Energy Healing
Victoria E. Slater
Nurse Healer OBJECTIVES
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Theoretical
Name and describe three major energetic structures.
Discuss one view of chakras.
Describe electromagnetic induction and entrainment and how they might operate in energy healing.
Discuss the role of intention in creating healing space.
Discuss one problem in energy healing research.
Clinical
Find an expert healer and determine what makes this person an expert healer. What made you decide this person was an expert? If this person is a nurse practicing energy healing, how does she integrate them?
Personal
Use the intuitive exercises in the chapter to explore auras, chakras, and meridians.
Experience a laying on of hands modality.
Explore the effect of your presence.
Experience an essential oil, flower essence, and/or homeopathic preparation that might be useful for you.
Experience the effects of music you do not like. Stand a few feet away from it as you listen to it for a few minutes. Gradually, over several weeks, move closer.
DEFINITIONS
Aura: An atmosphere; a vague, luminous glow surrounding something. It may be an information-containing electromagnetic field and can be likened to the data contained within a computer.
Capacitor: A device that stores electric charge.
Centering: An altered state of consciousness that results in the centered person’s hands emitting measurable extra-low-frequency magnetic pulses of 0.3-3.0 hertz (Hz), that is, cycles per second.
Chakra: An energy center in the subtle, or energetic, body that is described as a whirling vortex of light.
Electromagnetic induction: The causing or inducing of voltage, a change in an electrical current.
Energy healing: The deliberate process of using an external energy field to induce a change in one’s own or another’s field for the purpose of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual healing. Energy healing may involve the presence of a caring person.
Entrainment: The phenomenon of rhythmic processes synchronizing with each other.
Synchronization is recognized in pendulum clocks, planets, music, an organism adjusting to the light/dark cycle, brain waves, social groups, and more.
Synchronization is recognized in pendulum clocks, planets, music, an organism adjusting to the light/dark cycle, brain waves, social groups, and more.
Intention: Purpose, aim, or objective; the choice to act or think in a certain way.
Meridian: Microvolt electrical conduits organized in an electrical mesh that permeates the body and precedes development of vessels and organs. In Eastern philosophies, the meridians are said to conduct chi, or universal energy.
Resistor: Part of an electrical device that resists the flow of charge.
Subtle energies: Barely noticeable electrical and magnetic fields of living organisms that may be related to internal electrical and magnetic activity.
Voltage: A measurement related to the difference in potential energy between two adjacent areas.
▪ THEORY AND RESEARCH
Energy healing is often described as “woo-woo” or wishful thinking. This chapter is an attempt to offer physics explanations for healing approaches that make no sense from a biological or physiological perspective. How can laying on of hands modalities such as Reiki, Healing Touch, and Therapeutic Touch, among others, work? How do aromatherapies, flower essences, homeopathy, and even music, sound, and light work as healing modalities? This chapter proposes that electromagnetic induction is involved in many of the results of laying of hands modalities and that entrainment contributes to the effects of aromatherapies, flower essences, homeopathies, some music, sound, and light.
Physicists teach that until there is experimental and mathematic proof of something, it is a theory, not a fact. That is the state in which we find ourselves with energy healing modalities —laying on of hands treatments act like they involve electromagnetic induction; other types of healing modalities act like they involve entrainment, but there is no experimental proof or mathematic support for these theories. However, a theory must be presented before it can be tested. This chapter attempts to do that—to present the idea that well-known, basic physics principles are involved in energy therapies.
To accomplish this goal, the chapter presents the three-part energy anatomy of aura, chakras, and meridians from a traditional viewpoint and then compares those views to physical structures they resemble. Once the reader has the understanding that these seemingly esoteric structures might be just pieces of an electromagnetic structure, the physics principles of electromagnetic induction and of entrainment are discussed. An understanding of these principles opens the possibility that the presence of the nurse might even be an electromagnetic and entrainment event and that the mere presence of a caring person can be healing.
Researching the effects of applied electromagnetic induction techniques (laying on of hands modalities) and of entrainment (homeopathy) requires a new look at standard research methodology. If the presence of another person is healing, then the experimental/control research methodology to test laying on of hands modalities is questionable. How do you isolate the effect of the presence of the experimental and sham providers versus the treatment protocol? Perhaps you can’t. Typical research questions then may become: “How do you teach nurses to maximize an electromagnetic event, such as laying on of hands? How do you teach a nurse how to maximize presence? When are energy therapy modalities appropriate and in what combination with standard treatment?” These are just a few of the research questions that come to mind when one begins to imagine how to research phenomena that may be based in principles of physics, rather than the sciences nurses have studied for decades.
We begin the study of energy healing by defining it and looking at two ways to categorize energy modalities.
▪ DEFINITIONS AND CATEGORIZATION OF ENERGY HEALING
Energy healing describes healing that alters the subtle flow of energy within and around a person or organism. Many people believe that the state of this subtle flow of energy determines the
biological and psychological health of the organism; if it is not flowing properly, you hurt. You hurt physically, you hurt emotionally, and you hurt spiritually. Many cultures have developed methods to heal that flow, including the Chinese ChiKung (qi gong), the Hawaiian Huna, Tibetan meditations, Hindu yoga, and Native American drumming, among others. The energy is called by many names, including chi, ki, qi, mana, prana, and etheric; modalities using these energies are classified as “laying on of hands,” “biofield therapy,” and “subtle energy healing.” Other forms of subtle energy healing use light, sound, aromas, homeopathy, and flower essences.
biological and psychological health of the organism; if it is not flowing properly, you hurt. You hurt physically, you hurt emotionally, and you hurt spiritually. Many cultures have developed methods to heal that flow, including the Chinese ChiKung (qi gong), the Hawaiian Huna, Tibetan meditations, Hindu yoga, and Native American drumming, among others. The energy is called by many names, including chi, ki, qi, mana, prana, and etheric; modalities using these energies are classified as “laying on of hands,” “biofield therapy,” and “subtle energy healing.” Other forms of subtle energy healing use light, sound, aromas, homeopathy, and flower essences.
As people have been exposed to different cultures and experiences, energy healing modalities have become more common and accepted in the United States. Therapeutic Touch was one of the first energy healing modalities brought to nursing. Krieger, an American nurse, developed this popular Western adaptation of the Indian laying on of hands practice of Pranic healing.1 Other traditional forms of laying on of hands healing are Reiki and qi gong, which are from Japan and China. New versions of laying on of hands modalities have evolved, such as Polarity and Healing Touch, which blend traditional and scientific concepts. Many nurses have adopted these and other subtle energy modalities as part of their nursing practices.
Energy healing may or may not be the same thing as the widely used term energy medicine. Energy healing seems more appropriate for holistic nurses because so much of nursing is about the use of presence, and many forms of healing involve the active presence of a caring person. Energy medicine is one of five National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) categories; the others are mind-body medicine, natural product-based therapies, manipulative and body-based practices, and whole medical systems.2
NCCAM places various modalities in each of these categories, but in this chapter the modalities are not approached from the five categories, but are viewed from the perspective of the physics that might underpin them. For example, laying on of hands modalities such as qi gong, Healing Touch, and Reiki are listed as energy therapies in the NCCAM categories; in this chapter they are considered electromagnetic induction techniques. NCCAM puts homeopathy under Alternative (Whole) Medical Systems; here it is considered an entrainment technique.
▪ ENERGY ANATOMY
The Aura
The discussion of the aura begins with exploring some traditional explanations of the nature of the aura, moves to a discussion of the small amount of scientific research on the human aura, considers the possibility that the aura acts like an electromagnetic field, and concludes with some intuitive exercises the reader can use to explore his/her own aura.
Traditional Explanations of the Aura
The aura is traditionally described as an oval of golden light surrounding the body. It seems to be denser closer to the body, thus easier to sense, and less dense and more difficult to sense as you move farther away from the body. A person’s aura is slightly larger than the person is when he or she stands with the arms extended.
There are a number of diverse understandings of the aura. Two well-known ones are Brennan’s and Kunz’s. Brennan’s system includes seven layers divided into three planes: physical, astral, and spiritual. The astral body is “the state between energy and matter.”3 According to Brennan, each layer interpenetrates the others as well as the physical body, which is considered the densest layer. Her model also reflects chakra functions, with each auric level associated with a chakra.
Kunz defines the aura as dense light—a 12- to 18-inch-thick, multicolored, elastic oval light that interpenetrates and surrounds the body.4 It is composed of an upper and a lower hemisphere linked by a green band that encircles the middle of the physical body. She taught that chakras are an integral part of the aura.
Although the two descriptions differ, they have several similarities. Both describe two planes linked by a narrower band and both authors believe that chakras are integral to the aura. It would appear that Kunz and Brennan describe the same phenomenon from different perspectives.
The differences between these two interpretations may be explained by Benor’s discovery that multiple healers making simultaneous intuitive diagnoses of the same person sense different things. Each believes that he or she “perceived THE true picture of each patient’s condition, rather than one out of many possible pictures of this reality.”5 He proposes that intuitive diagnosticians obtain their impressions through a “window of observation” and that individual healers may have “blind spots.” Just as Benor’s healers saw different information in the same aura, perhaps Brennan, Kunz, and others see different aspects of the aura.
The aura, it is believed, can be damaged, which leads to a host of physical, emotional, and social problems, including post-traumatic stress disorder syndrome (PTSD). Damage can be caused by accidents, surgery, radiation therapy, hateful stares, not speaking your own truth, combat, and innumerable other traumas. Such damage can lead to stress, fatigue, pain, depression, and other problems; energy healing can lead to relief of these problems along with increased energy, peace, and, eventually, a deeper relationship with loved ones and with the Divine.
Research into the Aura
Scientific research into the aura is difficult. How do we study something many people do not believe exists? Two types of cameras have been designed that show movement within the aura. Harry Oldfield invented Polycontrast Interference Photography (PIP), a computer imaging system that shows the energy moving around the body.6 The colored bands of light reveal areas where the energy is diminished or not flowing and even where the body is leaking energy. Chakras and meridians are visible and the details in the photographs give information about the level of their functioning. The International Society for the Study of Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine (ISSSEEM) gave Oldfield the 2006 Alyce and Elmer Green Award for Innovation for his camera.7 Enter the term “Harry Oldfield” in a search engine on the Web to see videos available on YouTube.
At the 2010 ISSSEEM conference, another camera was demonstrated, the Electrophotonic Camera (EPC). This one is based on Gas Discharge Visualization analysis. The theory is that exposure to electrical fields causes the body to emit gases that can be photographed and analyzed.8 The result allows for viewing of real-time changes in the energy field of humans and other organisms.9
Scientific Explanations of the Aura: Comparing the Aura to an Electromagnetic Field
The human aura mimics an electromagnetic (EM) field (see Table 33-1), which has the following properties:
An electromagnetic field gives us power to do work we could not do by ourselves. It can lift cars in junk yards and is used to create the motors we use in many aspects of life.
One way to create an electromagnetic field is to place current carrying wires close together. When electricity is flowing, it creates an electromagnetic field surrounding the flow. When current-carrying wires are close to each other, their electromagnetic fields combine and the result is a stronger field. Engineers do this by tightly coiling an electrical wire around some kind of core, such as an iron rod, creating the effect of a series of adjacent wires even though it is one long electric wire.
The amount of power created is determined by the number of times the electric wire is wound around the core, meaning the more adjacent electric currents, the more work that can be done with the same amount of electricity.
Although it is not exactly the same, you can visualize an electromagnetic field by sprinkling iron filings randomly on a piece of paper. Place a bar magnet in the middle of the iron filings and notice how they instantly move to take a more or less oval shape around the magnet. (You may need to tap the piece of paper to help the iron filings move a bit.) This oval shape demonstrates the magnetic field emitted by the magnet. If you have the equipment, coil an electric wire around an iron core, sprinkle iron filings next to it, and turn on the electricity. You will see that the iron filings arrange themselves in a pattern around the wire/iron core device. More filings are closer to the core than farther
away, suggesting that the field is stronger closer to the core than it is farther away.
TABLE 33-1 Similarities Between an Electromagnetic Field and the Human Aura | ||||||||||||||||
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The Human Aura
The human aura closely resembles an electromagnetic field in the following ways:
Human blood contains hemoglobin, which contains iron. The vascular system of heart, arteries, veins, and capillaries results in an intricate tubular iron core that is surrounded by or, more accurately, intertwined by three electrical fields: neurons, meridians, and the minute electrical pulses of each single cell. Because of the electrical flow around the body’s iron core, the body must put out an electromagnetic field.
Medical science uses the magnetic nature of the human body for diagnoses. The magnetocardiogram (MCG) measures the heart’s magnetic field, and the magnetoencephalogram (MEG) assesses the head’s magnetic field. The well-known
MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) produces pictures of the body at the cellular level.10
FIGURE 33-1 The Electromagnetic Human
Source: Copyright © 1999, Carol Eckert.
People who are anemic have too little iron in their bloodstreams and are weak. Perhaps this is because their iron core is diminished, and, even with an unchanged electrical field, they emit less electromagnetic power and have less power to do work.
If you choose to sense a person’s electromagnetic field, notice that it is easier to sense closer to the person than farther away. You may be able to sense a layer-like pattern with different characteristics at different distances from the body. Some areas are thick, others moist, some bumpy; each is likely to be different from the next.
Intuitive Experiences of the Aura
The best way to understand the electromagnetic nature of the aura is to experience it. Take a moment to sense your own electromagnetic field.
Rub your hands vigorously until you feel heat. Separate them slightly and notice the amount of pressure, heat, or other sensations between them. Slowly, move your hands apart and then together. Do you feel changes in the density, heat, or other sensations between your hands?
Sense another person’s electromagnetic field by moving your hands around their head and shoulders and down their bodies. Is everyone’s field the same or do they differ? Compare an area that hurts to one that doesn’t. Notice the differences in the fields of an athletic person versus a sedentary one, of a man and a woman, and of a child and an adult. Sense your pet’s field. What did you discover about the aura of your family, friends, pets, and yourself?
Chakras
The word “chakra” is becoming more widespread in the Western world, but their functions have been recognized in a number of psychological theories well known to nurses, including Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. In this section, we explore traditional understandings of chakras, including their location, function, and maturation. Chakra functioning is looked at from traditional and psychological viewpoints. Research on chakras and the possible physics that underpins them is followed by exercises the reader can do to explore chakras, perhaps to prove to themselves that they exist.
Traditional Explanations of Chakras
In Sanskrit, chakra means vortex, or wheel of light. Chakra lore is varied, but there are two commonalities: Chakras exist within the body, and they are ports for energy and information exchange with the environment. They receive the information that surrounds them and transform it so that it is meaningful to the person. The chakras, then, broadcast the person’s unique interpretations of the initial data. People share their emotions and thoughts through their chakras and their aura; one never has to say what she or he is feeling for people around that person to know. This is likely the basis of the famous “nurse’s intuition.”
Beliefs vary about chakra locations in and around the body. Many traditions simply identify seven major chakras, five found along the spine and two in the brain, and all located near large collections of nerves or neuroendocrine glands. (See Table 33-2.) Leadbeater, who was the first person to bring chakra lore to the Western world, taught the Hindu model where one of the chakras is not along the spine, but at the spleen.11 Joy added a chakra at the manubiosternal joint (just below the neck at the junction of the collar bones) that he called the “high heart.”12 At least one tradition teaches that there are 12 primary chakras, 7 within the physical body and 5 above and below the body. These five are believed to provide access to higher levels of spirituality.13
In addition, there are numerous minor chakras: the palm, the sole of the foot, the base of the skull, and all joints in the body, including the spinal joints, which Gimbel describes as five octaves of chakras.14 Every joint has the same job as the seven major chakras—to gather and transform data. It helps if you can imagine an animal standing on all four paw chakras. These chakras bring in data from the pulses flowing through the Earth. The flow of information moves quickly from the sole of the paw, to the ankles, knees, and hip joints and into the central chakra chain. The animal uses the accumulated information to choose how to respond to its environment.
Human beings do this, too. We collect data with the soles of our feet and palms of our
hands, move it up through the joints in the arms and legs, to the hips and shoulders, and to the central chakra chain. In the major-minor chakra scheme, there are more than 360 chakras in the human body, which enables a person to gather and process the minute details of every experience.15 Very little crucial data are likely to escape detection by such a finely crafted system.
hands, move it up through the joints in the arms and legs, to the hips and shoulders, and to the central chakra chain. In the major-minor chakra scheme, there are more than 360 chakras in the human body, which enables a person to gather and process the minute details of every experience.15 Very little crucial data are likely to escape detection by such a finely crafted system.
TABLE 33-2 Traditional Chakra Locations, Associated Organs and Nervous Structures, and Attributes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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People who see and hear chakras describe them as emitting various colors and tones. One wellknown model assigns to them the colors of the rainbow (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet) and tones of an octave (middle C, D, E, F, G, A, B) (see Table 33-2).16 In this model, the root chakra is seen as red and is heard as the note middle C. Leadbeater describes a Hindu chakra model of colors and hues that are not related to the rainbow of colors produced by the refraction of light.11 Likewise, the Hindu model attributes different tones to the chakras, ones that reflect a 12-tone musical tradition. Probably both are partially true because, as Benor points out, we sense through a window of observation. If you are familiar with the 12-tone scale, you are likely to hear more tones than someone who is more comfortable with the smaller 8-tone scale of Western music. Chakras are probably more tonally complex than either scale.
The orderly increase in frequencies of the colors and tones ascribed to the chakras suggests that each chakra processes information that is on a higher frequency than the one below it. Each higher chakra adds information, creating a type of information tree. For example, you first must survive (lowest chakra), which enables you, eventually, to speak your own truth (a throat chakra function), a more complex task than surviving. Your relationship with your Spirit and with the Holy (a crown chakra function) is even more complex.
Everyone who writes about chakras gives them somewhat different functions, but all organize them from the concrete to the complex and abstract (Table 33-2). There is widespread agreement on the functions of five of the seven chakras: the first chakra (at the base of the spine) relates to survival, the fourth (at the heart) to love, the fifth (at the throat) to expression; the sixth (at the brow) to insight, and the seventh (at the crown) to spirituality. Interpretations of the second and third chakras vary widely.
Four popular chakra perspectives are displayed in Table 33-3: Bruyere’s and Brennan’s energy models, Maslow’s17 well-known hierarchy of needs, and Covey’s18 Seven Habits Paradigm. Maslow’s psychological and Covey’s organizational success models are not generally recognized as such, but when compared to chakra functioning, it is clear that they are chakra models.
TABLE 33-3 Four Perspectives of Chakra Functions | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Chakras mature; they exist and work even while you are in utero. However, just as the arms, legs, and intelligence of the child must mature, so must chakras. A person cannot do the tasks of a chakra well until it matures. For example, you can emote and communicate even as an infant (throat chakra functioning), but you cannot “speak your own truth” until the throat chakra matures. Communicating and speaking your own truth are not the same. It is as if Nature kindly gave us enough time to master each chakra task before we are faced with mastering the task of the next highest chakra.
Once again, there are different models of chakra development. Bruyere gives one model of chakra maturity.19 She teaches that the first chakra matures between birth and ages 3 or 4 years, the second between ages 4 and 7 years, the third between 8 and 12 years old, the heart chakra during the teenage years of 13 to 19, and
the fifth chakra from 19 to 25 years. Insight, the abstract and complex function of the sixth chakra, matures between 25 and 35 years of age. The crown chakra, which includes the ability to have a mature relationship with the Divine, matures after age 35 (see Table 33-4).
the fifth chakra from 19 to 25 years. Insight, the abstract and complex function of the sixth chakra, matures between 25 and 35 years of age. The crown chakra, which includes the ability to have a mature relationship with the Divine, matures after age 35 (see Table 33-4).
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