Talk:Biofield energy healing

I agree that this draft article should be developed and used for the spiritual healing article. Tom Butler (talk) 19:08, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

References for opening statement??

I have this on my clipboard for the faith healing article. May as well put it here and see if it can be applied. At point is the effecy of studies related to spiritual healing. Both of the kinds of healing here appear to be self-administered as they describe them.

Energy Medicines: Will East Meet West? beginning with:

Growing Western interest

As the appeal of these practices grows in the United States so does anecdotal evidence of their results. 20 prospective, randomized, controlled clinical trials, but only three studies met their inclusion criteria--Tai Chi may provide benefit to them, based on its combination of meditation and aerobic-like exercise.

27 studies, only four met their inclusion criteria. From these, only two reported significant differences in psychological and physiological symptoms compared to psychosocial support control (Not a treament for cancer)

examined the effects of Reiki on cancer-related fatigue, pain, anxiety and overall quality of life. Patients who practiced Reiki, following the trial’s protocol, experienced significant improvements in quality of life, as compared to the control group who merely rested.

Next steps in research

“interviews, with biomedical researchers who designed the trial and with the Qigong master responsible for the Qigong arm of the trial, revealed two fundamentally different understandings of how Qigong is experienced and how that experience may be beneficial. The biomedical team sees it as a non-specific therapy, which combines relaxation and exercise. The Qigong master, on the other hand, sees it as using specific movements and visualizations to direct mental attention to specific areas of the body.”

She suggests that the gaps in understanding between researchers and practitioners may hinder scientific efforts to assess therapies like Qigong. Therefore, she proposes that these clinical trials build into the protocol information that looks at cultural aspects of the practitioner’s experience. Tom Butler (talk) 19:08, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Therapeutic touch stimulates the proliferation of human cells in cultureTom Butler (talk) 23:47, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

More references

Distant Healing: Srinivasan Pillay, award-winning psychiatrist and brain-imaging researcher, conducted a study measuring the Skin conduction of people receiving distance healing. The study done in 2008 examined thirty-six couples. In twenty-two of these couples, one of the two people was a cancer patient. Some couples were trained in “directing intention” of healing towards the sick partners, and others received no training at all.

In this experiment, when people used intention to reach their partners who were in a shielded room, every time intention was sent, it created changes in the skin conductance that were very significant compared to the breaks when these changes would not be present. Thus, the experiment showed that intention can affect a partner’s body across distance.

The effects of distant healing have not been uniform and it appears that distant healing works in some situations but not in others. Dr Pillay writes, “I believe that the healing is not always effective for several reasons: (1) the quality of the intention is not high enough; (2) different intenders have different capacities; (3) different illnesses may require higher levels of intention; (4) there may be other intentions coming from elsewhere that disrupt the intention being measured … in a study that showed that distant healing had no effect on chronic fatigue, the expectation that one would get better did have an effect. I wonder if this implies that intention works best when we believe in our own capacities to get better.”

From: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/srinivasan-pillay/the-science-of-distant-he_b_177986.html Tom Butler (talk) 17:56, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

About the title

The Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) is a nonprofit organization which has a policy of developing and promoting evidence-based ideas concerning human potential. As a "human"-based group, the term, "spiritual," is often used to signify a state of mind or point of view as characterized in the Wikipedia article for Spirituality but in the non-religious sense, more like the introduction and #5: Personal well being. As such, the term "spiritual healing" is most often used to signify the expression of Compassionate Intention, Prayer, and Distant Healing.

The concept, however, is evolving to a more process-oriented practice based on techniques and policies designed around academic/clinical studies. In this way, the term "spiritual healing " is being replaced by "energy healing" or some variation of that denoting the intentional influence of the subtle energy of the biofield. The lead scientist for IONS is one of the leading scholars for the concept of biofields and intentionality affecting that subtle energy.

The problem is that Power's comment: "Oppose; it's all "faith healing" to the layman. Powers T 17:07, 1 October 2010 (UTC) " is probably pretty close to the truth and simply saying they are different will not work when you continue to use faith-based terms. I support the separation of energy healing from faith healing, but I think titling the article "spiritual healing" will have us back at this same discussion in a few years. I suggest alternative terms should be explored. I cannot think past "Energy healing," but there should be a simple title that embraces both the human potential aspect of "spiritual healing" with the process oriented "Energy healing." In the end, I feel something like "Energy healing" will dominate as academics attempt to separate their research from religious connotations. Tom Butler (talk) 20:11, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

That's an interesting point in that the word spiritual (unfortunately) can be used in religious and secular contexts. I think any alternative needs careful consideration as there are several energy healing(...) subjects already covered in Wikipedia for which redirects could be used:

• Pulsed_Electromagnetic_Field_Therapy or energy healing(pulsed electromagnetic)
• Magnetic_healing or energy healing(magnetic)

in which case the term "spiritual healing" could be a redirect to energy healing(biofield). One of the clinical trials I've found [1] Therapeutic touch affects DNA synthesis and mineralization of human osteoblasts in culture reports that cancer cell growth is affected differently from normal cells. However relevant the term energy healing(psychic) may be, it will probably never be accepted by the scientific community - likewise for energy healing (paranormal).

Adrian-from-london (talk) 23:06, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

How about Energy_healing(biofield)?

Adrian-from-london (talk) 00:43, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

I honestly do not know what the best term would be. Certainly not faith healing and I think spiritual healing is too likely to be taken as faith healing. You want to address the subject as a disclosure of what it is thought to be and how it is applied, but at the same time, you want people to recognize the subject. Take a look at: Energy medicine modalities, also known as biofield therapies

As it has been in the past, common usage follows academic usage. With the Internet, popular usage of academic terminology follows very soon after the academics adopt a term. We all know from quantum mysticism that people love to cloak their beliefs in science.

Right now, scientists have sanitized their vocabulary to eliminate faith-tainted terms and have at least to some extent settled on "biofield" as a name for the as yet undefined energy they are detecting associated with psi functioning, intentionality and REG studies. This energy is gradually being quantified and is being seen to show up in virtually every area of human potential research. "Biofield" is the academically accepted word for "energy" and it does not require recognition of an etheric aspect, which would be required for faith healing.

The term "healing" is not universally used either. "Therapy" is used in the above article, and I would guess it will be widely adopted by academia. "Biofield therapies" is a good name, and I think Energy healing(biofield) could work to stay with the wikipedia view.

"Energy medicine" is a problem because that term is used for mainstream therapies such as cancer treatment. Tom Butler (talk) 16:53, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

This is the sort of stupid cr*p I expected to happen. I don't believe anybody on the Faith healing talk page signed up for an article with such a stupid title. "Biofields". Don't make me laugh. Famousdog (talk) 10:00, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Nice talk Famousdog. Rather than going the typical aw shit attack, why not ask why the name?

Based on Powers' oppose comment: "it's all "faith healing" to the layman." and your oppose comment: "... Personally, I don't think that the fact that spiritual healers don't consider themselves part of "organised religion" and ask for divine intervention justifies an overly wordy title or a split." it is pretty clear that many of the people editing the faith healing article cannot see the difference. That is probably understandable. Spiritual healing is seen by many people as a New Age synonym for faith healing, yet the majority of the studies directed at examining the veracity of what is clearly not faith healing are describing the practices as energy or biofield (energy again) healing or therapy--anything to make the distinction more evident. That is why I had suggested the change.

I think you are just expressing an opinion based on an "its all faith healing" and not on an understanding of the subject. In the end, the article needs to be supported by references. If the references do not support the title, then the title needs to be changed. My advice would be for you to inform yourself a little more and then help Adrian compose a stable article. Tom Butler (talk) 17:14, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Firstly, in reply to the "why the sh*t name?", "biofield" is a term used by a number of journals:

Journal alt. cmp. med.

Oncology Nursing Society

Intl. Jnl. Behavourial Med.

Seminars Onc. Nursing

Whatever the title, how many sceptics will ever be able to accept a concept regarded as legitimate by these journals? Any debate about the title hasn't taken account of the redirects I've used - if any sceptic thinks this subject is "hand-waving nonsense" then feel free to add a redirect for that.

While the statement "Unlike faith healing, ..." may seem abrupt to some, it passed the review by user SPhilbrick (see section 10 on my talk page). It's a clear definition of the difference between the two, supported by the references quoted in the article. The term spiritual is ambiguous, as in a spiritual attitude to life means not needing to resort to... demonstrating that spiritual isn't always related to religion or healing.

Adrian-from-london (talk) 22:27, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

"Biofield" is meaningless. Its just an attempt to make "energy-but-not-measurable-energy" sound more scientific. Why not subtle body or any of a host of other, frankly, synonomous terms. What's wrong with Energy healing, for example. Oh, that's just energy medicine - which includes qi, chi, prana ... except they're linked to religious belief, which makes them faith healing I guess, and so the whole miserable cycle begins again. You say "educate yourself". In the face of this meaningless double-talk and infinite regress, education is not an option. Famousdog (talk) 12:57, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

As you say Famousdog, the whole miserable cycle begins again - you seem unable to accept that biofield (without the quackery connotations of faith healing, possibly regarded by some as spiritual religious) is a perfectly legitimate term, supported by reliable sources. It's not such a stupid title. '"Biofields". Don't make me laugh.', the journals aren't laughing at the name. The energy medicine article is all about fraud, quackery and coverage of the whole subject (qi, prana). This article includes numerous references to reviews of clinical trials compared with the other article based on fraudulent energy machines any decent clinical trial can disprove.

"Education is not an option" is just irrational sceptic talk of Wikipedias coverage of this subject - same goes for equating qi, chi, prana with faith healing.

Adrian-from-london (talk) 17:55, 19 October 2010 (UTC)