Polarity Therapy

I am sometimes asked in the course of my informal practice of polarity therapy what it’s all about. Early on, I was always a little bit flummoxed in answering that question succinctly and immediately. I could go on and on rhapsodically about some of the amazing things I had seen occur in classes, or how it made clients feel, or how it feels to receive a session. I could launch into long monologues about the theory behind it, or how far-sighted and ahead of his time the founder (Dr. Randolph Stone, an osteopath in the 1950s) was in coming up with it. I could tell stories of how some of its principles and movements had helped some of the hospice patients I had volunteered to spend time with. And at the end of all of that, I knew, the questioner might share some of my enthusiasm, but I would not have conveyed the essence of what it was in a manner that the questioner felt any more educated and informed about what polarity therapy was. Eventually, I began to see that I needed the equivalent of “an elevator speech” – a short and succinct presentation that would introduce the work in an understandable way and invite the person to try it.

Image used with permission of Digitaldrstone.org

Polarity therapy is a body-work modality. Let’s start there. But it’s not just a typical body-work modality, rather it’s an energy body-work therapy. “Polarity Therapy understands health as the free flow of energy throughout the body. It seeks to release blocks that may impede vitality and re-establish or strengthen the circulation of energy in the body” was the blurb I eventually put on my business cards. Energy is the frequently overlooked and unacknowledged substratum of human health; our bodies are, after all, energetic ultimately in their fundamental character, exhibiting an electromagnetic field just as the planet does. Our hearts beat continuously with an electrical charge. All energetic potential in the human body takes the form of one of three different functional charges: positive, neutral, or negative. The degree of polarization or charge between these poles is what elicits energy flow within the body, similar to that of an electric circuit. Long before diseases and structural malformations take root in physical form, they have their genesis as disturbances or blocks in the energetic body. These blocks may affect any of the “sheaths” or layers of the human being – the physical, the mental, but most frequently the emotional. People often get “stuck” in attempting to come to terms with events in their lives, and one comes to understand that “stuckness” is not simply a metaphor – it’s a persisting stagnation or blockage in the body’s larger energy field. Similarly to the models for EFT and Seemorg Matrix work, polarity therapy postulates that one’s emotions do not reside exclusively in the brain – they can be stored anywhere within the body’s extended energy field. Working with the body directly can help release/move the energy, resulting in emotional movement and relief or sometimes even complete resolution for the client.

Dr. Randolph Stone, Founder of Polarity Therapy. Image used permission of Digitaldrstone.org

Polarity therapy is based on the principles of Ayurvedic medicine from India. It has adopted some of those understandings as the underlying framework for the therapy, including the three gunas or modes of action (“sattvic”, stillness, lightness; “rajasic”, active and vibratory, “tamasic”, deep, hard and heavy) and the five elements or types of energy, characterized as ether (space), air, fire, water, and earth. But it is very much a Western body-work modality as well. Stone was a devout Christian, going so far as to write a “Mystic Bible”, interpreting Bible symbology in light of his understandings of the energetic human body. He was also trained in the Western scientific mindset, working as a practicing osteopath. He had a sharp analytic mind, knew human anatomy inside and out, and was a keen observer and recorder of his patients’ responses to his ministrations. The combination of these two potent potentials was metaphorically explosive. Polarity therapy brought together Eastern energetic theory and Western analytic attention to detail and focus on practical results to become an extremely effective form of body-work. Whether doing the work oneself, or receiving a polarity therapy session, the potential is present for one’s life to be changed, whether that change happens incrementally over time or swiftly and dramatically in a few sessions. That change, both in health circumstances and one’s personal understandings can manifest in both ways major and minor; it’s quite common for polarity practitioners to begin viewing and speaking of their lives dominantly from a polarity therapy mindset and using polarity vocabulary – expressions of one’s personal process in life, the negative and positive poles in one’s larger experience, whether energy is flowing generally in one’s life, “resonance”, “frequency” and so forth. On the other end of the spectrum and as an example of a minor transforming difference, I’ve learned to treat my infrequent headaches on my own with two or three minutes of self-polarity, rather than go for the aspirin. It’s quicker, just as effective, and gets more to the root of the underlying discomfort.

Recently, I encountered a summary of the Seven Hermetic Principles forming the basis of Hermetic philosophy as laid out in the Kybalion. Having no prior exposure to these, I was slightly amused to see that some of them restated polarity therapy principles. Of course! And yet nowhere in polarity’s founding documents is the Kybalion mentioned as a source for these understandings; they apparently were discovered (or revealed) independently by/to Dr. Stone, from another approach. Here they are, with prominent polarity principles bolded:

The principle of mentalism
“The All is Mind; the Universe is Mental.”

The principle of correspondence
“As above, so below; as below, so above.” […] This principle embodies the truth that there is always a correspondence between the laws and phenomena of the various planes of being and life.

The principle of vibration
“Nothing rests; everything moves; everything vibrates.”

The principle of polarity
“Everything is dual; everything has poles; everything has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree; extremes meet; all truths are but half-truths; all paradoxes may be reconciled.”

The principle of rhythm
“Everything flows, out and in; everything has its tides; all things rise and fall; the pendulum-swing manifests in everything; the measure of the swing to the right is the measure of the swing to the left; rhythm compensates.”

The principle of cause and effect
“Every cause has its effect; every effect has its cause; everything happens according to law; chance is but a name for law not recognized; there are many planes of causation, but nothing escapes the law.”

The principle of gender
“Gender is in everything; everything has its masculine and feminine principles; gender manifests on all planes.”

The Kybalion: A Study of the Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece

To get a flavor of the work from different perspectives, here are a couple of video clips. This video gives an introduction to a polarity therapy general session:

An interview with Gary Strauss, polarity therapy program director at both the Southwest Institute of Healing Arts in Tempe, AZ and the Life Energy Institute in Los Angeles, CA:

Further Resources:

For a deep dive into Dr. Randolph Stone’s original Polarity Therapy works, see The Digital Dr. Stone, a complete digital transcription of Dr. Stone’s books and charts.
Warning: this is a deep and wondrous rabbit hole!

A sample of the dense and extensive wisdom of Dr. Randolph Stone, Polarity Therapy Volume 1, Book 2, Chart No. 3. Chart reproduced with permission of Digitaldrstone.org