Ryan Smith - student of the body’s more mysterious forces and energies.

I’ve wanted to interview local health practitioner Ryan Smith (www.santesmith.com) ever since an observer at one of his presentations told me, with admiration rather than scorn, “He is like a mad scientist.” Smith himself has compared his vocation to that of Papa Smurf — a helper and an investigator with a strong independent streak who works outside the dominant paradigm. His California cool does not hide his infectious enthusiasm for his subject: the mysterious forces at work in balanced, vibrant, human well-being. He takes the unseen and subtle aspects of the human organism seriously, even if he employs some far-out sounding hardware — biomodulators, tuning forks, scalar energy pendants — in his ministrations.

Sitting on a La Mesa city bench, Smith told me how his explorations in the alternative heath world convinced him of the existence of energetic fields that can be attended to and harnessed. He impressed me most when at one point he offered to demonstrate “muscle testing” on me. As directed, I formed a circle with my ring-finger and thumb, holding them firmly together. “Be strong”, he encouraged me. “You’re strong. You’re like a rock.” Perhaps invigorated by this flattery, I was able to keep finger to thumb as he tried to pull them apart. Then he asked me to hold my other hand over my navel, two fingers extended in a “scout’s honor” gesture. For some reason, using no more force than before, he was suddenly able to separate my fingers with ease, despite my best efforts to resist. He called it a simple demonstration of the way that the body’s energetic flow can be manipulated. Curious.

Smith is big on energy; one of his practice’s central concerns is the electrical voltage that we all carry within our bodies. He explained this by invoking important triumvirate: voltage, alkalinity, and oxygen. Cell voltage, he explained, is related to alkalinity — “PH is a measure of voltage” — and “alkalinity dictates how much oxygen can be dissolved in the system.” Smith also noted that levels of voltage vary within us, and we need a certain amount of it to rejuvenate our cells. Optimal voltage, he argues, will grant us optimal cell replacement, part of the constant work of staying alive. Suboptimal voltage will force our body to recreate cells in a less powerful and vital way.

My interest is of an unscientific sort, but there’s just something appealing about the idea of electricity in our bodies. Even a person disinclined to care about the practical applications here can still appreciate the poetic dimension: the notion that the energy inside us connects us somehow to lightning, to the shock we get from shuffling across a carpet, to the power that propels a Tesla and keeps an iPhone running . I can feel it expanding my sense of myself as I write this, at least a bit. Our electricity reminds us that we are joined to the world around us. We are not just individuals; we are conductors of currents.