What is Polarity Therapy?

Polarity Therapy is best known for its energy-based approaches to somatic contact.  As an osteopath and chiropractor Dr. Randolph Stone was well aware of the value of touch.  His study of the “Energy Anatomy” was fully integrated into his western scientific training to create a unique blend of modern and ancient perspectives.

The fundamental concepts of Polarity Therapy touch are:

1.  The hands are conductors of energy. By placing two hands on the client, particularly on a specific energetic pathway, current flow through that channel is enhanced.  Polarity Therapy practitioners learn the pathway locations, then use conscious touch to facilitate energy movement.

2.  The client responds not only to touch itself, but also to the consciousness of the practitioner.  By creating an environment of safety and recognition, the practitioner supports the client’s self-healing process.  Polarity Therapy practitioners have extensive training in subtle listening, energetic boundaries, respect and related topics, to maximize the body-mind connection within a bodywork context.

3.  Energy can be palpated (felt) by both practitioner and client.  The practitioner may feel warming and softening, pulsation, relationship between the two hand contacts, stillness, energetic shaping, and related subtle sensations, as the Polarity contact is held. The client may feel relaxation, tingling, wavelike movement, stillness, and similar phenomena during the contact,

4.   Clients have a subconscious inner intelligence and self-regulating capacity which emerges with awareness of energy movement.  In the Polarity Therapy session, the practitioner may employ verbal skills to support the client’s increasing self-awareness of energy movement.

5.  A common energetic situation encountered in Polarity Therapy sessions is what Dr, Stone called “fixation at the negative pole.” This phenomenon reflects the universal tendency to become attached to events, people or things, experiences and thought-forms and thereby experience reduced flexibility, adaptability, forgiveness.  Polarity Therapy contacts are often oriented to relieving this condition by supporting the full cycle of energy out from the core to the periphery, and then especially, the return current back to the source.

6.   “God Geornetrizes” was one of Dr. Stone’s themes.  Polarity Therapy contacts often have recognizable patterns of symmetrical relationship.  A Polarity Therapy education explores the relationships of the chakras and their parallel lines of current flow, the “five pointed-star” pattern of the torso, the “Interlaced Triangles” of the craniosacral system, positive-neutral-negative polarized relationships throughout the body, and similar energy mappings which are the basis for hand placement.

7.  Polarity Therapy has a special affinity with Craniosacral Therapy, Dr, Stone’s osteopathic training led him to a deep appreciation for the “Breath of Life” intelligence which is conveyed by the cerebrospinal fluid.  Dr. Stone’s statements about CSF are entirely consistent with supportive of the revolutionary findings of William Garner Sutherland, DO (1880-1954), the pioneer of fluid-based Craniosacral Therapy. In the Polarity Therapy model, Craniosacral techniques address the “Primary Energy,” core layer of the Energy Anatomy.

Source: American Polarity Therapy Association