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Have you noticed the shoes worn by children that light up as they run? Kids love the flashing light show put
on by their shoes and parents love the fact that no batteries are needed. So, if there are no batteries, where
does the electricity come from to spark the lights? The answer is "piezoelectricity."
Electricity is the movement of electrons. Electrons are the smallest and outermost part of the atom and thus
are very mobile. A few moving electrons can communicate information precisely. A lot of flowing electrons can
transfer energy in massive quantities. In our modern society we use electrons in both roles.
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Piezoelectricity is electricity created by pressure. The word comes from the Greek peizein, which means to
squeeze or compress. No batteries required. The piezoelectric phenomenon has been known for hundreds of
years and was given its name in 1824 by
David Brewster.
Certain kinds of crystals, when subjected to deforming stress, create electrical fields (measured in volts
per meter) or cause electricity to flow (measured in amps). The reverse can also happen: when an electric
field is applied to these crystals they will bend in response - the stronger the field the greater the
deformation; the greater the stress - the stronger the field.
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Piezoelectricity is created by deforming a crystal.
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Piezoelectric crystals do not need to be recharged. When they resume their original shape the energy potential
ends - when they are deformed again the field is regenerated. This wonderful ability of some crystals has been
exploited in many technologies today - from the light show in shoes to lighting your barbeque, from electric
microphones to sophisticated sonar systems - piezoelectricity has become commonplace
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A crystal is a structured array of molecules repeated throughout the material. A crystal of salt is a simple
cubic lattice of sodium and chloride atoms. Diamonds are arrayed in interlocking tetrahedral pyramids of
carbon atoms. What is often overlooked is that tissues in our body are also aligned in structured, repeating
patterns. The molecules of our muscles, bones, eyes, cell membranes, collagen, elastin, even our DNA …
all have crystal-like structure.
James Oschman, in his two excellent books summarizing scientific research into energy medicine, states
that the living tissues of our bodies are best described as liquid crystals.
Liquid crystals, as he explains, [1] are "materials that are intermediate between solids and liquids and display
properties of both." He goes on to explain that virtually the whole body is composed of materials arranged in
a liquid crystal form and cites several studies confirming this model.
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Our eyes and muscles under the microscope reveal their crystalline structure.
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When our liquid crystalline tissues are subjected to deforming stress, they generate piezoelectric
potential energy and tiny electric currents. Just like in the children's shoes, every move we make, ever
breath we take (to paraphrase Sting) creates tiny currents of energy. Alternately, the presence of even small
electrical potentials creates a small amount of movement or deformation in our tissues. This level of
electricity is quite minute compared to the size of energy flowing in our nervous system. The voltage of
the membranes of our nerve cells is in the range of millivolts. [2] The sizes of the piezoelectric voltages we
are discussing are many orders of magnitude smaller than this - on the order of microvolts. It is no wonder
that this very small amount of energy was never noticed before; our instruments were not sensitive enough
and when they were, we just weren't looking.
If these piezoelectric energies we are discussing were expected to move materials in our body or affect
us in large ways, we would be right to think they have no chance of affecting us. But consider this metaphor -
you are cooking a big Thanksgiving turkey. [3] You know you need to preheat the oven, but you don't know how
high to set the temperature. You call your mother on your cell phone and she tells you to try four hundred
degrees.
The cell phone has at its heart a computer chip that consumes a very small amount of electricity, say
fifty milliwatts. The oven produces a great deal of heat and requires a thousand watts to run properly. [4]
And yet, until the small current in the cell phone gives you the information you need, all that power in
the oven is dormant. Yes, certainly the cell phone could not hope to power the oven. An instrument set to
measure the power output of the oven would miss the tiny energy flowing in the cell phone. But without the
cell phone's intelligence, the power in the oven would never be activated. A small amount of information
can create big changes. And this small amount of information requires very little power, especially
compared to the large effect it stimulates.
If our bodies can be considered as liquid crystals, and if even small movements create electric fields
and currents, this could provide a basis for scientific models of information and energy transfers
beyond purely chemical or electrical mechanisms, which solely rely on our nervous or blood system.
With such models we can begin to see how modalities that manipulate the body physically, such as yoga
and massage, might have an effect on the functioning of our bodies, and therefore on our health. [5]
When an electron moves, as it does in an electric current, it gives rise to a magnetic field. How this
electromagnetism can affect us is the next stop on our journey.
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1 -- Page 87 of Energy Medicine in Therapeutics and Human Performance by James Oschman.
2 -- Generally around fifty ~ seventy millivolts.
3 -- Of course, since we are talking about yoga this would be a tofu turkey.
4 -- That is twenty thousand times stronger than the cell phone.
5 -- An online paper discussing electrical flow across the skin, and piezoelectric effects, can
be found at the
Society of Electrodermology at www.electrodermology.com. There is a lot of research that indicates the body
is indeed filled with crystalline piezoelectric materials. Oschman and the Society of Electrodermology have many references
that can lead the interested reader to these studies.
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