as underlined above , the vocabulary used by our participants in interview and when writing diary entries is replete with terms like  energy and other words possessing a close family resemblance ( feeling  lively ,  revitalisation and  rejuvenation ) .
we hear repeatedly about individuals wanting to boost their  energy levels , to become 
energised , to be  energetic ; about their senses of good ( positive ) energy and bad ( negative ) energy , or at least about mobilising energies in good or bad ways ; about their feeling the  energy of being with others , enjoying the same kind of events ; about energies that are both ( perhaps simultaneously ) physical and mental ; about , more mysteriously , feeding upon the  energies that certain practices appear to unlock within the body - psyche ; or , even , tapping into 
there are clearly diverse meanings of energy being deployed here , and a key finding is that our participants are thoroughly eclectic , we might say hybrid , in the knowledges which they are conjoining ( from moment to moment , in a single sentence , but also across a life - course ) . sometimes participants are using the term energy in the utterly familiar sense of feeling that one s physical body is full of energy , able to do lots of stuff , with plenty of stamina , likely not experiencing aches and pains .
conversely , there are times when they talk of being bereft of energy , in short being exhausted , perhaps carrying aches , pains and injuries .
our diaries contain numerous moans about over - doing that yoga session , pushing too far on that pose , and hence depleting one s energy stocks .
the picture is thus not always rosy . as should be obvious from our brief listing above of energy talk ,
there are also many instances when participants depart from what might be taken as a conventional  we might say biomedical  take on energy .
thus , we find ourselves hearing about energies as an alternative account of bodily and mental well - being largely alien to western biomedicine . as jennifer lea explains in her paper on massage : while energy is an inexact and non - unified way of describing and understanding the body , the basis of the idea is of a flow around , through and beyond the body .
this gives rise to a body that is understood as essentially unbounded by the skin and is rather open to flow and transfer with other objects , people and environments .
the understanding is that when this flow is blocked , illness and suffering can arise .
it is these blockages that massage works on to re - establish free flow and restore health .
( 2011 , 5 ) while energy is an inexact and non - unified way of describing and understanding the body , the basis of the idea is of a flow around , through and beyond the body .
this gives rise to a body that is understood as essentially unbounded by the skin and is rather open to flow and transfer with other objects , people and environments .
the understanding is that when this flow is blocked , illness and suffering can arise .
it is these blockages that massage works on to re - establish free flow and restore health .
( 2011 , 5 ) for the more strictly  scientific persona , such talk may appear loose , sloppy even , perhaps metaphysical .
for such a persona , moreover , the claim would probably be that we should regard these vocabularies as largely metaphorical , since understandings of energy as the animating force of physical systems are simply being colonised to describe what is occurring in the hybrid corporeal , psychological , emotional and spiritual  system that is the human being .
indeed , such a persona might speculate that , once science arrives at a full biomedical explanation ( and  mapping ) of the body , then it will be possible to give a properly 
spiritual beliefs about body - psyche energies held by lea s massage practitioners or participants in our brighton study .
let us briefly return to  her day and to the window opened on how our participants  not merely as  individuals but also as 
sessions in a natural health centre , a buddhist centre , a church hall or even a municipal leisure centre . other sites might be found  at home , when waking up or going to sleep , or perhaps when more deliberately reorganising a home - space ( clearing the children s toys , for instance , to lay down the yoga mat or placing a buddha on the mantelpiece ) .
parks , rivers , the seaside  with the notion of  life - energies flowing from and across said spaces into and through human bodies ( as one meditates on a bench or while walking , cycling or swimming , or even as one practices a few yoga moves on a sunny park - slope ) .
a further dimension is how individuals carve dedicated times - spaces from the press of often fraught urban daily / weekly routines for conducting their yogic / meditative practice : in which regard participants underscored the need to create instances of 
stillness , apart from the normal pacing of thought - and - activity , when energies could indeed be recuperated  in effect , created anew  as resources to be deployed in the wider struggle to cope , to accomplish healthfulness . here ,
energy geographies of our participants , ones which  while presented highly empirically at the start of our paper  nonetheless resonate remarkably with a variety of more conceptually - driven notions now entering the broader fields of both human geography and , if as yet to a lesser extent , medical humanities ( eg .
perhaps in partial reversal of normal academic procedure , it is arguably less that we possessed a prior theoretical agenda for probing the qualitative data generated by our research and more that this data almost  invites us to consider particular theoretical possibilities for bringing into dialogue with our brighton study . indeed ,
even more than this , materials from our research arguably help us better to understand certain realms of theory rather than vice versa , which arrive  after the event of the research .
it is in this slightly unusual vein that we now make what we fully acknowledge as an abrupt shift in register , since we now wish to leave the empirics behind and spend the remainder of the paper travelling a route from the 
energy geographies depicted above into a more conceptually - facing discussion of a minor  energy turn arguably now occurring within human geography , geographical health studies and , potentially , the wider medical humanities .
there is a long - standing if now less often explicitly named subfield known as the geography of energy or energy geography .
its focus has been the spatial distribution of energy sources and supply  the spaces of energy production and consumption ; the locational dynamics of the energy sector / industry  delineating global and regional patterns in , and 
landscape features resulting from , the exploitation of fossil fuel deposits , natural gas reserves and hydro - electric power with some nods to alternative energy sources ( solar , wind , wave and biofuels ) . in anglophone geography ,
john d. chapman wrote in 1961 about  a geography of energy : an emerging field of study; gerald manners authored in 1964 the first book - length treatment entitled the geography of energy ; and f.j .
solomon edited in 1985 a volume entitled geographical dimensions of energy , describing it as the 
first attempt to provide a comprehensive volume on the topic of energy geography  ( ix ) .
explorations of energy geography had already occurred in france , notably by pierre george with his 1950 scholarly work gographie de lnergie , but also in texts by the perhaps more well - known max sorre .
we stress this fragment of historiography because the anglophone authors , unlike their french predecessors , have been clear that they are concerned with so - called inanimate energy ( eg .
indeed , manners ( 1964 , 21 ) explicitly narrowed his focus to inanimate energy , acknowledging that  [ i]n the writing of the french geographers in particular ( george 1950 ; sorre 1948 , 209  ff . )
discussion of energy has tended to include some references to the use of animate energy [ our emphasis ] . 
the distinction between these two forms of energy is clarified here : for our purposes , energy will be disaggregated into two sub - categories , namely ea(t ) , animate ( ie .
muscular force ) , while examples of inanimate energy include internal combustion , steam power , wind power , hydraulic power and electrical power .
( beaudreau 1998 , 42 ) for our purposes , energy will be disaggregated into two sub - categories , namely ea(t ) , animate ( ie .
muscular force ) , while examples of inanimate energy include internal combustion , steam power , wind power , hydraulic power and electrical power .
( beaudreau 1998 , 42 ) this sharp distinction between studying inanimate and animate energy has indeed mapped through into anglophone geography , setting up a sole tendency to contemplate the energy dimensions of humans and other life - forms in terms of their position within ecosystems responding ultimately to the harnessing and transformation of  radiant energy from the sun .
anthony hoare defined energy as  the ability to do work ,  adding that it  can be channelled into four forms , three of them ( thermal , mechanical and electrical ) end - forms and one ( fuels ) a holding operation for future work  ( 1979 , 507 ) .
the forms of energy gathered into the bodies of human beings themselves , as they convert nutrition into 
muscular force , are hence accorded scant attention . despite significant shifts in how scholars now characterise the subfield of energy geographies ( eg .
bridge 2012 ; zimmerer 2012 ) , as linked to radical rethinking of  resource geographies ( eg . bakker and bridge 2006 ) , the centralising of the human as itself a locus and source of animate energy ( or , indeed , of other life - forms in this respect ) has not been considered . at the same time , though , quite other conceptions of energy  we might say of  other energies  have started to appear in the orbit of contemporary human geography and cognate disciplines often with links across to realms of health and medicine .
a range of manoeuvres under the umbrellas of post - phenomenological , non - representational , vitalist and emotional geographies have all carried an under - current of concern for 
energies , never that explicitly stated and somewhat buried in ( often densely - written ) paragraphs , yet arguably amounting to an intimation of  new energy geographies. set within a lineage leading from spinoza and the romantics to a raft of deleuzian - inspired writings , the notation of affect  as already name checked  has been central to this development . to caricature swathes of debate ,
moves between peoples and perhaps other life - forms , a flow of possibilities for feeling 
something differently which circulates in the  atmosphere of a given place , preceding its localisation in an individual s emotional register ( where it might also become available for reflection and  wording ) but possessing a definite generative potential ( with the capacity to prompt trans - individual effects ) .
seen as such , affect has the capacity for producing changes in individual and even collective human ( and maybe non - human ) conduct , and it is therefore unsurprising that the vocabularies of 
energy , usually pluralised as energies , are occasionally enlisted to assist in the visualisation of what is occurring .
 neuropolitics ( 2002 ) is a common reference - point for discussion of affective geographies : affect consists of relatively mobile energies with powers that flow into conscious , cultural feeling and emotion ; yet these affective energies also exceed the formulations they help to foment .
 emotion with no affect would be dead , merely a pile of words as empty containers ; emotion and mood filled with affect brim over with energy - potentials that exceed ready - made articulations .
( connolly 2011 , 151 ) affect consists of relatively mobile energies with powers that flow into conscious , cultural feeling and emotion ; yet these affective energies also exceed the formulations they help to foment .
emotion with no affect would be dead , merely a pile of words as empty containers ; emotion and mood filled with affect brim over with energy - potentials that exceed ready - made articulations .
( connolly 2011 , 151 ) the  energy talk here is conspicuous , and it resonates with passages from nigel thrift , a key geographer of affect , when speaking of how affect can  allow the release of positive energies 
( 2004 , 76 ) or when wondering about  viral models of contagion  posited as explaining the workings of a range of phenomena ,  but often in highly speculative ways that posit a kind of performative energetics without specifying what the source , content or form of that energy might be 
the speculative , non - specific character of such models , echoed it might be said in thrift s own texts , is what would bother more orthodox students of energy , of course , but it has not prevented fragments of such energy talk appearing elsewhere .
michele lobo ( 2013 ) proposes to be  thinking of ethical engagement in terms of the  wildness of affective energies on the beach ;  gerda roelvink ( 2010 , 117 ) borrows from connolly ( 2002 , 76 ) to describe how testimonies at a 2005 world social forum session  triggered moments of  affective energy for creative thinking ;  jamie lorimer ( 2012 , 599 ) briefly alludes to  the affective energies of conservationists ;  and clive barnett ( 2012 , 380 ) , if in a critical mode , explores how  [ e]thics emerges from the  continental tradition as a residue of hope , as a vitalistic energy to be enacted differently ( perhaps in ways which can not be anticipated ) . 
once such work is laid alongside strands of post - phenomenological geography , as evidenced in lea s research ( lea 2008 , 2009 , 2011 ) on bodies in yogic and massage spaces , the case for a proliferation of energy talk is strengthened . indeed , while rarely expressed in quite this manner , 
energies are actually central to lea s interest in how environments , places and spaces of all kind insinuate their own 
ecologies , entailing multiple assemblages of the human and non - human , as affective influences entering muscle and psyche , sinew and soul . in sum , then , it might even be plausible to speak of a minor  energy turn in contemporary human geography ( which , ironically , has virtually nothing to do with a subfield called  energy geography ) .
insofar that scholarship in health geographies  meaning geographical inquiries into health - related subject - matters  has engaged at all systematically with energy matters , it has done so through a biomedical understanding of human energy .
for instance , a quick survey of the journal health and place ( founded in 1995 ) reveals fifty or more papers tackling the phenomenon of 
2008 ) on neighbourhoods  notably urban spaces with few green spaces , walkways , cycle lanes and the like , often in conjunction with clusterings of 
fast food outlets and  cheap food stores  which are hostile to local inhabitants exercising , being energetic and hence healthfully expending energy ( to avoid weight - gain ) .
physical energy levels , linking into deeper if often unspoken biomedical assumptions about what makes for spatial variations in healthy and unhealthy human metabolisms ( and here a connection can be spied with sorres s constructs of  biological geography and the  pathogenic complex : see akhtar 2003 ) . what our survey of health and place also reveals , however , is a handful of papers where 
energy is deployed to index more emotionally- , psychologically- and even spiritually - charged modalities of energy that also display geographical associations . in his piece on lourdes , wil gesler ( 1996 , 103 ) discusses a woman pilgrim , wholly depleted of energy by a demanding home - life , who departed the site with her energy levels ( physical and spiritual ) recharged ; and then in his piece on  words in wards , the same author discusses the  positive healing energy  released for a particular suburban new jersey community by  use of the name of jesus , saying mantras or uttering the phrase 
a study into the  ecologies of a rural retreat concludes that  [ m]any of the interviewees found that spending their time at holton lee lifted their mood , whil[e ] also raising energy levels before return to their home - setting 
[ t]he group s energy [ being ] low  or reflecting on realisations of how to  use a lot of my negative energy to make something , you know , good  ( dunkley 2009 , 94 ) ; and
[ v]ery jumpy energy  half - term coming up  ( atkinson and robson 2012 , 5 ) .
other authors relate the case of onsen , hot springs in japan fed by geothermal energy ( a possible theme for conventional energy geography ) , whose visitation for slow , prolonged immersion  was a cherished activity a few decades ago .
farmers used to take yearly breaks and to visit hot springs , which recharged them with energy for the next seasons 
the energy talk here is not foregrounded in these papers , it is true , but arguably comprises a rumbling sub - text of encountering  other energies which , if only in the thought - worlds of particular peoples and places , seemingly hold implications for health and well - being .
more sustained in its attention to such energies is ronan foley s ( 2011 ) inspired inquiry into irish holy wells as 
therapeutic assemblages comprising diverse spatial concatenations of people , things , symbols and behaviours . as he remarks : more usefully , energies , a term hinted at but under - used .. , is a key ingredient in this spatial stew , especially when associated with health and healing .
material settings and bodies hold within them a range of potential energies , those energies have symbolic healing associations and it is through energetic performances of health in place that productive aspects of the assemblage  are expressed .
( 2011 , 472 ) more usefully , energies , a term hinted at but under - used .. , is a key ingredient in this spatial stew , especially when associated with health and healing .
material settings and bodies hold within them a range of potential energies , those energies have symbolic healing associations and it is through energetic performances of health in place that productive aspects of the assemblage  are expressed .
ordinary , but they are embedded within a matrix of  deeper meanings , many of which were associated with the energies of the place itself and its affective reputation as a site of renewed energies  ( 475 ) .
such claims can perhaps re - energise , as it were , how the likes of gesler addressed the 
therapeutic landscapes of lourdes and other healing sites , but at the same time they explicitly chime across to the more theoretically - driven notations of affective energies , after connolly , thrift and others , as outlined previously .
they announce the possibility for new energy geographies permeating geographical studies of health whose guiding compass is less ( western ) biomedicine and more all of the  other energies which run through ecologies , bodies and minds affording ( or occluding ) qualities and practices of health , healing and well - being
. these would be alternative health studies for whom animate energy is central ; studies prepared to risk taking seriously yogic and meditative spaces ( to give just one example ) as the gathering and distribution points for  other energies ( holistically , so it seems , operating on both the [ deceptive ] materiality of bodies and the [ apparent ] immateriality of minds ) .
there are indeed exciting new energy geographies to ponder , some but not all with definite ramifications , many with a health - therapeutic dimension , all as disclosed by our own research and introduced ( more - or - less explicitly ) in the empirical sections above . as possibilities to consider : chakric geographies , concerned about an awareness of chakras as spiritual - physical energy centres and lines , energetic regions and routes , across , through and even maybe reaching beyond the human body ; geographies of environmental connectedness , a key thread in lea s recovery of scaravelli s yogic
teachings about how  the function of the earth is to collect energy from the ground  ( 2008 , 94 ) ; geographies of mental energy , released by  mindful meditational attentiveness to the countless micro - spaces of body , self and world , particularly if facilitated by the creation of stillness , slowness and focus ( not multi - focus , multi - tasking ) ;  atmospheric geographies , in part after david conradson ( 2003 , 2005 , 2011 ) , where energies seemingly fizz and settle in  a room of intense yogic or meditative practice , maybe lingering a while afterwards ; or even gentle geographies of lightness , humility and care , maybe as a re - approximation of the anarchist energies of the  gentle geographer - prince ( kropotkin ) .
these are strange notations perhaps  ones ideally needing elaboration ; ones readily open to a more structural critique of inequalities damaging people s well - being , for which our musings about new energy geographies could seem irrelevant  but we hope it can be agreed that our reflections , firmly rooted in a sustained burst of empirics centring on what research participants reveal about the energies energising their own life - worlds , do at least speak four - square to a bigger theme , surely central to an enlarged medical humanities , of diverse energies and prospects for cultural explorations of health and well - being .
if medical humanities has long excelled in unpacking the textual play of terms like  energy in the words ( written but sometimes spoken ) of medics and patients , taking seriously how  we think in metaphors and act accordingly  ( shoeneman et al . 2012 , 187 ) , then there are clear potentials for interfacing a medical humanities sensibilities with the energy talk of our project participants ( but possibly also of the scholars cited above ) .
if medical humanities is also open to considering alternative perspectives on the multiple materialities of the world beyond its textual inscriptions , perhaps contemplating what it means to speak after deleuze about  force as  a fundamental flow of energy 
( gibson 2006 , 185 ) , then there are other potentials for bringing medical humanities and  new energy geographies  and perhaps the likes of  her story from the start of this paper  into energetic conversation .
there is a long - standing if now less often explicitly named subfield known as the geography of energy or energy geography .
its focus has been the spatial distribution of energy sources and supply  the spaces of energy production and consumption ; the locational dynamics of the energy sector / industry  delineating global and regional patterns in , and 
landscape features resulting from , the exploitation of fossil fuel deposits , natural gas reserves and hydro - electric power with some nods to alternative energy sources ( solar , wind , wave and biofuels ) . in anglophone geography ,
john d. chapman wrote in 1961 about  a geography of energy : an emerging field of study; gerald manners authored in 1964 the first book - length treatment entitled the geography of energy ; and f.j .
solomon edited in 1985 a volume entitled geographical dimensions of energy , describing it as the 
first attempt to provide a comprehensive volume on the topic of energy geography  ( ix ) .
explorations of energy geography had already occurred in france , notably by pierre george with his 1950 scholarly work gographie de lnergie , but also in texts by the perhaps more well - known max sorre .
we stress this fragment of historiography because the anglophone authors , unlike their french predecessors , have been clear that they are concerned with so - called inanimate energy ( eg .
indeed , manners ( 1964 , 21 ) explicitly narrowed his focus to inanimate energy , acknowledging that  [ i]n the writing of the french geographers in particular ( george 1950 ; sorre 1948 , 209  ff . )
discussion of energy has tended to include some references to the use of animate energy [ our emphasis ] . 
the distinction between these two forms of energy is clarified here : for our purposes , energy will be disaggregated into two sub - categories , namely ea(t ) , animate ( ie .
muscular force ) , while examples of inanimate energy include internal combustion , steam power , wind power , hydraulic power and electrical power .
( beaudreau 1998 , 42 ) for our purposes , energy will be disaggregated into two sub - categories , namely ea(t ) , animate ( ie .
muscular force ) , while examples of inanimate energy include internal combustion , steam power , wind power , hydraulic power and electrical power .
( beaudreau 1998 , 42 ) this sharp distinction between studying inanimate and animate energy has indeed mapped through into anglophone geography , setting up a sole tendency to contemplate the energy dimensions of humans and other life - forms in terms of their position within ecosystems responding ultimately to the harnessing and transformation of  radiant energy from the sun .
anthony hoare defined energy as  the ability to do work ,  adding that it  can be channelled into four forms , three of them ( thermal , mechanical and electrical ) end - forms and one ( fuels ) a holding operation for future work  ( 1979 , 507 ) .
the forms of energy gathered into the bodies of human beings themselves , as they convert nutrition into 
muscular force , are hence accorded scant attention . despite significant shifts in how scholars now characterise the subfield of energy geographies ( eg .
bridge 2012 ; zimmerer 2012 ) , as linked to radical rethinking of  resource geographies ( eg . bakker and bridge 2006 ) , the centralising of the human as itself a locus and source of animate energy ( or , indeed , of other life - forms in this respect ) has not been considered .
at the same time , though , quite other conceptions of energy  we might say of  other energies  have started to appear in the orbit of contemporary human geography and cognate disciplines often with links across to realms of health and medicine .
a range of manoeuvres under the umbrellas of post - phenomenological , non - representational , vitalist and emotional geographies have all carried an under - current of concern for 
energies , never that explicitly stated and somewhat buried in ( often densely - written ) paragraphs , yet arguably amounting to an intimation of  new energy geographies. set within a lineage leading from spinoza and the romantics to a raft of deleuzian - inspired writings , the notation of affect  as already name checked  has been central to this development . to caricature swathes of debate ,
moves between peoples and perhaps other life - forms , a flow of possibilities for feeling 
something differently which circulates in the  atmosphere of a given place , preceding its localisation in an individual s emotional register ( where it might also become available for reflection and  wording ) but possessing a definite generative potential ( with the capacity to prompt trans - individual effects ) .
seen as such , affect has the capacity for producing changes in individual and even collective human ( and maybe non - human ) conduct , and it is therefore unsurprising that the vocabularies of 
energy , usually pluralised as energies , are occasionally enlisted to assist in the visualisation of what is occurring .
political philosopher william connolly , whose account of  neuropolitics ( 2002 ) is a common reference - point for discussion of affective geographies : affect consists of relatively mobile energies with powers that flow into conscious , cultural feeling and emotion ; yet these affective energies also exceed the formulations they help to foment .
emotion with no affect would be dead , merely a pile of words as empty containers ; emotion and mood filled with affect brim over with energy - potentials that exceed ready - made articulations .
( connolly 2011 , 151 ) affect consists of relatively mobile energies with powers that flow into conscious , cultural feeling and emotion ; yet these affective energies also exceed the formulations they help to foment .
emotion with no affect would be dead , merely a pile of words as empty containers ; emotion and mood filled with affect brim over with energy - potentials that exceed ready - made articulations .
( connolly 2011 , 151 ) the  energy talk here is conspicuous , and it resonates with passages from nigel thrift , a key geographer of affect , when speaking of how affect can  allow the release of positive energies 
( 2004 , 76 ) or when wondering about  viral models of contagion  posited as explaining the workings of a range of phenomena ,  but often in highly speculative ways that posit a kind of performative energetics without specifying what the source , content or form of that energy might be 
the speculative , non - specific character of such models , echoed it might be said in thrift s own texts , is what would bother more orthodox students of energy , of course , but it has not prevented fragments of such energy talk appearing elsewhere .
michele lobo ( 2013 ) proposes to be  thinking of ethical engagement in terms of the  wildness of affective energies on the beach ;  gerda roelvink ( 2010 , 117 ) borrows from connolly ( 2002 , 76 ) to describe how testimonies at a 2005 world social forum session  triggered moments of  affective energy for creative thinking ;  jamie lorimer ( 2012 , 599 ) briefly alludes to  the affective energies of conservationists ;  and clive barnett ( 2012 , 380 ) , if in a critical mode , explores how 
continental tradition as a residue of hope , as a vitalistic energy to be enacted differently ( perhaps in ways which can not be anticipated ) .
 once such work is laid alongside strands of post - phenomenological geography , as evidenced in lea s research ( lea 2008 , 2009 , 2011 ) on bodies in yogic and massage spaces , the case for a proliferation of energy talk is strengthened . indeed , while rarely expressed in quite this manner , 
energies are actually central to lea s interest in how environments , places and spaces of all kind insinuate their own 
ecologies , entailing multiple assemblages of the human and non - human , as affective influences entering muscle and psyche , sinew and soul . in sum , then , it might even be plausible to speak of a minor  energy turn in contemporary human geography ( which , ironically , has virtually nothing to do with a subfield called  energy geography ) .
insofar that scholarship in health geographies  meaning geographical inquiries into health - related subject - matters  has engaged at all systematically with energy matters , it has done so through a biomedical understanding of human energy .
for instance , a quick survey of the journal health and place ( founded in 1995 ) reveals fifty or more papers tackling the phenomenon of 
2008 ) on neighbourhoods  notably urban spaces with few green spaces , walkways , cycle lanes and the like , often in conjunction with clusterings of  fast food outlets and  cheap food stores  which are hostile to local inhabitants exercising , being energetic and hence healthfully expending energy ( to avoid weight - gain ) .
physical energy levels , linking into deeper if often unspoken biomedical assumptions about what makes for spatial variations in healthy and unhealthy human metabolisms ( and here a connection can be spied with sorres s constructs of  biological geography and the  pathogenic complex : see akhtar 2003 ) . what our survey of health and place also reveals , however , is a handful of papers where 
energy is deployed to index more emotionally- , psychologically- and even spiritually - charged modalities of energy that also display geographical associations . in his piece on lourdes , wil gesler ( 1996 , 103 ) discusses a woman pilgrim , wholly depleted of energy by a demanding home - life , who departed the site with her energy levels ( physical and spiritual ) recharged ; and then in his piece on  words in wards , the same author discusses the  positive healing energy  released for a particular suburban new jersey community by  use of the name of jesus , saying mantras or uttering the phrase
a study into the  ecologies of a rural retreat concludes that  [ m]any of the interviewees found that spending their time at holton lee lifted their mood , whil[e ] also raising energy levels before return to their home - setting 
( conradson 2005 , 345 ) ; a study into  taskspaces at a camp for troubled youth found participants talking about 
[ t]he group s energy [ being ] low  or reflecting on realisations of how to  use a lot of my negative energy to make something , you know , good  ( dunkley 2009 , 94 ) ; and a study considering school  arts and health experiments , heard a teacher bemoaning 
other authors relate the case of onsen , hot springs in japan fed by geothermal energy ( a possible theme for conventional energy geography ) , whose visitation for slow , prolonged immersion  was a cherished activity a few decades ago .
farmers used to take yearly breaks and to visit hot springs , which recharged them with energy for the next seasons 
the energy talk here is not foregrounded in these papers , it is true , but arguably comprises a rumbling sub - text of encountering  other energies which , if only in the thought - worlds of particular peoples and places , seemingly hold implications for health and well - being .
more sustained in its attention to such energies is ronan foley s ( 2011 ) inspired inquiry into irish holy wells as 
therapeutic assemblages comprising diverse spatial concatenations of people , things , symbols and behaviours . as he remarks : more usefully , energies , a term hinted at but under - used .. , is a key ingredient in this spatial stew , especially when associated with health and healing .
material settings and bodies hold within them a range of potential energies , those energies have symbolic healing associations and it is through energetic performances of health in place that productive aspects of the assemblage  are expressed .
( 2011 , 472 ) more usefully , energies , a term hinted at but under - used .. , is a key ingredient in this spatial stew , especially when associated with health and healing .
material settings and bodies hold within them a range of potential energies , those energies have symbolic healing associations and it is through energetic performances of health in place that productive aspects of the assemblage  are expressed . ( 2011 , 472 ) the waters in the wells might really be quite 
ordinary , but they are embedded within a matrix of  deeper meanings , many of which were associated with the energies of the place itself and its affective reputation as a site of renewed energies  ( 475 ) .
such claims can perhaps re - energise , as it were , how the likes of gesler addressed the  therapeutic landscapes of lourdes and other healing sites , but at the same time they explicitly chime across to the more theoretically - driven notations of affective energies , after connolly , thrift and others , as outlined previously .
they announce the possibility for new energy geographies permeating geographical studies of health whose guiding compass is less ( western ) biomedicine and more all of the  other energies which run through ecologies , bodies and minds affording ( or occluding ) qualities and practices of health , healing and well - being .
these would be alternative health studies for whom animate energy is central ; studies prepared to risk taking seriously yogic and meditative spaces ( to give just one example ) as the gathering and distribution points for  other energies ( holistically , so it seems , operating on both the [ deceptive ] materiality of bodies and the [ apparent ] immateriality of minds ) .
there are indeed exciting new energy geographies to ponder , some but not all with definite ramifications , many with a health - therapeutic dimension , all as disclosed by our own research and introduced ( more - or - less explicitly ) in the empirical sections above . as possibilities to consider : chakric geographies , concerned about an awareness of chakras as spiritual - physical energy centres and lines , energetic regions and routes , across , through and even maybe reaching beyond the human body ; geographies of environmental connectedness , a key thread in lea s recovery of scaravelli s yogic teachings about how 
( 2008 , 94 ) ; geographies of mental energy , released by  mindful meditational attentiveness to the countless micro - spaces of body , self and world , particularly if facilitated by the creation of stillness , slowness and focus ( not multi - focus , multi - tasking ) ;  atmospheric geographies , in part after david conradson ( 2003 , 2005 , 2011 ) , where energies seemingly fizz and settle in  a room of intense yogic or meditative practice , maybe lingering a while afterwards ; or even gentle geographies of lightness , humility and care , maybe as a re - approximation of the anarchist energies of the  gentle geographer - prince ( kropotkin ) .
these are strange notations perhaps  ones ideally needing elaboration ; ones readily open to a more structural critique of inequalities damaging people s well - being , for which our musings about new energy geographies could seem irrelevant  but we hope it can be agreed that our reflections , firmly rooted in a sustained burst of empirics centring on what research participants reveal about the energies energising their own life - worlds , do at least speak four - square to a bigger theme , surely central to an enlarged medical humanities , of diverse energies and prospects for cultural explorations of health and well - being .
if medical humanities has long excelled in unpacking the textual play of terms like  energy in the words ( written but sometimes spoken ) of medics and patients , taking seriously how  we think in metaphors and act accordingly 
2012 , 187 ) , then there are clear potentials for interfacing a medical humanities sensibilities with the energy talk of our project participants ( but possibly also of the scholars cited above ) .
if medical humanities is also open to considering alternative perspectives on the multiple materialities of the world beyond its textual inscriptions , perhaps contemplating what it means to speak after deleuze about  force as  a fundamental flow of energy 
( gibson 2006 , 185 ) , then there are other potentials for bringing medical humanities and  new energy geographies  and perhaps the likes of  her story from the start of this paper  into energetic conversation .
  unattributed in - text phrases ( between single quote marks ) are ones typically deployed by many of our interviewees and diarists . 
indented quotations derive either from our diarist - interviewees or from entries written in their own diaries ( with dates of an entry given ) . emboldened words or phrases indicate our emphases .  
extracts in arial typeface derive from diaries kept by research participants ; bold text indicates our emphasis . 
we asked our diarists to keep a diary on days when they practised yoga ( or meditation ) , the idea being that they reflected on how the practice maybe influenced other aspects and parts of their day .
occasionally , diarists reflected on what it meant not to practice on a given day or according to their normal routine for such practice .  
while a contemporary , and arguably western , distinction can be made between modern postural yoga ( hitherto  yoga ) and modern meditational yoga ( hitherto  meditation ) , for the purpose of the present paper we have chosen to unite the two , largely because the  energy talk here traversed both terrains of practice . for a discussion on differences between modern postural yoga and modern meditational yoga , see de michelis ( 2005 ) and connolly ( 2007 ) .  
details about project , including working / draft papers , are available at : http://spiritualitiesresearch.wordpress.com/ ( also cadman et al .
we are aware that there are various social axes  of class , gender , ethnicity , sexuality , ( dis)ability fracturing any singular experience of yoga / meditation , and our research attends closely to such fractures in our empirical database .
they are not pulled to the fore here , albeit we should acknowledge the preponderance of women over men diarists / interviewees . despite the opening section
her day , though , some of the quotes / extracts derive from male participants .  
there is a deeper critical - theoretical logic to our inquiry , in that we are seeking to insert matters of geography into research on contemporary spiritualities , insisting on sustained alertness to regional milieux within which such beliefs and associated practices are formed and enacted  in cryptic summary , taking seriously that brighton uk is not , say , blackburn uk  but also delving into the most intimate time - space geographies of how spiritual practices become woven into the everyday fabric of being , doing , moving and encountering .  
we then recruited 14 of these diarists to do the in - depth interviews , which explicitly followed - up on what had been disclosed in their diaries : this was a deliberate two - stage methodology . for
there is a tangled realm of theoretical labour underlying these deceptively simple remarks , coupled to intense debates about : the  scales at which such claims can be advanced ( including the implied scale - jumps from bodies to cities and back again ) ; the processes whereby 
 worded by individuals , and differences in how such processes might be conceived ( eg . phenomenologically as opposed to psychoanalytically ) ; and , more broadly , the whole problematic of how materiality ( as in tangible time - paths through sites and situations ) articulates with immateriality ( including domains of spirituality , affect and emotion ) . for clues about this complexity ,
see deliberations over  non - representational geographies in anderson and harrison ( 2010 ) .  
the  representativeness of our participants in relation to the wider population of brighton ( or the uk ) can not be understood in the classic mode of statistically - inclined social science ; rather , this case , and the overall package of cases presented in our project , have to be appreciated as representing nothing ( or at least little ) other than itself . instead , these cases are each  mini - laboratories for exploring connections and possibilities , a conclusion that stands even when scaling up to the collectivity of cases and , moreover , to talking about brighton as a  new - spiritual city.   for some , though
, there is a clear sense of  experimenting with different possibilities for improving well - being , gaining spiritual insight or simply coping better with the daily round . many had self - consciously been switching between different kinds of  new spiritual practice ( and , indeed , also embracing 
old religious worships as well as a diversity of psychotherapeutic , sporting and other possible activities ) in pursuit of the  mix that best suited their individual needs and capacities  ( see also lea et al .
persona , to evoke , as one referee puts it ,  the inevitably embodied nature of any view , rather than disembodying them ( a  scientific perspective ) 
a cynical view might be that here the activities of individuals are actually entirely conformable with the demands of modern 
fast capitalism :  practices of yoga / meditation are arguably easily fitted within the dominant temporal - spatial organisation of the body under capitalism ( eg . the demand that we  fit in  care of the self in snippets of time ) , such that a certain underlying ethos of 
productivity ( of  maintaining or  boosting energy ) is reinforced through practices , such as yoga , that might initially be seen as counter to the energy - depletions of capitalist work 
our own sense is that , for our participants at least , a framing of such activities as dissident to such capitalist demands , and the usual spatial - temporal frames imposed on everyday lives , would be equally plausible
note the recent establishment of an energy geographies working group of the royal geographical society with the institute of british geographers ( see http://energygeographiesworkinggroup.wordpress.com/about/ ) .   and also hinting at a meeting of west and east , always alert to a post - colonial critique of western priorities and appropriations : a set of themes never far from the surface in our own research project .
 beginning with a routine day in the life of a practitioner of yoga and meditation and emphasising the importance of nurturing , maintaining and preventing the dissipation of diverse  
 energies , this paper explores the possibilities for geographical health studies which take seriously  new energy geographies. it is explained how this account is derived from in - depth fieldwork tracing how practitioners of yoga and meditation find times and spaces for these practices , often in the face of busy urban lifestyles . 
 attention is paid to the  energy talk featuring heavily in how practitioners describe the benefits that they perceive themselves to derive from these practices , and to claims made about  
 energies generated during the time - spaces of these practices which seemingly flow , usually with positive effects , into other domains of their lives . 
 the paper then discusses the implications of this energy talk in the context of : ( a ) critically reviewing conventional approaches to studying  energy geographies ; ( b ) identifying an alertness to the likes of  affective energies surfacing in recent theoretically - attuned works of human geography ( and cognate disciplines ) ; and ( c ) exploring differing understandings of energy / energies extant in geographical studies of health and in step with the empirical research materials presented about yoga , meditation and healthfulness . while orientated towards explicitly geographical inquiries , the paper is intended as a statement of interest to the wider medical humanities . 
Talking and time-spacing energy
Discussion: towards animate other energies
Old energy geography
New energy geographies
Re-energised health geographies?
Endnotes