So What is “Healing” Anyway?
Just what affects a person’s state of health? How do we participate in it? How can we enhance or make more effective, the work that we do? How does all of this relate to the ultimate questions: why am I here? How can I evolve more purposefully?
I read an amazing book by Dr. Valerie Hunt called Infinite Mind: Science of the Human Vibrations of Consciousness (1996). Dr. Hunt was a professor of physiology at UCLA from 1948 – 1981, and in the ’70’s was the head of the Kinesiology Department there. As the scientist who conducted the Rolf Study of 1972, her continued research in the area of the mind-field offers profound and powerful applications to our lives as practitioners of Structural Integration and those with whom we work (and, more to the point, to everyone’s lives in relation to everyone else). She continues to write, and is at present, the director of the Bioenergy Fields Laboratory.
What got her attention…
Dr. Hunt first became interested in Rolfing when she observed dance performances at UCLA which showed a remarkable improvement over previous performances. The dancers attributed their greater achievement to Structural Integration. It had increased their flexibility. They also discovered that they “moved better, felt freer, were more alert, and experienced higher states of consciousness…” p.11.
The Study
Dr. Hunt initiated a study involving two Rolf Practitioners, several clients, Roselyn Bruyere (an aura reader and healer), and Dr. Hunt who measured changes in vibrations with mechanical equipment. The following observations were made:
- The upward energy flow in the chakras increased during the ten sessions, and progressively changed from being small, dark in color, low in frequency and amplitude and uneven flow to being even, light in color, and higher amplitude and frequency.
- Closed or weakly operating chakras opened during the sessions.
- There was a constant interplay between the fields of the subject and that of the Rolfer. While mostly having a large blue and white corona, the Rolfer’s hands changed to violet-pink if the subject expressed pain, which was then soothed. When the subject reported higher consciousness states, the Rolfer’s hands were invariably white.
- It was observed that before the brain wave was activated, and before stimuli altered the heart rate and other body processes, the field had already responded. p.25.
Dr. Hunt postulated that a person’s primary response first takes place in his field, and not in the sensory nerves or brain. Subsequent studies set out to show that the auric field was the first communication contact between a person and the outside world. In her tests, some people did not interact well – sometimes two fields would remain absolutely separate. In other cases, one field dominated the other with one changing while the other did not – an occurrence she found common with successful healing. Sometimes both fields changed to become identical, but unlike either in the beginning. The new field was more elaborate that the former one.
Clearly, human fields do indeed interact either by being closed or open to change in vibration. Openness suggested availability to healing.
The Electromagnetic Field
The quality of the electromagnetic balance was found to play an important part in the health of the individual. It was discovered that during Santa Ana wind conditions in southern California, the strong positive ions caused the human field to become small resulting in irritability or illness. Contrarily, the field expanded when a person was in the mountains or near the sea, possibly due to the increased negative ions.
Further studies involving controlled conditions at the UCLA labs showed that the human field is nourished by a normal electromagnetic environment, positively affecting physiological processes and emotional clarity. With a critically saturated level, motor performance improved, as well as emotional well-being and advanced states of consciousness. With an electromagnetic deficit there resulted diminished capabilities and increased levels of anxiety and emotion. pp. 32-33
In addition, data recordings from separate chakras showed that if they had a similar amplitude and frequency they were coherent or synchronous. If different, they were out of sync or anti-coherent. Later studies showed the measure of anti-coherency was associated with physical and emotional dysfunction.
Conclusion
Hunt concludes: “…by manipulating the energy field we can refine and encourage coherency in all tissues and biological systems. This approach could produce results more rapidly and dramatically than could any other known medical, psychiatric, or educational approach…” p.36
This information is profoundly important for the bodyworker. Hunt has already shown that the field changes and energy flow improves in the practitioner/participant interaction. Her continued research proves a holistic healthful effect on the client. It also suggests the importance of what the healer brings to the patient.
Chaos Theory and Hands-On-Healing
Hunt goes on to talk about the relationship of chaos theory to consciousness and health. Lorenz (the butterfly effect) proved that small “perturbations” over time makes things happen that could not have happened without them. Just as chaotic systems can be altered by small disturbances, physics has shown that the introduction of energy into chaotic systems can bring them back to order. Because of the resilience of the human energy field,
“…manipulation techniques such as hands-on healing, subtle energy devices, and body therapies introducing subtle energy into the system can more effectively preserve health than those therapies using chemical or mechanical intervention.” P.56
The Field Doesn’t Age…
Hunt’s summary of the new electromagnetic model of illness and health illustrates a difference between material tissue and the human field. Where tissue ages, gets sick or diseased, repairs itself, and due to entropy eventually deteriorates and disintegrates, the human field improves with the introduction of new energy and becomes more refined. The field is affected before physiological processes, so that “regeneration comes from re-energizing the field and hence the tissue.” p.245
This leads her to investigate energy healing and its relationship to intention. In her first studies of the human aura, hands-on healers reduced symptoms and altered energy fields. The auric field changed before the senses responded. She then simultaneously recorded the auras of both healer and patient during a hands-on session. Hundreds of recordings showed:
- Initially, both fields were distinctly different in amplitude, frequency spectra, and patterning. The healer’s field was stronger, having a wider band of frequencies. It displayed a unique frequency pattern when healing. They successfully shift their field to affect various illnesses.
- At times both fields remained separate, with no interaction or change. There was no resonance. Where healing takes place, the patient’s field changes toward a complete, strong, coherent one, even becoming identical with the healer’s. At this point the healer stopped work. p.264
The Power of Intention
She discovered through her personal experiments that intention could affect another’s field. If she thought about easing pain, that’s what happened; if it was to help to surface repressed information, this happened, whether or not the person knew the intent or believed it could happen. p.93
Healers Listen Up
At this point, to reflect on her work and the work of Structural Integration, the practitioner can approach the work knowing that her energy field will affect the other’s if the other is open to it, and that the intention of the Rolfer will indeed affect the results in the client. Probably one of the most important statements that Hunt makes to healers (and this word I assume to mean anyone who places themselves at the service of another’s body for purposes of helping or improving the condition of that person) is:
“Hands-on and healing by one’s presence emphasizes the transaction between two people, each with an intent – one to become well and the other to serve as a catalyst. I believe the best healer does not attempt to heal; that belongs to the patient. But rather, the healer intends to present a positive, enlightened presence to manifest a strong, radiant, complete field to nourish and encourage the ill field to change. Ideally, the transaction should reinforce the healing response with the desire to heal oneself. This means that the patient must tap into personal strengths rather than weaknesses…The healer must provide a model of vibrant life. Who and what he or she is, is as important as his ability to ‘run energy’, select vibrational spectrums, and direct it to the ill areas. Such is a powerful charge.” p.265
And The Point Is...
This statement finally addressed the question of ultimate significance which somehow gives meaning to all the others: why am I here, and how can I evolve more purposefully? In Dr. Hunt’s terms, I must remain committed to personal growth and consciousness, and to make the changes in my “structure of knowing” that are necessary to do be of such service.
The structure of our knowing is our habitual method of arriving at what we will accept as true or real. Quite often it leaves out the imaginative, “illusionary”, intuitive energy which is not admitted to a partnership with “rational” and “critical” thinking. In the realm of “healing”, the imaginative serves to keep the doors open to possibilities that the rational mind cannot grasp.
We need to expand the understanding of what and where mind is: that it is throughout the entire body, that it extends beyond the physical visible body into the field around it, and that it interacts with the fields of others as well as the fields of energies of matter beyond to an extent which we have not yet grasped.
Hunt says that while miracles of healing have never been explained scientifically, two requisites seem essential for these miracles – the power of divine thought and its associated emotion, love. “Some persons call on God to heal them, others open themselves to love. I know these to be the same, releasing in or through the person the power to heal. In that sense we are all healers of ourselves and others. For many of us these powers are but under-developed.” p.259
Dr. Hunt passed away at age 97 in 2014.
Her research website: Valerie_Hunt_Research.
