This is a law of physics that holds that a system isolated from all outside factors maintains the same total amount of energy, though energy transformations from one form to another take place. For instance, if you were standing at the top of a building holding a baseball over the side, the ball would have a certain quantity of potential energy—the energy that an object possesses by virtue of its position. Once the ball is dropped, it immediately begins losing potential energy and gaining kinetic energy—the energy that an object possesses by virtue of its motion. Since the total energy must remain constant, potential and kinetic energy have an inverse relationship: as the value of one variable decreases, that of the other increases in exact proportion.
The Bernoulli Equation can be considered to be a statement of the conservation of energy principle appropriate for flowing fluids. The qualitative behavior that is usually labeled with the term "Bernoulli effect" is the lowering of fluid pressure in regions where the flow velocity is increased. This lowering of pressure in a constriction of a flow path may seem counterintuitive, but seems less so when you consider pressure to be energy density. In the high velocity flow through the constriction, kinetic energy must increase at the expense of pressure energy.