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George asks:
Question: What language would you use to describe to someone what a “biofield” is and how you work with it, if they weren’t well-versed in the topic (or even a little wary or dismissive about these things)?
(Also a great discussion of direct / indirect magick in that thread, worth reading from the start.)
To answer, I’ll imagine a potential client, curious but skeptical, is asking this. I’d start with case studies:
“Before explaining the biofield, let me explain why I care about it, why I work with it…” And then whatever case studies matter most, simply describing that person’s condition before the healing session and after.
Note: I like to let people draw their own conclusions on whether the results were from healing energy or placebo or coincidence. That way they don’t feel pressured. Also, it lets me avoid claiming more than I actually know, and also avoid legal issues with saying that a healing technique had specific medical results.
Why start with healing results? Because you can’t convince someone of the biofield by describing it. You need to start with the experimental evidence. You also want to share the impact, why it’s worthwhile to study and use this. For us, the experimental evidence and the impact are both our healing results.
(If they’re more skeptical, I’ll discuss peer-reviewed journal articles, particularly the recent studies done on cell cultures. It won’t convince an unreasonable skeptic, but if they want to believe and just need to know they’re not foolish for believing, journal articles can be great.)
Once they’re on board with this healing technique being awesome, I’d explain the biofield:
“The short answer is, no one really knows what the biofield is. It’s our current best explanation for how this phenomenon works. Our current thinking is, there’s there’s a field of energy around living tissue, probably emitted by the cells. By influencing the energy, we can affect the cells. Now, is this literally true, or is it just an explanation that happens to lead to useful healing techniques? I can’t say. But it’s our current best model.
“My current hypothesis is that the energy inhibits or promotes cellular processes, and by picking the right energy we can target the right cellular process. Healing techniques based on that model seem to work well. Is that literally true? Again, no one knows. At some point I’d like to do cell culture studies so we can advance our understanding further.”
The point is to be really honest about what we know and what we don’t, what we believe and why we believe it.
I continue that tone as we talk about their healing session, setting expectations that the first technique rarely works and that we’ll need to debug it. And clients tell me how other healers overpromise and underdeliver, and that they trust me more for admitting the limits of our knowledge and our current healing research.
If you liked this post, consider visiting my current blog at mikesententia.com.Tags: Aura, ExplainingMagick, Healing, ReadersQuestions
That’s a nice, well balanced, open and sincere approach. And I think that’s the only way: knowing where are own understanding begins, and stops, and letting other people be the judge of whether it’s something they want involve themselves with.
For demonstrating that there’s “something in it”, I tend to recommend an exercise to try out on their own, and then can judge the results for themselves. After that, they can dismiss them, embrace them, certainly remain healthily skeptical, but hopefully: actually healthy.