Magick of Thought

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What will it take to build biofield healing into a trusted, reliable science?

After a decade or so of published research, it appears that current healing methods can reduce pain for 24-48 hours. Not all studies agree, and this hasn’t been subjected to double-blind testing, but let’s ignore that for now. My question today is: Is that enough?

Is it enough to reduce pain for a day? Clearly, that’s a great result. It’s what Tylenol does, and we’re all better off for it. If that were a pill, we’d already be using it. But is that enough to get the medical community and the public on board for biofield healing?

I don’t think it is. And I’m reminded of something a dance teacher once said about competitions:

When I got serious, I stopped aiming to be the best competitor out there. I aimed to be so good, the judges would look bad if they put anyone else in first place.

That’s what it’ll take. Healing techniques so effective, people will look bad if they dismiss them.

That might be a verifiable-under-controlled-conditions healing technique for people with cancer, multiple sclerosis, or drug-resistant infections. If someone you love had that condition, you wouldn’t care that biofield healing sounds woo, you’d want it.

Or a technique to create obvious, fast numbness or sensations. Not just a reduction in pain, but novocain-level numbness in minutes. Could anyone deny the effectiveness after experiencing that? (They could, but they would look bad doing it, which is the point.)

But… We can’t do any of that yet. So where does this get us?

It can guide our work. Doing those things isn’t a matter of being slightly better, it’s a matter of being 10x or 100x better. It’s not a matter of practicing more hours or channeling more energy, it’s a matter of understanding how the biofield works and engineering new techniques. And that can guide our work, focusing us on exploration rather than repetition, on developing new techniques rather than performing already-known healing techniques.

This is what’s on my mind as I write and plan studies for Healing Lab.

(Hat tip to Skeptics vs Skepticism on Augoeides. This is my response to that, too.)

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Tags: Science

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 5th, 2015 at 8:04 PM and is filed under Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.