The other day, a friend’s daughter walked into my house wearing bellbottom pants. I immediately experienced the déjà vu that occurs when something old is repackaged as something new. (It’s just too bad we can’t become 16 again by simply wearing our high school pants.)
At the forefront of the medical community is a “new” idea called bioelectric medicine, which involves the use of electrical stimulation to create healing and pain relief. Techniques typically incorporate the use of technology and instruments, which have added to the ability to measure effectiveness. Because of this, we now have an increasing body of statistical evidence supporting the use of bioelectric medicine. Having said that, bioelectrical medicine is actually yet another resurgence of an age-old concept and set of techniques, one that bodyworkers can perform without the tool kit required by allopathic physicians.
What are the roots of bioelectric medicine? They spread throughout thousands of cultures across time and share one fundamental understanding: there is a vital life energy that animates us. The various names for this energy include chi or qi in Chinese, kundalini in Hindu, mana among the Polynesians, ka to the Egyptians, pneuma among the Greeks, and baraka to the Sufis.1 On a physical level alone, we might call this energy “electricity.”
The central fact of contemporary bioelectric medicine is the body’s bioelectromagnetic nature. We know that every cell produces electricity, not only in humans, but in all living organisms, including plants and microbes. In human, animal, and plant cells, a certain type of protein, called channel proteins, creates gaps in the cellular plasma membranes. These proteins function as ion channels—ions defined as chemicals that can conduct electricity.2 They also allow the communication of energy, or information that vibrates, between all parts of us and between this self and the external world.
Electricity underlies the body’s communication equation in that it passes information between cells. It also creates fields that emanate from every organ, organ system, and the body as a whole. These fields share information with the greater world and also receive incoming communications. These fields, all of which are generated by electricity, create electrical, magnetic, and electromagnetic fields. Together these various fields formulate life and interconnectivity.
It makes sense that if you shift the electrical conduction or activity inside of the body, you will change the corresponding fields. It also follows that if you alter the fields outside the body, they will alter the electrical functions and codes in the body. Theoretically, if a growth is causing an electrical dysfunction in the body, and you can change the electrical flow around that area, you can potentially alter the growth itself. If you create function where there is dysfunction in electrical flow, you create new patterns for the body, enabling healing.
Healers across time have worked to alter electrical flow to provide healing and hope. They have frequently shifted another’s bioelectric current by applying their own bioelectric currents through their hands, via needles, or maybe with mantras (sounds), postures, psychological insights, prayers, or dietary alterations. Using technology is simply a different way to do what healers have always done—alter the life force or electrical basis of life in order to establish a healthier state.
Yale researcher Harold Burr was one of the first to modernize the concept of bioelectric medicine, quite notably contributing to science beginning in 1937.
In his groundbreaking work, “The Meaning of Bio-Electrical Potentials,” Burr showed that every living organism emanates and exists within a bioelectrical field.3 The fact that this field is present before structural differentiation in an embryo means that the field predates the organism. He also noticed that when there was abnormal tissue in an organism, the field showed abnormalities. Therefore, reasoned Burr, you can alter anything—from an embryo to diseased tissue—by first changing the external field. In other words, by positively shifting the electrical voltage within a system, you can create a more healed state.4
Of course, we don’t only alter electrical currents by applying field-based healings from outside to in. Case in point: Tufts University is currently using Burr’s concept to grow new organs. By altering the voltage in cellular membranes, Tufts’s researchers have actually caused eyes to grow outside of the head in tadpoles.5
The implications of bioelectric therapy don’t start and end with organ regeneration. For quite some time, electricity has been considered a safe and drug-free option for treating chronic and acute pain, headaches and migraines, blood flow disorders, and arthritis. The most traditional way this therapy is delivered is via electrodes attached to the skin, with the applied voltage controlled by a connected computer. The electrical flow interrupts pain signals before they reach the brain, also prompting the production of endorphins, hormones that relieve pain.6 More recently, scientists have been using in-body bioelectric stimulation of the internal body, focused on the deep brain and the vagus nerve, a cranial nerve that extends from the brain stem to the abdomen. This nerve is responsible for hundreds of important bodily functions, such as the regulation of heartbeat, muscle movement, and chemical and neurological responsiveness.
In particular, researchers are now stimulating the vagus nerve to treat dozens of different inflammatory conditions, including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, hypertension, inflammatory bowel disease, asthma, obesity, chronic fatigue, hepatitis, and even cancer.7 Science is also crediting bioelectric medicine with futuristic treatments for psychiatric disorders, such as depression, schizophrenia, and more. Isn’t that interesting? We can even shift our emotions by altering our electrical balance.8
The central tenet of bioelectric medicine is summarized by biologist James Oschman, PhD, who speaks for hundreds of researchers, healers, and ancient cultures when he recognizes the body as a living matrix—a complex network formed by all systems of the body. Energy is at the core of this matrix and interconnects all human tissue.
Even our DNA pulses with electricity that emits magnetic fields and helps create a vast network of light made of interactive, internally generated fields that also react to external energy fields. All aspects of the self, which is really a set of oscillating fields, creates and responds to memory, consciousness, and ultimately, the universe, and of course, to measurable vibrations, such as mechanical waves, electrical signals, electrical, magnetic, and electromagnetic fields, as well as heat and light.9
Whether you are aware of it or not, every time you touch a client, you are working bioelectrically. Every time you think about, talk to, or dream with a client, you are interacting with their measurable and immeasurable energetic fields, and therefore are performing bioelectric medicine. How can you improve your ability to shift the energetic fields and, in turn, support the body’s most natural processes—especially when everything you do can create change? I propose using an adaptation of an age-old shamanic tool called the assemblage point.
Various shamans or priest-healers have, throughout history, theorized the existence of an assemblage point.10 There are many types of assemblage points, but the basic notion is of a single area within the subtle energetic body where all properties of the self converge and create coherency. It’s usually perceived as being located in the external energetic field near the chest—but remember, it’s a focal point for internal and external energies.11
Coherency is a unified state. It’s what we want for our clients. When their body, mind, and soul are coherent, all systems are go. Every aspect of the person is better able to cope with stress, recover from trauma, make effective decisions, find pain relief, and experience well-being. Ideally, you could perceive, touch, stimulate, or focus on the assemblage point and help rebalance a client’s entire system, calling for coherency instead of disharmony. You could also work with the assemblage point to safely perform bioelectric medicine without a machine.
The stationary assemblage point is usually found in the front and back of the chest area. This is a particularly awkward position for a bodyworker, or even for myself, an intuitive and hands-on healer. I have found that working directly on the center of the sternum or holding the hands a couple of inches above it will accomplish the same goals as working farther away. Likewise, touching or operating just over the comparable area on the back will balance the backside energies.
Using the heart area as the center of the energetic and therefore physical body is commonplace among energy practitioners. Hundreds of studies, many of them conducted at the HeartMath Institute, prove the heart is the strongest electromagnetic organ in the body, creating a field that emanates up to 10 feet away. It is also the key center for composing coherency in all levels of our being.12
The heart chakra, a subtle energy center, merges energy from all the lower chakras or subtle energy bodies and higher chakras to serve as the center of the subtle energy anatomy. It includes an anchor point, which literally anchors the assemblage point into the heart core. And in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), the heart meridian (meridians being channels of subtle energy that flow through the body) is the most electrical meridian in the body.13 The heart area is legitimately the best place to gather energy and effect bioelectrical change.
I focus on the sternum because in TCM, the sternum represents all our life experiences and the expression of our heart.14 It is also the center of the anchor point and the most approachable way to balance the electrical energy.

Using Bioelectrical Techniques
How do you best work with this sternum point for bioelectrical balancing? First, locate the center of the sternum on a client and the comparable area on their back. You’ll find this on-the-body assemblage point equidistant between the top and the bottom of the sternum in the center of the chest. I include the xiphoid process in this formula, which puts the center in the middle of the sternum body and below the sternal angle. This is approximately between the second and third sternebrae. The backside of this point is directly opposite in the thoracic vertebrae. Since the body of the sternum is typically found between the fifth and ninth thoracic vertebrae, you’ll typically focus on the seventh thoracic vertebra.
You can also recognize the point when your hands feel a tingle, chill, flash of heat, or density at the right area. In your mind’s eye, you will intuitively perceive a flash of light or brightness. You can also tap on the sternum or the back of your client, or pass your hand a couple of inches above these areas, and ask your client to tell you when they experience a reaction.
When working energetically, intuition is king—and queen. Gently pulse your hand or a finger on or over the point, front and back, following your instincts and your client’s reactions. You can shift the point upward, downward, or to the right or left by shifting your intention, altering your pulse, or moving your hand or finger slightly.
If a certain color pops into your mind, ask your intuition if you should imagine that color streaming into or out of the point. Do the same with sounds, sensations, or even messages. Ask the client if feelings, memories, knowledge, or awareness strikes them when you are working the point. These insights can help them clear blocks and access desirable energies.
Use your intuition and hand movements to pull unnecessary energy out of, and send needed energy into, the point. Ask that this energy transfer to any area of the body, mind, or soul it is needed. And finally, when you have finished working the front and back of your client, ask them to sit. Hold your hands on or over the points and align them by moving your hands.
As you work with this technique, you will become more comfortable with using it as an information source and balancing tool. As George Carlin said, “Electricity is really just organized lightning.” And what is lightning but inspiration?

Notes
1. Higher Awareness website, “Invisible Life Force,” accessed July 2015, www.higherawareness.com/manifesting-abundance/life-force-energy.html.
2. B. Alberts et al., “Ion Channels and the Electrical Properties of Membranes,” in Molecular Biology of the Cell, 4th ed (New York: Garland Science, 2002): accessed July 2015, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK26910/.
3. H. S. Burr, “The Meaning of Bio-Electrical Potentials,” Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine 4 (March 16, 1944): 353–60.
4. Ibid.
5. Kurzweil Accelerating Intelligence website, “Changes in Bioelectric Signals Trigger Formation of New Organs; Regenerative Medicine Implications,” December 9, 2011, original research by Vaibhav P. Pai et al., accessed July 2015, www.kurzweilai.net/changes-in-bioelectric-signals-trigger-formation-of-new-organs-regenerative-medicine-implications.
6. WebMD, “Pain Management and Bioelectric Therapy,” accessed July 2015, www.webmd.com/pain-management/guide/bioelectric-therapy.
7. Kevin Tracy, “Shock Medicine,” Scientific American 312, no. 3 (March 2015): 30–5.
8. R. Rybak, “Bioelectrical Modulators and the Cell Membrane in Psychiatric Medicine,” Psychopharmocological Bulletin 35, no. 4 (Autumn 2001): 5–44; Cancer Tutor, John Kasunic, “Lyme Disease—Natural Treatments,” February 13, 2015, accessed July 2015, www.cancertutor.com/lymedisease.
9. Biocog Tech, “Living Matrix,” accessed July 2015,
www.biocog.com/livingmatrix.htm.
10. “The Assemblage Point,” accessed July 2015, www.whale.to/b/ap.html.
11. The Assemblage Point Centre Ltd, “The Assemblage Point,” accessed July 2015, www.assemblagepointcentre.com/apcwhat.html.
12. Rollin McCray, PhD, and Doc Childre, “Coherence: Bridging Personal, Social, and Global Health,” Alternative Therapies 16, no. 4 (July/August 2010); HeartMath Institute Research Library, accessed July 2015, www.heartmath.org/research/research-library/research-library.html.
13. Consciousness Energetics Blog, “The Heart Has Reason That Reason Cannot Know,” accessed July 2015, www.imaginalhealth.com/blog/?p=87.
14. Acupuncture Medical Group, “The Energetics of the Torso,” accessed July 2015, www.acupuncturemedical.org/energetics-of-the-torso.

Cyndi Dale is an internationally renowned author, speaker, and intuitive consultant. Her books include the bestselling The Subtle Body: An Encyclopedia of Your Energetic Anatomy (Sounds True, 2009), The Complete Book of Chakra Healing (Llewellyn Publications, 2009), and Advanced Chakra Healing (Crossing Press, 2005). To learn more about Dale and her products, services, and classes, please visit www.cyndidale.com.