Energy Healing Mechanisms
Energy medicine practitioners and researchers have long explored various possible mechanisms for energy healing, and while we’re not at a stage where all of our questions have been answered—far from it—there have been some interesting developments, which we’ll look at in this chapter.
There is a fundamental difference in the way vibrational medicine approaches the body versus allopathic intervention, and we might describe this as a holistic-versus-reductionist viewpoint. Reductionism takes things apart and looks at how the individual components function, and the goal is to break things down into the smallest possible units, the idea being that if you understand how the indivisible particles forming Thing A work, you now understand Thing A. To be sure, this approach has generated massive breakthroughs in our understanding of the world. One of the major shortcomings, however, is that it rarely tells us how the parts integrate to form a whole. For this we need holism, or its cousin, emergentism. The latter posits that when you study all the little bits and add them back together, something new emerges from the whole that you can’t explain solely from the individual workings of the bits. It’s like trying to explain the complex organization of a bee colony by studying one bee; it can’t be done.
Vibrational medicine looks at the body and, indeed, all of existence, as a whole, so while we can explore individual parts and enhance our understanding by doing so, we will always be missing part of the puzzle if we overlook the relationships between the parts and the fact that all things are in relationship. As a structural integrator, my work is predicated on the fact that the body, rather than being an assemblage of isolated muscles and tendons and bones, is a complex, continuous web of tissues, none of which can be separated out from the rest. Having pain in your shoulder? That might very well be related to an issue in the sole of your foot, and I could work on your shoulder until the cows come home without ever giving you the relief you’re looking for. And your shoulder and foot don’t exist in a vacuum, either; there’s a complex world surrounding and interpenetrating your body that informs your state of health. In the same fashion, we can throw surgeries and medications at issues that we’ve falsely isolated from the rest of the living system (and the environment in which this system exists), but this frequently fails to address underlying conditions, which may reoccur in various forms, from physical issues to mental-emotional and spiritual states of dis-ease.
Holographic Reality and the Implicate Order
Two popular models espousing a more holistic view are the holographic model and David Bohm’s theory of implicate order. The holographic model states that each individual part of something contains the whole, and to understand this, let’s look at how a hologram works. The process of creating a holographic image involves, on a basic level, capturing the light scattering off of an object and recording it so that this precise scattering of light can be reconstructed later, even when the original object is no longer present. On a more detailed level, let’s say you’re trying to create a hologram of a teddy bear. One way to do this is to take a laser light and split it into two beams. One of these beams is passed through a special lens and directed at the teddy bear. The bear then reflects or scatters this light, and a special recording plate captures the scattering. The second of the two beams is shone on the recording plate itself, and the interaction between the light scattering off the teddy bear and the light of the second beam interfere. This interference pattern is recorded on the plate, and it looks nothing like the teddy bear—yet. When the original, unsplit beam of light is shone on the recording plate, it acts like a key, decoding the strange pattern and recreating the teddy bear as a hologram.
What does this have to do with energy medicine? Well, if you were to break the holographic plate into smaller pieces and shine the laser at one of these pieces, it wouldn’t reproduce just part of the teddy bear—say, its arm or ear—it would reproduce the entire teddy bear. In other words, the part contains the whole. This model is used to explain how our energy fields operate: as holographic plates, each part of which contains the whole. Proponents of this model believe that each part of our energy field and body contains instructions for, among other things, healing at a whole-system level; thus, if you can trigger one part to “remember” this holistic repair sequence, the entire system will benefit.
In a similar fashion, the theoretical physicist David Bohm (1917–1992) proposed an emergent model for explaining the universe, which he called the implicate and explicate order. This model sees a deeper, fundamental ordering of all existence giving rise to all of the phenomena we experience through normal human perception. What we’re able to perceive is the explicate order, and the underlying pattern is the implicate order. In Chapter 1, we discussed the nature of energy fields and the idea that matter is merely a local concentration of energy within a field. In the same way, Bohm proposed that reality as we know it is like a local concentration in the implicate order, and he saw this unseen order as a possible explanation for the bizarre behavior of quantum particles, which is otherwise hard to reconcile with “ordinary” reality. The implicate order reflects the vibrational medicine approach of looking at things holistically, because if all things emerge from an underlying source, each “part” still retains the whole. We cannot separate the parts from the field, because they are the field, just like an individual ocean wave cannot be separated from the ocean.
Bioelectricity
In looking at the human energy field in particular, numerous theories have been put forth to explain what this field is made of, and many researchers believe that electricity might play a huge role. In the mid-1900s, Yale professor and bioelectric researcher Harold S. Burr coined the term L-field to describe the electric field of living organisms. While studying salamanders, Burr identified an electrical line or axis corresponding with the brain and spinal cord, which was surrounded by an electrical field, roughly mapping out the shape of an adult salamander. In plants, Burr found that the electrical field surrounding a plant sprout mirrored not the tiny seedling but the shape of an adult plant, suggesting that the “blueprint” for the mature organism existed not only as genetic information, but in the electrical field surrounding and interpenetrating the organism.1
Perhaps more well known in metaphysical circles is Semyon Kirlian, from which Kirlian photography, which is said to capture the aura of humans, other organisms, and non-living objects, takes its name. To create a Kirlian image, an object is placed on a special photographic sheet, which is then set on a metal plate. A high voltage is applied to the object, and the photographic sheet captures the electrical discharge between the object and the metal plate. When the discharge interacts with the various dyes contained within the sheet, colorful images are generated. One now-famous experiment demonstrates what is known as the Phantom Leaf Effect: a Kirlian photo of a leaf whose top half was torn off still showed the original, intact leaf. Skeptics have claimed that lingering moisture on the surface of the plate resulted in a false image, but this may have been refuted by Chris Wagner of California State University, who demonstrated that the phantom leaf could still be captured even when a plastic barrier prevented moisture contamination.2
All these perspectives are pointing toward the idea that all parts of an organism, whether that part is an arm or an individual cell, have access to a greater whole, and this whole can be accessed through various means, such as energy medicine, to trigger system-wide balance and healing.
The Extracellular Matrix
A key question in energy medicine is how healing energy or information travels throughout the body. Is it via visible pathways, such as nerves and blood vessels, or invisible-yet-mapped pathways, such as acupuncture meridians and nadis, or is there another network of communication? The answer may well be all of the above, and the work of researcher Albert Szent-Györgyi (1893–1986), biochemist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1937, gives us another possibility: connective tissue.
Szent-Györgyi researched reactive oxygen species (ROS), which are molecules with an electric charge due to one or more missing electrons. This makes them highly reactive; they are eager to reverse their electron deficit, and they will steal electrons from other molecules in order to do so. ROS are formed as a natural byproduct of metabolism, but they can also be produced in excess in reaction to UV exposure, pollutants, certain drugs and pathogens, and other triggers, and they can cause significant damage to cell structures, such as DNA, proteins, and lipids (fats). For example, research has implicated ROS in the functional decline of aging, male infertility, and cancer.3 This damage can be counteracted by substances known as antioxidants, which interrupt the chemical reactions leading to ROS-inflicted cellular damage.4
In the 1950s, Szent-Györgyi began researching the potential role of ROS in cancer. He determined that a cell’s natural regulatory mechanisms, which prevent the cell from becoming cancerous, were hampered in cells that were no longer in communication with the rest of the body. He intuited that there must be as-yet-undiscovered pathways of communication between cells, and he believed that free electrons and protons were the primary messengers of this intercellular communication. Conventional wisdom of the time held that any flow of electrical charge within the body was accomplished primarily through charged molecules, or ions, but Szent-GyÖrgyi proposed that electrons and protons were also able to travel throughout the body on their own, without an ionic mediator.
He focused his attention on the extracellular matrix (ECM), which, as the name suggests, is the “stuff” outside of cells, a rich network composed of different substances, such as proteins, enzymes, and other chemicals. This connective tissue was routinely seen as unimportant and discarded in order to study the cells in isolation. Szent-Györgyi found that one of the extracellular matrix components, a type of protein called collagen, was capable of transferring mobile electrons, and the water surrounding the collagen, known as the hydration shell, was capable of conducting protons, providing a transmission route for these particles that didn’t require carrier molecules.
The ECM is not restricted to affecting only the external environment of cells, either. The cytoskeleton of the ECM, which is like a living, dynamic scaffolding, is connected to the cytoskeleton inside of cells, too, and these connections even extend into DNA. In other words, this connective tissue matrix doesn’t just surround cells; it interpenetrates each and every one and maintains intimate contact with the genetic material housed within the cells. Thus, activity in the ECM can have a profound effect, including altered gene expression. The cytoskeleton allows for communication that is much faster than hormones or nerve impulses, and healthy flow within this network may be, in part, what energy workers address when they seek to reestablish a proper flow of energy via vibrational medicine techniques.
Ultimately, we may find that it is beyond the scope of science to entirely explain the mechanisms underlying energy medicine, and it becomes important to honor our subjective experience when determining whether a modality is effective for us. How do you feel after a reiki session? Do you notice any changes to your physical, mental-emotional, or spiritual health? Because reiki works to effect change when and where we need it most in a deeply personal manner, it can be difficult to generalize the effects of reiki treatment. For example, throughout the course of a day, I might see a client who needs to experience deep relaxation in order to see a path through the forest of chronic anxiety, while another client is struggling with gastrointestinal issues and leaves with an intuitive urge to cut dairy from her diet for a few weeks to see how she feels. Given the rich diversity of responses to reiki treatment, it seems likely that the underlying mechanisms for reiki’s effectiveness are similarly diverse, and in the years to come, perhaps further research will give us a more complete picture.
In the next chapter, we’ll explore various practices for sensing energy, the prerequisite to working more consciously with your own and others’ energy fields, pathways, and centers. If you’re brand new to this, don’t despair! You’re sensing energy all the time, and it’s simply a matter of heightening conscious awareness of your innate capacities.
1. Richard Gerber, Vibrational Medicine, 3rd ed. (Rochester, VT: Bear and Company, 2001).
2. Gerber, Vibrational Medicine, 85.
3. Florian L. Muller et al., “Trends in Oxidative Aging Theories,” Free Radical Biology and Medicine 43, no. 4 (2007): 477–503, doi:10.1016/j.freeradbiomed.2007.03.034; R. J. Aitken et al., “The Simmet Lecture: New Horizons on an Old Landscape—Oxidative Stress, DNA Damage and Apoptosis in the Male Germ Line,” Reproduction in Domestic Animals 47, no. 4 (August 2012): 7–14; Rob A. Cairns et al., “Regulation of Cancer Cell Metabolism,” Nature Reviews Cancer 11, no. 2 (2011): 85–95, doi:10.1038/nrc2981.
4. Finley Eversole, ed, Energy Medicine Technologies: Ozone Healing, Microcrystals, Frequency Therapy, and the Future of Health (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2013), 48.