SHEN® (Specific Human Energy Nexus Physioemotional Release Therapy)
Background: Where does this technique come from?
Definition: A modern energy healing technique which focuses on energy flows. The practitioner’s hands are placed directly on client’s body and held in position until the flow of the client’s energy is re-established. Goal is to release energy blocks caused by emotional or physical trauma.
Source: Handbook of SHEN by Richard Rainbow Pavek.
Manual.
Origin of Method / History: Developed by the author. His background is in chemistry, electronics, and aeronautics. He believed that if there was a human energy field, then it “would have to follow the same principles of apparent motion that apply to all other field systems in physics, such as magnetism and … weather currents.” (Pavek, v) He then did several years of systematic hands-on research to map these flows. An example of an early discovery: When he placed his right hand on patient’s right hip, and left hand on patient’s right shoulder, patient would relax quickly and might even fall asleep. If he reversed those hand positions, patient’s heart rate would increase, then they would get uncomfortable, then disoriented, and nauseous.
Finding out more: www.shentherapy.org has more information on SHEN, and information about training workshops.
Theory: What is energy? What is energy healing?
What energy is being worked with? Physioemotional Field. This field permeates the human body, is involved in the creation and experience of emotion as well as the formation of tension in the body, and is the linking mechanism in psychosomatic and somatoform disorders.
Detecting the field: Can be felt by putting palms close to each other. “Sensations are usually perceived as changes in temperature (most often heat…), tingles, prickles, “electricity”, pressure, or magnetism.” (Pavek, 57) Can’t be detected by DC voltmeter or magnetic coils. Can detect temperature changes at practitioner’s hands and patient’s energy centers.
Movement of energy: “It is the expansion and contraction of the peripheral flows and the arm flows that drives the field… occur[s] each time the chest and abdomen expand or contract during breathing.”
Emotion centers: “The field behaves differently at emotion centers: “Effect is largely one of vibration… As vibrations build and increase, they expand and radiate outward from the emotion centers…. The vibrating bubble is affected by the vertical motion of the peripheral flows… spin or rotate the expanding bubble in a clockwise fashion.” (Pavek, 66-67) Pavek describes six energy centers: Root, Pubic, Kath, Solar Plexus, Heart, and Throat. He also notes that in between energy centers, there are barrier regions; the energy there projects out the back of the body rather than the front.
Certain emotions create illness at certain locations: “Repression of individual emotions requires tension that largely effects the glands, organs, and muscle tissue at one region alone.” (Pavek, 42)
What is illness? “When the emotional state is good, the body does not react, instead it just purrs along healthily.” (Pavek, 7) “When faced with bad or painful emotions the body reacts away from its normal, pleasurable state with a specific, definite reaction and can develop a state of poor health.” Contraction: “All life forms, from the amoeba to the human, respond to the intrusion of pain by involuntary contraction… withdraw[ing] from all directions at once… Splinting reflex: where a bone in the body is broken the muscles around the bone automatically contract and apply tension to immobilize it.” (Pavek, 7-8) Emotional pain can also cause the body to contract around the emotional centers, and long-term physical illness can result if the emotional contraction is not released and flow restored.
What is the mechanism for healing? “Practitioners move bioenergy across areas of increased energetic resistance… to complete disrupted energy circuits that have become blocked by chronically held-in emotions.” (Gerber, 389) “When the pressureless touch procedures comprising SHEN are applied to the body, the involuntary physioemotional tensions that surround the sites of either physical pain or emotional pain are released.” (Pavek, 1) Then the body can return to normal healthy function.
Role of practitioner: “Uses the portion of the physioemotional field that extends between the therapist’s hands” (Pavek, 1) to evoke and release suppressed emotions from energy field.
Role of person receiving healing: Passive. When practitioner releases blockages, flow automatically resumes.
Who can heal? Training? This is a precise system, based on specific theories which should be clearly understood to perform SHEN. Training: 8 day intensive workshop.
Practitioner preparation: Learning to do the flows, becoming familiar with them all.
Practice: How does a healing session work for this technique?
Assessment: Ask what emotions have emerged. Observe breathing and body language. Client may place hands where pain is. Scan with your hand 1” above body, note places where there’s a noticeable shift in temperature. Sensation is likely to be a place of constriction. (Pavek, 111)
Process: Practitioner plans out a series of flows, beginning with peripheral flows to relax body, then work at emotion centers, then reintegration. When emotions arise and begin releasing, practitioner leaves hands in place, can quietly say “good” or “let it go” to encourage release.
Sample protocol for tension headache: 1. Relaxation: Peripheral flows. You place right hand on client’s right foot, left hand above their right knee. Stay there for about 3 minutes, breathing deep relaxed breaths. Then move right hand up to just below where the left had was just placed, and the left hand up to hip. Stay there for 3 minutes. And so on, continuing up the right side, and down the left, as per diagram. Note how each flow overlaps a little with the last one, so no part of the flow is missed. 2. Transverse flows at throat and mouth. Place one hand on each side of the neck. After three minutes, place hands on each side of head, in line with the mouth. After 3 minutes, do Heart-Throat Triples: Place receiving hand (generally left) on back at a point midway between throat and heart. Place right hand on the center of the front of the body, midway between throat and heart. Remain there for 3 minutes, then move right hand just a hands-breadth toward the right side, and do another flow, then move it to the left of where you did the first flow, and hold for three more minutes. Repeat triples at throat, but with left hand on front of client, and right hand behind. 3. Grounding / reintegration: Root to crown flows. Place right hand at root (base of spine / tailbone). Place left hand at crown. Take some deep breaths, encourage client to do the same. That ends the session.
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The Peripheral Flows |
Overlapping |
Uses: When is this Technique useful?
Duration / Frequency: Sessions are typically about one hour long. They are best scheduled once or twice a week, although some conditions can benefit from daily treatment. The number of sessions needed depends upon how significant the original trauma and the physical effects thereof.
What do practitioners say it is useful for: Almost everything, especially emotionally influenced disorders or physical disorders with emotional results. Particular strengths: swollen tissue, migraines, psychogenic pain, irritable bowel syndrome, lower back pain, PMS, hypertension. Handbook includes treatment protocols for several disorders.
Contraindications: Pavek states that there are no known adverse reactions or contra-indications. There are things that SHEN simply will not work for, including things with a genetic basis, the normal pain associated with a current injury that is in the process of healing, healing broken bones, etc. Small effect on viral or bacterial diseases: can’t destroy agents. Any effects are through relaxation, improved circulation, and breath, assisting the immune system. (Author’s note: One person I know who tried SHEN reported little positive effect, and a tendency to feeling very jittery and irritable after treatments. I do not know whether this was due to his individual energy field response, or whether it was due to problems with the SHEN therapist’s work.)
Studies done: None beyond Pavek’s own research.
Other uses: Good adjunct to psychiatry and counseling, but no real combining of the techniques. Can be combined with Breathwork / Rebirthing, Massage, Imagery, and Rolfing.
Spiritual Component: None mentioned.
Related Technique: Stillpoint Therapy is a direct
offspring of SHEN. A Stillpoint practitioner, Karen Roehl, told me the
techniques were very similar, there are just some philosophical differences in
the theory behind the work.
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