Week Eleven: Energy Medicine and Energy Fields

Acupuncture as effective energy medicine / Human intent as it affects health (these two questions are linked for me)

How can effectiveness of any treatment be measured? My graduate work was in medical anthropology; part of our study turned the lens onto western biomedicine. Studies within this field have shown how the amount of both the patient’s and the physician’s BELIEF in the treatment at hand impacted the efficacy of the treatment. Doctors have been quoted as saying “prescribe this medication while it still works” meaning that new medications often had a kind of “beginner’s luck” while belief in the medication ran high. If physician and patient were coming from two different belief systems, treatment was often not as effective.

I tend to think of almost any treatment as a placebo. Our minds’ belief in the strengths and limitations of treatments, and of our own healing powers, I think ultimately have the greatest impact on our health.

So...is acupuncture effective? To me, the overall metaphor of Chinese medicine is truer to life than the clinical and detached belief system of western biomedicine. Therefore, right off the bat I think it must be more effective, because it is truer to what I believe as a metaphysical reality of union and interconnectedness. Treating the body as a microsystem of the planet is much more respectful than treating the body as though it were a “dumb machine.” Life IS energy, and therefore it makes sense to me to treat the body as an energy system. I do think that “buy in” is almost always essential in any treatment, however. And I think more and more people are allowing themselves to respect their bodies as part of the natural order of things.

The effectiveness of acupuncture will be difficult to study because so many variables are involved and no treatment or practitioner is essentially the same, easily reproduced in exactly the same manner. What will matter, I suppose, is whether or not people who are treated feel as if it were effective and can see/feel the results themselves. I know that I personally have had experiences with acupuncture that affected me so profoundly and deeply that it is almost hard to believe -- kind of like seeing a ghost; the amazement at realizing the universe really is as mysterious and wonderful as we might have hoped, and that we are intimately connected to it as living energy beings! Wow! I have also gathered many, many similar stories from others relating how amazed they were by the profound effectiveness of acupuncture.

Acupuncture in the TV News media tells an interesting story of where we are with it in our popular culture...



Some healing stories about the effectiveness of acupuncture and other energy-based medicine...






What conclusions can you draw from Kirlian photography?

Only that we possess electrical energy which can be photographed.