Chapter 1 My Eyes Are Opened Would you believe that a healer removed the pain of a broken wrist and bone in fifteen minutes? Would you believe that another healer removed an ovarian tumor in a matter of weeks? Would you believe that a third healer regenerated the nerves of a broken spine in a few months, remotely, on a person thousands of miles away? As thoroughly unlikely as these examples may sound, I have personally witnessed such healings at first hand. They seem like miracles -- yet they really did happen. The question is, how? The answer to this question involves a new understanding of energy and consciousness. I'm a Harvard PhD, a former Yale professor of psychology and psychiatry and director of the Yale Psychophysiology Center. I'm currently a professor of psychology, surgery, medicine, neurology, and psychiatry at the University of Arizona. I was awarded one of two NIH grants to establish a Center for Frontier Medicine in Biofield Science. Though I was originally taught that such healing miracles do not and can not happen, the fact is that they do. Science can now help us to understand and celebrate them. Pain That Disappears The first energy healing I ever experienced was completely unexpected. In the summer of 1994, I was visiting a colleague on the East Coast, a psychotherapist I will call Suzanne. Her father had been a distinguished physician and scientist who, though conventionally trained, was open to alternative therapies. After his death, Suzanne developed an interest in energy healing and was taking advanced courses in what's called healing touch. While I was visiting with her, Suzanne received an emergency phone call from one of her counseling patients. In tears, the patient explained that her husband had been repairing the roof and had fallen off. He was rushed to the hospital in extreme pain. The lady pleaded with Suzanne to meet her at the emergency room and help her cope with this stress. Suzanne agreed to go, and I went as well. We found her husband, Robert, apparently in excruciating pain, with his right wrist bent at an unlikely angle. I stepped out of the room so Suzanne could attempt healing. Curious about the process, I snuck a quick peek over her shoulder before I left. I saw Robert lying with his eyes closed while Suzanne waved her hands a few inches above his arm and wrist. I realized she was being circumspect: the hospital staff would not have been pleased about these goings-on, which they probably would have thought closely akin to voodoo. After about fifteen minutes, Suzanne asked us to return. We found Robert with his eyes wide open and smiling like a surprised Cheshire cat. He said he had no idea what had just transpired, but to his amazement the severe pain in his wrist and arm was virtually gone. And no, he had not been given any pain medications. He still couldn't move his limb, and X-rays would confirm he had a fractured wrist. Nonetheless, he was unexpectedly pain free and greatly relieved. So was his wife. As for me, I was frankly in shock. If this was a placebo response -- if Robert had believed Suzanne could relieve his pain, and his belief had tricked his body into making the pain disappear -- then it was certainly a dramatic example. Could the elimination of Robert's pain be explained solely as the power of his mind over his body? Or had something more occurred, something to do with healing that Suzanne had induced? Had I witnessed my first energy healing? A Tumor Vanishes Several years ago, a New Yorker I'll call Jane was diagnosed using ultrasound as having a large tumor on her right ovary. Refusing an immediate biopsy, she announced that she wanted to take a month to try alternative healing techniques. She focused on two modalities -- herbs, prescribed by a psychiatrist, and energy healing, to be performed by her husband, Mark, who happened to be a psychologist as well as a budding healer. He used the technique called Reiki, a form of energy healing that originated in Japan and has become popular in the United States and worldwide. Mark took a week off before the second ultrasound and spent four hours a day sending his wife loving energy. At times she would work at her computer and he would sit in a chair in the corner sending Reiki energy across the room. They focused on success, but what happened was not at all what they could have expected. When the doctor repeated the ultrasound, he was astonished to find that the tumor had vanished. It had quite literally disappeared. I was shown the initial and follow-up ultrasound pictures, so was able to confirm the report for myself: a large tumor in the initial pictures, a complete absence of any tumor in the follow-up. The radiologist who took the pictures said he was completely baffled -- he had never witnessed such a thing before. In rare cases, tumors have been known to disappear by spontaneous remission. Perhaps that's what happened here. Or did it happen primarily through the combination of herbs and Mark's loving attention? Did his intentions and energies play a significant if not synergistic role as well? The aftermath was less happy. After Jane and Mark divorced a few years later, she again developed tumors. This time she chose to have them surgically removed. Help for a Permanently Disabled Man A friend of mine in California, whom I will call Michael, asked me if I knew someone who could do a long-distance medical intuition diagnosis for his friend James. Medical intuition is a controversial process in which psychics -- also known as intuitives -- claim to receive information about a person's medical problems that includes energetic, emotional, and spiritual components. These diagnoses are often made longdistance, without the diagnostician ever meeting the patient. James had been injured in an accident that left him paralyzed from the neck down. His neurologists came to the conclusion that his condition was incurable. Patients with this kind of injury frequently die within three years. Michael said that James was not receiving physical therapy. Since his case was hopeless, there seemed to be no point in any treatment. I told Michael about an Arizona medical intuitive and energy healer, Lynn, who had made some surprisingly accurate long-distance diagnoses in my presence, and I gave him her phone number. Since conventional medicine had failed to help, there was nothing to lose in giving alternative medicine a try. Lynn not only provided an accurate medical diagnosis but accepted James as a patient, holding more than sixty therapy sessions with him over the ensuing eight months. All of the sessions were conducted longdistance, most over the telephone, along with a few via meditation. Despite the predictions of conventional medicine, James began to regain much of his functioning. He regained use of his abdominal muscles and regained bladder control. He developed sensation in his legs, and then was able to move his legs and toes to the point where it was possible for him to start physical therapy. He even regained the ability to have sex. His doctors in San Diego were baffled because his MRIs indicated that his nerves were clearly regenerating, something they had never seen before. Just a miracle? Or was there something more going on here? Was Lynn's long-distance spiritual energy healing actually responsible? Any reputable scientist will tell you that a story of an individual, isolated experience -- referred to as "anecdotal evidence" -- is invalid, essentially meaningless. However, a collection of independently observed experiences begins to suggest that something real is going on and deserves scientific examination. Exploring Energy Healing What you are about to read will probably stretch your mind as it tugs at your heart. You will accompany me in the laboratory and clinic as I gather evidence, slowly but surely, that energy healing is real and can play a vital role in human existence, offering the tantalizing potential of improving the quality of life for every one of us. You will experience the challenges I faced as a scientist as I struggled to make sense of findings I was not prepared to discover. The evidence typically took me beyond my personal comfort level. Medicine and science are in the throes of a dramatic evolution -- which some might call a revolution. We live in a time of a profound change in thinking that is absolutely fundamental. The messages of contemporary physics tell us that our everyday sensory experience of the world is extremely limited, and that reality is far more interesting and mysterious than most of us are yet aware of. The first sections of this book present a wide-ranging set of human energy experiments, mostly with nonhealers -- from young undergraduate students at the University of Arizona in their late teens and early twenties to mature former students at Harvard University in their mid-sixties. The experiments address fundamental and far-reaching issues such as: - Whether our bodies register invisible fields of energy, including TV and radio signals - Whether we sense the energies of people, animals, and even plants - Whether the energies generated by our bodies can be measured by electronic devices - Whether our energies affect the physiology and behavior of diverse living systems -- bacteria, animals, plants, and even other people -- and can be used by us to foster healing and health As you witness my personal scientific journey and ponder the discoveries my colleagues and I have made, consider the following: if all this, and more, is real, then as Dr. James Levin puts it, not only are we all "energy beings," we all have the inherent ability to be energy healers -- to others, but most important, to ourselves. Since research has solidly established that we can use our minds to help heal ourselves, and the physical body is actually a dynamic organization of energy and fields, it therefore follows that we are all potential energy healers as well. Further, because energy radiates beyond the body, in principle (and in fact, as I discuss in this book) energy healing can extend from your mind to others' bodies. If you find the evidence of this book compelling, be ready to claim your natural power to heal. Copyright (c) 2007 by Gary E. Schwartz, Ph.D. Excerpted from The Energy Healing Experiments: Science Reveals Our Natural Power to Heal by Gary E. Schwartz All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
