Feeling off balance, thinking fuzzy, uncoordinated upon rising?  You likely have an energy crossover problem. Our bodies are like self winding clocks.  Our natural movements of babies crawling, or us walking and swinging our arms is more than just exercise.  The motions help synchronize both hemispheres of the brain so we have more brainpower.  This is how the Universe designed it.  When babies don’t get to crawl, when they are instead in baby walkers most of the time, they don’t get this motion.  This can delay development.  If, while we go for our daily walk, we carry a shoulder bag, or hold a phone or iPod in one hand, anything instead of swinging both arms naturally as we walk, we don’t get the motion.  We need this motion for optimum brain hemisphere synchronization and if we don’t get it naturally, there is a short and easy exercise we can do on our own that doesn’t cost a thing.  It’s called –> The Cross Crawl in Energy Medicine.

The left hemisphere of your brain sends information to the right side of your body and the right hemisphere sends info to the left side. If energy from the left or right is not adequately crossing over to the opposite side of your body, you cannot utilize your brain’s full capacity or your body’s full intelligence. Donna Eden in Energy Medicine. 

When energy is unable to cross over, it slows down dramatically.  It begins to move in what is referred to as a homolateral pattern – straight up and down the body – and the body’s ability to heal is severely diminished.  A homolateral pattern is natural in newborn babies.  Their energy does not yet cross over. Crawling establishes the patterning that allows the energies to cross over from each hemisphere of the brain to operate the opposite side of the body. This is one reason an infant’s learning curve increases expoentially with the ability to crawl, and children who do not crawl often  develop learning disabilities.  An easy exercise called The Cross Crawl helps your whole system function more effecively, and it also promotes the healing process.

Human evolution arranged for us to spend a considerable amount of time cross crawling every day.  Walking, running, swimming are all natural ways of performing a cross crawl.  Often when we walk, we do not use a cross crawl pattern – a shoulder bag prevents your arms from swinging and cuts through the major meridian lines of your shoulder.  Or you’re carrying your phone or iPod, so one arm isn’t swinging.

That’s when you can do a few minutes of Cross Crawl afterwards to make sure you’ve synched yourself up.

The Energy Crossover Problem BALANCE OFF? THINKING FUZZY? UNCOORDINATED ON RISING? When energy is unable to cross over, it slows down dramatically. It begins to move in a homolateral pattern straight up and down the body and the body’s ability to heal is severely diminished . – Donna Eden & David Feinstein, PhD

Barbara Lynne Mallory writes, “For full functioning, energy and information must flow naturally in a contralateral or cross-over pattern, i.e., from left brain to right-body, from right brain to left-body, weaving unhindered from side to side. When you’ve been in a stationary position for a while, your body’s energy flow may shift temporarily to a homolateral energy-flow pattern. So…? You feel physically stumbly and mentally bumbly!

If I have been seated at the computer for hours, or even in my easy chair, my thinking becomes sluggish, I move awkwardly when I stand, and my energy feels low. When I first rise in the morning, my gait is lumbering and I’m poorly coordinated. That’s because my energy flow is homolateral. It’s as though my only energy source is two columns of feeble AAA batteries, one running up the left side of my body, the other up the right, with no energy contacts between.

Persons who are wheel-chair bound or who suffer enduring or recurring fatigue-type illness often develop a chronic homolateral energy-flow pattern (Eden, 1998).

THE CROSS CRAWL
The Cross Crawl is the answer to homolateral energy flow. Imagine an exaggerated march step, done on the spot (or around the breakfast table, or down the street for that matter), with exaggerated arm swing and vigorous step. You can touch hand or elbow to knee to emphasize the rhythmic crossover.

Babies devote a whole stage of their young lives to the change-over from a homolateral to a contralateral energy pattern when they practise crawling.

Do the Cross Crawl exercise for only as long as is comfortable, take a break, and then do more later. Even if homolaterality is your default setting, you can retrain your energy-flow pattern over time. If you’re quite physically fit, doing the Cross Crawl for a full minute at a time will enhance energy cross-over and help consolidate the pattern.

CROSS CRAWL WHEN SEATED
Even when seated, you can do a Cross-Crawl movement by lifting your knees alternately, and touching each raised knee with the opposite hand or elbow. Persons with chronic-fatigue and those who have experienced head trauma seem to benefit from regular cross-over exercise. They describe feeling more energetic, alert and clear-thinking than previously, and show improved response to other energy-work techniques.

IF YOU CAN’T DO IT, IMAGINE YOU ARE DOING IT
If you’re in a situation or condition which makes doing the physical Cross Crawl action impossible, just imagine it! See yourself walking energetically with arms swinging. Visualize yourself skating rhythmically, or cross-country skiing! Such imaging calls your body to remember the fluid grace and integrity of contralateral energy flow.

For more information about homolateral energy flow and the value of cross-crawl exercises, I recommend Donna Eden’s ground-breaking book, Energy Medicine, written with her husband, Dr. David Feinstein, and published in 1998.

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