Voltage

The idea of voltage first appeared on my radar while researching nerve health. I had long known that my nervous system was in a state of dysregulation, even if I didn’t fully understand what that meant or how to address it. What I did know was how it felt: like an electrical storm inside my body—nerves on high alert, short-circuiting, pulsing, painful muscle spasms, burning, flooding, a hormonal soup. I’ll spare you the rest of the list.

Over time, I learned that our nervous system communicates through specialized cells that transmit electrical signals.

“Our body is a portable electronic device. Electronic devices need a battery. Battery packs can lose their charge or stop holding a charge.”

—Dr. Jerry Tennant

Battery packs can also short-circuit.

A healthy cell typically operates at about –25 millivolts. When a cell needs to regenerate or repair tissue, it must reach closer to –50 millivolts. Muscles are one such “battery pack.” The contractions of the heart generate currents—tiny electrical pulses that travel through the conductive tissues of the body. With every beat, a charge is created. Muscles contract when they receive electrical impulses from nerves; these impulses are messages traveling along living wires, creating a continuous electrical flow.

The human body is, at its core, an electrical organism. Every thought, movement, heartbeat, and sensation relies on subtle electrical impulses created and conducted by our cells. Because we generate electrical signals, we also create measurable electromagnetic fields (think EEGs and EKGs). This isn’t metaphoric—it’s biology, the very mechanism that keeps us alive.

“The information embedded within cardiac pulses alters central nervous function in behaviorally significant ways. There is, in fact, a two-way communication between heart and brain that shifts physiological functioning and behavior in response to the information exchanged.”

—Stephen Buhner

More on that later.

But at this point, I could sense it: something in my system wasn’t firing correctly. Something in the circuitry was disrupted.

So down the rabbit hole I went.

Could my body repair this disruption? Was there something I could do? Was anyone talking about this?

Today, more and more people are talking about it. In the last decade, breakthroughs in biological technologies have allowed us to understand systems of the mind and body that we could previously describe only metaphorically. And alongside this science, ancient modalities—once dismissed—are now being understood at a physiological level.

Enter energetics.

At its simplest, energetics is the idea that the things we do, say, experience, and believe can either add to or deplete our body’s ability to function and repair. Diet, movement, air, light, water—all of these matter, of course. And then there is earthing. Research now shows measurable nervous-system benefits when we touch the earth with our bare feet or hands or connect with more-than-human beings (trees, plants, rocks).

Trees, in fact, engage in an exchange of electrical connections. We benefit when we place ourselves within that exchange.

So metaphorically—and also quite literally—we can say that the things we do or don’t do can raise or lower our voltage. I love thinking about it this way. It cuts through the noise and makes it easier to recognize what truly supports our energy and well-being.

And, by this point in my research, I was becoming acutely aware of how my thoughts were affecting my physiology.

“Chronic conditions are associated with low cellular voltage. That’s how emotions make us sick—by dropping the voltage in the circuit they’re hanging out in.”

—Dr. Jerry Tennant

How we think, what we focus on, what we engage with, and what we allow ourselves to ruminate over—these all shape our physical health. This is no longer conjecture. It’s neurobiology.

My father had many sayings he repeated throughout my childhood. “You gotta think positive. Think what you doing,” he’d say, again and again. I always thought he was a little off his rocker. It turns out he was ahead of his time.

Biologists now understand that our thoughts can actually change genetic expression.

Enter energy psychology—an umbrella term for approaches that integrate psychological principles with the body’s energy systems: bioelectric, electromagnetic, biochemical. Emotions, trauma, and beliefs are stored in the body and shape the flow of energy. Every emotional state carries its own neurochemical and electrical pattern.

So what do rivers have to do with any of this? As in Rivers Speak in Voltage?

Just as time in the forest nourishes the nervous system, water—especially moving water—offers even more. The electrical charge present in the air near waterfalls, rivers, and ocean waves supports regulation, raising serotonin levels and activating the parasympathetic nervous system. Being in the presence of these negative ions actually shifts stress chemistry in the body. Putting your bare feet in water increases stable cell membrane potential. The experience can somatically lift you out of that high-alert state so many of us live in—and the effect lingers.

How much can it help? How often do you need to be near moving water or in the presence of trees for it to have an effect? I encourage you to discover this for yourself. Conduct your own small case study. Test it out. Record the outcome. What have you got to lose? You may be surprised by the results.