Psishaman Parapsychology

The power of mind over biology is a mystery that science has just begun to understand, but healers from the the Eastern world did not wait for science to break the mind-body code. Elaborate systems of curing and preventing disease have been developed by trial and error, and applied by faith in an invisible energy called “qi.”

It was almost like magic.

When a pregnant April Henry of Newmarket learned her baby was breech at 37 weeks, she decided to try it — a small incense cone of mugwort set alight and burned hot and close to the nail of her right pinky toe.

Netta Hart, the Stratham acupuncturist administering the moxibustion — so named for the herb moxa, or mugwort — told April that the energy was blocked in her pelvis.

“She said, if we can open up that channel it will allow the baby to move,” says Henry.
It sounded a little weird but as a labor and delivery nurse preparing to give birth to her second child she wanted to avoid a difficult breech delivery or C-section.

When you hear a story like this, you can usually guess the ending: It worked.
Her son was born in a normal delivery a few weeks later, healthy and no worse for the mugwort Henry says had caused him to squirm with vigor in her womb.

Breath of life

Qi (chi) is the name given to the life force or vital energy that flows through our bodies. In traditional Chinese medicine, an imbalance or disruption of it is said to lead to illness.

You can’t see qi, but you can see evidence of it, says Adam Learner, an acupuncturist and Chinese herbologist at Pinewood Healing Arts in Somersworth. The classic analogy is a sailboat.

“You can’t see the wind, but you see the manifestation of it. The wind catches the sail and pushes the boat,” says Learner.

This vital energy is called ki in the Japanese kampo system, doshas in Ayurvedic medicine and elsewhere prana, etheric energy, orgone, magnetic or homeopathic resonance, fohat, mana, odic force and biofield. The basic idea has crossed cultures, religions and millennia of time.

This energy field has defied measurement by conventional instruments and reproducible methods. Yet practitioners of energy therapies claim they can see it, feel it, work with it and use it to heal the physical body.

Some energy therapies are going mainstream. A chemotherapy patient may be offered acupuncture as a complement to standard treatment. Therapeutic touch may help a patient relax before surgery.

Hospitals in New Hampshire are linking up with centers for integrative medicine that utilize energy therapies. If the existence of an energy field is unproven, why are these treatments being offered?
Source; New Hampshire Magazine