By E. Gene Rooney

This is a time of great change in the way we view the world.

In the practice of medicine, informational, technical, relational and spiritual forces are reshaping the way physicians and institutions minister to their patients.  One element is emerging that overlies all these developments.  “The living relationship” is central to actualizing the paradigm of health and integrates all healing and community. 

“Relationship” is the medium through which all communications flows, and this relationship brings together the feelings, concerns, beliefs, hopes and fears of both the patient and the healer.  In addition, the relationship provides the medium through which the healer can communicate caring and compassion is itself an important, perhaps the most important of all therapeutic tools. 

This relationship has not been studied much, in spite of the fact that all great healers have demonstrated that they placed this relationship and compassion at the top of their work.

Jesus- Matt 9:36 “And He had compassion on them.”  “Splangledeshomae” or gut feeling or compassion or cared deeply for and about.  It is said that His spirit groaned (His heart hurt. His "gut" ached.)

Over 50 yrs. Ago, Dr. Francis Peabody wrote in JAMA: “One of the essential qualities of the clinician is (h/h) interest in humanity, for the secret of the care of the patient is caring for (about) the patient.”

Somehow, over the course of this past century this very basic insight has been shunted aside as we have adopted the machine as the metaphor for man.  It is not surprising then that much of healing has been given over to machines and a mechanistic way of  viewing life and health treatment.

The re-emergence of the relationship dynamic as the vehicle for healing is beginning to appear in the teachings of some visionaries in the health - care field.  And recent research findings have strongly suggested that human psychological/spiritual factors play a fundamental role in health and health-care.

The way we think and field and believe have an obvious, demonstrable effect on the course of a disease….maybe even plays a role in its origins and cure.

Health care as it is often practiced today nearly disregards the role of the therapeutic relationship.  Consequently, technical competence has come to be of more importance that interpersonal skills.  Our modern technical advances far-exceed  those of our predecessors, but our skills on the human level not only do not exceed those of previous generations of healers, but do not even measure up - and, are not considered to be important.

Yet, some research is beginning to suggest that healing best takes place in those doctor/Patient relationships where genuine caring and compassion operate to sever as enhancements to healing.

Dr. Larry Dossey writes:

“At the root of the problem lies the fact that we, as a culture, have turned our collective back on healing.  We should not kid ourselves: We are all in this together, jointly entranced by a physicalistic approach to health and illness, and dazzled by the promises of technology to right every conceivable misfire of the body.  Against this backdrop, dealers and healing have been shoved aside and very nearly forgotten, and we are paying the price.  Ignoring the role of consciousness, soul, spirit and moaning… we have birthed a malaise that permeates not just healers and healing, but the soul and the spirit of a culture.”

It is believed that an invisible, but actual, palpable “life-force” energy infuses and permeates all living forms.  This energy is infinite, limitless, and pure.  Intangible to the several physical senses though it may be, it constantly bathes us and fills us.

Odorless and tasteless, it nevertheless sustains us.  Though we virtually swim in it, ingesting it with every breath, we are physically unaware of its presence as a fish fails to notice the water.  Every thing lives in side of and is inspired or inspirited by this force field.

This life-force (E) is the essence that gives vitality (C²) to form (M).  E=mc².

It is the primary activating and indwelling energy of life and the underlying creative intelligence of the Universe.  This energy animates and organizes our world and everything in it.

Ancient civilizations understood as well as our modern ones, that this life-force energy flowed through the body, supporting optimal development and activity.

We call it, simply, animating spirit.  The Chinese call it chi (pronounced chee), the Indians call it prana.  The Japanese call it Ki (kee).

Because Western culture has separated science form philosophy and from spirituality, based on Cartesian separation of mind, body and sprit (dualism), this concept of a subtle yet powerful life-force energy has existed outside the theoretical framework of our modern medicine.

Therefore, it is hard to even discuss the nature and source of chi, ki, or prana in specific terms because we in the west do not even have an equivalent word for this energy.  The ancient Greeks called it pneuma - wind/breath/spirit.

Currently, western research is seeking to measure this energy because quantifying it will validate this energetic phenomenon to the Western way of thought.  We have chosen to consider as real and valid, only that which can be quantified and only that which can be sensed by the five currently known senses.

So far this life-force has resisted quantifying, but it nevertheless exists within us and around us, giving life to our bodies, minds and emotions.

The ancients considered life-force energy to be in perfect balance in the body when a person experienced physiological orderliness, psychological equilibrium and emotional stability.

Modern therapies that seek to deal directly with that energy fit in well with the new paradigm includes mind/body awareness and prevention techniques.

One such method is called Reiki (ray-key) which is a precise method for connecting this universal energy with the mind’s innate power to heal.  Rediscovered in the mid-1800’s by Dr.  Mikao Usui, a Japanese monk, educator, this hands-on healing art is an adjunct to conventional therapeutic modalities.  It seeks to help the body, mind and emotions seek restorative balance.  It strives to support optimal development and fulfillment.  Buy marshalling the biological intelligence that produces healing.  In other words, it tries to amplify the body’s resources to heal, whether a cut finger, a broken bone or clogged lungs.

Many of the nation’s top medical establishments across the country have in-service Reiki and other adjunctive therapies services.

The essential vehicle of Reiki-is touch, applies whenever and wherever appropriate.

Through inducing the relaxation response (book by Dr. Herbert Benson),  Reiki encourages an integrated functioning of the body’s healing mechanisms… perhaps through the same modalities as ancient laying-on-of-hands… still not understood.

Studies show that a deep state of relaxation acts through the autonomic nervous system to lower blood pressure and heart rate to relieve tension and anxiety.  This state of relaxation augments the abilities of the immune system.  This, of course, aids in the defense against harmful bacteria and viruses (see videos here).  It also stimulates the brain’s production of endorphins, the natural opiates which acts to decrease perception of pain and a sense of well-being.

Until recently the Western medical model emphasized more attention to what constituted disease than to what contributes to health.  Allopathic medicine has historically tended to view disease as incorrect physical functioning caused primarily by infection diet, environment or heredity and to respond by planning a strategy of attack.

While disease may at times arise in the physical body, as an identifiable illness such as cancer, lupus or arteriosclerosis, at other times it manifests in our mental or emotional bodies as states of “dis-ease”, such as anxiety, depression or paranoia.

Disease can be more broadly defined, therefore, as a state of unbalance or lack of homeostasis, that causes disruption in optimal functioning of the body, mind and emotions.  Disease is not separate from the body as in invader to be attacked, but an important signal or messenger carrying the message that balance or homeostasis needs to be restored.

Thus, total healing moves towards wholeness.

When we view the human being as a dynamic energy system, we realize that health is not a static goal.  Health is a verb, not a noun.  Current research suggests the world is more than just matter.  In fact, matter itself is energy, therefore, the body is not just a collection of functioning parts.  It is a system of energy, subtle energy, and this energy plays a key role in maintaining the body’s vitality and balance.

The mind, a part of the body (or vice versa) influences bodily health, and life-energy,  chi, pervades both mind and body.

So, at this stage, we simply recognize the presence of life-energy, even though we cannot yet quantify it, just as we have recognized the presence of protons, electrons, neutrons (atoms, molecules) without being able to see or truly measure them yet either.

In the 1990’s we entered the age of energy information.  We live in a constantly expanding and increasingly complex world with continually changing paradigms (models) of what the world truly is. We must maintain flexibility in order to stay aware of and involved in this ever expanding understating of the nature of reality.

We are limited only by our own models.  In our culture we are taught to learn new information at an intellectual level first, then apply that conceptual knowing in such a way that it either supports or contradicts our first hand, perpetual experiences.

But quantum physicists are developing new theories of energy movement and transformation that go beyond the capacities of our perception.  The physical senses do not have access to information on the quantum level except through the extension of our physical senses on the micro level.  (microscope, etc.).

What they are finding often challenge traditional explanations of the nature of the universe and reality.  Their conjectures, hence the term “theoretical physics”, are slowly shifting our understandings toward new ways of understanding the nature of life.

Energy healings are inexplicable within the confines of our old mechanical model of the universe—The working model for the past 4 centuries.

We are free to chose our own attitude in approaching any new experience or conjecture.  If we choose to be dominated by our old limiting beliefs (models), then we block our on learning and cheat ourselves out of having a new, authentic experience based on newer, more comprehensive models.  If the mind chooses to believe that something is not worth considering just because it challenges or contradicts old concepts, we lose the chance to grow or expand our understanding.

When energetic healing takes place, the shifts and changes that take place often happen on a micro or non-material or non-perceivable level and may be difficult or impossible to perceive at a physically observable level.  Nevertheless, healing may still take place for the patient according to the capacities of the highest priority on the holistic ordering of the universe.

Because the nature and mode of change of energy healings are not yet quantifiable in our old mode of physically observable data, energy medicine is not easily evaluated by our allopathic medical and clinical protocols.   Historically, allopathic medicine has dismissed healings which fall outside its framework of understanding, empiricism, based on structure and function relationships.

Until we can devise ways to perceive with the senses, we must depend on anecdotal evidence to open the possibility on people's minds that energy healings do, in fact, work.

Modern physics is now discovering what the ancients knew anecdotally, that our bodies are not solid entities, but are interacting fields of energy given to continuous, creative fluctuation.  Our body is a verb, not a noun.

From the smallest subatomic particle to the space beyond the sink into the ultimate reaches of the universe, vibratory forces configure and reconfigure who and what we are.  Quantum physics has demonstrated, time and again (anecdotes) that all substance is composed of energy fields.  These fields are vast expanses of space in which particles of matter are created by the temporary intersection of those energy fields.

While relatively new to Westerners, those concepts are deeply rooted in the thoughts and understandings of Eastern cultures---and they won’t go away.  Even though we cannot see, yet, those energy systems, but can only see the results of them, those energy systems that compose and sustain the body/mind, they are nevertheless a real and valid part of us.

Those energy fields not only interact within the individual but also between individuals and within the environment.  The more we learn to think of ourselves as fields of energy (water noun) rather than solid particles (rock noun), the better we can understand the mind/body connection and how it affects the quality of our lives and health.

The human body is the most dense and the most familiar aspect of the human energy system.

Extending beyond the physical body are multiple subtle bodies through which vital energy flows from the universe in to the physical being.  These “bodies” are energy fields which overlap and inter-penetrate each other and the physical body, and therefore, have a very powerful effect on our well-being, directly influencing the condition of our physical, mental and emotional health.

Though not composed of tightly packed matter, as the physical body, the subtle bodies are perceptible through touch and are experience by practitioners of many systems of energy healing…e.g. Reiki, Ayurveda, evidian, charka, acupuncture, hands-on healing, etc.

Because the theories of quantum physics are not yet universally accepted (but most modern electrical technology is based on them), the concepts of energy healing confounds many, so we speak only in metaphor when we describe energy healing.  To introduce the ideas of the new physics, while still staying true to our descriptions, we characterize the process of alternative healing as the body’s pulling into itself the universal life-force.  This can be made analogous to barnacles living on the sea-coast rocks, opening themselves to the waves of the sea to receive their nourishment and relinquish their waste.

As the cells open or breath in, they take in those things necessary for life, healing and wholeness.  Then, as they breath out, they release the energies of all that is old, used up, outmoded and unnecessary.

Likewise, the person must take in all that is needed for life to heal, and expunge all that is unnecessary that pollutes and retards health.

Reiki and other touch healing processes emphasize the truth about healing: that the responsibility and power for healing already lie within the individual.  The Reiki healer is not the source of healing… that has already been built into each person by the "Source".  The healer merely acts as the one who stimulates the healing by being a compassionate conduit for the universal life force.  The practitioner does not do the healing but merely facilitates it.  The healing comes as the result of the receiver’s energy field being open to the universal energy field, mediated through the cellular consciousness already built into the receiver.

No healing method is magic or a panacea.  Any of them merely work to enhance the normal healing processes possessed by the mind and body. 

The intention to assist and to be a part of the by process is implicit in the pacing of hands on the hurting body of another.

It is possible that compassion operates to release the energy flow through the healer to the patient.  It was said numerous times that when Jesus healed, He “had compassion” (spangledeshamae - yearning gut)

Many healers consciously employ intention and awareness of the flow of life-energy as a part of their work.  Jesus felt the energy-virtue go out of Him when touched by the woman with a hemorrhage (Mark 5:2 5-35;  Matt 9:20-22; Luke 8:43-48)

The flow is not something we can will or force because it depends on the cellular demand as directed by the recipient’s innate intelligence, not on our ability.  It is also not only due to the will of the person to be well because it works for babies, pets even plants.  The energetic flow is always available in response to the cell’s demands and needs. It also does not depend solely on the feelings or beliefs of either the practitioner or the recipient.  As a matter of fact beliefs, feelings etc. are often what can block, limit or affect a healing process.

The whole point is that the process connects both the healer and the recipient with a willing (Matt8:3- “I am willing”), unconditional and unlimited Source of life.  We, the healers merely are empowered to be a channel of universal life energy for anyone.  The energy is available to a willing, conscious patient, or an unconscious child, stranger or even oneself.  Our bodies are flowing, energy systems that constantly change and renew themselves.  As a result, we have the opportunity to recreate ourselves and others in a pattern of wholeness.

E Gene Roooney
Jefferson City, MO