The Emotional Biofield

All molecules in the body are surrounded by tiny electromagnetic fields. These fields combine into a human biofield that fills and surrounds the body, in the same way the small fields around iron molecules combine to form the larger magnetic field that passes through and around a magnet. The biofield is at the low end (zero frequency or Direct Current end) of the electromagnetic spectrum. The biofield has polarity the same as the polarities in a battery or a metal magnet. Emotions appear to have their origin in the biofield, hence the term "Emotional Biofield." Beyond that, changes in the biofield cause changes in emotion.

There is consensus among practitioners that the biofield, which permeates the physical body, also extends outward from the body for several inches. Therefore, no real difference is seen between placing the hands directly upon the body (either by direct skin contact or through clothing) or in close proximity to the body. In either case the practitioner's biofield comes into confluence with the recipient's biofield. There are, however, advantages and disadvantages between clinical application of the two approaches.*

Extension of the external portion of the biofield is variable, being dependent on the person's emotional state and state of health. The external portion, sometimes called the "aura", is tactilely detectable and is thought to be less dense than the portion permeating the physical body.

"Until 1977 I was an unshakable disbeliever in 'subtle energy' and disdained the vague, rambling 'explanations' associated with it. But that was to change. In August of that year I attended the Second International Healing Arts Conference in Ward, Colorado, intending to learn all the latest physical bodywork theories and techniques from the 200 or so presenters. On the third day I joined a workshop titled "Healing with the Subtle Bodies" though I had no clue as to what subtle bodies were. To my utter disdain, I noticed a chart of the charkas at the front of the class. Before I could dredge up enough courage to leave, the teacher instructed us to face the nearest person, raise our hands with the palms near our partner's without touching and "Send energy from your right palm to your partner's left palm." With considerable disgust, I did - and was shocked to feel something between my right hand and my partner's left. I was thunderstruck - I didn't believe in "energies" but I couldn't deny what I felt! Before I could sort myself out enough to speak, we were told, "Now try to send the energy from your left hands." With a slight mental effort, whatever I had been feeling in my right hand was now in my left, magnified ten-fold! Before I could speak a word my partner exclaimed, "My that's a lot of energy coming from your left hand! " With that independent validation of the phenomenon, I was forced to accept that the biofield existed. It was clear the biofield was not formed by my mind because it was there before I believed it to be. The unbidden thought flashed through me, "Now I know why I came into this life - it's to bring this out of the paranormal into physics." For me 'science' had begun already; the obvious polarity between my hands suggested that I was dealing with a field in physics.

Three days later, I joined a class in 'healing' where we were asked to choose a partner, scan his or her body to find the hot and cold areas and apply the 'energy' from our hands so as to balance our partner's body temperature. A middle-aged woman who appeared depressed and forlorn approached and asked to partner with me adding, "I don't have very much energy so maybe you could give me some and then I could give you some back." Less than thrilled, I agreed. She reclined and I scanned her body with the palm of my hand to discover that her abdomen was hot and her thighs cold, especially the right. I remarked on the distinct line separating hot from cold at her groin and she responded, "There is a sharp pain along that line." Somehow that seemed reasonable. With that I placed my sending hand on her abdomen and my receiving on her thigh and unleashed a chain of completely unanticipated reactions. The hair on my arms began to rise, my arms got hot, she began sobbing and her abdomen began contracting.

Everything intensified. Then I realized that the contractions appeared to be birth contractions. I said nothing because it was clear she was not giving birth. Eventually everything subsided. She sat up and said, "I feel as if I just gave birth to myself," a completely illogical yet profound statement, especially since the contractions had seemed like birth contractions to me. I saw her every day for the next few days and she always remarked, somewhat illogically, "I don't know what happened but the world is different." She left the conference and I thought I would never see her again.

Six weeks later I saw her at a Halloween party. She strode up to me, wearing a vivid red dress with a large black widow spider enclosing her right breast, and exclaimed, "I still don't know what you did to me back then, but I'm different!" This was resoundingly seconded by several of her friends. After a bit I asked about the spider. She replied, more nonchalantly that I would have thought possible, "Oh, I had a mastectomy six months ago." Somehow I had released her mastectomy trauma and assisted in recovering her sense of self. With that I began a two-fold study of the biofield; a study of its physics and a study of its relation to emotion.

It took nearly a year to confirm that when I (or others) placed my hands (or theirs) in polarized paired positions along the legs and sides of the torso so that the flow of qi between my hands matched the pattern of movement shown in the torso below, and held them in place until I felt the qi from my sending hand enter my accepting hand, and continued this in steps around the torso, that the recipient would report feeling relaxed, energized, and/or refreshed. I found that if I followed the same pattern but with my hands reversed, the person would report feeling anxious, tense, uncomfortable, and, if I did it long enough - nauseous. From this I was able to deduce the normal flow of the bioflux, or Ren Qi, through the torso, legs and arms.

I also became aware that the flow did not proceed instantly from my sending hand to my accepting hand. It could take up to several minutes and was dependent on several factors, the distance between my hands and the emotional state of the recipient were the most obvious. The recipients often reported, "Feeling the flow go through," or reported the reduction of pain at the same time I felt the connection.

It took another year or two to discover that if my sending hand was behind the heart and my accepting hand on the front, emotions of grief, joy and love often be lifted into awareness. But if I reversed the placement of my hands the emotion did not release. This held true for the other emotional regions in the torso.

By then I was caught up in unraveling the mysteries of how emotion - which I believed to be occurring in the biofield - impacted the physical body the way it does. Few were interested in hearing about physics anyway. I began developing methods that resulted in specific treatments for a range of disorders resulting from the effects of bodily-retained emotions. These were refined until we now have SHEN Therapy procedures that challenge standard medical treatments for several hard to treat disorders. Among these are Panic Disorder, Migraine, Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy refractive to surgical nerve blocks and virtually all cases of Chronic Pain with insufficient organic explanation.

During this period I began a serious investigation into the history of biofield therapeutics; I had started my exploration tabula rasa - I knew nothing of what others had done before me; I soon found there many others has preceded me along the same track of physics. It was somewhat embarrassing, but confirming and satisfying all the same.

A basic necessity of any science is that its terminology be unambiguous; the term energy and its derivatives fail on several counts:

Energy is in confusion with previously established meanings of heat energy (caloric, Btu) and of physiological (bodily) energy.
Energy Field is meaningless since all fields in physics possess energy.
Subtle Energy denies its true potential; when the physics of the biofield are utilized in developing treatments it is not subtle at all.
None of the above terms even remotely suggest what the field is, or is involved with.
The continuing popular use of Energy to explain every new therapy whose mechanism of action is unclear, or has not yet been explained, has stripped the term of the ability to describe the biofield in any useful way. To rectify the need, The Editorial Review Board of the NIH report, "Alternative Medicine: Expanding Medical Horizons," (GPO 1992) defined 'Biofield' and established it as the proper term; the term was adopted by the OAM and continues as the NIH term of choice.

BIOFIELD:

a fluxive, massless medium with the distinctive property of being bioeffective, or having effect on biological material. The biofield penetrates and extends outward from the physical body a finite distance. The term AURA is commonly used to denote the portion that is external to the physical body.
The operative mechanism in healing modalities using proximate touch.