Energy medicine is the future,” proposes Dr. Mehmet Oz. While we are still firmly entrenched in the surgical cutting-and-burning, prescription-popping, radiation-and-chemo-treating rituals of western medicine, there are pockets of medical practitioners who offer integrative medicine, honoring the whole person and focusing on creating health rather than simply alleviating disease. Energy medicine starts with the premise that we are essentially energetic beings. Everything in the universe vibrates at specific frequency. Raising one’s vibration and clearing the energetic blocks in one’s energy field assists the individual on a path to wellness.
Scientific discoveries in the field of epigenetics and quantum physics confirm what indigenous peoples have known for millenniums: that every living and non-living thing has a spirit (or energy). George Schwartz’s The Energy Healing Experiments provides scientific evidence that energy fields exist and that humans are able to influence our own energy fields as well as the energy fields of others. George Schwartz has impressive credentials, a Ph.D. from Harvard, former Yale professor of psychology and psychiatry, and current professor at the University of Arizona. His series of experiments challenge medical dogma by providing evidence “that energy healing is real and can play a vital role in human existence.” Rather than dismiss miraculous recoveries as scientific anomalies, it behooves us to understand why energy healing, faith healing, and spontaneous remission occur.
The experiments in Swartz’s book tested the ability to transmit human intention to others, our ability to sense others’ intentions, the measurability of our energy field, our bodies serving as attenae for other people, animals, and objects, and our ability to sense the energies of others, including animals and plants. For instance, a series of experiments in which blinded human subjects were tested to see if they could sense a person’s hand hovering over the subject’s palm, and the accuracy ranged from 59-70 percent, which exceeded the probability of chance. In another experiment human subjects were blindfolded and tested if they could sense another human staring at them. The average detection was 58 percent, (the best subjects ranged between 75-80 percent and the worst subjects 45 percent) what Swartz considered “statistically significant.” A fascinating experiment tested the abilities of a young part-Hopi college student named Jason who was gifted with talking to crystals. Crystals were hidden in ten wooden boxes, and Jason was 95% acccurate in matching the crystal name to the appropriate crystal. The experiment was conducted 3 times with the same result.
Like most energy healers, I don’t need the scientific evidence to confirm what I already know and sense. I witness too many miracles daily to refute that there is more to life than the material world. But it’s refreshing to know there is solid scientific research done in this area. Throughout the ages, it has taken awhile before new ideas become accepted by the masses. Energy healing is really an ancient idea, and it’s time to recuperate what the indigenous and the ancient world knew long ago. The health of our society and our planet depend upon it.
Does the science behind energy healing alter your view of this burgeoning field? Why or why not?
The scientific model is an effective one because it is dynamic, what is considered true by scientists changes over time. New hypotheses are developed, new experiments produce new evidence and what we accept to be true then changes.
The limitation for science is that it relies on technology for experimentation. We have questions about our universe and ourselves that we do not have the necessary technology to answer in the traditional scientific sense. Nonetheless, as science is always moving forward, so is technology and in the past five decades we are finding that how we perceive ourselves, and our place in the universe, is being completely turned on its head. I believe that the new science in neurobiology and quantum physics will soon explain the processes of energy healing, and what Indigenous peoples have always known will become accepted in Western cultures that rely on the truth claims of science.