Reiki and Science

Hi everyone. I've been doing a lot of research into Reiki and science (links with my future research ideas) and found this report written by Joe Potter who runs the Reiki research website (http://www.reiki-research.co.uk).

The following is a collaboration of current up-to-date research showing scientifically that Reiki IS a transmission of energy and shows how this energy has been shown to improve health of body tissues.

The full link for this article is:
http://www.reiki-research.co.uk/refsheal.html

In my latest manual I have included a section on Reiki and Science and will be borrowing extracts from this article in future versions. I think its important for Reiki people to see that what we do is not seperate from science but beyond what is currently understood. Luckily, science is catching up!

Happy reading

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Science and Healing: A Reiki Focus
Introduction
Reiki is a Japanese form of hand and distance healing which teaches that:

health can be promoted by the energetic support of body energy systems;
it is possible to transfer energy to another person;
healing can be achieved by using hands on, near or at a distance;
the source of this energy used during a healing session, in Reiki, is external to our body;
the intent to do, is the main trigger or driving force for this process;
Healing and health in the East is seen as being underpinned by energy. This supports all activities from medicine to martial arts. Explanations of this involve discussion about the aura, chakra and meridian systems.
The aura, common across the east, is usually described as a predominately external energy field, parts of which are linked to, and interrelate with, various physical and energetic body functions.

The chakra system, from India, describes an energy system rooted within the physical body but extending a short way beyond it. The main function of this system is to pick up 'free' energy called prana and to bring it into the physical body to be used.

The meridian system, from China, describes a way in which energy moves within the physical body in response to body needs.
During my time in Reiki my perception of what I do has altered in many ways. This personal perception largely substantiates what was taught during Reiki training. Contact with other healing practitioners, further reading, along with my understanding of a range of different healing forms suggest to me that although different words are used, all healers are making use of the same underlying system or systems.
It is from this perspective, as well as that of my academic training, that I look at what is said about healing in general and Reiki in particular.

Traditional scientific establishment responses to healing research
The scientific establishment, is very conservative and has an in-built system that maintains and bolsters the status quo. This is largely based upon peer acceptance. It effectively controls access to money for research, access to journals for research to be published in and career maintenance and advancement. For many years the scientific establishment has promoted a negative view of healers and healing.

Traditionally western 'hard science' has consistently rejected healers and healing by ignoring it, largely on the basis that it is:-

Unproved therefore untrue;
Wishful thinking;
There is documentary evidence that the above has been and is being used to denigrate both the research done and the researchers as individuals, who are working, and want to work in healing related research.
Traditional western 'soft science' has largely rejected healing on the basis of it being the:-

psychological effect of handling;
psychological effect of the 'important other'
physical effect of relaxation;
Don't get me wrong, these effects are real and certainly are used as tools by healers to enhance their healing but are not in themselves, I would contend, responsible for the healing that takes place.
Scientists
Scientists conscientiously work in a specific systematic way to test and pin down their ideas of how things are and the way they work. This is both their strength and their failing. It causes them to make a small step by small step approach to research securely based upon their own and others' findings of the previous steps made. Such a process gives a strong 'building block' approach to research but perhaps reduces the frequency of intuitive leaps. Coupled with this is an increasing need to focus on the finer detail in an effort to pin down what is happening. This process helps scientists to know more and more about a narrower and narrower field of research. Due to this concentration of effort scientists become ever more blinkered and have the propensity to develop scientific tunnel vision. They lose the wider view and sometimes the original context within which they started their work. They lose their ability to integrate their own findings with other related findings on the wider scale.

This sort of process has caused scientists to use single theories or paradigms to view their work with. The healing research in print, for example, focuses largely on electricity and electromagnetic fields. This may not be the final answer but has much to offer in terms of shedding light on the healing process.

Useful research has taken place but has tended to be printed in the 'less important' journals with small circulations. This makes it more difficult for these research ideas to be disseminated widely because the material cannot be accessed easily. This then, creates the impression that research into healing hasn't been done. From time to time scientific synthesists emerge within or on the edge of the scientific community, to throw light on what is really going on. They are important because they put together that which others haven't and then hold it up to the light for all to see. For healing, Benor (2002), Oschman (2000) McTaggart (2002), the medical doctor, the researcher and the journalist, are acting as synthesists. They it is that have gone out and found what is available and put it together in a believable form to paint a picture of how healing might work. My reaction to reading their thoughts and ideas was instantaneous and positive, for within what they are writing about is the reflection of what I perceive when I work.

Science's best kept secret - healing works
Over the last 50 years or so there have been hundreds of research studies into aspects of healing. Of these Benor (2002) identified nearly 200 that were of interest and at least satisfactory in construction. 2/3rds of these studies indicate a positive healing effect. As with all published research less than ¼ could be categorised as being level 1 studies, i.e. an excellent study, including blinded, randomised, controlled and with adequate reporting of data to confirm results. A further two studies were included, as worthwhile, from the level 2 category, i.e. Study lacking in some details but flaws not serious. Collectively these studies covered a vast range of subject matter and approach to the problems of quality control. All findings indicated a high level of statistical significance.

In these studies the healer types ranged from therapeutic touch to shamanism and from religious prayer groups to total non believers. A small number used ordinary people not known to be healers. Topics included 'healers' in doing the following:-

Supporting medical usefulness

promoting normal germination of damaged seeds
inhibiting harmful bacteria growth
inhibiting fungal growth
delaying the destruction of red blood cells
controlling the effectiveness of neurotransmitters
enhancing the enzyme reaction in muscle cells
Healing effects for specific medical conditions
advanced aids
amyloidosis
anesthesia
coronary care
depression
goiters
malaria
muscle relaxation
pain
wound healing
Helping to quantify
biological effects
measuring experience
healing sensations
All these keynote studies show that healers can make a 'healing' difference but raises the question of what systems and processes are involved. Significantly an increasing number of researchers have moved away from hands on healers towards distance healers. This was done as a way of controlling for the psychological effects of handling and that of the effect of the 'significant other', i.e. the healer but has the added benefit of proving that distance healing actually works as well as hands on healing. For example:-
Remote prayer: Christian. All recipients improved (heart).
Christian and non-Christian. Better progress and shorter stays in hospital (heart/stroke).
Remote healing: Mixed healers (rotated). All stage 3 Aids patients improved in health.
Electricity and electromagnetic fields
Science tells us that you cannot separate electricity and electromagnetic fields. This statement is true whether we talk about subatomic particles or the universe on the grand scale. As soon as a charge or potential appears so does the electromagnetic field. Furthermore, as the electrical potential changes the quality of the electromagnetic field around it reflects this. Therefore you could say that the electromagnetic field holds or displays information about what is happening at the centre, a sort of database of electrical change. Electromagnetic fields are said to diminish in power the further you get from the original electrical source but science says it does not disappear before infinity is reached. Electromagnetic fields overlap, they also interact so that the resulting field is a combination or compilation of the information of each separate field. In certain circumstances electromagnetic field changes can be seen to induce electrical changes at the centre.
Personal energy as bio-electricity and bio-magnetic fields
Electricity or electrical potential is a part of the functioning of our body from the atomic to the organ level. It is known that our body generates bio-electrical energy within the nervous system, within organs and within cells. Movement and respiration also generate bio-electricity. Such electrical energy is seen as moving round the body through the nervous system, the circulatory system and from cell to cell. The amount, frequency and power level would of course be different depending upon the task being performed, i.e. the heart will be different to that of the ovaries or to that of inter cellular respiration. Therefore it is likely that different body functions have different electrical signatures. Some organ signatures are routinely electronically separated from all other body signals on a daily basis. For example, cardiographs from chest probes showing heart function and ovary function being detected and read from probes on one finger of each hand showing when ovulation is taking place. Specific electromagnetic field frequency signatures can be read both on and beyond the body. For example heart function can now be monitored up to 16 feet from the person being checked. The functioning of the whole or part of our body changes with age and health and these changes are reflected as changed electrical signal, within or on the body, or as an electromagnetic field change within or outside the body.

Energy within us
Scientists say that:

An electromagnetic field forms around any electrical current or electrical potential.

Atoms in crystal lattices respond to physical deformation (mechanical) changes by moving shared electrons and creating an electrical potential. Such 'Liquid crystals' generate an electrical field when deformed. These are based on long thin molecular chains. Some proteins in our bodies are formed in long chains and seem to act as living liquid crystals as deformation of these chains causes them to generate an electrical field. Such proteins are common in living things.

Molecules effectively make an energy/information continuum by electronic conduction. Molecular strings/chains (protein) are good at passing electrons along the strings/chains. Molecular strings (water) are good at passing photons along (flowing potential). Electromagnetic field allows the energy/information to jump gaps.

Molecules vibrate all the time. This state is reflected in their electromagnetic fields. Perhaps in response to some changed condition initially two molecules begin to resonate together. This new resonant frequency being different is stronger than the original single molecular frequency. This seems to encourage more molecules to begin to resonate in tune with the original group causing an expanding molecular resonance. This increasing group resonant coherence brings an increased stability of the new resonant frequency.

Electromagnetic messaging is seen as molecular resonance passed on across 'great molecular distances' including molecular gaps. Some scientists conclude that electromagnetic messaging eventually form a large stable body of resonant/coherent molecules which they call 'electromagnetic memory'. This 'memory' is said to last until a more dominant frequency takes over. Water is seen to be a good medium for such molecular resonance.

Fluid in motion carries with it both positive and negative ions. A moving electromagnetic field is therefore created. The moving electromagnetic field interacts with any static electromagnetic field through which it passes to causes a resulting field signal change.

Working together in biological coherence each molecule, cell, tissue and organs uses laser like oscillations/vibrations in different frequency signatures. These vibrations move around the body building up many different frequency ranges and harmonics reflecting the collective/co-operative body properties. Such harmonic vibrations offer a vast range of information codes and harmonic differences reflecting complex information. (harmonic information transfer). Vibrations reflecting the body status are rarely without harmonics.

All such individual micro electromagnetic field information generated as above, in any living thing, builds up to form a full body electromagnetic field containing all of the body activity information.

Body harmonic vibrations can be influenced from outside the body.
Body systems: the living matrix
The body is formed of elements in constant tension or compression. Tendons are in tension and bones largely in compression. This is called tensigrity and is an architectural idea based on the systems like that of a geodesic dome. Changing forces promotes growth to bring stability to the system. Bones grow in response to tensigrity having an inner tensigrity system.
The nervous system is made up of dedicated linked nerve cells which spread out from the brain to all parts of the body. This system uses on/off signals analogous to computer coding. This digitally coded information gives outward going directions/instructions and receives feedback the same way.

The perineural system uses oscillating direct current and is analogous to microprocessors. This system in evolutionary terms predates that of the nervous system. The perineural system is responsible for directing the overall nervous system operation but in particular is responsible for controlling injury repair. It is electromagnetic field sensitive.


Body Cells: I can remember being taught that the cells in our body were bags holding a liquid containing the nucleus and organelles. The necessary chemical reactions took place when an enzyme bumped into appropriate molecules. This situation had come about when scientists studying cells would take cell groups, mash them up and then centrifuge the results. The cell parts would form layers with the nuclei at the bottom and the clear cell liquid at the top. After many years of this accepted practice someone finally decided to look at the clear cell liquid that everyone else was throwing away. The liquid was found to be full of long protein strands. The research which followed changed totally the understanding about how the cell functions.

The long protein strands were found to be tube like with a hollow centre just large enough to take a water molecule, with space to wobble. This, in effect, meant that the protein molecule chain was very good at passing along electrons and the water molecule string at the centre, good at passing along photons. These protein strands formed a cell wide interconnecting cellular matrix filling all parts of the cell (membrane matrix, cytoplasmic matrix and nuclear matrix). This cellular matrix binds up most of the cell water and forms the grid on which the cell enzymes are attached. These 10 enzyme types are attached in order so that the ten steps between glucose and pyruvate are efficiently completed with the product being passed on to the next stage of the process.

The cellular matrix is connected outwards, through the cell membrane by (integrin connectors - tonofilaments integrin connectors) an extra cellular matrix across any extra cellular space to other cells and connective tissue. As the body, or even a cell moves, the extra cell connections are broken. When movement ceases connections are remade. This means that all the parts of the body are interconnected at a cellular level in a constantly changing web that transmits electrons and photons (information) with ease. On a cell to cell basis this is called streaming potential and is the bodies basic response to injury triggered by cell deformation, damage or cell group instruction. However this information is also being passed right through and across our bodies at a cellular level by a mechanical, vibrational, energetic, electronic network based on the living matrix. The body obviously has the basis of a sophisticated information system with inbuilt redundancy and automatic feedback across the body as a whole.

Transmitting 'energy': electromagnetic fields
The pulsed electromagnetic field therapy or PEMF therapy has been in use in our hospitals for many years it is used for stalled bone healing and soft tissue healing. The PEMF pulses need to be low energy and very low frequency and for soft tissue has the healing effect of:-

Enhanced capillary formation
Decreased necrosis
Reduced swelling
Diminished pain
Faster functional recovery
Reduction in depth, area and pain in skin wounds
Reduced muscle loss after ligament surgery
Increased ligament tensile strength
Acceleration of nerve regeneration and functional recovery
In this therapy a pulsed electromagnetic field of a specific signature is focused on the desired spot or area. It has the effect of kick starting the healing desired. As such PEMF therapy reflects in a limited way what a healer's bio magnetic hand field does.
Hands on and near healing:
Research shows that when in 'healing mode', the normal electromagnetic body field changes. In this state the electromagnetic field related to the arm and hand projects forward away from the hands. This is not the normal body field configuration but a 'new' field which:-

pulses;
varies frequency by sweeping the electromagnetic spectrum;
extends markedly beyond the hand
This makes it possible for the healer's 'energy' to:-
inter penetrate another's field;
interact with another's field;
promote bio electric changes and
stimulate recovery;
Research has shown that a healer's bio-magnetic hand field averages at 7-8Hz (cycles per second), reflecting the normal brain alpha rhythm, but sweeps the electromagnetic frequencies between at least 0.3 and 30Hz and can occasionally peak at higher frequencies. Levels of Infra red have been detected from the hands of healers and can be 1000 times the heart power and 100,00 times the brain in power.
Detected in healing mode Effect on or within body
Increased electromagnetic field Reinforced coherence at least cell level (information reinforcement)
Infra red Enhanced cell growth, DNA synthesis and protein synthesis
Micro waves Noted but not understood yet
Photons (light) Molecular excitement/body state information passed on, promoting group coherence (stabilising and normalising effect)

Healing frequency specificity (signiture)
[Hz] Effect on or within body
22550 Nerve regeneration
7 Bone growth
1215
72 Decreased necrosis (cell death)
Capillary formation
10 Ligament healing


Moving and stroking
Many healers move their hands, sometimes stroking the recipient. This causes the specific body response of:

Induced potential, effectively creating a micro electric current especially within moving body fluids.
Simulates 'streaming potential' which triggers the normal body injury response.
Pressure
Healers may apply light pressure, especially at specific points on the recipient's body. This causes cell and tissue deformation creating a charge that spreads out from the point of pressure as streaming potential. This is the way that the body responds to injury and instigates the healing process. In terms of the acupressure points the energy is transported to another specific point.
Vibration
Sometimes light vibrating pressure is used by healers, especially on specific points of the recipient's body. As above, this causes cell and tissue deformation but also creates short term patterns of vibrations that change or interfere/interact with existing localised body vibrations.

The techniques of hands on, or near, pressure and vibration, use the existing living matrix system to trigger a cascade of activity which effects change at all its levels in the body including an automatic change in the recipient's own electromagnetic field. This change effectively reinforces the changes taking place until a new coherence is established and the healing effect ceases.



Entrainment and the external energy source
As the power and range of frequencies delivered by a healer to the recipient seems, at times, to exceed that which a human body would normally display, this raises the question about where it comes from. Some scientists are talking about entrainment being the process that helps healers to tap into the enormous power of the earth's own electromagnetic field.

Entrainment is said to have taken place when two separate, similar vibrations synchronise into one vibration. It was first noticed and coined by clock makers who made clocks with pendulums of identical length. After manufacture they were hung on the wall and started. It was noticed that after a time all the clock pendulums began to swing together at the same time. Such coming together of similar rhythms can be seen in families and in female dormitories where the ovulation cycles of the females present, synchronize to the cycle of the dominant female.

Internal entrainment
Internal entrainment takes place within us on a daily basis. It is essential to the way our body works. An electrical rhythm/oscillation takes place in the thalamic pacemaker within our brain. This is caused by thalamic cells taking in calcium. This rhythm spreads through the brain entraining the brain cells to work to the same beat. This increasingly coherent rhythm spreads throughout the body, regulating the speed of body activities.


Brain Rhythm Speed (Hz) Effect
Beta 13 - 40 Peak concentration, heightened alertness and visual acuity.
Alpha 7 - 12 Relaxed alert state, increased access to creativity below normal conscious awareness.
Thetea 4 - 7 Twilight state, increases creativity, enhances learning, reduces stress and awakens intuition.
Delta 0.3 - 4 Deep sleep, triggers growth hormone for healing and regeneration.


Meditative entrainment takes place when a 'dominant' meditator already in deep meditation becomes the focus for the entrainment of the rest of the group, thus helping them, also, to achieve a deep meditative state.
The process is thought to be:

A. Dominant meditator

Brain rate drops to theta state.
Theta rhythm spreads throughout body via perineural system, relaxing the body.
Electromagnetic field reflects theta state and effect spreads outwards interacting with another meditator.
B. Receiving meditator
Through interaction the electromagnetic field changes to match the more cohesive theta field.
Theta rhythm induced in perineural system and passed back to brain. Body relaxes.
Brain drops into theta state relaxing body further.
External entrainment: Schuman's Resonance
Shuman's resonance has been suggested as the external power source of healers. It is said to take place when a person in the alpha state is triggered into resonance with the Earth's geomagnetic field. Shuman's resonance occurs when:
As lightning occurs it releases energy, creating a resonant vibration.
Resonant vibration travels round the planet bouncing between ionosphere and the ground.
Resonant vibration as a standing wave.
Healer's thalamic pacemaker is triggered to entrain to the Earth's geomagnetic field during its rest period when calcium is leeching way from the cells.
The new frequency spreads out from the pacemaker, throughout the brain and body, entraining as it goes.
The body enters a state where 'energy' is downloaded through the healer's enhanced system to another (or/and themselves)
. The Earth's geomagnetic field is an enormous power store with an Electromagnetic field frequency of between 1 and 40Hz, averaging between 7 and 10Hz. This is very similar to the human alpha frequency.
There is limited supporting evidence that this is true but it is based on the belief that all animals, including humans, seem to be responsive to electromagnetic fields in the following ways:

Electrical storms-as they come closer so our pacemaker rate decreases. This increases as the electrical storm moves away.
People in rooms for long periods that have been electromagnetically screened show increasingly chaotic physiological rhythms, i.e. absence of electromagnetic fields around us make us ill.
Electromagnetic fields derived from large electric currents (5oHz) are implicated in depression and there is also a correlation with suicides.
Healers seem less able to heal during periods of sunspots when the Earth's geomagnetic field is disrupted.
This theory is likely to be at least partly correct. It may not be the total answer because when healers have been screened totally from the Earth's geomagnetic field they seemed to be still able to deliver surprising amounts of energy.
Distance healing
As mentioned earlier scientists are finding that healing can work. Over time a significant number of researchers have moved away from hands on healers towards distance healers. This was done as a way of controlling for the psychological effects of handling and that of the effect of the 'significant other', i.e. the healer. What is obvious is that it works.

As to how it works, Lynne Mc Taggart (2002) is the main source of evidence. In her book 'The Field' she develops a strong careful argument based on scientists research. In this she describes the aggregation of electromagnetic fields into super fields until you have a single field that encompasses everything.

If an electromagnetic field reflects what has and is happening at the centre, and this field does not diminish to nothing before it reaches infinity, then all the information in the electromagnetic fields of the people on this planet is available everywhere. If this is true then we are not sending energy anywhere. For the electromagnetic field of the recipient is here. On this basis my electromagnetic field can interact with any other person's electromagnetic field and have the same effect that hands on healing does. The trigger for this healing seems to be the intent.

Intent as the healing trigger
Intent, an act of will, is seen as that which triggers the largely unconscious process of electromagnetic energy changes that take place during healing. All life may have this but it has been detected both in humans and animals.

Animal Response
Newly hatched chicks Stays near to randomly programmed moving robot with strong light bulb
Newborn rabbits Stays away from randomly programmed moving robot with strong light bulb
Cat Stays near to a randomly programmed greenhouse heater kept turned on in cold weather


A series of 2.5 million trials was carried out lasting 12 years. These involved the use of computers displaying randomly generated events which were shown graphically as pictures shown in sequences and in cascading balls. It was found that, by intent, ordinary people could influence an outcome, probably by influencing critical moments in events. The level of statistical significance was high, clearly showing an effect on manipulating the experiments in the desired way. Males were found to be more effective when concentrating on getting the desired effect, whereas females were found to be more effective when not concentrating on the desired effect but just accepting that it would happen as they carried on with a different task.

Level of Accuracy
Single people Significant effect
Single sex couples Less than when single
Mixed sex couples 3x that of the single people
Bonded couples 6x that of the single people


Meta analysis of all the studies (800), after grading, taking place between 1959 and 2000 showed that the likelihood was 1 trillion to 1 in favour of intent working.

In general, human intent has been shown to be able to affect the activities of other living things by:-

Slowing the inevitable
Influencing an activity
Repairing damage Altering mind states
Conclusions
At some level everything can be seen as electrical and electromagnetic energy.
All electromagnetic energy is information about what is happening at the centre.
All body systems collect, move, are sensitive to and use such energy.
The body systems can use internally produced energy but also access external energy.
Intent to do is crucial to triggering healing.
Hands on and distance healing actually works.
The healing process operates largely without conscious control.
There is likely to be much more to be found out about how healing works.
Bibliography
Sub references have not been included in this document due to the difficulty of obtaining journal copies and I am loath to include any reference for work that I have not read. All aspects of what is presented in this document are to be found in the following three books which are well worth reading.
Benor, D.J. (2002) Spiritual Healing: scientific validation of a healing revolution. Professional Supplement. Vision Publications, Southfield MI.

Oschman, J.L. (2000) Energy Medicine: the scientific basis. Churchill Livingstone, Edinburgh.

McTaggart, L. (2002) The Field: the quest for the secret force of the universe. Harper Collins Publishers, New York.

wow!!!! thats all really scientific and i think i only understood half of it, but what i would say is that im pleased these things are being looked into, perhaps we will realise just how much potential us humans actually have!