Energy Treatment

Each of the ancient medical traditions mentions a vital, subtle energy system in the body that is crucial to health. In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), this subtle energy is called qi; in Japanese medicine, it is ki; in Tibetan medicine, it is loong, or “wind”, and in Ayurveda, it is prana. This subtle energy is said to flow through a network of invisible channels in the body known as the meridian system in acupuncture or the nadi system in yoga.

For decades researchers around the world have been interested in developing devices that may measure and treat the flow of this subtle energy, and the electro-magnetic field believed to surround the body. A range of these devices is now available and in use by complementary medicine practitioners. This chapter explores the most common ones, while also looking at some other forms of energy medicine, including radiesthesia and radionics (divining techniques using pendulums or electrical devices), magnet therapy, gem therapy, and flower essences.

Energy medicine in its oldest form consisted of divining techniques, often using a pendulum, rod, twig, or other instrument (known as dowsing), for detecting imbalances in the body and also for other purposes such as for locating water and evaluating the therapeutic properties of plants. The ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, and Chinese are all believed to have used forms of dowsing and the technique is thought to have been fashionable in 18th-century France. Dowsing was resurrected by French Jesuit priests in the 1920s, who taught it to their missionaries as a way of determining the therapeutic properties of plants in areas where no medicine was available.

The French priest Abbé (Father) Alex Bouly coined the term radiesthésie, from the Latin radius meaning a ray or beam, and the Greek aisthesis meaning a feeling or perception. This term has been translated as radiesthesia and is used to mean literally “perception of the radiation or vibration of a person or thing”.

Abbé Bouly and two other Jesuit priests, Abbé Alexis Mermet and Abbé Jean Jurion, pioneered the medical use of dowsing. They surmised that if dowsing could be used successfully for divining water, it could also be used to determine the circulation of blood and the condition of the tissues in the body. At the turn of the 20th-century in another part of the world, American doctor Albert Abrams formulated the idea that disease was caused by an imbalance of electrons (tiny sub-atomic particles) in affected tissue rather than imbalance in the cells. He believed that these electrical particles radiated a charge that could be detected outside of the body and that different electronic reactions were linked with different diseases. He developed devices for measuring these changes and called his system radionics.