Energy-Based Practices and the Medicine of Movement—The Cases of 5Rhythms and Core Energetics

Abstract

This paper discusses the role of energy and movement in facilitating experiences of well-being from an anthropological perspective that considers energy as a situated form of knowledge. Drawing on fieldwork among Core Energetics (CE) and 5Rhythms (5R) groups, I examine how the circulation of energy is achieved through bodily movements and dances, attention to the senses, somatic self-cultivation, and deep experiences of consciousness. Focus is hold on the ritual elements, including a specific spacetime framework and intersubjective exercises that facilitate energetical experiences that renew the subjective and intersubjective relationship to the self in a restorative way. I argue that mind–body–energy groups conflate two Western sources: on the one hand, the legacy of early Western medical offshoots that have been marginalized by mainstream biomedicine, and on the other, discursive references to contemporary interpretations of quantum physics.

1. Introduction

Among the mind–body practices focused on improving individuals’ well-being (Csordas 2002; Eckersley 2007; González-González 2018; McGuire 1996; Smith 2007), activities based on free-form dance and bodily movements have received little attention from scholars and weak recognition from the public. Yet, social media sites overflow with invitations to partake in Ecstatic Dance, Movement Medicine, Biodanza, 5Rhythms, and Core Energetics group sessions. The anthropological literature has long acknowledged that “trance and ecstatic dance” are ancient and widespread cultural practices that were used either “as a vehicle for achieving mystic states” or “in the ritual enactment of a role” (Bourguignon 2001, p. 102). Currently, some observers (Fasullo et al. 2020) contend that the emerging genre of free-form/ecstatic dance is paving the way for “a potential cultural revival”.

Some anthropologists have addressed holistic practices based on conscious and free-form movements by exploring the social and intersubjective dynamics at play in such practices (Houseman 2020) or the distant intimacy they build between dancers (Moisseeff and Houseman 2020); the reflexive path toward self-development and self-actualization they pave (sometimes called “transformative”) (Houseman et al. 2023; Kieft 2013, 2014); the gendered embodied experience of connection they foster as lived spirituality (Hauw and Halafoff 2025; Hauw 2019); the sense of spiritual revelation concerning the self and the world they afford (Mazzella Di Bosco 2023); or their relationship with the therapeutic culture of well-being (Aschenbrenner and Koch 2021). The notion of energy that is central to these groups’ semantics and the movement-based process they promote has rarely been explored as the medium that connects the self and sensitivity to one’s well-being. Yet, some anthropologists like Catherine Albanese see spiritual healing based on subtle energy as “the dominant model in the healing repertoire of New Age” (Albanese 2000, p. 30).

Pioneering anthropologist Emile Durkheim first captured the elusive and mysterious dimension of some form of energy by addressing what is collectively created through ritual with his concept of “effervescence”. Following Turner’s idea of “communitas”, Randall Collins (2004) proposed emotional energy (EE) as a term to designate the positive energy that both catalyzes and emerges from ritualized interactions. This energy creates a feedback loop between action, coordination, and emotional synchronization. Functionalist approaches like these focus on rituals as producers of social bonds. They do not say much about individual experiences, nor do they explore the phenomenology of liminal experience, which is viewed as a kind of black box in such approaches. Yet, from charismatic and Pentecostal Christianity to holistic practices, the notion of “energy” has increasingly seeped into religious and spiritual semantics, where it is used as a symbolic device that designates a particular atmosphere that people can subtly feel but struggle to define. In their study of energy in the daily life of yoga and meditation practitioners, Philo et al. (2015) show that “energy talk” is largely used as a metaphor to describe “what is occurring in the hybrid corporeal, psychological, emotional and spiritual ‘system’ that is the human being.” (39) Studying the “therapeutic landscapes” and “healing energies” across specific sites—such as sacred wells or wellness retreats—Philo and his colleagues have identified a recurring belief in a vital, animate energy located within the human body. The flow, blockage, or depletion of this energy is seen as directly affecting various dimensions of health and well-being, including the physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual. The authors also report that the meanings participants assign to it are eclectic and hybrid in that they build on diverse fields of knowledge, and they call for more elaboration to relate the way energies shape and animate their participants’ own life-worlds to the sensibilities more broadly broached by medical humanities.

Among holistic groups, the idea that energy circulates is part of the broader concept of vital forces found in a number of societies, as observed by anthropologists (Jolliot 2003), and it has thrived in Western modernity with the emergence of science and a collective concern for health and well-being (Albanese 2000; Rieff 1966). In Europe, the idea of a vital force animating living beings first appeared in the 17th century in the wake of the development of European sciences and the rising importance of medicine. Later on, vita-list views were formulated by physicians like Barthez to offset the mechanical view of the body introduced by rationalist philosophers and physicians, with Bernard as the leading figure. In her analysis of American spiritual healer Barbara Brennan’s concept of “auric” healing, Albanese situates this mode of energetic healing within a specific moment in American religious history—at the intersection of New Age spirituality, Baconian empiricism, Blavatskian theosophy, and the circulation of Asian spiritual traditions. From a historical-theoretical perspective, scholar of religion Dominic Zoehrer argues that within contemporary holistic contexts, energy is a generic concept that is derived from two distinct pools of influence: (a) occult physicalism, defined as the invocation of physics—especially from the 19th and 20th centuries—to rationalize occult ideas and subvert scientific naturalism; and (b) occult orientalism, a transnational discourse involving both Euro-American and Asian actors, which encompasses imaginaries of a “mystic East” and gives rise to a wide-spectrum of hybridized spiritual and healing practices (Zoehrer, forthcoming-a, forthcoming-b). In his seminal study on alternative spiritualities and popular culture, religious studies scholar Christopher Partridge also contends that “the confluence of Western esotericism, Eastern thought, and quantum theory have fundamentally shaped much contemporary alternative theorizing about healing” (Partridge 2006, p. 38). This observation is echoed by philosopher Ruth Barcan, who traces the resurgence of the notion of the “subtle” or “energetic body”—understood as a vision of the body as “multiple, invisible, extensive, expressive, and interconnected with others” (Barcan 2013, p. 226)—within the Western popular imagination to deeper roots within Western intellectual traditions, including ancient Greek philosophy, Western esotericism, and occult thought.

This article draws on the work of Zoëhrer, Partridge, and Barcan to examine how ideas of energy and its healing potential are articulated and embodied within two contemporary movement-based practices—Core Energetics and 5Rhythms—through an anthropological lens. In anthropology, Lea (2019) investigates the role of energy within bodywork practices such as massage, highlighting the connection between conceptions of energy and embodied experience. She argues that, in the context of massage therapy, energy functions as an “alternative” body knowledge. Similarly, Dansac (2021), in her ethnographic study of New Age and contemporary Pagan practitioners at the megalithic site of Carnac in northwestern France, demonstrates that “healing energy” is accessed primarily through heightened attention to bodily sensations. Together, Lea and Dansac advance new directions in anthropological inquiry by moving beyond a strictly social constructionist lens, proposing instead that energy constitutes a situated form of knowledge that actively shapes embodied subjectivities and unfolds within affectively and sensorially mediated relational spaces.

Following this anthropological view, I address the role of energy in Core Energetics (CE) and 5Rhythms (5R), two mind–body practices that focus on praxis and more specifically on bodily movements. The concept of “energy” occupies a central place in both CE and 5R practices and discourse, while the circulation of energy is meant to be achieved through intersubjectivity, bodily movements, and somatic self-attention. The emic usage of energy informs participants’ conceptions of the body, their perception and construction of spacetime frameworks, and both subjective and intersubjective experiences. After an overview of the origins and guiding principles of 5R and CE, I describe the dynamics of group sessions within each practice. Particular attention is given to how the ritualization of these settings creates a safe and supportive space that facilitates both physical and emotional expression—experiences that participants commonly describe and interpret as the circulation of energy with perceived restorative effects. Ultimately, I argue that these energy-focused, movement-based practices articulate alternative—though not entirely unprecedented—understandings of healing and medicine. Their legitimacy and appeal are, in part, maintained through the appropriation of scientific terminology, which functions as a metaphorical framework for articulating processes of self-transformation and transcendence.

This article draws on ongoing ethnographic fieldwork that I have been conducting in Montreal (Canada) since 2021 among mind–body groups that are focused on movement and refer to energy. These include Core Energetics, Radical Aliveness, Shaking Medicine, 5Rhythms, Ecstatic Dance, and Biodanza. Using a phenomenological perspective inherited from Alfred Schutz, my work is part of an anthropology of the senses (Laplantine 2018) that uses the entire somatic apparatus to capture experiences in the field and recognizes the need to engage the body and senses in fieldwork (Samudra 2008; Pierini et al. 2023) as a form of embodied knowledge (Varela 2022). By doing so, I situate my anthropological gaze outside of a Western epistemological dualism that distinguishes between form and materiality, and conceives of spirit and energy as part of a non-material realm of reality. I contend that energy can be maintained and conveyed through physical media, including dancers’ bodies.

2. Fieldwork in 5Rhythms (5R) and Core Energetics (CE) Group Sessions

This article is based on extensive fieldwork that took place in Montreal (Canada) among two communities: one composed of 5Rhythms dancers and the other composed of Core Energetics practitioners. My observation of both groups—ongoing since 2021—is part of a larger ethnographic project that aims to document Quebecois holistic milieux and specific mind–body practices that have not acquired legitimacy or mainstream recognition (as opposed to yoga, for example). The fieldwork I carried out led me to identify an important subgenre of practices focused on bodily movements in collective spaces, sometimes involving physical contact. In naming these practices, I adapt Tataryn’s (2002) classification of Complementary and Alternative Medicine to situate them within a broader category I refer to as body–mind–energy practices. This article addresses 5R and CE as two case studies that are part of this research.

5Rhythms (5R) is a dance-based practice that was created by Gabrielle Roth in the late 1970s at the Esalen Institute (Big Sur, CA, USA), a place devoted to the development of human potential with a specific focus on the body (Roth 1998), in the wake of the Sedona movement (Crockford 2021). Roth’s teachings were influenced by ecstatic and mystical philosophy and Gestalt therapy (Juhan 2003). After observing dancers for a decade, she noticed that their bodies followed a common pattern characterized by five different sequential rhythms (flowing, staccato, chaos, lyrical, and stillness) that were linked together like waves. Described as “meditation in movement”, 5Rhythms aims to explore those rhythms that are designed as vibrations of different states of being. During 5R sessions, participants are invited to partake in free vocal and bodily expression. Music leads participants through a crescendo of vivid movements until they reach the climax of chaos, where they are encouraged to let go of their bodies and emotions, sometimes through interactions with each other, before stepping into joy and ecstasy, and finally reaching the state of still mind. In each rhythm, participants are asked to explore their own unique way of moving by paying attention to the self, sensations, and the body’s senses. This combination of self-awareness and free-form physical movement is said to facilitate the release of emotions, relationships, and psychological patterns, leading to a sense of freedom and creativity (Vargas-Gibson et al. 2017).

Core Energetics (CE) is a mind–body practice based on Bioenergy, which was created in the United States by Alexander Lowen, a student of Wilhelm Reich—himself a student of Freud’s. While it stems from the Freudian psychoanalytic tradition, Bioenergy has never been recognized or accepted in psychoanalytic circles, mainly due to Reich’s highly controversial nature (Carleton 2002). Basically, practices based on Bioenergy aim to release psychological and physical tensions and restore clients’ ability to feel and express what is called “their aliveness”. The psychologists Robert Glazer and Harris L. Friedman explain that Bioenergetics is “an approach that always returns experiences to the lived body. [Its] basic conceptualization is that experience (e.g., increased fear) affects somatic expression (e.g., increased panic breathing), while somatic expression (e.g., increased panic breathing), in turn, affects experience (e.g., increased fear) in an infinite circle of reciprocity” (Friedman and Glazer 2009, p. 378). By stimulating psychological interventions and somatic expression, Bioenergetics aims to increase the scope of bodily movements and energy transfers in order to deepen participants’ experience. John Pierrakos, an American psychiatrist who worked with Lowen, created Core Energetics by merging Bioenergy with teachings that Eva Broch received from the “Guide” through channeling, which are compiled in the book Spiritual Pathwork, published in 1971. Core Energetics is thus the product of three influences, namely, Reich’s psychiatry, Loewen’s Bioenergetics, and Eva (Broch) Pierrakos’ spiritual teachings.

In both CE and 5R practices, movement and energy play a prominent role and exist in a dialectical relationship, where movement allows energy to circulate. The desired outcome is the release of physical and emotional tensions and access to a state of ecstasy and deep consciousness. This corresponds to the healthy and desirable state of human existence.

CE and 5R group practices are held on a weekly basis and complemented by occasional workshops and retreats. In Montréal (Québec, Canada), where I have conducted fieldwork since 2021, Core Energetics (CE) and 5Rhythms (5R) classes are offered on a weekly or bimonthly basis, with sessions lasting between two and three hours. These are occasionally extended through immersive workshops and retreats ranging from three to six days. CE classes are more intimate, typically involving around 10 participants enrolled in a fixed eight-session cycle, while 5R events draw between 20 and 40 participants, allowing for greater flexibility and walk-in participation. During my fieldwork in Quebec, I found that most CE practitioners knew of 5R and regularly participated in free-form movement practices like 5R or Ecstatic Dance (an offshoot of 5R), but the reverse was not true. Some CE facilitators refer to 5R as the “dance version of CE”.

The majority of participants are between 30 and 55 years old. Younger participants (under 30) often discover the practice through their parents, while a small number of older individuals are already involved in broader New Age or alternative holistic practices. Al-though CE and 5R attract comparatively more men than other holistic modalities, men still represent only about one-third of attendees, and some come to accompany their partner. The majority are middle-class, especially in CE, where the higher cost (around CAD 85 per session) acts as a selective filter. In contrast, the lower fee for 5R (about CAD 25) permits wider socioeconomic access.

Typically, participants have prior experience with holistic practices and often combine CE or 5R with complementary approaches such as meditation, ecstatic dance, or somatic therapies like focusing. Many report a strong interest in alternative healing methods, including massage, dietary changes, and various non-conventional wellness strategies. A notable number also share personal histories of trauma or long-term emotional distress and view CE and 5R as part of an ongoing search for healing tools. Interestingly, some participants come from medical and allied health professions, including physicians, psychologists, and nutritionists, while others represent a broader range of occupational backgrounds. Some of them occupy caregiving roles, whether as professional bodyworkers (e.g., massage therapists) or as primary caregivers within the family sphere (e.g., caring for aging parents). A significant portion identify as highly sensitive individuals, sometimes holding formal diagnoses (e.g., ADHD and Asperger’s); a lot of them often articulate a sense of misalignment or vulnerability within dominant societal norms.

I began my study of both 5R and CE by performing participant observation (Wacquant 2003 [in Eribake et al. 2016]) in group sessions twice a month for two years, and in three-day workshops and five-day retreats1 since 2021. Because group sessions require intense physical and emotional engagement, and authentic participation is a core part of the vision behind these practices, I adopted a participative ethnographic approach that featured a level of personal involvement that was partly reflexive. This methodological stance indeed seems to shape access to fieldwork and aid in grasping the experiential dimension of the activities that take place in closed groups (Eribake et al. 2016; Vargas-Gibson et al. 2017). I also conducted interviews with the facilitators of each group (five) and members (sixteen) who had different degrees of involvement in the practices.

3. Group Sessions: The Process

5R and CE group sessions follow a repetitive pattern where participants are first invited to formulate their intention for the session, sometimes while holding hands in a circle. This introduction is essential to the process that is about to take place because it is meant to call on each person’s creative power and “settle energies” in the practice space. Intentions are usually quite idealistic, touching on matters of personal well-being and taking on a spiritual tone. For example: “My intention is to respect and love myself.” Participants then “warm up” either by dancing through a first wave (5R) or by dancing and shaking the body in order to move individual and collective energies before one participant starts processing by hitting a foam cube, for instance, or tapping his or her feet on a mat (CE). Sessions include a break during which the facilitator may share advice or knowledge. They do so using their own bodies, either by showing participants how to engage the body in each rhythm or by leading participants to be in touch with their current experience and emotions. Then, participants are invited to go deeper by dancing through a second wave (5R) or continuing to process individually with the support of the group (CE). Sessions conclude with a period of collective sharing where participants frame what they experienced in positive terms and explain how this equips them for their return to everyday life. For example: “I now feel that I am allowed to be happy.” In both CE and 5R, movements are designed to make participants feel their sensations and bodies. This process is described as a circulation of energy that allows all participants to experience what is seen as “expansion of consciousness”, which ultimately allows them to retrieve their nature as vibratory beings. In 5R, the liminality of such processes is commonly called “a metaphor for life”.

References to energy as a condition to reach awareness are omnipresent and carry the underlying assumption that although energy is meant to circulate in bodies, it may also be blocked in parts of these bodies and impact their sense of being. Participants are thus encouraged to engage with their bodily sensations and emotional experiences as a means of accessing “what is stored in the body”. As they make this move, the process may culminate in a cathartic release, whereby the release of personal emotions fosters a sense of inner peace and relief. This is why rhythms and “energetic waves” in 5R are experienced as “the energetic path.” Sophie, a participant who has been performing 5R for two years, explains: “a lot of things come from energy, I think. Sometimes I feel like it’s blocked inside of me, it’s because I’m either scared, or I have a door that’s closed because at some point I thought it was good to close it to protect me from something.” From this point of view, energy knots are related to individuals’ false beliefs. The latter can be released through physical movements, creating floods of emotions.

The following excerpt from my fieldwork journal exemplifies this process:

“Since the beginning of the session, I have felt a lot of vibration in my feet almost to the point of tingling. It feels like there are places in my bodies where there are more vibrations than others, and it’s not pleasant. During the exercise, I felt a very strong energy in my lower abdomen and a little in my chest and back. As if this was crushing my lower abdomen and intestines. When I shared my experience, Denise (the facilitator) commented with satisfaction: ‘This is what negative thoughts (about yourself and your body) can do to you […] And all the work is about undoing all that. To feel the wound, to learn to tolerate it, to feel all the anger and rage that’s sometimes behind it, that you’ve never allowed yourself to feel... So that you can move it.’”

4. How to Make Energy Move?

5R and CE facilitators claim that participants’ only commitment when they show up is to be authentic and to follow their own inspiration. Nevertheless, observations show that movements and dance styles follow conventions (Houseman et al. 2016) that are transmitted through mutual imitation or short moments of instruction between embodied practices. Because moving spontaneously is not innate for most participants whose bodies have been disciplined and constrained by Western socialization, newcomers usually start moving by imitating the others. In any form, moving and shaking are seen as an entrance point to experiencing energy. According to Adam, a CE facilitator, “when you have energy that doesn’t move, and you want it to move, it takes effort. It can’t just move; it takes effort to take something that doesn’t move and bring it into motion. And the act of making something that doesn’t move move is uncomfortable. So you have to commit. You have to be willing to do the work, which is often difficult to take.” Yet, this process is individual, and both CE and 5R group sessions are designed to make each one “feel and become curious, and this opens channels, despite them.”

5R and CE offer many techniques to make energy circulate. In 5R, each rhythm can be embraced by moving specific parts of the body that act as energetic portals; for example, one might focus on the feet to enter the flow rhythm. CE sessions rely on various breathing exercises directed toward different parts of the body, especially the lower belly. Participants are invited to express how they feel vocally, including by screaming, and to “discharge” their emotions (anger, sadness, etc.), all the while maintaining eye contact with the rest of the group. Various physical movements are employed to facilitate emotional expression, including jumping, vocalization (e.g., shouting), and more commonly, striking a foam cube with a “bataka” or tennis racket, hitting a punching ball with boxing gloves, or engaging in cathartic stomping while lying on a mattress. Typically, after scanning their body, a participant would start to tap their feet on the floor and then “add a sound” by yelling, eventually shouting louder and louder. The facilitator would place a large foam cube in front of the participant and encourage them to hit the cube with their fists and hips. The participant would do so faster and faster until they entered a state of disinhibition. This is what happened to one person: Their face, tense due to the efforts and the rising emotions, and their gaze, brilliant and vivid, started to convey determination before this participant eventually exploded and yelled out: “I do exist; I am allowed to exist!” After releasing this wave of emotions, the participant’s body vibrated and shook from head to toe. The members of the group became closer, surrounding the person, touching them, holding their hands, feet, and head, and hugging them in an attempt to offer physical comfort, emotional security, and embodied care. The participant kept on vibrating for long minutes, seeming relieved and scared at the same time. The group stayed close and breathed with the participant, collectively inhaling and exhaling. Given that energy fields are larger than physical bodies, these were said to be intermingling so that the participant’s release supposedly affected the whole group. Some members reported feeling more at ease, too.

5R’s official website defines waves as “a map to everywhere we want to go, on all planes of consciousness—inner and outer, forward and back, physical, emotional and intellectual”; they are “markers on the way back to a real self, a vulnerable, wild passionate, instinctive self.”2 The invitation to release bodies in coordination with each musical rhythm follows ritual conventions that are designed to create shared emotional energy and drive the embodied expression of emotions along a crescendo and decrescendo (Berthomé and Houseman 2010). Sophie says: “When I do something that I really like, I feel like I’m vibrating, it’s like I’m glowing, people tell me I’m glowing, but it’s like, energy, light, love. For me, it’s words that I try to put on it. It’s not something, it’s not really intellectual, this thing, it’s really more felt for me.” Even though it is an important source of inspiration for most participants, music hardly plays any role here, given that bodies and body parts are said to be animated by internal energies that naturally manifest themselves, provided they have a conducive space in which to do so. Interestingly, in both CE and 5R, facilitators compare the human body’s natural impulse to release tensions through movement to animal behaviors, like dogs who instinctively shake to let go of stress after being attacked or fighting.

5. Embodied Awareness and Attention to Sensory Experience

Apart from some comments or quotes attributed to Gabrielle Roth or John Pierrakos, group sessions rarely include teachings on the tenets of 5R or CE. They rely more on a mode of somatic attention to the body, sensations, emotions, states of mind, awareness of the present moment, and of a sense of “groundedness”, all understood as ways to connect to the self and the environment. In CE sessions, participants are guided to cultivate awareness of their internal feelings and be attuned to their bodily sensations “in consciousness”, that is, to sense their physical experience to identify areas of tension, discomfort, fluidity, ease, etc. As participants bring attention to their feet, belly, jaw, skin, etc., they become aware of their “level of energy”, which is considered an entry point to the true and authentic self, i.e., the one that is present in this moment. Denise showed me how paying attention to her body allows her to be aware of her energetic field: “It’s important to inhabit our bodies, to be conscious. I feel it, my hands are cold right now, I can feel a lot of things. So, I stay in this posture [knees bent and body straight above the hips], I breathe, and I observe what comes. For me, spontaneously, the vibration will come [her body starts shaking], because it’s the energy, for me it’s been so long, it’s integrated now.” This sense of deep attention to phenomenology self-facilitates access to personal subjectivity and one’s connection to oneself and one’s environment. This connection to the self is also mediated by group interactions when, for example, participants are invited to face and stare at each other while scanning their own body in order to become aware of their sensations. For instance, a cold feeling in the back might reveal the fear of being touched by the other. Observing what one “feels” in each moment is thus meant to convey direct information and discernment about one’s own state, which then initiates a “process” toward resolution and well-being.

Group sessions consider bodies as the “servants” who “contain all our stories” and allow us to access them beyond words. Indeed, bodies are supposedly shaped by social and personal conditioning, which 5R and CE both aim to deprogram through reconnection with the “authentic self and Other.” 5R and CE’s anthropology of the body combines the phenomenological subjective body with the notion of the body as an object (Henry 1965), a feature that is evident in numerous contemporary mind–body practices (Di Placido 2020). On the one hand, bodies have their own agency, intelligence, and wisdom, given their ability to induce tension- and stress-relieving movements. This powerful “corps-propre” (Merleau-Ponty 1945) is as much the expression of the true self as it is the most reliable space in which to experience this self. For Sam, who teaches 5R classes, “my body, my feeling, they always have the last word for me. If it doesn’t sound right in my body, it’s probably not right. I have a lot of confidence in my internal radar. After 65 years, I trust it.” Bodies have their own subjectivity, ethics, and potential for action. Sam continues: “The body is very fair. And the body will rarely let out something that it is not able to handle.” The body is also assigned (good) intentions and feelings. As Sam taught during a 5R class: “Your body loves you, unconditionally, do not forget it, it’s true! Your body only has this life, so your body wants to engage in this life 100%. It will tell you what prevents it from engaging 100%. If you do not listen, it will speak louder and louder but remember: your body loves you!” It follows that bodies have a life of their own, their own volition.

Nevertheless, bodies can also be objectified—divided into different independent and autonomous parts that can be scanned and acted upon. At the end of a 5R wave, one participant explained that she was torn between a part of her that wanted to dance and the other part that just wanted to lie on the floor. Sam answered: “Have you tried to listen to these two parts of your body? The one that wants to dance and the one that wants to resist? You can put them in dialogue and listen to them both.” When the self becomes the conscious witness of one’s historical body, the body emerges as a puppet made up of fragmented parts. As a container of biographical experiences, the body can be disassembled to single out trauma that is crystallized in certain parts. For example, Sam sometimes suggests that participants inhabit the hips and dance within them because “our hips support our upper body like a pedestal, and are nourished by our feet, which connect us to the earth. There are many stories in our hips.” As group session rituals aim to increase internal opening, this connection may turn parts of the body inside out and make “the part of you that is really ready to collapse fall to pieces”. This deconstruction of the self is the condition for its very renovation and transformation, and although the process is highly personal, it is supported by the heightened collective emotional energy that is produced in 5R or CE ritualized group sessions.

6. Space and Time

Group sessions’ high level of ritualization depends on the creation of a safe and sacred space for collective experience. In both 5R and CE, ritual spaces are adorned with special objects that supposedly refer to energies, like orchids, for example. Special stones are located in the four corners of the room in order to raise the “frequency.” At 5R retreats, part of the dance floor includes an energetic station with mirrors, or references to the five elements (earth, fire, water, air, and ether), each of them being related to one of the five rhythms. Some spaces are said to have more power than others, as was the case in a retreat that took place in August 2024 over a natural crystal source. Similarly, a collective dance or energetic process is thought to create a specific “egregore” in the space. This is conducive to deeper experiences and can energetically permeate the room in the long run. When I entered the room in which Denise was running her CE group sessions, I started to feel my body tingle and my belly gurgle. As I mentioned this to Denise, she replied: “It’s the walls, there are 19 years of practice in this room, it certainly creates an egregore!”

The word egregore is borrowed from esotericism. It refers to a group spirit that emerges from the aggregate of desires and intentions of different people bound together in pursuit of a shared goal. As they gather the energies of participants, egregores supposedly have the power to reverberate and extend intentions into actions. Some participants report having experienced surprising shifts in their lives after working through their intentions in such spaces. The word “egregor” comes from the Greek for “watch” and refers to angels from the intermediary world in the Book of Enoch3. So, beyond amplifying energies, egregores also carry an aura of mystery to which 5R and CE facilitators sometimes allude: “We are not alone; I invite you to formulate your intentions in this space that has a great power!”

Processing 5R and CE in subtle spaces designed to raise vibrations also echoes specific temporalities. For example, the Montreal Institute of Core Energetics’ logo is a spiral. All ritual techniques are designed to make participants connect to past unpleasant experiences and debunk them, slowly removing layers to get back to what is referred to as “the original state of pure consciousness.” This means reaching back to the center of the existential experience that is free from suffering and false beliefs. Likewise, in 5R retreats, circulation between different temporalities is the point of dancing, as illustrated by the themes of the different retreats I observed: “dimensions; portals; transitions; passage”. To prepare a 5R retreat, Sam says she sometimes uses an elixir of ferns; as some of the world’s oldest plants, “ferns have lived throughout all the ages of the earth and hold certain codes and emotional intelligence. Certain types of ferns hold anger, others hold curiosity, other sorts hold intelligence.” Sam said she used ferns elixir for clarity of mind during the last workshop she ran. Similarly, water is considered to be the main element that “holds all our codes” as human beings. Through this linkage between space and time, participants challenge rational and positivist views of space and time and generate new frameworks in which human interactions draw on intersubjective energetic experiences.

7. Creating a Group Harmonic Through Intersubjectivity

5R and CE practices grant community an essential role based on the premise that individuals are social beings who need to witness and be witnessed by others. At the root of this approach lies a specific anthropology of the person that assumes that subjectivities have different levels, the highest of which is unbounded and connects individuals to each other through the circulation of energy. It follows that individual energies affect one another.

This is best exemplified during a CE exercise where participants are supposed to raise vibrations by staring into each other’s eyes while moving their pelvis back and forth—obviously alluding to sexual energy as a strong vital energy. In this situation, a duo might experience emotions, sometimes combined with sounds and onomatopoeia that recall moans of pleasure. Here, participants vocalize what they experience and repeat it using an increasingly assertive tone. For example: “I have the right to be who I am.” This adds to the uncontrolled vibration that emanates from their body, combined with sustained visual contact. Vibrations increase when participants come closer to each other; this is attributed to the magnetic field that is created through symbiosis and affects each participant. While such experiences make some participants visibly uncomfortable, others are less inhibited and might compare such an experience to orgasm. Some participants see these experiences as a release of accumulated energies in stressful times (workload, loss of a loved one, etc.), and they appreciate the feeling of relief and relaxation they provide.

Besides allusions to sexual energy suggested by Freud, the anthropological literature has explained such collective organic experiences in terms of intense emotional sharing (Randall Collins 2004), group effervescence (Durkheim 1912), or out-of-the-ordinary “anti-structure” moments that are conducive to social cohesion (Turner [1969] 1991). The anthropologist Randall Collins (2004) shows how, when rituals are successful, they facilitate the harmonization of affective collective energy. The latter follows a progressive loop between the coordination of action and the synchronization of emotions that enhances a sense of common momentary belonging and personal elation that is heightened by fruitful interactions. Sophie, a 5R dancer, compares this circulation of emotional energy to an electric current: “when I feel like someone is really sad, or … there are things that we feel… Well, joy, it doesn’t flow through anything… So, the zones, like, the electric aspect.” As Trulsson (2014) shows in her study on the revival of the Dance of the Spider in Southern Italy, ritualized bodily movements not only allow the expression of contained and lingering emotions, but they also shape them into collective emotional sharing, like Sophie reports: “We dance, and I get a lot of that energy of great joy.” References to magnetic fields, energetic vibration, and frequency point to the intersubjective mechanics underlying collective experiences and human bonding.

Observation of 5R workshops offers more insights into how these intersubjective experiences shape collective energy and allow for the exploration of differrent dimensions of life. Participants are invited to dance in two-way or three-way interactions (or more). All the bodies moving together make energy circulate on a larger scale, which consolidates the (ephemeral) group as an entity of its own. Leaders explain that this collective motion induced by a common intention to dance and interact involves a biochemical dynamic “because in fact, these people’s energetic field has resonances” (Sam). This group resonance means that each person’s experience is “mirrored in the other’s, which helps them go through the moment”. This is what Sam calls “the gift of 5R”. Group motion unfolds along a specific “harmonic” that Sam describes by referring to quantum energy: “we are all small… batteries. Let’s call it that. So, being in motion with other batteries involves a certain energy cohesion. Not necessarily integration, but cohesion.” When the group is in tune, the vibration that emanates makes “anything that is close to this vibration start to vibrate, too”, forming an energetic song. As energy circulates, bodies become naturally aligned with the common vibration. In this scheme, the interconnection that occurs through energy allows a form of touch without physical contact (Lea 2019). That is, the materiality of bodily movement works together with the nonphysical dimension of interactions.

Aligning with a common harmonic does not mean sharing the same note and avoiding disagreements. Differences in intention may emerge within the group. For example, many participants would not respond to the facilitator’s call to interact with other dancers and would instead refer to “their own bubble”, either out of shyness, lack of interest in interacting with others, or due to their need to be alone at that moment. Such divergent motivations among ritual members (Hüsken 2007) are welcome in 5R dance, where they are absorbed into the common harmonic. Sam explains that “the goal of a group syncretic class is precisely to be biochemically, energetically in the same room, to harmonize, and to live out the disagreement.” It follows that each dancer’s particular way of moving impacts the entire group. For example, the one who remains on the floor is said to be dancing “the dance of I’m tired”. This mirrors all the participants’ tired body parts in a way that allows participants to dedicate their own movements to other aspects of the collective energy level “because someone is already taking care of the expression of fatigue in the group”. Sam compares this individual distribution of collective energy to a “big amoeba that is a multicellular cooperative [where each participant plays each cell: one playing the liver, another one the lungs, another one the heart, etc.” The organic dimension of the collective being is not new and goes back as far as the idea of Gemeinschaft developed by the sociologist Tönnies in the 19th century. Yet, by referring to energetic vibrations that constantly evolve and change, 5R points to the creative and ephemeral dimension of this organic being that is born and dies in the “spacetime” inhabited by the egregore on the dance floor.

In contrast to 5R’s organic view of the community of dancers, CE group sessions are designed to be confronting spaces where the pooling of energies results in one’s personal vibrations reverberating others’ experiences. CE’s closed and interactive space is indeed conducive to the heightening of individual energies and collective interactions, allowing each person to be in touch with their personal vibrations and experience. As Denise says, “the group is not necessarily easy. But at the same time, it’s enlightening because we see things that we hadn’t necessarily seen and we expose ourselves. I expose myself, I become vulnerable. It’s not somewhere to hide; we work.” Typically, one participant’s way of being triggers another participant’s historical experience of “vulnerability” that supposedly blocks their circulation of energy. For example, one participant’s gaze, behavior, and energy might bring to mind a coercive figure whom another participant had to face earlier in life, usually in childhood. In this case, the participant carrying the bullying energy would be invited to play the role of the previous coercer to help the participant process the emotions linked to this early experience. This process is meant to free the participant from the conflict that this childhood experience caused in their social life afterwards. During this work, the participant who accepts to embody the bullying energy and role allows the other to express their anger until release and relief lead them to a higher realm of subjectivity, that is, a state of compassion for both parties. At the end of the process, the coercer turns on the spot three times in order to shed the energy associated with the role they played.

5R and CE both combine participants’ energy into organic aggregates, though these differ in terms of their nature and intentions. CE and 5R also converge in that participants’ energies are thought to mirror one another, drawing on the belief that participants (and ultimately all human beings) are all one, rather than separate from the others. These ideas are not far from quantum physics, from which practitioners often draw to formulate this reference to organic unity. In both CE and 5R ritual settings (albeit in different ways), each person can experience and transform his or her own existential experience by raising their own vibration and frequency. Yet, the attempt to explain these situations introduces a new separation between the observer and the observed. In fact, framing individual experiences in 5R and CE in terms that belong to quantum physics brings the understanding of movements and energy into quantum’s mysterious realm.

8. Moving the Vital Force Through Quantum Physics

5R and CE both rely on an energetic conception of the human being. Sam explains, for instance, that in order to “release” during the chaos rhythm, dancers sometimes need to take their feet off the ground “because legs are like the two poles of a battery; if we keep our feet on the ground, we make the energy circulate like a battery and we don’t release. It’s physics!” This engagement with energy in CE and 5Rhythms is consistent with the principles of most holistic therapies, which similarly rely on the manipulation of subtle energies, as exemplified by practices such as Reiki (Partridge 2006). Both CE and 5Rhythms reflect the resurgence of the concept of energy in the wake of the 1960s countercultural movement, particularly through the growing influence of Eastern practices such as yoga and New Age spirituality. However, this understanding of energy is deeply embedded in historical frameworks, particularly those associated with vitalist thoughts. This idea of human beings as bodies through which energy flows draws indeed on a vitalist anthropology, which supplements the biological data of the living body with the notion of a vital force that influences a person’s general state of health and illness (Jolliot 2003; Kaptchuk 2006). According to this view, the human being’s nature and vital principle are of an energetic nature, and illnesses are caused by disturbances in the natural circulation of energy (Caussié 2022; Vernette and Moncelon 1999).

When I asked her about her definition of energy, Sam answered as follows: “Energy for me is the vital, animating force. It manifests itself in us, through our collection of cells, biochemistry, and electromagnetic fields. I am a body, that’s it. And there is a vital energy that feeds all of that. When we die, the body is there, but the vital energy is not […] This vital energy animates everything: my dog, the birds outside, the trees, the flowers […] We’re not outside, we’re not on top of it, we’re not underneath, we don’t hold it, we’re in there, like a fabric, a woven fabric. For me, energy is the current of life that runs through all of this.” Alongside Chinese medicine (with the notion of chi) or ayurvedic practices (with the notion of prana) that refer to “vital energy”, this idea of energy as a fluid emerged in 18th century Europe via the German physician Franz-Anton Mesmer (Berghmans 2023). Mesmer defined animal magnetism as a subtle electric fluid that bonds living agents with their environment and with each other. Although the scientific community discredited Mesmer’s hypothesis, the idea of energy continued to develop at the margins through the work of psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich who, at the beginning of the 19th century, introduced the concept of orgone, a biological electrical force that placed the human being at the center of an organized energetic system. According to the psychologist Claude Berghmans, energy-based therapies that re-emerged out of the New Age can in part be traced back to the idea of the orgonic energetical field as that which surrounds human beings. It resembles electromagnetism insofar as it is a link between humanity and the universe.

In 5R, these ancient ideas of vitalism and vital energy are expressed through the language of physics, with notions of vibrations, frequencies, and electromagnetism situating bodies in a larger holistic frame. Although they do not necessarily mention quantum physics per se, leaders draw from this field’s vocabulary and principles. For example, Sam explains the intersubjective collective experience of energy through a reference to electromagnetism: “It has been scientifically proven that the electromagnetic emanations of our hearts are like energetical vortexes around us.”

Quantum physics was born between the two world wars, and it explores reality not in terms of cause and effect (like positivism) but in terms of chance and probability, that is, by drawing on the principle of uncertainty. Quantum physics also posits that energy is fundamental to matter and that it can be influenced or directed. This perspective has been adopted by certain non-conventional physicians, who argue that the manipulation of energy may serve as a basis for healing. Quantum physics contends that at the atomic and subatomic scale, observation influences what is observed in such a way that the relationship with reality is no longer characterized by a passive observer/observed dynamic, but by the human being’s active participation in what he or she knows. This supports facilitators’ constant calls to get in touch with and witness physical and emotional discomfort because this will help transform them. Likewise, the principle of entanglement, which supposes that all particle states are intrinsically linked, is used to explain that interactions that occur in CE group sessions are part of a single experience of unity. Adam, a CE facilitator, stated:

“Even scientists have explored this idea that you are you, and I am me, and we are different beings. But in reality, you’re not really there: 99.99% of you is empty space, with a 0.01% of atoms. OK, there’s a little bit of material. But when you look at these atoms, you discover a lot of energy and very little matter. And this goes on until we get to particles that are extremely small. What I’m hearing is that scientists have found a particle that is so small, it’s a bit like the God particle, and it’s a particle that moves at infinite speed. So it can be in two places at the same time, there’s no limit. And if it can be in two places at the same time, it can be in an infinite number of places at the same time. So it can be everything and everywhere at the same time, and even it is one.”

In 5R and CE group sessions, experiences of deep release and blissful ecstasy are usually viewed as moments of expansion where the self reaches higher states of being situated in an alternative spacetime. This idea of expansion goes hand in hand with the concept of contraction in quantum physics. After experiencing a moment of deep awareness and opening during a CE session, a participant attended a family gathering where her siblings’ attitude triggered great anger in her and “brought her energy down”. After she shared this experience with the group, Denise explained the following: “Yes, it’s contraction. After a moment of great opening, there’s always a contracting effect, as if the universe and energies were trying to return to a balance”. This newfound balance usually leads the participant to the next step of their process. In fact, all the energies that are experienced in CE and 5R have two sides. In CE, for example, anger can be a positive and healthy energy of affirmation, but as an emotion that is not socially accepted, it may also be a repressed and (self-) destructive energy. Likewise, in 5R, each rhythm comprises a light side and a shadow side, like the chaos rhythm that can trigger the impulse for movement and change, just as it can trigger a state of deep confusion.

References to science (neuroscience and quantum physics) (Caussié 2022; Cuffe 2010) to frame metaphors of personal change and movement currently play a large part in the success and credibility of mind–body practices like 5R and CE. Concepts such as consciousness, energy, and sensory experience are attractive to certain audiences because they echo critiques of the dominant positivist and materialistic ways of imagining body, mind, and soul (Ozawa-de Silva 2006; Seligman and Kirmayer 2008; Taves 1999). Yet, these groups aim to address more than energies in the body. They discriminate between light and shadow, associated with the higher and the lower self, and introduce what they call the “power of intention.” In fact, facilitators acknowledge that affirmation and destruction are the same energy, just like movement and confusion, but they stress that both have different orientations. Moving from one to the other requires a clear intention that participants are invited to formulate at the beginning of each session. Intentions can vary, from reaching peace in one’s relationship with a child to working on accepting oneself. Their common feature is that they focus on the heart and on love, which are associated with a higher vibrational level. This transformation of embodied grid of perceptions renews the relationship to the self, and overall reality, which is supposedly integrated in the nervous system through bodily movements. This happens by opening new neuropathways in the brain, generating physiological responses that are conducive to an overall sense of wellness.

In conclusion, while 5R and CE are rooted in Western vitalism and esoteric magnetism, they both refer to the latest scientific discoveries in quantum physics (and neuroscience). Like many holistic groups, they draw on recent scientific developments to offer access to new non-ordinary therapeutic experiences through the sensing of vibrations, frequencies, and electromagnetic fields.

9. Energy-Based Practices as a New Kind of Movement Medicine?

The literature has widely acknowledged the positive impacts that free-form movements based on non-verbal, nonlinear, and creative practices can have on various aspects of health and well-being (Grauslund et al. 2023; Juhan 2003; Keeney 2007; Laird et al. 2021; Rooke 2014). Indeed, some participants present 5R dance as their “medicine”. Sam, who also described her musical playlist as her medicine, sometimes invites people to dance for someone who is sick. As she reported that someone for whom the group had danced a week ago was doing better, Sam noted (in a tone rich with innuendo) that “some may not believe that something happens, but the fact is …”. Yet, in this context, healing is not seen as a restorative act that aims to return the person to the state preceding the onset of symptoms, but one that allows the person to accept the experience of navigating everything that makes up the therapeutic and life path. This perspective resonates with many participants who regard science as a limited body of knowledge, constrained by its reliance on evidence-based methodologies. In contrast, a significant number advocate for an experience-based approach to knowledge. One physician practicing Core Energetics (CE) seeks clearer distinctions between what science has validated and what remains to be explored, without dismissing the field. Similarly, another scientist engaged in CE calls for a more inclusive scientific framework that allows space for the articulation of sensitivities, proposing that experience should be considered a valid criterion for scientific inquiry. In his view, auto-referential methods could enable access to knowledge beyond the confines of rationality and quantitative analysis, which they perceive as too broad and insufficiently attuned to the singularities of personal experiences.

The indeterminate and unquantifiable nature of the energy found in 5R and CE probably explains why this vocabulary and the practices associated with it have not penetrated conventional Western medicine (Twigg 2000). Indeed, biomedicine mostly relies on anatomical and mechanical views of the body that do not fit with organic and holistic conceptions of the body based on energy or vital force. Among many participants in 5Rhythms (5R) and Core Energetics (CE), there is a shared conviction in the body’s innate capacity for self-healing—a potential that energy-based practices are believed to awaken and support. Jenny, a woman in her 30s reorienting her professional life after a challenging period, articulates a broader critique of psychological treatment, which she perceives as anxiety-inducing and insufficiently forward-moving. In contrast, she values 5R for offering energetic space that allows participants to fully “experience” their emotional landscapes—a process she sees as essential for healing. For Jenny, 5R offers energetic tools and an embodied environment that facilitate deep engagement with present life experiences, understood not only as burdens but also as sources of personal insight and renewal. The idea that individuals can self-regulate their mental, emotional, and physical states through energetic practices is widely held among the participants I encountered in both CE and 5R, forming part of a broader therapeutic ethos centered on fluidity, embodiment, and transformation.

The biomedical field partly emerged and was consolidated by differentiating itself from holistic practice (Monnais 2011). Yet, there is a long history of therapeutic recourse to holistic practices (Brown 2013; Cooter 1988), and the recent scientific literature evinces the entanglement of spiritual and medical environments (Bates 2000; Pierini et al. 2023), the influence of spiritualities on clinical practices in the context of integrative approaches (Lüddeckens et al. 2021; Maurya et al. 2021; Stein 2021), and the borrowing from psychological approaches for the purpose of personal transformation (Altglas 2007; Garnoussi 2011). Many participants view body–mind–energy practices such as Core Energetics (CE) and 5Rhythms (5R) as complementary to, rather than in competition with, biomedical care. Erika, a computer engineer, underscores this point by stating, “I am not numb, I go to the doctor when I need!” while also noting that medical professionals often fall short when it comes to addressing anxiety-related concerns. Her position reflects a broader desire among participants for a more integrated approach—one that recognizes the value of experiential, energy-based, and body-centered healing alongside clinical interventions. John, who attributes his recovery from work-related depression to regular 5R practice, voices a desire for greater institutional recognition of such approaches, hoping therapists might one day recommend 5R as a complement to conventional treatment. Similarly, Julie recalled her parents encouraging her to learn Reiki at age 20 before traveling abroad, reasoning that she could use energy for self-healing in the absence of access to therapists. Conversely, some participants working within the healthcare system seek to integrate the somatic and emotional insights they gain through CE into their professional roles. Jenny, a nutritionist in a public hospital, uses her blog to encourage patients to consider the emotional underpinnings of illness. In addition, she credits CE with enhancing her own capacity to be energetically more available to her patients, remarking, “My container is bigger than before.” Nonetheless, a degree of skepticism toward biomedicine persists among some participants—particularly concerning pharmaceutical treatments which are seen by some as disruptive to the body’s energetic and chemical equilibrium. Catherine, a massage therapist and regular 5R attendee, regards her body as both her primary tool and means of livelihood. Attuned to subtle shifts in her psychophysical state, she actively avoids conventional medicine, favoring herbal remedies and emphasizing a deep, continuous awareness of her bodily and energetic rhythms. For her and others, health is understood as a dynamic process of embodied energetic attunement, rather than external intervention.

Although they explicitly distance themselves from conventional psychological treatment based on “talk therapy” to focus on embodied expressions (Vergeer et al. 2021), notions in 5R and CE of repressed feelings, emotional blockage, and ideas of light and shadow appear to be firmly anchored in depth psychological approaches stemming from Freud and Jung (Walker 2020). In other words, their focus on emotions as rooted in individuals’ personal histories, along with their aim to provoke shifts in the deep unconscious, likely positions them as products of the contemporary psychological turn. On the other hand, 5R and CE equally work on the unconscious by focusing on emotions as embodied thoughts and by cultivating somatic attention with the aim of helping human beings achieve self-actualization. In this respect, they rely heavily on humanistic psychology, which endeavors to develop human beings’ inner potential. It is indeed hard not to compare CE and 5R’s ritualization of cathartic experiences to Abraham Maslow’s “peak experiences”, that is, to experiences of “wonder, awe, reverence, humility, surrender, and even worship before the greatness of the experience” (Maslow 1970, p. 19) where the person “becomes (…) more truly himself [sic], more perfectly actualizing his potentialities, closer to the core of his Being” (Maslow 1959, p. 62). Nevertheless, insofar as they introduce an understanding of the body as an energetic vehicle for individual and collective access to the inner self, 5R and CE offer new possibilities in terms of integrating phenomenological sensitivities into therapeutic approaches (Albanese 2000).

10. To Conclude

The concept of living energy spread throughout the therapeutic sphere in the wake of the American counterculture, in tandem with the celebration of East Asian bodily practices and spiritualities. Core Energetics and 5Rhythms are two offshoots of this movement, grounded in the premise that living bodies exist at the nexus of an energetic field. Drawing on the ethnographic fieldwork that I carried out among those two mind–body–energy groups, I have shown how they conflate two Western sources: on the one hand, the legacy of early Western medical offshoots that have been marginalized by mainstream biomedicine, and on the other, discursive references to contemporary interpretations of quantum physics.

Given that the ritualized motion of the body coupled with the guided awareness of sensations is conducive to emotional release, many practitioners regard 5Rhythms (5R) or Core Energetics (CE) as their personal forms of “medicine.” Indeed, they describe this release as restoring the circulation of energy, which they experience as an expansion of consciousness that regenerates them and fosters a profound state of well-being. While biomedicine generally maintains a degree of skepticism toward these practices, many practitioners view them as complementary, or even alternative, approaches to conventional medical treatments.

Questions remain as to whether the body–mind–energy practices like 5R and CE that fall under this new culture have turned subjects into vulnerable bodies (McLaughlin 2010) or whether they provide opportunities to empower them (Kieft 2013). Indeed, the level of commitment expected from participants, along with the continual attention they are encouraged to place on their bodies and sensations, shifts the responsibility for well-being onto the individuals’ shoulders. Moreover, ritual settings and facilitators’ cues are designed to make free-form movement the entry point to mindful presence; interconnection with others, the self, and the world; and a sense of self-compassion, freedom, and creativity (Maurer 2021). In this regard, one participant described her decision to discontinue using Core Energetics (CE) with those in her social circle, stating, “people seek answers, while this method only offers reflections.” Her account emphasizes that CE privileges introspective engagement and the unfolding of subjective insight over the delivery of clear-cut answers.

Many participants allude to the spiritual, intangible, and mysterious dimension of these practices and their potential to generate new transformative experiences by claiming that they sense the “magic” in places. Yet, relying on “magic” to explore and work on the self does not necessarily lead to well-being, just as working with energy is not without flaws, given the unpredictability and risks that polarities introduce to the movement-based transformative process. Observations have shown that working with energies may bring about unexpected and sometimes undesired changes, as energy and power are not always positively correlated. For example, within the neo-shamanic settings where I have been carrying out ethnographic fieldwork since 2021, linked to a parallel line of inquiry, practitioners like to talk about the time that Michael Harner (considered the founder of neo-shamanism) was in the hospital, having been struggling with disease for some time. When Harner left the hospital, his followers happily told him that they had been sending him energy, to which he replied: “That’s why I was ill for so long; I did not need to receive energy, I needed to be sent power!” It follows that neo-shamans now prefer to work on attracting the power of their “allies”, with whom they collaborate for their own well-being. Other empirical studies (Mossière 2024) tell the stories of people who turned back to traditional Christian practices after having previously embraced holistic practices. In those cases, praying for well-being and “letting go and letting God” feels less constraining and burdensome than remaining in a state of constant self-monitoring. Although 5R and CE practitioners remain in control of the process they go through in free-form movements, attracting and orienting energies that align with their purpose makes self-reflexivity a distinct way of being in the world.