– by Tania O’Neill McGowan
Medicine in Western countries is currently centered on physical biological systems, with the emphasis being to diagnose pathological conditions and treat the symptoms associated with those conditions. While a state of ‘no symptoms’ is better than a state of illness, this model is costing governments billions of dollars every year because people are swinging back and forth between the states of ‘no symptoms’ and ‘illness’. Should the state of ‘no symptoms’ be the ultimate goal of a healthcare system, when this state really cannot be defined as healthy? It would seem more logical for a healthcare system to aim for optimal health, a state that could be labelled ‘wellness’.
Why does the resolution of physical symptoms not lead to wellness? It would appear that there are more factors involved in wellness than just the physiological ones addressed by Western medicine. In fact, over the last 80 years a number of researchers in both science and medicine have discovered that there are energies that exist in and around the physical body, often termed ‘subtle energies’. These energies appear to play a significant role in the health and wellbeing of living organisms and are different from the energies currently recognized in physics. As discussed by Richard Gerber in his book Vibrational Medicine “Only now has Western technology evolved to the point that we are beginning to get the earliest confirmations that subtle-energy systems do exist and that they influence the physiologic behavior of cellular systems”.
Human Energy Fields and Cellular Growth
Both Eastern and Western literature contain many references to an energy field surrounding and interpenetrating the physical body, which acts as a template to guide cellular growth and maintenance. This field is termed the ‘etheric field’ or ‘etheric double’ in esoteric literature. Every particle of the physical body is surrounded with an etheric envelope, hence the etheric field is a perfect duplicate of the dense physical body. Traditional Chinese Medicine literature discusses the acupuncture meridian system, which is a network of subtle energy vessels that provide nutritive energy to the organs of the physical body. Indigenous healing traditions have incorporated an energetic template into their understanding of living organisms for thousands of years; however, it is only relatively recently that Western science has begun to uncover evidence for a template that guides cellular growth.
For some time scientists thought that genetic programming was responsible for all cellular activities, however, as Biologist Rupert Sheldrake pointed out: “To say that cells, tissues and organs simply assemble themselves automatically is like saying that if all the materials were delivered to a building site at the right times, the building would automatically assemble itself in the right shape as a result of blind physical forces.” There are biologists who now believe that in addition to the genes there must be some sort of organizing field involved in morphogenesis.
Another fact that is leading many scientists to suspect that some sort of organizing field is associated with living organisms is that they contravene the second law of thermodynamics. Most processes in the physical universe are believed to head toward increasing positive entropy, that is, given time they become less ordered. However, as discussed by Richard Gerber: “the unique exception to this thermodynamic rule is the behavior of biological systems. Living organisms utilize energy to create increasing levels of order within their physiological systems. However, when this self-organizing energy or life-force leaves the system (i.e. the body dies), then its component parts return to dust and disorder”.
Evidence for Energy Fields in Living Organisms
In the first half of last century, Dr. Harold Burr explored the voltage fields around living organisms. In his research Burr discovered that there is an electrical axis in unfertilized salamander eggs that corresponds with the orientation of the brain and central nervous system in the adult. He also found that the electrical field surrounding plant seedlings took the shape of the adult plant. Even when part of the physical plant was cut away, the electrical field surrounding the plant remained whole! Burr’s findings led him to propose that this field is involved in guiding growing cells in the embryo and possibly instructs stem cells in how to specialize.
Research by orthopedic surgeon Robert Becker has revealed fascinating information about how electrical currents within the nervous system mediate tissue repair and regeneration. Becker found that frogs, which cannot regenerate new limbs, had a positive electrical potential across an amputated arm that gradually drifted to zero as the stump healed over, whereas salamanders, which can regenerate new limbs, had an initial positive electrical potential but it reversed to a negative potential which gradually drifted to zero as the salamander regrew a new limb. When Becker artificially applied a negative potential to the site of the frog’s amputated limb, he found that the frog grew a new limb. Therefore, fields seem to play a role in tissue regeneration.
Physiologist Valerie Hunt discovered that the baseline electrical activity found in recordings of physiological activity, such as an EMG, was actually the human aura. This baseline activity had previously been thought to be noise within the electrical equipment or in the case of EMGs, a rough indicator of muscle tension, and so it was just ignored. However, Hunt discovered that this electrical activity corresponded with a previously undiscovered bioenergy that was smaller in amplitude, but higher in frequency than the electrical frequencies from the muscle, brain, and heart. As discussed by Dr Hunt in her book Infinite Mind, “From approximately 600 hours of recording under many circumstances, we discovered that each person has a unique, predictable and recurring field”. Hunt spent more than 25 years researching the human energy field, and what was particularly significant was that she discovered physiological changes could be measured in the field first.
Incorporating Subtle Energies into Healthcare
There is a growing body of research into subtle energies that demonstrate there is a subtle energy field that guides cellular growth and physical pathologies can be detected in this subtle energy field, even prior to manifestation in the physical body. Therefore, if a multidimensional anatomy approach to medicine was adopted it would involve rebalancing the subtle energy fields which regulate cellular physiology. This type of approach would be one way to move from a medical system that emphasizes ‘no symptoms’, to a wellness model of healthcare. Not only would it provide a way to identify impending pathologies, it would provide people with an opportunity to resolve health issues prior to their physical manifestation. It would also provide non-invasive treatment without detrimental side effects.
