James L. Oschman

Energy and the healing response

Abstract The healing response is the vital means by which an organism marshals its diverse repair strategies in reaction to injury or disease. This article discusses the question of how much energy may be necessary to stimulate or ‘jump start’ the repair of injuries, or to reverse disease processes. The question obviously is of major clinical importance. Clinical and behavioral research validates the ‘less is more’ principle of energetic interactions. Convincing evidence came in 1975, when a number of scientists confirmed that extremely weak low frequency electric fields can have significant effects on important regulatory processes in the brain. These findings led to the concept of the power/frequency window, the narrow range of signal properties that will produce a maximum biological effect. This was a turning point in a lingering controversy over beneficial vs harmful environmental field effects on physiology and behavior and the applications of subtle energies in healing.

What is healing energy? Part 4: vibrational medicines

Abstract Vibrational medicines involve the therapeutic application of fluctuating energy fields, whether projected from the hands of therapists, from electronic devices, lasers, the human voice or musical instruments, or from homeopathic, aromatherapy, herbal or other kinds of preparations. At a basic level, virtually all that we know about living systems is based on the analysis of vibrations. Vital regulatory systems in the body are associated with a variety of molecular electromagnetic emissions and absorptions. In many cells and tissues, molecules are arranged arrays resembling crystals. Because of this, molecular oscillations are organized and coherent. Molecular oscillations are absorbed by the living matrix (connective tissues, cytoskeletons and nuclear matrices) and conducted throughout the body. All forms of bodywork and movement therapy interact with this energy continuum in one way or another. Coherent molecular oscillations give rise to collective properties such as great sensitivity to environmental fields and radiation of energy from the body into the environment. Part B discusses how dynamic energy systems are influenced by homeopathy, aromatherapy, herbs, light and sound stimulation, and related vibratory methods.

Healing energy part 1: historical background

Abstract Energy fields have been used for healing since ancient times. By the late 1880s, thousands of physicians in the USA and Europe were using electricity daily to treat a wide range of ailments. All of this went on while mainstream science was rejecting ‘vitalism’, the idea that living matter possesses some sort of ‘life force’ that is separate from the known laws of nature. In 1910, science was formally established as the basis for medicine, and medical schools were overhauled. Clinical electrotherapy became illegal in the USA. Few academic scientists dared to study the therapeutic potentials of energy fields. One exception was Yale Professor H.S. Burr, who was convinced that energy fields are the basic blueprints for all life, that every physiological process has an electrical counterpart, and that diseases alter energy fields before pathological changes begin. In the early 1980s, the FDA cautiously began to approve electrical and magnetic devices to stimulate bone repair. This was the start of a new era of electromagnetic medicine. Research from around the world began to confirm many of Burrs conclusions about the importance of energy fields in physiology and medicine. Along with this article is a brief summary of research on the flow of the ‘life force’ as conceptualized in acupuncture and related methods.

What is ‘healing energy’? Part 2: measuring the fields of life

Abstract This paper traces the development of our modern understanding of magnetic fields within and around the human body. In 1963, researchers at Syracuse University in New York reported the first measurements of the magnetic field of the human heart. At the same time, a number of scientists began exploring a remarkable quantum wave phenomenon (tunnelling) that led to the development of an extremely sensitive magnetometer known as the SQUID. Within a few years, biomedical researchers around the world were using SQUIDs to map the magnetic fields around the human body, which are called biomagnetic fields. The fields produced by the heart are the strongest fields generated by any organ. The other muscles, the eye, the brain and the other organs all produce weaker but measurable fields. For a variety of reasons, biomagnetic fields are more accurate indicators of events taking place within the body than are electrical measurements at the skin surface. Remarkably, scientists are beginning to recognize that living tissues may contain arrays of tunnelling devices comparable to those used in the manufacture of SQUIDs. If confirmed, this could explain the ability of energy therapists to sense magnetic phenomena around the body. Other research has shown that practitioners from a variety of healing traditions are able to project strong pulsating biomagnetic fields from their hands. The signals are similar in many ways to those employed in medicine to facilitate the repair of bone fractures and other injuries. A supplementary section discusses the application of biomagnetism in polarity therapy and related methods.

What is healing energy? Part 6: Conclusions: is energy medicine the medicine of the future?

Abstract A variety of discoveries, made in the course of ordinary science, following traditional methods and logic, have clarified the roles of electrical, magnetic, elastic, acoustic, thermal, gravitational and photonic energies in living systems. A key advance is the development of instruments that can measure the energy fields produced within and around the body. At the same time, we have recognized that biological regulations involve more than nerve impulses and hormones. Each of the great systems in the body — the musculoskeletal system, the digestive tract, the circulatory system, the nervous system, the skin — is composed of connective tissues that have important roles in communication and regulation. The extracellular, cellular and nuclear matrices throughout the body form an interconnected solid-state network or ‘living matrix’. Because the main structural components are helical piezo-electric semiconductors, the living matrix generates energetic vibrations, absorbs them from the environment, and conducts a variety of kinds of energetic signals from place to place. There is no single ‘life force’ or ‘healing energy.’ Instead, there are many energetic systems in the living body and many ways of influencing them. The ‘living state’ and ‘health’ result from the totality of these systems functioning collectively and cooperatively. Disease and disorder compromise energetic flows. When integrated with the discoveries of bodywork, energetic and movement therapists, these concepts can enable energetics to take its proper place in the medicine of the future. The various concepts developed in this series have led to a practical method of experiencing the ‘life force’ and ‘healing energy’. This is the ‘energy circle’ described in part 2.