From Abracadabra to Zombies
reader comments: therapeutic touch
14 Jun 2000
Your article on Therapeutic Touch shows clearly your arrogant disdain for
this healing system you appear to know little about. I have found closed
minded skeptics rarely learn anything, how can they? their minds are
closed. Case in point, a new instrument has been developed that reveals in
great detail the subtle energy field that surrounds all live human beings
and indeed all living things. I say live because those dead bodies that
were scanned had no energy field around them. If you can squeeze open your
mind a few mm and go to www.spiritnetwork.com/indexinsts.html
and look at the bottom of an article entitled Human Energy Fields you
will find an example of the changes in this field when two pairs of tt
hand are placed on the body. This experiment has been repeated many many
times in UK. If you were the tt "expert" you claim to be you
would have known about this system, it is at the leading edge of energy
healing research.
reply: I am aware of this "system" and have commented on it with disdain.
I don't expect an answer to this email, after all no-one
else will see it and if you ignore it you have nothing to lose and your
reputation and integrity, what there is of it, remain intact.
Best regards,
Chris Lovelidge
reply: I agree that I have disdain for TT and other forms of energy medicine, such as Ayurvedic medicine. I would call my disdain contemptuous, however, rather than arrogant. I do not admire people who are so open-minded that a vacuum is created whenever they speak. Case in point, your article on Human Energy Fields.
I encourage the reader to examine Lovelidge's article. In the first few sentences, we discover that Lovelidge believes that thousands of years ago in India there were special people ("sensitives") who discovered energy fields known as chakras and that a modern homeopath in England (Harry Oldfield) can measure these energies with his invention called Polycontrast Interface Photography (PIP). Mr. Oldfield is also the inventor of electrocrystal therapy, which allegedly diagnoses and heals diseases by stimulating crystals with high frequency electro-magnetic waves. His theory seems to be based on some sort of sympathetic magic, e.g., low frequencies are calming and high frequencies are stimulating. He thinks cancer is a low energy state and should be treated with high frequencies, while pain is a high energy state and should be treated with low frequencies. He claims he has proof that this electrocrystal therapy works, but his evidence seems to consist of testimonials.
Oldfield was also an early believer in the diagnostic utility of Kirlian photography, but has now moved on to the invention which Lovelidge thinks is proof that chi or spirits can be measured and that energy medicine is truly scientific. PIP uses a digital video camera and a computer to generate colorful images of people, plants, doorknobs, whatever. People like Oldfield and Lovelidge think these images reveal chakras, diseases, healing, etc. Look at the images from Oldfield or from another Oldfield follower Mark Lester or at Lovelidge's own images and you will see that they bear an uncanny resemblance to thermographic images. The images do reveal different energies, but they are electromagnetic, not chakras.
Tim Boettcher looked at Lester's images and wrote:
I examined the the photographs of Chakras ... and I noticed that the walls of the room and the chair seem to have their own energy fields, very similar to those of humans. This raises some questions:
o Does that mean that these inanimate objects are alive?
o Was the red congestion of the patient in picture one transferred to the back of the chair in picture three?
o Does the chair feel congested?
o Should we form a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Chairs?
o How come the Chakras disappear right at his underwear line?
o Would "The Congested Chairs" be a good name for a rock band?If I didn't know better I'd think they were measuring minute differences in temperature.
Apparently, Tim does not take this stuff as seriously as Mr. Lester, who, in addition to PIP, also practices "Electro-crystal therapy, Rife treatment, Bowen technique, Nutrition [??], Remedial Massage and Oxygen/Ozone Therapy."* He is quite the multi-tasker. He, like many other "alternative" scientists, is quite fond of quoting Schopenhauer: "All truth passes through 3 stages: First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." He's forgotten the fourth stage, however. "Fourth, while the rest of the world recognizes that it wasn't truth at all, pseudoscientists open a clinic or write a book based upon it."
I recently visited the Exploratorium in San Francisco and went through an exhibition called Revealing Bodies. There were several exhibits demonstrating the application of technology to understanding health and disease, but no mention was made of Mr. Oldfield's invention. There was, however, one exhibit which seems to be very similar to PIP. A video camera films visitors and projects large images on a screen. The images look very similar to those Oldfield and Lovelidge think are images of chakras. I suppose I was misled by the stupid scientists who put together the exhibition. They think the images depict different light and heat frequencies, not chakras! What a bunch of dummies!
According to Lovelidge, in PIP photos
....chakras are visible in various detail depending on the subject’s mental and physical condition. Also visible are the meridians used by acupuncturists.
The evidence for these claims seems to be intuitive.
Lovelidge seems to have an unquenchable gusto for gullibility. He seems to believe everything Oldfield claims, though Oldfield has published nothing of note in any reputable journal and is only taken seriously by people ignorant of the known laws of physics and the dynamics of various types of photography and imaging. (Lovelidge even admires Brazilians for performing exorcisms on the mentally ill!) His greatest gullibility is revealed, however, in accepting at face value Oldfield's claim that he has photographed "discarnate energy forms", i.e., ghosts, in graveyards and elsewhere. His article on Human Energy Fields concludes with the following:
I am involved with a local group who will be undertaking further research into the nature of the human energy field and one of the first experiments will be to scan an animal as it is being euthanized. We expect to see the animal’s energy field leave its body as it dies. In following on from that I leave readers with a question to ponder. If an energy field can be observed leaving a human body during its last moments of physical life- are we watching the human soul? Only more thorough and complete research will help us to answer. Watch this space.
I have no doubt that Chris and friends will indeed see what they are looking for. They'll even have the pictures to prove scientifically that animals have souls. And, if we watch this space long enough we may even see God looking back at us.
01 Dec 1997
I am sure your efforts to provide an alternative view to some ideas and
topics which seem to be silly or untrue to you will provide some
entertaining reading for people after many of the subjects you ridicule
are proven to be true to everyone's satisfaction.
I read part of your comments on Therapeutic Touch (which I believe is a specific school of hands-on healing, not a phrase which can be applied to an entire school of thought about healing) and would like to recommend to you that you do some further research on this topic. I particularly recommend the study of a particular art known as Quantum Touch. I believe its founder, Richard Gordon, can be reached at rgordon@scruznet.net.
reply: Mr. Gordon is a very interesting character. He also has a video out on how to read Tarot cards. He is a true renaissance man.
I also recommend examining the art of Shinkiko, a Japanese healing art. You can reach the Ki Science Institute, which teaches Shinkiko, at harmonyki@worldnet.att.net. I believe that either of these practices could provide for you the proof you clearly need.
reply: Shinkiko is the Japanese version of Chinese healing by manipulating ch'i.
"{Shinkiko (true ki) Energy Flow, true ki energy flow}: Allegedly the ultimate "healing art" from Japan. Shinkiko is an "intuitive medical science" founded by Masato Nakagawa, Ph.D. Somewhat similar to Qigong, it purportedly involves application of "Shin-ki" ("healing-energy"). Supposedly, Shinkiko "therapists" can tap a "limitless universal energy source." The Japanese word "shin" refers to an alleged soul-like "divine spirit." ("Kiko" means Qigong.)"[Jack Raso]
I don't think that Shinkiko will provide me with any more proof than Qi Gong does.
Or, you could wait until you get cancer, AIDS, leukemia, radiation
poisoning, a broken bone, sciatica, pneumonia, etc., before you try it
out. If you, yourself, are healed of a serious ailment, that should knock
your intellectual socks off. Remember, the healer assists, but it is the
patient who does the true healing, internally. If you can do it, anyone
can!
Mrs. Tamarleigh Lippegrenfell
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
reply: Well, I certainly agree with your last statement.
