Various Experiments
Studies that demonstrate that energetic healing and telepathy are real phenomena

In the following it will be addressed two phenomena that they must be taken in consideration when we look for a complete description of the mind, those phenomena are telepathy and energetic healing, here the same basic mechanisms (the target's and sender's environmental electromagnetic fields) may be in play, but this section is not to try to concrete this mechanism but to view the diversity of results and outcomes as a general scientific support for the existence of those phenomena. ...

The main objective of this website is to add scientific basis for the view of the mind as a field, in concrete an electromagnetic field, this is an intuitive outcome derived from the sensation that every think is an action and from the real facts that electromagnetic fields and photons are the sources of material changes and the special characteristics and widespread use of these fields by the biological entities in a multilayered (multifrequency) form.

The website editor has had along his live, in parallel, not hundred but thousand of psy experiences (in concrete of telepathy and energetic healing kind), that needs to accommodate in a theory of electromagnetic mind if the goal is a complete view of consciousness that include all factors including those that in principle can sound rare but that are, for this author, an everyday reality.

For this reason there is, along with this section, another section [1] where experiments with some kind of measures of the electromagnetic fields, that are at play when meditators/healers are achieving their objectives, are done, and where it can be seen that environmental configuration of these fields, that are somewhat altered by those intentions, have a main role. Interesting, are in this sense, experiments by Persinger et al. where similar environmental electromagnetic fields configuration in two distant points make them more “entangled” and the response to a stimulus in one target is partially replicated in the distant one (see section [1]).

Using a bit of abstraction in this paragraph; for the editor of this website, imagination is the key role (and the powerful tool) that causes than target electromagnetic environment to be reflected in the sender one, making them somewhat entangled. Anyways speaking of personal experience and derived personal philosophy I must add that I believe that we are part of a bigger consciousness as cells are part of bodies and that the earth (and its electromagnetic environment) is my first candidate for that upper scale entity, which may also pertain to other bigger entities (but it's a supposition) but that for me is true that at least this upper scale entity exists due to experiences in which information of which I am ignorant has a central role among others.

The experiments presented in this section, on the other hand, do not have any type of electromagnetic measurement, but are included to strengthen the scientific evidence of these psy effects in combination with the aforementioned section's experiments. It must be said also that here we are going to speak about various apparently different phenomenons under study but that for the author the previously mentioned ‘mechanism’ must be involved to some extent in all of them:

- Telepathic phenomenons and mind-matter interaction (usually with a random number generator) at distances where in principle no direct electromagnetic communication is possible.
- Healing by intention, using biofield therapies, but at distances so large that again in principle no direct electromagnetic communication is possible.
- Healing by intention, using biofield therapies, where practitioner and target are separated only by some centimeters. In this case it's possible that some direct electromagnetic communication occur but in any case of very low intensity that must imply some kind of sensitivity to nonthermal intensities, something that in this web is widely demonstrated that exists in the two sections of applied fields [2][3].

As in the rest of this website although experiments, some of them very good, also were done in the previous decade and earlier, only experiments done in the present decade will be treated (especially in this introductory text, although in the lists may be some previous studies also) because it's supposed that with the new techniques and experience in protocol development shortcomings that previous studies have been able to have are resolved, and because probably it's the new technology what is sensitive enough to approach the core of the issue/question.

Interacting Minds

Telepathy experiments are part of a very interesting research field, a number of experiment have found some kind of information transfer between brains of sender(s) and receiver(s). In a 2017 thesis [4], apart from an interesting review of the variables that are probably influencing the outcome of this kind of studies, in it's experimental procedure, where visual stimulus information is tried to send, it was found that:

" ...while few group differences were found, far more participants than expected by chance produced extreme scores (scores of 4 or 12 hits out of 16 trials). By a conservative estimate of binomial probability, the odds that our data set shows such a distribution skewed away from the center and towards high and low scores are calculated at p < .002. Only female receivers were run on five of the six data collection sessions, and all extreme scores observed happened on these sessions. The odds that this occurred strictly due to chance are calculated at p = .0003."

Also some kind of telepathic information transmission of a visual stimulus is found in recent years [5][6][7]. In [8] some of the pairs used as test subjects (separated 190 km) revealed good level of coincidence using a procedure to detect the sequences of silence and signal between the EEG activity of the two subjects. This publication has successfully overcome the objections that have been put by one of the reviewers, in another independent peer-review publication [9] previous publication was revised with the conclusion that:

" Reanalysis of those data confirmed the presence of a time-synchronous, statistically significant correlation in brain electrical activity of these distant ‘sender-receiver’ pairs."

It can be interesting to mention here some experiments pertaining to other section, like the experiments of Persinger at al. [10][11a][11b] where interaction between distant minds is reached using identical electromagnetic environmental condition to both subjects. Or the detection of specific biophotonic activities while doing mental interactions at distance by Tressoldi et al. [12][13].

Some clues in favor of a telepathic inter-species connection was found in [14].

And not only the influences can be detected between 'in vivo' brains; In [15] a laboratory tests using a healer concentrating on neuronal cultures shows remarkable shifts of the metabolic lines (both in resonant frequency with a shift to 30Hz and motional resistance characteristics with a shift of 12 ohms) of cultured neurons. It is very interesting in this paper the author's mention that previous experiments using neurons cultured in vitro have shown that them finally organize themselves in a neural network that oscillates synchronously at a specific frequency, a frequency which corresponds to the delta brain rhythm.

One of the another biological parameter that is measured in various experiments to test if any kind of information is passes between subjects it's the heart rate variability (HRV), in an experimental setup designed to detect two kind of alleged psy potentialities: precognition and information transfer (in this case the amplification of the precognition derived effects) the outcome confirm these two hypothesis (although precognition is interesting, and have a number of studies that confirm this phenomena, is not going to be treated in this website for the moment); the premonition effect on the HRV are amplified in the test subjects co-participant pairs [16].

" In sum, the study's results corroborate the Bradley et al study's finding that electrophysiological measures can detect nonlocal intuition in repeat entrepreneurs. This result is notable because it constitutes cross-corroboration in a different, non-Western cultural context—namely, repeat entrepreneurs in Iran. In addition, the results for co-participant pairs offer new evidence on the amplification of the nonlocal intuition signal by socio-psychophysiological fields."

In relation to this, in a study by the HeartMath institute [17] it has been found that subjects in a small social group have a subtle yet persistent influence on each other's heart rhythms, and when the group oriented to an optimal heart rate variability their members have more easily to reach this condition although there are inexperienced mediators.

Another research field is related to dreams and their possible ability to acquire information about remote subjects/situations, for example in [18] it is shown that young, healthy adults are capable of dreaming details about the personal problems of an unknown individual simply by examining a picture of the target and then planning to dream about that individual’s problems.

While investigating psy, some authors focus attention on healer/meditator physiological information during experimental session. For example in [19] Persinger et al. investigated if independently rated congruence of subjects’ drawings and descriptions with the content of affective pictures hidden ~50 m away were correlated with cerebral quantitative electroencephalography (QEEG) and LORTEA (Low Resolution Electromagnetic Tomography), and shows that a shift over time from left prefrontal gamma activity to right caudal hemispheric delta activity was associated with increased accuracy.

In another telepathy experiment [20] it has been found that accuracy is related to the activation of the right parahippocampal gyrus.

Mind Over Matter

Another argumentation in favor of the idea that mind or intention can influence distant objectives came from the quantum theory where one of the most accepted interpretation give to the consciousness a necessary function for the collapse of the undefined matter quantum wave. The quantum measurement problem (QMP) refers to the fact that quantum objects behave differently when they are observed than when they are not observed, and although there are other interpretations of the quantum theory where consciousness do not need to collapse anything, this not changes the results obtained in quantum sensitive devices when mind affects them.

For example in [21], in an extensive experiment series where 137 people participate in 250 test sessions and 250 control sessions, a double-slit optical system was used to test the possible role of consciousness in the collapse of the quantum wavefunction, with results indicating that consciousness may be related to the formation of physical reality.

As explained in [22]:

" In these experiments, each photon arriving at an interference pattern minimum (i.e., a fringe “trough” as opposed to a “peak”) was counted while test participants were asked to concentrate their attention on the double-slit, or to relax and withdraw their attention (Figure 1). Based on this design we predicted that during the concentration phase the count rates at the troughs should increase as compared to the count rates during the relax phase. That is, if observation in fact reduces wave-like interference, then the destructive interference that prevented photons from arising at a trough should dissipate, and that in turn should allow more photons to arrive."

For the authors...

" If the mind acts akin to a weak physical detector, then during attention-toward periods the interference pattern should show more particle-like behavior than during attention-away periods."

And results confirm these suppositions. More confirmatory experiments were done subsequently [23] some of them with hundred of participants and positive results, and where it is showed also that distance between participants and the optical system, ranging from 1 km to 18,000 km, shows no correlation with experimental effect size. And, more recently, a study done at the University of São Paulo partially confirm these findings [24], here the participants sitting 3m apart from the double slit apparatus alternated between intending the increase of the amount of light diffracted through a specific single slit and relaxing any intention effort, the collected data shows a statistically significant difference between the measurements performed in the intention versus the relax conditions.

As the double-slit apparatus various kind of random number generators were used in various experiments to test if mind can influence matter in some direction. In this sense it's necessary to mention here (although the papers that will be mentioned now are in the section with the experiments where EM measured are done [1]) the experiments done at Laurentian University [25][26], in a thesis by Joseph M. Caswell [27] various experiments are done to test what parameters are influencing the mind-matter interactions:

" The following series of experiments was conducted in order to identify potential physical factors which might play a role in the consciousness-correlated effects on a random event generator device. Transcerebral application of a specific physiologically-patterned electromagnetic field was found to enhance the occurrence of this consciousness-mediated interaction. Furthermore, immersing the test area in electromagnetic ‘noise’ appears to interfere with the apparent effects of intention. Subsequent analyses were conducted in order to examine the potential contributions of gravitational sources on this phenomenon. Cerebral biophoton emission was also examined which determined that biophotons are related to the output of a proximal random event generator within both time and frequency domains. This initial series of experiments revealed a seemingly integral temporal component in this form of experiment which occurs at approximately 2 minutes into the test phase. Finally, space weather factors were examined for potential associations with the random event generator phenomenon which revealed a number of significant relationships that may contribute to this process."

Related to that it must be taken in consideration that when biophotonic emission occurs some studies suggest that subject's near electromagnetic field intensity (in concrete the magnetic field intensity) shift downward [21], that is, there is a specific EM environmental field, which may be by means of which distant influence is successful if we take into account the experiments carried out in this sense [11][29][30][31] (where no direct EM influence is possible).

A mental influence 190 km away from target RNG is alleged in [32], meanwhile other experiments take in consideration the possible influence of groups activity on these sensors [33], moreover there is a veteran, with various years working on, line of research that is showing that random number generators are influenced at a global scale, with derivations on the data that correspond with concrete moments (when a catastrophic notice become known to the public for example), more scientifically expressed this experiment demonstrate that periods of collective attention or emotion in widely distributed populations correlate with deviations from expectation in a global network of physical RNGs[34][35][36].

Biofield / Therapeutic Intention

Before beginning with the therapeutic approaches of the biofield used for healing purposes, channeling energy from the biofield through thought intention, which is what we are talking about here, it will be interesting to underline another kind of experiments in a halfway between the mind-matter interaction experiments and healing energy experiments, like those that interact with biological targets but that are 'in vitro' samples in their pertinent receptacles.

In this direction a vast number of experiments are done by M. Trivedi et al. whom uses biofield energy, defined as focus targeted mental energy, to alter targets in various ways and that are publishing from a while now; targets includes vegetables [37][38], bacterias [39], viruses [40] or chemical compounds [41][42] among others.

Water per se, as is a main component of the biological system is an interesting target of the biofield treatment to study, some indications that internal structure of water is changed, obtained through the measure of the infrared spectra are described in [43], moreover in a more recent study [44] water samples ph was measured during experimental period showing alterations in the form of an increase followed by shifts in the tendency. But in this case not only water as the target was measured but the target's environmental magnetism was measured also and found to be increased during intentional mental energy projection from the senders (that are away from the laboratory), also the light-scattering properties around the experimental spot was measured and they found a higher frequency of spectral changes with an increase in intensity during critical moments on the experimental days, all this, very especially the changes in the magnetic field strength, are directly linked to the previously mentioned possible mechanism that would use changes in environmental magnetic fields to cause effects non-locally, see section [1].

In [45] the presence or absence of a meditator is tested measuring gases concentrations emitted from cucumber slices with which they have no physical contact but are in the same room. The result shows that it's a replicable method. And in [46] more intentional mental influence has been found, here in both trials the group of seedlings that had undergone mental treatment achieved significantly greater length than the group of untreated seedlings. Concretely on the seventh day the test seedlings were 26% longer (i.e. 126% as long as) than the control seedlings (100%) (p<0.01) while effect strength was in the medium range at the level of seedlings and in the high range at the level of germination pots.

Some more 'in vitro' biological targets will be show in the next lines but we will try to give way to the more extended experimental studies that use somewhat established healing energy techniques as therapeutic tool on 'in vivo' subjects, mostly humans. This in turn contributes to increase the body of scientific evidence of the existence of the phenomena hitherto referred.

In this sense it can be said that biofield therapies are approaches that harness energy fields to influence the human body. These therapies encompass Reiki, Qigong, Therapeutic Touch, Johrei and Spiritist "passe", among others.

Healing Touch (HT) uses gentle hand movements on or near the body, to clear and balance human energy fields. In [47] using HT the intervention group had increased activation in all brainwaves patterns also there was a statistically significant difference (p = .03) in the decrease in anxiety of the intervention group as compared to the control group, with a CI of 95%.

In [48] Those in the HT group showed significant decreases in the scores for pain, stress, and fatigue for participants, parents, and caregivers. Furthermore, parents' perception of their children's pain decreased significantly for the HT group when compared with the group receiving reading/play activity. In a case study with a patient with Parkinson's [49] the effects of Healing Touch were found in terms of palliation of muscle contracture, progress of psychological relaxation, and improvement of insomnia.

A number of experiments have been done using Reiki as technique to biofield intentional sending, in [50] is used to alter the response of cells to direct radiation and the bystander signal mechanisms (bystander effects are per se very interesting phenomena where endogenous electromagnetic fields of targets cause alterations in near target subjects that, in principle, they were not in the focus of the experimental design).

A more therapeutically oriented Reiki was also used as an experimental protocol to reduce pain in different patients. For example in [51] Reiki was used, with positive outcomes on pain, anxiety, and hemodynamic parameters on postoperative days 1 and 2 in patients who had undergone cesarean delivery.

In an interesting study [52], because they also use sham Reiki treatment as control, it is shown that there was a significant difference between the Reiki and sham Reiki groups in the mean scores of pain sensory quality in the leg.

" The findings are in line with many laboratory and clinical studies that highlight the impact of Reiki on pain management. The findings of various studies indicate Reiki decreases pain in acute coronary syndrome , oral surgery and fibromyalgia."

Other technique as mentioned above is the Spiritist “passe”; in [53] interesting results inhibiting bacterial growth have reached while in [54] this technique have show to cause more reduced anxiety in target volunteers compared to sham treatment.

On the other hand Yi Ren Medical Qigong was associated with trends in weight loss and improvement of insulin resistance in people with type 2 diabetes mellitus [55].

" The results on the beneficial effects of YRMQ in diabetes are consistent with the studies of Miller et al. and Liu et al. of Qigong in patients with impaired glucose tolerance not on diabetes medication."

The list of techniques that can be used as biofield therapy is extensive, and maybe the choose, at least in some cases, between some technique or another have not repercussion on the experimental outcome, in the future it will be ok if some studies compare different techniques stripped of their mystical background to figure out which techniques are best for one case or another.

Another biofield technique named “Okada purifying therapy” was used in a study where individuals with sickle cell disease (SCD) are used as target, the experiment detected very significant improvements in them [56] (although it must be said that the protocol used in this case was open label and nonrandomized); the experimental group showed a significant improvement in its blood data, including hemoglobin, total bilirubin, alanine aminotransferase, creatinine, and white blood cell count. Also SCD-related episodes, such as painful crises, blood transfusions, and hospitalizations, decreased more significantly than for the control group, and finally the follow-up survey revealed that those who continued using the biofield therapy regularly had remained in better condition for approximately 3y after the intervention period than those who did not.

On the other hand, from the results in [57] it can be concluded that the target of intentional healing energy have some differences in the EEG of the cerebral activity compared to controls.

" In line with predictions, recipients of IRECA [biofield therapy] showed enhanced left-anterior activation of the cerebral cortex relative to placebo and no-treatment controls (as indicated by significantly higher and significantly positive AAI [Alpha Asymmetry Index] scores) during the first 100 seconds of treatment, and they reported greater overall reduction in state anxiety relative to baseline measures."

Finally, intentional distant therapy was investigated in a double-blind randomized study [58] where it can be seen that intentional projection by healer caused patients took less pain medication and had less pain post-ops following foot and ankle surgeries.

Cancer As Target

Cancer or at least consequences of cancer (like pain, depression, etc) have also been subject of biofield therapies.

In [59], a randomized placebo controlled trial is done, where the biofield treatment try to and is success in reduce fatigue, depression, pro-inflammatory cytokines and cortisol. So results show differential outcome profile for breast cancer survivor who received healing sessions compared to those who received mock healing.

In [60], meanwhile, this effect on cortisol is also confirmed in independent experiment using mice with breast cancer tumor cells, concluding that:

" Through this research we were able to prove that mice injected with breast cancer cells and then treated with bioenergy demonstrated decreased levels of cortisol. Though the statistical significance for the first study was not as strong as the second, in both studies the cortisol levels decreased. These results would support earlier studies reporting the effectiveness of bioenergy on cortisol levels, stress, and immune function."

As initially mentioned there are some clues that biofield (or bioenergetic) treatment can be used not only as palliative therapy but to treat cancer itself, for example in [61] a cancer cell line on culture is used as target, and biofield treatment is capable to decrease parameters like proliferation, mineralization, and mRNA expression of several bone matrix proteins compared to controls. Meanwhile in [62] using mice with injected carcinoma cells some positive results are also obtained:

" No significant differences were found in body weight gain or tumor size. Metastasis was significantly reduced in the TT (Therapeutic Touch)-treated mice compared to mock-treated mice. Cancer significantly elevated eleven cytokines. TT significantly reduced IL-1-a, MIG, IL-1b, and MIP-2 to control/vehicle levels. FACS demonstrated that TT significantly reduced specific splenic lymphocyte subsets and macrophages were significantly elevated with cancer. Human biofield therapy had no significant effect on primary tumor but produced significant effects on metastasis and immune responses in a mouse breast cancer model."

References:

Very related sections:

Nonlocaity & Fields
Various Experiments