Energy medicine
Energy medicine is a branch of alternative medicine based on a pseudo-scientific belief that healers can channel "healing energy" into patients and effect positive results.
This esoteric concept of "energy" used by proponents of energy medicine is unrelated to the scientific concept of energy.
The field is defined by shared beliefs and practices relating to mysticism and esotericism in the wider alternative medicine sphere rather than any unified terminology, leading to terms such as energy healing, vibrational medicine, and similar terms being used synonymously. Practitioners may classify their practice as hands-on, hands-off, or distant, wherein the patient and healer are in different locations. Many approaches to energy healing exist: for example, "biofield energy healing", "spiritual healing", "contact healing", "distant healing", therapeutic touch, Reiki, and Qigong.
Reviews of the scientific literature on energy healing have concluded that no evidence supports its clinical use. The theoretical basis of energy healing has been criticised as implausible; research and reviews supportive of energy medicine have been faulted for containing methodological flaws and selection bias, and positive therapeutic results have been determined to result from known psychological mechanisms, such as the placebo effect. Some claims of those purveying "energy medicine" devices are known to be fraudulent, and their marketing practices have drawn law-enforcement action in the U.S.
History
History records the repeated association or exploitation of scientific inventions by individuals claiming that newly discovered science could help people to heal. In the 19th century, electricity and magnetism were in the "borderlands" of science, and electrical quackery became rife. These concepts continue to inspire writers in the New Age movement. In the early 20th century, health claims for radio-active materials put lives at risk; recently, quantum mechanics and grand unification theory have provided similar opportunities for commercial exploitation. Thousands of devices claiming to heal via putative or veritable energy are used worldwide. Many are illegal or dangerous and are marketed with false or unproven claims. The Oregon Board of Chiropractic Examiners barred EPFX use by chiropractors. Reliance on spiritual and energetic healing is associated with serious harm or death when patients delay or forego medical treatment.Classification
The term "energy medicine" has been in general use since the founding of the non-profit International Society for the Study of Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine in the 1980s. Guides are available for practitioners, and other books aim to provide a theoretical basis and evidence for the practice. Energy medicine often proposes that imbalances in the body's "energy field" result in illness, and that by rebalancing the body's energy field, health can be restored. Some modalities describe treatments as ridding the body of negative energies or blockages in 'mind'; illness or episodes of ill health after a treatment are referred to as a 'release' or letting go of a 'contraction' in the body-mind. Usually, a practitioner will then recommend further treatments for complete healing.The US-based National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health distinguishes between health care involving scientifically observable energy, which it calls "Veritable Energy Medicine", and health care methods that invoke physically undetectable or unverifiable "energies", which it calls "Putative Energy Medicine":
- Types of "veritable energy medicine" include magnet therapy, colorpuncture, and light therapy. Medical techniques involving the use of electromagnetic radiation are not considered "energy medicine" in the terms of alternative medicine.
- Types of "putative energy medicine" include biofield energy healing therapies that are claimed to direct or modulate "energies" to allow healing in the patient. This includes spiritual healing, psychic healing, therapeutic touch, healing touch, Hands of light, Esoteric healing, Magnetic healing, Qigong healing, Reiki, crystal healing, distant healing, intercessory prayer, and similar modalities. Concepts such as Qi, Prana, Innate Intelligence, Mana, Pneuma, vital fluid, Odic force, and orgone are among the many terms that have been used to describe these putative energy fields. This category does not include acupuncture, Ayurvedic medicine, chiropractic, moxibustion and other modalities where a physical intervention is used to manipulate a putative energy.
Beliefs
There are various schools of energy healing, including biofield energy healing, spiritual healing, contact healing, distant healing, Pranic Healing, therapeutic touch, Reiki, and Qigong among others.Spiritual healing occurs largely among practitioners who do not see traditional religious faith as a prerequisite for effecting cures. Faith healing by contrast takes place within a traditional or non-denominational religious context such as with some televangelists. The Buddha is often quoted by practitioners of energy medicine, but he did not practise "hands on or off" healing.
Energy healing techniques such as therapeutic touch have found recognition in the nursing profession. In 2005–2006, the North American Nursing Diagnosis Association approved the diagnosis of "energy field disturbance" in patients, reflective of what has been variously called a "postmodern" or "anti-scientific" approach to nursing care. This approach has been strongly criticised.
Believers in these techniques have proposed quantum mystical invocations of non-locality to try to explain distant healing. They have also proposed that healers act as a channel passing on a kind of bioelectromagnetism which shares similarities to vitalistic pseudosciences such as orgone or qi. Writing in the Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies, James Oschman introduced the concept of healer-sourced electromagnetic fields which change in frequency. Oschman believes that "healing energy" derives from electromagnetic frequencies generated by a medical device, projected from the hands of the healer, or by electrons acting as antioxidants. Beverly Rubik, in an article in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, justified her belief with references to biophysical systems theory, bioelectromagnetics, and chaos theory that provide her with a "…scientific foundation for the biofield…" Drew Leder remarked in a paper in the same journal that such ideas were attempts to "make sense of, interpret, and explore 'psi' and distant healing." and that "such physics-based models are not presented as explanatory but rather as suggestive."
Physicists and sceptics criticise these explanations as pseudophysics – a branch of pseudoscience which explains magical thinking by using irrelevant jargon from modern physics to exploit scientific illiteracy and to impress the unsophisticated.
Indeed, even enthusiastic supporters of energy healing say that "there are only very tenuous theoretical foundations underlying healing".