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The "Science Behind"

Article by Dr. Yasmilde - 2018

Every time I’ve mentioned having a page like this one on my website, I would get reactions of surprise. What would energy healing have to do with science? Well, chances are that more than you may think. But before I say anything about it, I should make clear that my journey as a scientist WAS NOT what lead me to spiritual growth and healing practices and so this page is not intended to ‘convert’ anyone into believing in them. This is indeed intended to open your mind to possibilities…

Personally, the more I experience healing practices, universal connectedness and energy work, the more I realize that science is just one approach to interpreting the world. Non-scientists regard Science as an infallible way of testing veracity. As a Scientist, I feel entitled to say that that idea is far from the truth. Scientific experiments are designed by humans, influenced by their human beliefs; measured by technology created by humans, for purposes limited by human imagination and interpreted by humans that most times have a pre-conceived idea of the world. Equally, Science advancement depends on the availability of resources that are assigned by humans, therefore, if a project challenges the core ways in which most people perceive reality it is likely not to get financed. Additionally, scientific results are peer-reviewed by humans in the process of deciding what to publish. You might be surprised to know that only a small fraction of discoveries get published and mostly only positive results. Due to the fact that proving a negative is almost impossible, finding out that whatever we were testing does not work the way we thought it would, makes our results very unattractive and almost unpublishable. Not to mention the barriers imposed over the years by geopolitical boundaries and iron curtains. As a result, by the time the public finds out about a scientific finding, there is always a chance that it is being reported in a biased manner by non-scientists, out of context and even outdated.

I will use one example to illustrate what I have said above:

Based on the documented history available to us today, Aristarchus of Samos, an ancient Greek astronomer and mathematician (310-230 BC), presented the first model of heliocentrism (the sun as the centre) for our universe. He was widely rejected. Eighteen centuries later, Nicolaus Copernicus (1543) published “On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres” arguing the exact same model. Although today this is considered a major event in the history of science, at the time this was very much ignored both by science and society in general except for some church opposition. About 70 years later, Galileo Galilei provided the first scientific evidence supporting heliocentrism. He was loudly opposed by other astronomers and forced by the roman inquisition to recant from his scientific conclusions. From that point on, research exploded and we expect the next three centuries debating the subject. Names like Johannes Kepler (description of elliptical orbits), Isaac Newton (universal gravitation and laws of motion), James Bradley (relative motion of the earth) and Giordano Bruno (the sun as just another star in the universe) are part of the story that is also plagued with religious opposition. So, it took us almost 22 centuries to go from the original idea to the common knowledge that the earth belongs to one of many galaxies in the universe and that it and the rest of the planets in our galaxy move around the sun. Regardless, what was already true 23 centuries ago.

It is my intention to develop some specific ideas about this subject as entries in my blog. Here then, and to get to the meat of the matter, I am picking one of my ‘energetic’ beliefs and enumerate some of the scientific evidence I think could be used to support it.

I BELIEVE I CAN CONNECT WITH AND INFLUENCE THE ENERGY FIELD OF ANY INDIVIDUAL AROUND THE WORLD, NO MATTER HOW FAR FROM ME THE INDIVIDUAL IS.

IS THERE SUCH A FIELD?

For decades, science has argued the existence of an energetic field that connects everything in the Universe, from galaxies to subatomic particles inside our cells.

  1. Michelson and Morley predicted it in 1887 but couldn’t prove it.
  2. Barrow and Tipler managed to actually measure such a field in 1987 (published on Nature 320, later a book, “The Anthropic Cosmological Principle”).
  3. Alexander Gurwitsch, a Russian biologist, published in 1907 his ‘Morphogenetic field theory”, suggesting that embryonic biological processes were regulated by an overall biological field of energy. In 1923, he first observed Biophotons, as weak electromagnetic waves produced by the human body. The discovery was neglected for decades due to about 500 failed replication attempts. Some 60 years later (~1980s), technological advancement made it possible to prove him right. Today, over 100 scientific papers (Pubmed) have been published on the matter. Biophoton physical aspects have been described, DNA has been identified as an important source (1) and it appears that this bioemission reflects (i) the left-right symmetry of the body, (ii) biological rhythms, (iii) disease, as patterns of broken symmetry and (iv) light channels in the body (2, 3). Cell-to-cell communication by Biophotons has been extensively demonstrated in plants, bacteria, immune cells, kidney cells and neurons (4, 5). The assessment of this biological energetic field has even been suggested as a non-invasive diagnostic tool (6, 7).
  4. In the meantime, quantum physics was born (~1900), research of our micro-world exploded and the Quantum Field Theory was formulated. The science behind it is extremely complex and very hard to put into lay terms (even by physicists (8, 9); hence the lack of popular knowledge about it. At its essence, this theory establishes that the most elemental component of our world is not any kind of wave or particle, but quantum energetic fields and that their excited states are what we interpret as particles. Based on that theory, the whole of the material universe (we included) is built of these fields (~18 have been described). So, we do not contain energy, we ARE energy (10).

What Quantum mechanics is demonstrating is that the whole world is a unique field of energy that includes absolutely everything, even human beings, where we are in constant vibration and communication. The concepts of separateness and material limits are being debunked by this field of science.

CAN WE INTERACT AND AFFECT THE FIELD?

This is where the evidence comes from diverse sources, from exact sciences to behavioural sciences.

  1. In 1997, Dr Nicolas Gisin, a Swiss physicist and expert in experimental and theoretical physics, made public the discovery that entangled particles (common origin) communicate with each other even when very far apart. The evidence demonstrated that the actual experience and behaviour of one would be instantaneously (faster than the speed of light) mirrored by the other one, even when it was 7 miles away (11, 12). This discovery actually proved wrong an Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen paper (1935) where they rejected this quantum theory and its ‘spooky long-distance’ predictions.
  2. Quantum mechanics describe the ‘uncertainty principle' which states that if a particle can move in several different paths, such particle can exist in all those different paths simultaneously. Also against Einstein opposition, this principle was mathematically proven by John S Bell in 1964 (Bell’s theorem) (13). But then, quantum mechanics also show that if such particle happens to be measured or observed by some mean, it adopts a definite state and its path is no longer uncertain. This has been described and proven as the ‘observer effect’ (14, 15).
  3. The existence of the ‘placebo effect’ in clinical trials (‘if you think you’re getting cured, you might get cured’) and the psycho-somatic nature (‘thought to be caused or made worse by mental factors’) of some medical disorders are facts widely accepted nowadays by western medicine.
  4. Gregg Braden in “The Divine Matrix” describes experiments done by the US Military (I haven’t been able to find any peer-reviewed report of the experiments) where emotions from a human donor (measured as electrical responses) produced immediate and identical effects on their DNA samples, even when separated by 50 miles (16). Studies performed at The Institute of HeartMath and published in 2003 (17) demonstrated that positive emotions can cause DNA to uncoil and chaotic emotions have opposite effects, even when the individual was 0.5 miles from the DNA sample.
  5. It has been shown that the adoption of power postures and attitudes, even if just for 2 minutes, induces a significant switch in our neuroendocrine hormones (higher testosterone, lower cortisol) (18).
  6. Studies have shown that mindfulness practices have a significant impact on DNA features such as telomere length (20), a feature associated not only with health unbalance, such as cancer, but with ageing as well.

So, based on all the above, it is not as farfetched for me to say that we can actually focus our intention and influence our physical bodies.

For a more comprehensive reading, I suggest the books ‘The Field” and ‘The Power of 8” by Lynne McTaggart, where she (an investigative journalist) explores hard scientific evidence supporting the idea of an interconnected universe and the power of our intentions over our reality.

For a fun and entertaining interpretation of these ideas, I definitely recommend the film ‘The Matrix’ (1999, The Wachowski Brothers). The story is based on the belief that the reality we live in is an illusion we have the power to transform. Personally, being connected to the universe feels much like being Trinity or Morpheus and even in some glorious moments, Neo, when they are in The Matrix. If you watch it, you will probably understand why sometimes, when I feel caged by my own limiting beliefs, I whisper: ‘There is no spoon…’.

References:

  1. Cell Biphys, 6(1):33, 1984
  2. Indian J Exp Biol, 41(5):440, 2003
  3. Forsch Komplementarmed Klass Nat 12(2):77, 2005
  4. Indian J Exp Biol, 41(5):440, 2003
  5. Forsch Komplementarmed Klass Nat 12(2):77, 2005
  6. Indian J Exp Biol, 41(5):440, 2003
  7. Forsch Komplementarmed Klass Nat 12(2):77, 2005
  8. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCXasr-y8Vo
  9. https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2015/08/20/qft/
  10. https://gravityandlevity.wordpress.com/2010/08/30/our-stability-is-but-balance-freeman-dyson-on-how-to-imagine-quantum-fields/
  11. http://www.nytimes.com/1997/07/22/science/far-apart-2-particles-respond-faster-than-light.html
  12. https://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/9707042.pdf
  13. https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle
  14. Nature 391:871-874, 1998
  15. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect_(physics)
  16. http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/mistic/esp_greggbraden_11.htm
  17. http://ojasjourney.org/pdf/Modulation_of_DNA.pdf
  18. Psychol Sci., 21(10):1363-8, 2010
  19. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks-_Mh1QhMc
  20. Cancer,121:476–484, 2015