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Energy medicine is one of five domains of “complementary and alternative medicine” identified by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) in the United States.
The approaches vary widely in philosophy, approach, and origin. The U.S. National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine divides energy medicine approaches into two general categories. Therapies predicated on forms of "energy" unknown to current science are known as putative energy medicine. Therapies which rely on known forms of energy, such as electromagnetism are termed "veritable" energy therapies. In the U.S., devices relying on putative energy medicine have in some cases been the subject of law-enforcement action due to fraudulent marketing practices.
Varieties of energy medicine
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 and was further defined by two books, each titled Energy Medicine, one which is a guide for practitioners and one which surveys existing research evidence.
The NCCAM distinguishes between claims of healing virtue surrounding actual, well-known forms of physical energy ("Veritable Energy Medicine"), and claims of "energies" of unclear nature, where not only the claim of healing virtue is unsubstantiated, but also the alleged energy itself ("Energy Medicine Involving Putative Energy Fields"):
Types of "Veritable Energy Medicine" include magnet therapy and light therapy, collectively referred to as electromagnetic therapy. Mainstream medicine involving electromagnetic radiation (radiation therapy) is not accounted "electromagnetic therapy" in the terms of complementary medicine. Cymatic therapy uses sound waves.
Types of "Energy Medicine Involving Putative Energy Fields" include acupuncture, qi gong and related concepts involving the notion of Qi (such as Reiki), homeopathy, Therapeutic Touch, distant healing (under which they count intercessory prayer) and related concepts.
Energy medicine often proposes that imbalances in the body's "energy field" result in illness, and that by re-balancing the body's energy field health can be restored.
Some alternative therapies, such as electromagnetic therapy, use veritable energy, though they may still make claims that are not supported by evidence. Many claims have been made by associating "spirit" with forms of energy poorly understood at the time. In the 1800s, electricity and magnetism were in the "borderlands" of science and electrical quackery was rife. In the 2000s, quantum mechanics and grand unification theory provide similar opportunities.
Devices
Electro-metabograph machine
A 2007 investigation by the Seattle Times found that thousands of devices claiming to utilize energy medicine—many of them illegal or dangerous—were used in hundreds of venues across the United States. The newspaper described energy medicine as modern-day snake oil, pointing to a lack of regulation and the widespread use of false or unproven marketing claims.
Following this investigation, two such devices were banned in
January 2008 by authorities in the USA.
References
External links
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"Subtle energy" redirects here. For the mystical concept of psychospiritual bodies overlaying the physical body, see Subtle body.
The term energy has been widely adopted by writers and practitioners of various forms of spirituality and alternative medicine to refer to a variety of ideas, often (though not always) conceived as "fields" surrounding the earth or any living thing, supposed to be directly perceptible and accessible to the human mind as "auras", "rays", "fields" or "vibrations". There is no scientific evidence for those kinds of energy or fields, indeed energy is very well defined in science. The term was borrowed from physical science as an analogy where, for example, in physics, measurable quantities of energy are associated with a variety of observable phenomena including waves, potential fields, and even matter itself. Unlike in the physical sciences, spiritual energy is not necessarily considered by those who believe in its existence to be something that can be directly measured or observed in a laboratory. Still, many believers in spiritual energy have used the discoveries of modern physics including relativity and quantum mechanics to support their beliefs in both allegorical and pseudoscientific ways.
In many cases "energy" is conceived of as a universal life force: to this extent "spiritual energy" theories resemble vitalism and may even invoke the Luminiferous Ether of Victorian physics.Additionally, or alternatively, such notions are often aligned with or derived from conceptions found in other cultures, such as the Chinese idea of Qi and the Prana of the Upanishads. Many such ideas arise from the primitive idea of life as breath - a relationship implicit also in the word "spirit".
Such a usage is already evident in William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1793);
"Energy is the only life and is from the Body and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy. Energy is Eternal Delight."
Blake's alignment of energy with affective emotion is noteworthy, for it depicts energy as the psychic continuum that unites body and mind, thus reflecting Plato's celebrated tripartite division of the human psyche into the appetitive, the spirited and the rational. Such an integration of "energy" into systematic esoteric expositions of the universe and/or the human psyche is frequently found combined, as in Kundalini and Theosophy, into an account of a hierarchy of "inner planes" or "subtle bodies".
Bio-energy and the appeal of fields
The success of the scientific Enlightenment's treatment of energy in natural science quickly led to attempts to study the energies of life, a process which at first derived much strength from Luigi Galvani's neurological discoveries. Some, like Mesmer, identified these energies with magnetism, others continued to assume that living organisms were constituted of special materials subject to special forces - a view which became known as vitalism.
As microbiologists studied embryology and developmental biology, particularly before the discovery of the genes, a variety of organisational forces were posited to account for the observations. From the time of Driesch, however, the importance of "energy-fields" began to wane and the proposed forces became more mind-like.
Sometimes, however, as in the work of Harold Saxton Burr, the electromagnetic fields of organisms have been studied precisely as the hypothetical medium of such organisational "forces".
- Vitalism - Entelechy of Driesch. Johannes Reinke
- Élan vital of Henri Bergson
- Recapitulation theory of Ernst Haeckel
- Morphic field of biologist Rupert Sheldrake
- L-field of Harold Saxton Burr
- Kirlian Photography of Semyon Davidovich Kirlian
- Odic force of chemist Carl von Reichenbach
- Psychoenergetics of Professor William A. Tiller
- Animal magnetism of Franz Anton Mesmer
- Vril of Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
- Walter Kilner
- Somatotype and Constitutional Psychology of William Sheldon
- Developmental systems theory
- Organismic theory
- Organicism
- Emergence
The attempt to associate additional energetic properties with life has been all but abandoned in modern research science, but spiritual writers and thinkers have maintained connections to these ideas and continue to promote them as either useful allegories or even as fact in spite of their dismissal by the scientific community.
Some early advocates of these ideas were particularly attracted to the narrative history of the unification of electromagnetism and its implications for the storage, transference, and conversion of physical energy through electric and magnetic fields. The seeming mathematical construct of potentials and fields slowly became recognized after the work of James Clerk Maxwell as real physical phenomena rather than simply mathematical abstractions. Aware of this history, spiritual writers positivistically adopted much of the language of physical science and made appeals to the "force fields" and "biological energy" to explain their ideas as natural allegories or object lessons. Concepts such as the "life force", "physiological gradient", and "élan vital" that emerged from the spiritualist movement would inspire later thinkers in the modern New Age movement.
Modern western psychotherapies
These are therapeutic approaches that depend on the idea of "energy". The following are mostly neo-Reichian therapies which aim to release emotional tension from the body;
- Body Psychotherapy and Somatic psychology
- Orgone energy and Vegetotherapy of Wilhelm Reich
- Bioenergetic analysis of Alexander Lowen
- Rebirthing-Breathwork of Leonard Orr
- Rolfing therapy of Ida Pauline Rolf
- Orgonomy, the American College of Orgonomy
- Emotional Freedom Techniques
- David Boadella
- Gerda Boyesen
- Integrative Body Psychotherapy IBP
- Myron Sharaf
There have also been attempts to align the psycho-analytic theories of C.G.Jung regarding the archetypes of the collective unconscious with the memory-like morphogenetic force-fields postulated by biologists like Hans Driesch and Rupert Sheldrake.
- Psychobiology
- Evolutionary Psychology
Energy medicine
Some alternative medicine practices depend on a form of energy, whether veritable (known to science), putative (unknown to science), or pseudoscience (unfalsifiable).
Parapsychology
These pages do not cover all of parapsychology but only those that are concerned with some "energy". Some effects studied in that discipline, such telepathy and dowsing at a distance, are by nature attempting to go beyond normal time-space: these are excluded.
- Parapsychology
- Paranormal phenomena
- Aura (paranormal)
- Out-of-body experience as Astral projection
- Reincarnation: Rebirth in a new physical body.
- Hauntings: Phenomena attributed to ghosts, also spirits, fairies, angels, daemons and demons. Ectoplasm (paranormal).
- Radiesthesia: Perception of biofields
Dowsing
Some dowsers talk about " earth rays".
- Dowsing
- Karl Spiesberger
- J. Francis Hitching
- Thomas Charles Lethbridge
- Divining rod
- Long range locator
- Michel Moine
Earth energy
- Ley lines
- Earth radiation
- Geoglyphs
- Archaeoastronomy
- Cursus monument
- Glastonbury
- Telluric currents
- Earth's magnetic field
- Songlines
- Psychogeography
- Earth mysteries
- Aurora Borealis
- Geodesy
- Gaia hypothesis
Chinese vitalism
Practitioners of acupuncture believe that its mode of action is by virtue of manipulating the circulation of qi energy through supposed meridians. There is no scientific evidence for such things. To the extent that acupuncture is regarded as efficacious in western medicine, its palliative effects are usually described as obtained physiologically by blocking or stimulating nerve cells and causing changes in the perception of pain in the brain. However the idea of qi is not confined to medicine: it appears throughout traditional east Asian culture, for example, in the art of Feng Shui, in Chinese martial arts and spiritual tracts.
- Qi in Taoism - Qigong - Jing Qi Shen - Internal alchemy
- Meridian (Chinese medicine) of Acupuncture - Shiatsu - Electroacupuncture according to Voll
Indian vitalism
- Prana, Doshas, Chakra, Kosha, Kundalini in Indian Ayurveda and Yoga
- Subtle body - the Etheric Body and Astral Body in Theosophy
Other cultures
- Holy Spirit, Pneumatology, Spirituality
- The Force (Star Wars)
- Egyptian soul
- Unani
- Mana in Oceanic cultures and in anthropology
- Aether or the quintessence of classical physics
- Holy Spirit in some branches of Christianity, similar ideas in Islam and Judaism
- Qudra in Sufism
- Magical energy in various systems
- Mbec in Ghedee
- Silap Inua in Inuit mythology
References
- The 'National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (2006-10-13). "Energy Medicine Overview". http://nccam.nih.gov/health/backgrounds/energymed.htm.
- Kimball C. Atwood (September 2003). "Ongoing Problem with the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine". Skeptical Inquirer magazine. http://www.csicop.org/si/2003-09/alternative-medicine.html.
- e.g. Playfair G.L. and Hill S., "The Cycles of Heaven", Pan Books 1978 p.12 "We discuss the fascinating new concept of man's "energy body" and its radiations, and how it may be interacting with its energetic surroundings.." See also ibid. Ch12 passim.
- Victor Stenger (2001). "The Breath of God: Identifying Spiritual Energy" (PDF). Skeptical Odysseys (Prometheus Books): 363-74.. http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/RelSci/Breath.pdf.
- Dawson, P.J. (January 2008). "A reply to Goddard's spirituality as integrative energy". Journal of Advanced Nursing 25 (2): 282-289. http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119155654/abstract. Retrieved on 2008-10-23.
- energy
- Playfair and Hill op. cit.
- Milton Klonsky, "William Blake: The Seer and his Visions", Orbis 1977.
- Jonathan Locke Hart, "Northrop Frye: The Theoretical Imagination", Routledge 1994, Kathleen Raine, "Blake and Tradition", Routledge, 2002, Plato, "The Republic", trans. Desmond Lee, Harmondsworth.
- Mead, G. R. S. (1967). "The Doctrine of the Subtle Body in Western Tradition". Theosophical Publishing House. Onians, Richard Broxton. (1951). "The Origins of European Thought About the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time, and Fate". Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Vitalism. Bechtel W, Richardson RC (1998). Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. E. Craig (Ed.), London: Routledge.
- "Science and spiritual healing: a critical review of spiritual healing, "energy" medicine, and intentionality.". Altern-Ther-Health-Med. 9 (2): 56-61. 2003 Mar-April.
- Energy Forms: Allegory and Science in the Era of Classical Thermodynamics. University of Michigan Press. November 8, 2001.
- "Get the Facts, Acupuncture". National Institute of Health.. 2006. http://nccam.nih.gov/health/acupuncture/. Retrieved on 2006-03-02.
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