Matter = Energy = Force

A Simple Model from Physics to InnerDialogue

In physics, Einstein’s equation E = mc² tells us that matter is energy. That is, what we experience as solid—bone, body, chair, stone—is, at its core, energy held in form. Matter is simply energy condensed, slowed down, patterned. There’s nothing static about it. Even the densest object is, at the quantum level, mostly space, vibration, and potential.

But in the clinical and ontological work we do, there’s an important bridge still to cross.

We often observe that energy alone doesn’t explain what we’re encountering in the field of a person. Behind the symptoms, gestures, postures, or words—there is a directive quality, a driver. That driver is what we refer to as force.

Energy vs Force

Energy simply is. It flows, it vibrates, it pulses. But force has intention—a push, a trajectory, a will. Force moves energy in a particular direction. It’s not just presence—it’s presence with purpose.

In Newtonian physics, a force is what causes a body to move, stop, or change direction. In our work, we understand force as that which shapes the bodymind field—the unseen influence behind behaviour, behind illness, behind inherited patterns. It may come from trauma, from ancestral imprint, from soul’s longing, or from what Bohm might call an enfolded order pressing into expression.

So when we say,

Matter = Energy = Force,

we are pointing to something quite radical:

That the body is not separate from the field, and that the field is not passive—it holds directional influence. The symptom, the posture, the feeling—they are the visible edge of something deeper that is moving.

A Simple Model: The Arrow, the Bow, and the Archer

Imagine:

• Matter is the arrow—the visible part, the symptom, the body’s form or dysfunction.
• Energy is the bowstring—taut, invisible, vibrating with potential.
• Force is the archer—the one who aims and releases. The will, the driver, the cause.

Without the archer (force), the bowstring (energy) is meaningless. Without the bowstring (energy), the arrow (matter) cannot move. All three are part of a whole system.

In quantum theory, the observer collapses the wave function. In other words, what we observe is not separate from us. The act of attention brings energy into form. This matches our clinical experience: the practitioner’s presence—when properly aligned—is often what allows the narrative to emerge. Conscious attention can change the system. Force meets force. A new pattern becomes possible.

This is why InnerDialogue is not simply a therapy—it is a participatory unfolding of reality. We’re not just releasing energy. We are locating the force that shaped it. And when that is revealed—through mudra, cranial work, story, or stillness—the system can reorganise itself around essence, not symptom.

Bohm and the Enfolded

David Bohm spoke of the implicate (enfolded) order, from which all things arise. In this view, force arises from the implicate. It is the initial ripple, the inner gesture, that later becomes energy, and finally, material form.

So when we say,

Matter = Energy = Force,

we are not collapsing everything into sameness. We are pointing to the continuum of reality, from the subtlest impulse to the densest structure.

This is not metaphor. It is physics meeting soul.