ADVANCES

Fall 2009, VOL. 24, NO. 3

Book Review: Endless Energy: The Essential Guide to Energy Health

ith her book

Endless Energy: The Essential Guide to Energy Health

, Debra Greene,

PhD

, has succeeded inproducing a comprehensive self-help manual that isbeneficial for lay readers as well as mind-body professionals. In aphrase, it’s like meta-analysismeets workbook.Both lay and professionalreaders will benefit from thearray of practical exercises inthe book, and practitioners inparticular will benefit fromGreene’s expert weaving of acoherent theoretical frameworkthat incorporates the many fac-ets of energy medicine and itsdiversity of research. Manybooks focus on a single modali-ty or theoretical concept; fewsynthesize such a variety of approaches, thus giving readersa way of understanding the fieldas a whole.Greene’s academic back-ground is in communicationand somatics (her doctorate isfrom Ohio State University). Asa longtime practitioner of ener-gy kinesiology, she positionsherself as a supportive andknowledgeable health coachand sets out to teach her read-ers about their own energymakeup. Greene’s focus is onthe nonphysical subtle energythat is accessed internally and,she claims, is laced with infor-mation. She chooses to call this subtle energy “inergy,

”

insteadof the more familiar “energy,” to highlight the qualities of humanenergy as distinct from electricity and power generators. Thebook is fast paced; it covers basic energy anatomy—meridians,chakras, nadis, and aura—and their psychoemotional correlatesin less than a chapter.Early on, the overarching theory that permeates the book isintroduced. Drawing from themultidimensional model putforth by William Tiller(

Psychoenergetic Science: ASecond Copernican-scale Revolution

[Pavior Publishing;2007]) and Richard Gerber(

Vibrational Medicine: Choices for Healing Ourselves

[Bear &Company; 1996]), Greenedescribes 4 subtle bodies thatcomprise an individual’s iner-gy constitution: the vital, theemotional, the mental, andthe universal. She avoids theterm

spiritual

so as not to con-fuse inergy with religiosity.She also introduces the inno-vative notion of what sheterms internal senses that arenecessary to inergy health:attention, intention, visualiza-tion, self-talk, self-sensing,and self-observation. Thenshe provides assessments thatreaders can use to discover theoverall health of each of their4 inergy bodies.In the body of the book,Greene uses a highly effectivestructure to organize a survey-like discussion of the field of energy medicine. Toward that end, she devotes 2 chapters to eachof the 4 bodies. The first provides a research-rich theoreticalunderstanding of a body; the second provides exercises andguidelines for achieving optimal health in that body. (An interest-ing side note: In her chapter on the emotional body, Greeneoffers a unique theory, based on the inergy bodies, of why andhow tapping techniques such as the Emotional FreedomTechnique, originated by Gary Craig, work.) In her final chapter,

Book Review

Endless Energy: The Essential Guide to Energy Health

By Debra Greene,

PhD

MetaComm MediaKihei, Hawaii, 2009Reviewed by Sonja K. Foss,

PhD

Sonja K. Foss,

PhD

, is a professor of communication at the University of ColoradoDenver. Her research interests include contemporary rhetorical theory; theorizingand advancing feminist values; and alternative, energy-based paradigms forexplaining change process.

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