disenchantment

[percival]

I find that I am severely disenchanted with New Age and theories of Energy Medicine. I've two classics of the field out from the library, Donna Eden's Energy Medicine and Richard Gerber's Vibrational Medicine - and yet I can't bring myself to read them. It's strange - a couple of months ago I would have devoured those books. I seem to become more literal-minded and sciency, more down-to-earth. I don't doubt that energy medicine works, because I've felt it work. It's just that I don't believe in the pseudo-science that is marshalled to explain it. For example, what put me off Gerber's book was the introduction, where he explicitly aligned Vibrational Medicine with Einsteinian and Quantum physics. That jarred with me.


Einsteinian and Quantum physics may be modern, but they're as yet irreconciled. Physicists would love to have a Theory of Everything, but even though there are candidates (string theory and loop theory), there's no universally agreed on link yet. It's true that Einstein showed the relation between energy and matter, and Quantum physics show that the state of a particle depends on the mode it's observed in. But crucially, Einstein's theory explains the big world, whereas Quantum physics explains what happens in worlds that are beyond microscropically small. For a nice explanation of this difference, see Michael Shermer's column in the current issue of Scientific American. How that relates to a person's energy, soul, transmitting energy from person to person is still absolutely unclear. And the very last people to help clarify it are New age gurus who serve up half-digested popular science as explanations. True, Michael Shermer, being the arch-skeptic he is, is bound to find something to criticise with energy work. However, I think it's salutary to have people like him around to point out the holes in your argument, and to advance the suggestion that the emperor could do at least with some underwear.

It's all very well if you're a quantum physicist assuring me that the tools of your trade can be used to explain Reiki, but I want to at least see a reference to a peer-reviewed paper where you back these claims up. What New Age books seem to be ripe with are arguments from authority. Now, in some fields, that's how knowledge has been accumulated up until now: herbalism and my own field of aromatherapy are good cases in point. There's very little aromatherapy research, and all a student can do is get as many books as possible and compare and contrast the various uses an oil is said to be good for. Then, you're left to work with your own experience. Experience is certainly valuable - I attribute a recent breakthrough largely to the hormone-balancing herbs and energy treatments I've been getting. But I like my experience backed up with experimental work. That's what attracts me so much to Structural Integration: it has a solid foundation in human anatomy, unlike aromatherapy, which is more of an art than a science.

I've yet to read James Oschman's book on Energy Medicine, and I was somewhat underwhelmed by Candace Pert's autobiography, Molecules of Emotion. I'd have preferred a book that surveys psychoneuroimmunology with a wider scope. Just the anatomy, physiology, immunology, endocrinology of the human body is fascinating enough in itself. These books are out there, and those are the works I'll turn to next - besides getting more into my medicine textbooks.

Comments

[apel.livejournal.com]

I completely agree with you. Psychic energy or whatever you want to call it exists and works but we don't know how. Those pseudo pop quantum mechanical "explanations" do nothing but put up a big barrier for people who have academic training. I always skip over them and head straight for the how-to sections.

BTW, don't read The Dancing Wu Li Masters. You'd have a fit.

[perceval.livejournal.com]

OK, I'll stay well away from it then ... that's by the guy who's now mining the Soul, Gary Zukav, right?

[wang1961.livejournal.com]

The body & mind systems are very complex, and there are plenty of ways by which we may understand how these non-traditional therapies work without dragging ideas from basically unrelated realms into arguments in favor of these therapies.

I find that those making such arguments universally have no science background; my sister in law and aunt, for example.

[perceval.livejournal.com]

As if just by saying "it's science" you could anoint something with rightness ...

[spin1978.livejournal.com]

Just to nitpick - there has been (some) reconcilation between quantum mechanics and modern gravitational physics, namely in what's known as quantum field theory, where (basically) the special theory of relativity is combined with quantum mechanics. The general theory of relativity is still being recalcitrant about unification into a single framework.

It's much like whenever I hear someone discussing "ki" or "ch'i" or "qi" in my martial arts travails or when I used to study shiatsu - I never paid it much attention.

[perceval.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the nitpick!

It's much like whenever I hear someone discussing "ki" or "ch'i" or "qi" in my martial arts travails or when I used to study shiatsu - I never paid it much attention.

Be in the moment, kill the Buddha!

[chrysantza.livejournal.com]

While I find quantum physics, etc. fascinating, I still prefer my old-fashioned explanation for "how things work" - "They work because they worked for ME and because I say so!"

Why yes, I am a Gryffindor, how did you guess?

I believe that there are things that won't be "rationally" explained, and that the universe is a big mysterious place that often works in mysterious ways and maybe accept that we won't know or explain everything.

[hilarityallen.livejournal.com]

It's just part of the whole problem of complementary medicine - bits of it work, bits of it don't. Much of it has not been systematically tested. Pseudo-scientific explanations are not at all reassuring for those of us who can think - I'd much prefer they said, 'Hey, it seems to work. We're not quite sure why. Feel free to try it; we hope it'll make you better.' After all, that's what happened with aspirin, and quinine, and St John's Wort. And later on, of course, we found out why they worked.