by all means find me a text from this period that refers to any belief concerning energy healing and I will be impressed and eat my hat. Also, just because they did not write anything down does not mean they didn’t believe in healing energy, however this author steaks a claim with NO EVIDENCE. Nothing to even suggest it might be true. With no writing from 4000BC, we know literally nothing about their beliefs. We might find a clay pot and make some assumptions as to how it was used, but energy healing is not something that any reputable acheologist, that wants to get something published in a peer reviewed publication, would conclude from the evidence we have found from this period of time. This is entirely the author’s fantasy.
Let’s hope that the author continues the rest of the book talking about his/their experiences rather than speculating about his fantasies, so that we actually have some content to learn rather than a load of unverified personal gnosis and make-believe.
Everything is Energy and Bogus Science
The author attempts to relate everything to energy from the matter that our body is made up of and our thoughts. Yes nearly everything can be mapped as energy, but one type of energy does not equal another type of energy. He seems to be using these paragraphs to suggest everything is essentially the same. It’s not. Think about when you see lightning and a few seconds later there is thunder. Often these are two different energy emissions from the same event, but they hit you very separately because they are two very different type of energy travelling through two different mediums. One is transverse waves in an Electro-Magnetic Matrix and the other is longditudinal waves travelling through a gas. Two energies and they are not the same. Watch out for the author trying to lead us to the assumption everything is the same thing. Anyone who does energy healing will note that energy we move might look like light in our minds, but it often acts like a viscous substance so it’s more like a type of matter than energy even though the word we use is energy. Light is not a viscous substance, in fact it rarely acts like quanta at all only for certain models.
Dear author please drop the scientific gobbledegook. Mentioning a few GCSE science terms is only going to wow the feeble minded and not for the right reasons. You clearly don’t know what you’re talking about and waffling about stuff you heard second-hand and did not quite understand. The author seems to be leading people to mistruths, something I cannot abide. He is trying to sound authoritative by using very basic scientific terms however he is failing to say anything of note so doesn’t quite have the knowledge to use these terms. For example, literally no scientist is making an argument that atoms have intelligence in the way we do. Some scientists believe in God and that he universe is intelligent as a whole but a different claim staked here. We do not need bullshit explanations on the potential scientific basis for a technique to use it and see if it works. Put down the Science for Dummies and second-hand terms from quantum mechanics and present us your work, not your misunderstanding of various scientists’ work passed through the hands of people who thought they could leverage scientific terms to make a buck publishing something.
Next we have dreams used like further evidence of how we carve reality and the ability to fly. When someone can fly just by visualising it and being grateful to God then please come fly over to where I live and let me know please. I am eager to believe in such things soon as I see them. Sadly, reality doesn’t seem that simple to me. While no-one is landing in my back garden to prove me wrong, I will assume I am right that this is not evidence of anything. Should I be proved otherwise, I will openly admit I am wrong, but my own involvement in many spiritual communities where people cannot fly is all the evidence I need to conclude belief does not allow one to defy the laws of physics.
Next we have references to widely discredited science. The water memory experiments referenced are well-known for being debunked. Everyone that has tried to repeat them as had difficulty getting the same results as the original experiment, so it is assumed that the original scientist just kept getting water molecules until he got the one that backed up his original hypothesis and throwing away anything that contradicted his beliefs.
I feel like the author has little evidence to back up his theory so he is reaching. I am a good third of the way into the book and very little of the technique has been presented to me and he is still reaching to science he doesn’t understand. His use of language is indicative of of a poor understanding of science, “the scientific community” referenced “scientists have changed their minds” as if they are all of one homogenous belief. Has he considered that one scientist might have been denying a Reiki energy field while another is presenting evidence of vague magnetic field around the body? By conflating all scientists into one and all fields into one he might conclude the community has changed its mind, but actually it is not that simple. He also provides no reference when writing like this so there is no way to verify his claims.
The author also appears to criticise medical science suggesting that some medication only addresses the symptoms not the cause. He fails to provide examples of this and how the cause could be addressed. It’s never good to criticise medical science unless you work in the field and can provide an alternative evidence to base your theories on. Even then, some people can become convinced of poor advice. It’s a bad look criticising medical science especially since the resistence of people to vaccination caused the whole population to have issues. Just presenting one poorly run experiment one time has left thousands believing vaccines cause illness rather than health. Despite hundreds reports which provided better evidence contradicting the original report thousands are still stuck following the previous report which has been proven time and time again to be wrong.
Early on we have the use of magnets. I guess the magnet provides a good visualisation, a visualisation that depicts it as a field and you move it up the governing vessel without touching so you end up focusing on the sensation of energy in the vessel rather touching your skin and focusing on the physical sensation. I tried this with the magnet, with a non-magnetic iron rod, with a wooden wand and with my finger. While the magnet seemed to elicit a stronger effect than the finger the iron rod and the wooden wand were near identical effects to the magnet so I would like to conclude it is unlikely to be related to the magnetic field. Also the body does contain trace amounts of iron in it, but too much iron in once place could cause a toxicity issue. While static magnetic fields have been shown to allow for great iron metabolism these are fields generate in a scientific environment not something you could do at home. Using magnets that are repeatedly worn as bracelets or waved over parts of the body could collect iron in one place causing a toxicity issue.
Later we have a section about the heart. Perhaps they want to tell you to lead with the heart rather than the head, but the author chooses to start by saying that the heart generates 60-1000 times more electrial energy than the brain… So what?! A power station generates way more power than my car does when it is using the motion as I drive down the street to charge the battery, but no power station is going to drive me to my mum’s house. Using bogus analogies to make blanket dumb statements is not going to add to the wealth of human knowledge nor convince people to do anything sensible. Also let’s remember that the organ we feel our emotions with is not actually the physical heart, but more likely a combination of the amygdola and hypothalamus so the strength of the vessel which transports oxygen around the body has little baring on our emotional decision making.
Following this we have comments about the heart being able to project electro-magnetic energy into other people’s brains and supposedly this is backed up by “science” and “research”. This is bogus again. I am very interested in such research and I have never heard of such an experiment proving that something like that could happen. Yet I have come across people making up that such experiments exist. The lack of references and referring to as simply “research” using a generic term indicates to me that this author is not referring to specific research and they one again don’t know what they’re talking about. They are drawn to regurgitating some bs they heard elsewhere as if it were fact. They clearly have a loose relationship with the truth and therefore should not be writing a book that conveys any form of learning or truth.
So we must conclude this individual is incapable of understanding basic scientific reports or concepts. They have real difficulty distinguishing between good sources of information and poor sources. The author presents research without references and when he references he doesn’t bother to check whether the source has been checked.
No Faith In His Own Method
The author of this text seems to be very insecure that you won’t believe this practice. He doesn’t seem to imagine you will try it, find it works immediately and get excitedly involved.
Normally, when you’re selling books about stuff that does not work people catch on fast. You know what you’re like, you can probably remember a time when someone was telling you porkies and you just knew it. When it comes to something like this in order to keep people believing rubbish you need to provide a reason for when it does not work. I am not saying that the author is doing this just yet. Keep with me a sec.
In this book, the author suggests when it doesn’t work, it might be when you’re dehydrated or have a stiff neck. Now try and think of a time when you’re sure you weren’t dehydrated and you didn’t have a stiff neck. You can’t can you? So if something in a hypothetical book doesn’t work and someone says “that’s because you’re dehydrated or your have a stiff neck.” You’re going to think, oh that’s viable because I might be dehydrated, mightn’t I? I can’t know for sure that I am not dehydrated. Well, that means there’s never going to be a way to test it and have it fail, is there? It’s always going to be a suitable excuse when something doesn’t work. That means it can work at random intervals, but if it doesn’t work most of the time, then you can just blame your state of hydration, so it seems like it works when it doesn’t.
Why is this relevant? Well, I ask why does a book like this, trying to peddle something that supposedly works, need such a viable reason for when it doesn’t work? Well it could be because the Emotion Code doesn’t work most of the time. Otherwise, the author would not need to include a section like this. Also, why does most of the first half of the book so far need so many examples of when it supposedly has worked? Surely, if it works, readers would just need to try it and see, and don’t need 200 pages or more of case studies to convince the readers. If it actually worked it could just rely on people giving it a try.
Next we have a big section on how if the suppressed emotion you have found doesn’t match anything you remember then maybe it’s because it is an emotion you absorbed from someone else through empathy or an emotion you have forgotten because you put it behind you, or it was before you were conceived. Again, we have the same sort of thing. Excuses for why it might not be working, so that the audience of this book is once again prepped for the failure of this technique.
Later, we suggest if you’re doing a reading for someone else you could project some of your own damage and could make yourself read what you want to read rather than allowing your subconscious to send the message. This is probably the most likely way these sorts of things go wrong, but here we are with more ways it could go wrong. Does this ever just work? I mean one section like this I would understand, but so we have many???
In the section about Heart-Walls (I will explain this later) there is a paragraph suggesting you can get false results because sometimes it is a “hidden” heart-wall and you can either get multiple readings or 0 readings because you forgot to ask for a “hidden heart-wall” and only said “heart-wall”. So, we are ensuring 2 ways that this can go wrong are catered for. Yes again we have a way that to enable readers to ignore the system failing.
Whether it works or not, I am not impressed so far, I am over halfway through the book, it has barely included any methods that the author is confident that you can just rely on being accurate.
The Release Technique
The technique seems to initially rely on the subtle body as described in Chinese medicine. For example the author makes reference to the conception vessel and governing vessel which come the Chinese concepts Ren Mai and Du Mai.
The reader is instructed to draw a magnet up from the forehead over the head backwards when releasing on themself and doing similarly down the spine if releasing for someone else. This immediately shocks me as backwards to the normal flow. Since this is contrary to the natural flow it could be damaging or dangerous.
I remember reading Yang Jwing-ming’s book Root of Chinese Qi-gong a good 18 years ago and I specifically remember this trained martial artist, qi-gong practitioner and acupuncturist writing a section on moving energy in the opposite direction. In his book, there is a short undeveloped note about a practice called the “wind path”, where energy is moved backward along the vessels. It is a very advanced technique, rarely done and only done in certain circumstance by an experience professional. Naturally being the idiot I was back then… I immediately performed the technique back then and gave myself a massive headache which lasted for days.
Since this technique seems to have worked for the author, I retried for his technique with magnets and felt like my blood pressure increased and I was short of breath / anxious. This author has done nothing to encourage me to believe he has a decent understanding of Qi-gong, so I am not impressed with him leading people to do things so contrary to the generally accepted practice of qi-gong practitioners across the globe. If he had learning in Qi-gong and taught a unique practice, I wouldn’t mind, but I am immediately concerned that he has no knowledge of this subject and is leading people to hurt themselves.
The release techniques involves moving a magnet backwards along the governing vessel or the very top of the conception vessel, but I do not recommend this technique as it is contrary to most qi-gong and accupuncturist practices.
Bad Psychological Advice
There is a reference to a concept called a heart wall. This is basically an emotional defence mechanism. The author encourages people to free themselves from these walls so they can live freer. This concept is explored much more carefully with care and reverence for the damage that could potentially be done in Cognitive Behavioural Training books. The main issue I have with this session is that there is almost always a reason a defence mechanism manifests. Before we can or should lower a defense mechanism we should ensure that we have the means to protect ourselves from unnecessary pain then we can lower the defence mechanism. In my experience this is TOTALLY inadvisable without a trained therapist. This book gives many examples, but few go into enough depth to explore the problems with releasing a defence mechanism or as this author calls them “a heart-wall”. This is not the first time the author makes ill advice with regards to treating people.
We have a tendency to see ourselves as the victim or hero in most of memories of our lives. This book in its examples seems to encourage people to see themselves as such. The issue with this is that it never encourages them to takes responsiblity for some of the emotions they experienced and to entirely blame other people. This is a populist approach designed to appeal to many readers and sell more books rather than provide good techniques to support mankind. It’s a lazy way to approach interactions. Blame other people, never take responsibility, release emotions without necessarily dealing with why we experienced them in the first place in a suitable mentally healthy way.
Conclusion
This book is a menace. It should not have been written. It encourages science denialism, the author had a fleeting acquaintance with the truth. It’s main method is contrary to most accepted qi-gong and Chinese medicinal practice. It fails to add anything of note to our collective knowledge as a species. Most if it is annecdotes and reasons why it might not be working. The actual practice itself could be summarised into about 4 or 5 paragraphs and the rest of the book could be tossed out. Even if that were done, I would not recommend the practices as they are most likely damaging rather than healing. Buy a book on CBT instead.