The Contagion of Anger

Eckhart Tolle once told a story about a person who had come to see him at his home. During the course of their conversation the individual vented and expressed much discontent and anger. Later that day, Eckhart went alone to a neighborhood restaurant, where he witnessed a most unusual outburst by one of the patrons sitting at a nearby table. It was Eckhart’s belief that the ensuing outburst was caused by the invisible but palpable pain body energy that Eckhart had unknowingly carried into the restaurant.

It certainly seems implausible, but it also appeared that Eckhart very much believed the possibility that energy could be transferred between individuals. This belief is the cornerstone of the practice of QiGong (chee-gong) healers. Medical QiGong programs are now located all over the globe and I have read reports of hospitals in China that practice QiGong exclusively on a wide variety of physical conditions.

For those of us familiar only with allopathic medicine, the idea of healing energy that cannot be seen with the naked eye seems unreasonable. However the suggestion that microscopic germs could impact the health of a patient during surgery was also scoffed at in the late eighteen hundreds when Louis Pasture presented his germ theory and its applications to medicine.

Whether we understand or even believe the possibility that imperceptible movements of energy can impact how we feel, we have all most certainly experienced the contagious nature of a yawn. Sitting around a tedious board meeting you can watch the domino effect of a yawn bounce around the room. I have even noticed yawns that can be infectious at a distance. The simple upshot of hearing a person take in a long oxygenated open mouthed ear popping breath seems to be enough to trigger a yawn in the person they are speaking to on the other end of the phone! Not to mention that I am certain my dog’s yawn can elicit my cat to yawn across the room.

In my own experience with energy waves, both within and outside of my physical body it is not only plausible that they exist but required in order to explain what I and others in my presence have witnessed. Take tonight for instance. I asked my college-girl to spend some time helping her brother prepare for a Spanish final exam. Within minutes of her taking a seat at the dining room table, I could overhear her bickering with him about his posture, attitude, mispronunciation and pitiful comprehension, as I was dicing up vegetables for lentil soup.

While chopping zucchini and slicing sweet onion, I tried to remind her to be gentle and patient. I explained that Dan was nervous because he was so far behind and asked for her grace. But Grace is not something we can control in the moment, and certainly not in the bio-chemical moment she found herself in as she tried for a few more minutes to tutor her sibling before his test. After a final whine “Mommy, he’s not listening and I’m trying REALLY hard!” I sent her off to another room.

I was determined to sit down myself and review the material with my son. Since I have never taken even a semester of Spanish, I asked my husband if he could join us. By this time, Dan was already percolating his own peptide brew and he began being confrontational at my offer to help. Like instant pudding I was in the thick of it making demands and ultimatums. Richard, also hit by the cold blast of rile, stood at the top of the stairs like a pit bull waiting for something to cross his path.

Defiance provoked wrath, which translated into slammed doors and eerie silence. As I cooled my heels behind closed doors, I thought back on how everything seemed to flow and follow one action after another. In my mind I could map out the conduit of frustration that set off each of our chemical clouds. Yet I wondered what if the energy started even before my watchful eye observed the first outburst. Perhaps one of us brought it into the house from a phone conversation that may have even preceded the homework crusade?

Of course it’s only speculation and there is no objective proof that energy can move between individuals or objects or even within a single body mind.

yawn Ahhhh,