1. Benor D: Spiritual Healing-Professional Supplement  This is my number one resource.  Dr. Benor does an outstanding job of summarizing virtually all studies done in this area and pointing out their strengths and weaknesses. Since most of the studies are in outstanding but hard to find journals, this is an essential book for healers and scientists alike. Vision Publications 2002

2. Scientific guidelines for Researchers:  Benor reports hundreds of clinical studies showing the efficacy of energy healing.  I am astonished at the outstanding and overlooked research in this area.  In addition, he also reports dozens and dozens of excellent studies which are flawed in crucial areas either in their research design or in the reporting.

Contrary to popular impression, these studies are easy to do, can be done on animals and plants, and are fairly easy to publish in outstanding scientific peer reviewed journals.  Follow the guidelines below, which are cookbook, protocol driven, and you can publish and contribute too!

Click here for Consort 2010 Guidelines on how to design a research project and how to properly report it. (JAMA)

3. Articles and Scientific Books on Energy Healing (Click here to go to different page on website, most of the articles can be downloaded in PDF format)

4. Quackbuster Steven Barrett MD:

An article by Steven Barrett MD on Qi Gong in which he includes it in his "quackwatch".  A nice example of selective journalism, Dr. Barrett is highly selective in his articles to reach his conclusions. (click here for his website)  Here is the link to his article Reiki is Nonsense (click here)  Why worry about Dr. Barrett's review of the literature? He is not a scientist but a self described media slut. He started as a Psychiatrist and now supports himself by exposing health care fraud. Good for him. Do your own literature reviews. Click here to see the articles you can download from this site.

    Many people are dismayed by Dr. Barrett.  I am not.  He serves an important function and is highly respected. He investigated hair analysis labs and showed many of them were fraudulent. He played an important part of exposing the fraudulent health related products mail order industry.  He is a product of the corrosive "Believer v Skeptic" debate, because "Believers" often are not critical at all, letting con artists flourish in the Alternative Health care field.

5.  Gary Schwartz: The Energy Healing Experiments  Atria Books New York (Division of Simon and Schuster) 2008.

Forward is by United States Surgeon General Richard Carmona MD, so you know this is the real deal.  Gary is an old friend of mine and an inspiration with his research and scientific approach.  Click here for chapter on what is energy healing

11) Leibovici L:  The Effects of Remote Retroactive Intercessory Prayer on Outcomes in Patients with Bloodstream Infections: Randomized Controlled Trial  British Medical Journal  2001 323: 1450-1451

 Click here for the PDF

Natasha Demikina is now a young woman who is a full time student in the Soviet Union.  At age 10, she had her appendix out. Afterwards, she is said to have "seen" surgical gauze accidentally left behind in her abdomen. She subsequently developed what she calls "medical vision".

Ray Hyman PhD and CSICOP (an organization of Skeptics) investigated her. Astonishingly, she properly identified 4 out of 6 medical conditions under their strict tests, and the one control patient who had nothing wrong.  However, this wasn't good enough for Dr. Hyman, who covered himself with scientific shame in this case and subsequently.  They declared her a fraud!  They based this on her mother claiming that Natasha was 100% accurate, an unrealistic claim.

Once again, the corrosive Skeptic v Believer debate destroyed a chance to truly understand energetic healing and viewing. The Believers say "she is 100% accurate" and the Skeptics say 5 out of 7 isn't good enough! Natasha understandably returned to the Soviet Union and declined to be further tested or scientifically studied.

Click here to read the CSICOP report which is sickening. 
Click here to read a Nobel Prize winning physicists rebuttal. Brian Josephson calls CSICOP and Hyman unethical.

.1. Emma Bragdon PhD wrote the definitive book on Spiritual Emergencies. She currently is editing an important book on Spiritism and Psychiatry in Brazil (that I wrote a chapter for!)  Her website is Foundation for Energy Therapies Click Here

2. Paul O'Connor (Remote Viewer and Energy Healer)  A powerful combo. I feel all energy healers should get training in remote viewing.  Click here for his website

.1.  Energetic healing involves opening our consciousness to the nonlocal all knowledge timeless spaceless domain (better known as "God" to the children in my near death research studies).  As such, it is a right brain, or spiritual brain activity.  It involves the suspension of judgment or analysis.
So, in turn that means:

1A:  Asking for a certain outcome involves judgment and analysis which will shift the healer out of the spiritual brain.

1B: Considering whether or not the healing is successful, helpful, useful, or bogus baloney is analysis and judgment and will shift the healer out of the right or spiritual brain state.

1C: Thinking that one is "no good at this", or thinking others are better or worse at healing again shifts the healer out of the right brain state.

1D: Concepts such as the patient has to "want" the healing, "be responsible for accepting the healing", or any similar sentiments all involve analysis which is a left brain function. Such concepts may be true, but they have no place in the healing process as they are left brained analytic functions.

2.  Considerable research has documented the best sequence of energetic healing involves: A) Quiet meditation to shift into the right or spiritual brain state B) Accessing the non-local domain, which has many different names. C) Asking for resonance between the patient and the non-local domain and asking for an appropriate or perfect outcome of an unspecified sort.  (For example, asking that God's will be done, is one common method)  D) Expressing gratitude on behalf of the healer for the opportunity to do the work.

For tumor regression, for example, asking that "God's" will be done causes more tumor regression than saying "tumor, shrink"!  Probably, again, because "tumor shrink" involves analysis so is not a spiritual brain concept.  This same pattern is documented in studies of the effect of prayer on plant growth.

3. It's okay to be an egomaniac about your energetic healing abilities, and to strut your stuff and trash talk.  I encourage all that, as it creates a healing environment and can give the patient confidence in you. Neurosurgeons and Internists certainly do the same, with excellent results.  But come game time, cool it and shift to right brain consciousness.

4. It is best to work with a monitor.  The role of the monitor is to do all the left brain tasks for the healer, direct the healer in the visualization process, and make sure the healer stays in the right brain or spiritual brain state.  The monitor can call for breaks, and the healer/monitor team can come up with more effective strategies for visualization and healing.

5. It's actually not energy.  It's a field effect.  The healer probably is effective simply by paying attention (note NOT intention) to the process.  Energetic healing is similar to physics studies of entanglement, or double slit experiments monitoring the path of photons, all which involve an observer paying attention to the process.  In both the world of subatomic physics and (in my opinion) energy healing, the observer (or healer) by paying attention and changing the specific aspects of the experiment, create different realities.

Modern experimental physicists have gotten used to this need for an observer for these odd shifts in time and entangled phenomena to occur; as so-called energy healers, we need to humble ourselves and admit that in fact we are most likely simply observers to a subatomic process we can put into play but not quite fully understand.

Just as the observer changes the outcome of experiments in subatomic physics, an observer (healer) can change the outcome of health in a patient by paying attention to what is going on in the nonlocal level.

6. Interactions between the healer and the patient on the non-local level are helpful and accelerate the healing process. The hottest recent research is coming out of China.  They typically have the patient meditate immediately prior to healing sessions.  Since the healing occurs by resonance with information in the nonlocal domain, having both patient and healer open to the nonlocal domain is optimum.

How to open to the nonlocal domain?

A. Meditation, but most people are not experienced mediators. Can be difficult to learn.  Try active meditation, which is a technique of talking out your thoughts instead of suppressing them.  It involves paying close attention to your surroundings and describing it out loud.

B. Sorting and organizing (right brain activities) Baseball card collections, playing gin rummy, organizing knick knacks.

C. Rhythmical Repetitive Activities: Quilting is well known to induce spiritual visions. Also gardening, sewing, chopping wood, carpentry work, anything repetitive.

D. Chatting with a friend:  This was one of the most popular techniques to induce communication with spirits in the 1700 and 1800s.  This distracts the left brain so the right brain is free to access information from the non-local domain.

E. Music and mathematics are also right brain activities.

F.  Prayer:  Hah Hah, people overlook the most ancient and sacred technique, prayer! 

G. Chanting, drumming, saying brief words over and over.

These are just a few ideas. Pick one that is fun!