Health

In the last several days a number of interesting posts were added to our Parapsychology and alternative medicine forums. Here I’ll present several of them.

User anonymous, who often writes on the topics of psychic development, healing and spiritual churches and is happy to answer people on the topics lately wrote that Army is going to test alternative medicine for PTSD. PTSD is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, for those who don’t know and many soldiers suffer from it, coming back from war. He quotes an article from Wired about the news:

The military is scrambling for new ways to treat the brain injuries and post-traumatic stress of troops returning home from war. And every kind of therapy – no matter how far outside the accepted medical form- is being considered. The Army just unveiled a $4 million program to investigate everything from “spiritual ministry, transcendental meditation, [and] yoga” to “bioenergies such as Qi gong, Reiki, [and] distant healing” to mend the psyches of wounded troops.

But many of these treatments haven’t been held up to much rigorous scientific scrutiny before. So the Army is looking to hand out $4 million in “seedling grants” to “conduc[t] rigorous clinical studies” into all sorts of “novel approaches.” Projects “containing preliminary data” will be eligible for up to $1 million. But even “innovative but testable hypotheses without preliminary data” could get as much as $300,000. Proposals are due May 15.

“Music, animal-facilitated therapy, art, dance/movement, massage therapy, EMDR [Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing] program evaluation, virtual reality, acupuncture, spiritual ministry, transcendental meditation, [and] yoga,” might all be considered worth of the military’s largess. So would “biologically-based treatments, botanicals, and nutritional supplements for enhancing cognitive function and mood in patients with trauma spectrum disorders, including TBI and/or PTSD, depression, anxiety, and/or substance dependence/abuse.” Even proposals for wild-sounding “therapies using bioenergies such as Qi gong, Reiki, distant healing and acupuncture” would be accepted.

This is good news indeed. I might add using the EFT therapy. One of its teaching videos even shows several sessions with people suffering with PTSD after vietnam war. And it seems that EFT helped them very much.

Another interesting post by the same anonymous is called Skeptics duped by Fraudulent Skeptics. Here’s the intro:

There is a big problem in the skeptical community. There is rampant obscuration of the truth by prominent skeptics who have misled masses of people. Skeptics often say that believers in the paranormal have been fooled by charlatans but it is the skeptics who have been fooled by prominent members of their community who seem to be more interested in winning the debate than in illuminating the truth.

Following, he provides a significant number of links and excerpts from various sources that signify the point. Including quotes from Randi, Dean Radin, Michael Prescott and more. Another forum user, LeoM, added several sources of his own.

In Home remedies forum user Allen Green posted a number of articles on various conditions and news from research from the web.

User Drynal wrote about the Art of making a psi ball, where he describes how to create a psi ball, which is an energy practice.

User Jozen-Bo writes about The Incredible Mind Portal which is something that he kind of invented and now promotes on the forum. It seems to be a technique that should help people to deal with their problems, generally speaking.

On the very active Skeptiko podcast forum there are lots of interesting discussions, both philosophical ones about the consciousness nature and psi and also discussions of the various episodes of the great podcast itself. One interesting post was added by user Open Mind, where he writes about The Collective Placebo Effect. Collective Belief & Disbelief?. He provides several quotes from various articles about the placebo effect. For example:

’......Cimetidine was one of the first anti-ulcer drugs on the market, and it is still in use today. In 1975, when it was brand new, it eradicated 80% of ulcers, on average, in various different trials. But as time passed the success rate of cimetidine – this very same drug – deteriorated to just 50%.
This deterioration seems to have occurred particularly after the introduction of ranitidine, a competing and supposedly superior drug…..

So, if you haven’t done this already, take a look at our various forums. Read the posts that interest you, ask your questions and write your answers and ideas, where they are fit. All you need to post is to register for the forums for free. You’re all welcome.

For those who don’t know what EFT is: EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) is a healing technique which bases itself in the meridian energy knowledge and which especially excels in treating psychological issues along physical ones. See my experience treating migraines with EFT. To get started with learning EFT (it’s quite easy), go to EFT Get Started.

Latest newsletter from EFT founder Gary Craig links to a story by an EFT practitioner (actually, an EFT journal founder, Gary Williams). Williams discusses the topics of whether EFT can be explained by placebo effect. He shares Gary Craig’s views about it, which discuss why placebo effect differs from EFT procedure:

Placebo effects require some belief in the process and this is rarely the case for newcomers to EFT. Also, although EFT may appear to be distracting, it will not work if the client is, in fact, distracted. That is why the client continually repeats a reminder phrase which “tunes in” to the problem.

Williams then tells a story where he witnesses a car accident and went to help the injured, among them a little girl, crying hysterically on one of the cars:

I approached her, looking her in the eye and said, “What I am about to do is a little strange,” and then began tapping her on the face and hands whilst still holding her gaze. Within a matter of seconds, to my own surprise, she stopped shaking and became totally calm. It was as though we had built an island of calm amongst the chaos.

I can remember her saying “I am going to be late to pick up my father” – a strange thing to say, but I just reminded her that she had had an accident and that picking up her father would have to wait. Meanwhile the services had been called and then when they arrived she calmly climbed into an ambulance to be assessed.

Could this be a placebo effect or does EFT really work?

To learn more about EFT visit EFT homepage.

I am hosting the second volume of the qigong and Energy arts forum.

Anmol Mehta posted the article Free Online Yoga Video – Breath of Fire Yoga Breathing Exercise
This king kong of pranayamas helps you detoxify your system, oxygenate your blood, magnify the benefits of the Kundalini Yoga exercise you are doing and generate terrific energy within. If you suffer from heat related issues or high blood pressure, you should use caution when practicing Breath of Fire.

I want to add my article Top 5 healthy relaxation techniques to the list, where you’ll learn 5 of the best relaxation techniques I know of.

This concludes the second edition of Qigong and Energy Arts Forum. You may submit your article for the next edition, to be published in a few weeks’ time.

I’m going to host the second volume of Qigong and Healing arts Forum. Qigong and Energy Arts Forum is a monthly online magazine, featuring the Internet’s best new articles on qigong, kundalini yoga, reiki, and other energy arts. It was started and is managed by http://www.martialdevelopment.com.

One of my articles, Qigong Yiquan Review was published in the first volume. You can see it at http://www.martialdevelopment.com/blog/qigong-and-energy-arts-forum-1/.

The second volume will be out on December 21 and it is now possible to submit your articles. If you have an article about Qigong or other healing arts, please send your articles for submission at http://www.martialdevelopment.com/blog/about/#contact.

Start pressing those keys already.

Today I present another article by drew hempel who often published here several other articles on the subjects of qigong, music and healing.

How Qigong or Taoist Yoga Explains Gurdjieff

by drew hempel, MA

(anti-copyright, free distribution).

THE FOUNDATION OF THE LAW OF THREE

"'Before examining these influences,' began G., 'and the laws of transformation of Unity in Plurality, we must examine the fundamental law that creates all phenomena in all the diversity or unity of all universes.'" -- In Search of the Miraculous (p. 78, emphasis in original, and source for below Gurdjieff quotes).

I continue to see a lot of serious confusion about the teachings of G.I. Gurdjieff, a very influential source for people exploring paranormal healing powers.  First of all there was Gurdjieff's focus on the truth of his teaching, not on the kundalini energy effects.  This is one reason people reject Gurdjieff.  For example a famous person, Katherine Mansfield, came to Gurdjieff shortly before her death from tuberculosis.  Some people think that Gurdjieff just accelerated her death because he focused on the truth instead of on healing.   Secondly there's the problem of Gurdjieff's lineage.  Some state Gurdjieff was a Sufi but since he didn't have a particular Sufi master he's not credible.  Gurdjieff does name a very important Sufi teacher who doles out amazing secrets in Gurdjieff's excellent book Meetings with Remarkable Men. 

Most importantly Gurdjieff didn't pass on and develop his powers in someone else -- i.e. create another energy master.  Gurdjieff doesn't have a replacement yet many people think that Ouspensky was necessary to help Gurdjieff or that Bennett or Orage or others can better continue Gurdjieff's teachings.  For example, because of this conflict, the famous NYC literary critic Edmund Wilson made fun of Gurdjieff based on Orage's attempts to teach Gurdjieff.  The best book on Gurdjieff's teachings, In Search of the Miraculous, is only hindered by Ouspensky's extended yet confused commentaries while Gurdjieff's longest book was the cause for Gurdjieff considering suicide.  Beelzebub's Tales is not a reliable source since his publishers forced Gurdjieff to change the meaning of his teaching, as Bennett reports.

What is clear is that Gurdjieff's teaching is based on harmonics or what some term "psychic music," the central secret of my 2001 U of MN masters thesis, linked at http://nonduality.com/hempel.htm and focus of my subsequent research, including my previous articles here.  I discovered that the Pythagorean Perfect 5th or 2:3 music interval, C to G, and the Perfect 4th or 3:4, G to C, are the same as yang and yin in Taoism.  Gurdjieff also relies on the Pythagorean teachings based on harmonics or what Gurdjieff called the Law of Three, the fundamental law.   (as quoted above)

Western science converted complimentary opposites, yin and yang, or the Pythagorean Tetrad of 1:2:3:4, into a symmetrical system through the same diatonic scale that Gurdjieff presents in his teaching, thereby forever confusing the West's understanding of Gurdjieff.  

For example the major third diatonic music interval of Gurdjieff, 4:5, was converted into 5:4 as the cube root of two while the Pythagorean diatonic minor sixth, 5:8, was converted into 8:5 as the Golden Ratio.  In fact the extension of the Tetrad, 1:2:3:4 (Perfect 5th/Perfect 4th complimentary opposite harmonics as the Law of Pythagoras) into symmetric-based ratios (i.e. Gurdjieff's 4:5 into 5:4 as the cube root of two) was the product not of Pythagoras but of Platonic math from Archytas' creation of the geometric mean (a "one-to-one correspondence of letter and number").  I give the technical details in chapter four of my blogbook, http://mothershiplanding.blogspot.com.  Math professor Joe Mazur recently stated that my compilation of this information is "very valuable" and he recommended that I have it published in a peer-reviewed academic journal.  

Today is another interview, this time with Laura Bruno. Laura Bruno is a Life Coach, Medical Intuitive, Animal Communicator and Reiki Master Teacher. She has lived and taught across the U.S. and now resides in Sedona, Arizona, where she enjoys the beauty with her husband Stephen, a photographer. Laura offers classes and phone consultations and writes fiction in her spare time. In addition to over twenty articles on natural healing, Laura also authored the soon-to-be-released eBook, If I Only Had a Brain Injury: A TBI Survivor and Life Coach’s Guide to Chronic Fatigue, Concussion, Lyme Disease, Migraine and Other “Medical Mystery. You can visit her website at www.internationalrenaissancecoaching.com.

Could you please tell the story of discovering your intuitive abilities.

I grew up as an empath (meaning I could feel other people’s physical and emotional pain), but I had no context for that “gift.” Everyone called me over-sensitive, and I learned to view intuition as something inconvenient, weird or shameful. Despite efforts to suppress it, people still sensed my ability. While I earned a Masters in English at University of Chicago, strangers often approached me for health or life path advice, which I quietly gave. To my embarrassment, these same strangers later hugged me in front of my friends, thanking me for the insights. Secretly, I felt led to a more spiritual career than academia, but I resisted.

Instead, I chose the corporate world. My first sales job required twenty-five cold calls per day. Twenty-five cold calls supposedly equaled seven call-backs, which translated to three sales appointments, which became one sale, which (funneled throughout the month) equaled or exceeded quota. I hated viewing conversations as statistics—not to mention all the “no soliciting” jabs. But I couldn’t live on my base salary: I needed to hit quota. Desperate, I started praying. Before each cold call I would silently ask, “Let them see your Light in me and, please, give me the right words to say.” Instead of kicking me out, business folks suddenly welcomed me as a long lost friend! Yet after seven cold calls, I still needed a vanilla milkshake and a two-hour nap. I requested extra guidance: “Please, take me to the right places today. Then, let me radiate your Light and use your words.” With my terrible sense of direction, I developed an uncanny knack for getting “lost” exactly where and when someone needed exactly what I had to sell. I continued to make or exceed quota each month, averaging about two cold calls per day.

This effective prayer only intensified that nudge toward spiritual work. One day I “accidentally” cold called a nun and she took my hands: “Child, you have such Sweetness in you! You will go far when you embrace your gifts.” Disturbed, I reapplied to doctoral programs, vowing to teach a Literature and Spirituality class. I found a cushy sales job with established accounts—no more cold calling nuns! Then I prayed, “If academia’s not my path, don’t let me do it. Otherwise, I’m going!” The scholarships and stipends flooded in: “Wow!” I thought, “That was easy! Here I expected some big, dramatic thing. One course on Literature and Spirituality? Guess I’m not so intuitive after all …”

But on May 19, 1998 (three months before I planned to start fully funded doctoral studies in English Literature) an on-the-job car accident destroyed the life I knew. A brain injury shut down my rational side for years. I suffered visual impairments leaving me unable to read longer than five minutes per day. Florescent lights caused migraines, dizziness and disorientation, and my short term memory all but disappeared. Without my rational mind, intuition suddenly unleashed itself. Carefully developed filters no longer worked. I suddenly “knew” someone had a thyroid problem or emotional blocks leading to cancer. Even worse, I’d get the insistent urge to tell them and if I didn’t, my head pounded louder than usual. The more I resisted, the stronger the migraines became until finally I contacted each person and shared my insights. Then the pain subsided. Medical tests and conversations continued to confirm my intuition, but it took a long time for me to feel comfortable sharing information—even under duress.

Summer 1999, I spent eight weeks in Seattle in a final push to attend graduate school. (Yep, I’m stubborn, and Northwestern let me defer enrollment for a year.) One day, my holistic vision and brain injury specialist said, “If grad school doesn’t pan out, come back to Seattle. I’m old and I need to give my practice to someone.” “OK, where did that come from?” I asked. “I’m an English major!” He explained that he and his assistant had noticed “the next three patients after” me “always made amazing progress.” “Great,” I said, “What’s that got to do with me?” He answered, “For weeks we’ve purposely mixed things up and no matter which three patients follow you, they always make amazing progress. You leave an energy residue in the room that lasts at least three hours. Seriously, if grad school doesn’t pan out, come back and work with me.”

Well, graduate school didn’t pan out. My head imploded under florescent lights and if I ever managed to read, I immediately forgot the content. Meanwhile, my intuition and energy continued to grow. In August 2001, I returned to Seattle for more treatment. That specialist eventually hired me as his Medical Intuitive Consultant—my first job after brain injury. With no other career options and a strong sense of Fate, I started to embrace my healing gifts instead of running from them. I opened my own business and made a full recovery. Now, I love my intuition, and I love that it helps so many people heal and find their path!

You are a Reiki Master teacher. What do you find Reiki helpful for?

Reiki translates to “universal life force energy” or “divinely directed healing energy.” As such, people find Reiki helpful for all kinds of things! In the last 10 years, many hospices and hospitals (including the esteemed California Pacific Medical Center, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in New Hampshire, St. Luke’s Hospital in Pennsylvania, and Tucson Medical Center in Arizona) have valued volunteer or paid Reiki practitioners alongside their cancer programs because patients report vastly decreased pain and fear, and increased peace, positive attitude and relaxation.

Personally, I’ve found that Reiki works well for headaches, stomach pain, and insomnia. When I first learned Reiki, I was still recovering from my brain injury. Daily self-treatments and a number of “healing attunements” allowed me to wean myself completely from pharmaceutical migraine pills. I also find Reiki useful for empowering goals, because the energy just flows through situations and events. Hallmarks of Reiki include increased serendipity and a bubbling sense of joy.

Describe some of the more interesting cases from your practice, where Reiki was helpful.

Daniel Tammet

The story of Daniel Tammet is a rare story. And although it is not about psychic abilities, it is still a story of extreme, paranormal mental ability. Daniel Tammet is what is called a Savant. A savant, while literally means a learned person, and comes into English from the French, usually means a “polymath”, or a person of exceptional genius, like Leonardo da Vinci. But there’s also the kind of people who are called Autisic savants, and these people are more special. Daniel Tammet is one of them and he’s more valuable to the scientific world that most of them, for reasons to be disclosed below.

Autistic Savants are usually people who have really extraordinary mental abilities in some areas but are usually so at the expense of social skills and they are all autistic by definition, which makes contact with them harder. One of the more famous living savants is Kim Peek, who was the inspiration for Dustin Huffman’s role in the movie “The Rainman”. Daniel (born 1979), on the hands, is almost normal and can express himself very well, including how his mind seems to work. Daniel has the following extraordinary abilities:

Today, another article by drew hempel who wrote several intriguing articles before, including The Highest Technology of All Technologies: The Yan Xin Secret article. This article is a bit heavy and requires reading it with attention.

The Purloined Phantom Limb: Solving Sack’s Syncopation Susceptibility

By drew hempel, MA
Anti-copyright (free distribution)

Professor Oliver Sack’s new book Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain is a treasure-trove of analysis on the mind-body conundrum. Sack previews neuroscientist Patel’s forthcoming book focusing on rhythm as subcortical binding for motor coordination with language. But as Sack notes Patel’s take on the Thai elephant orchestra music (of which I’m a big fan) may be questioned by some readers. The issue is do humans have a unique capacity or, as William James’ stated a “susceptibility” towards music, in contrast to the rest of Nature (and nonwestern cultures) seeming noise? Does this supposed unique ability of human rhythm processing also solves the “binding” problem of the mind-body paradox—also seen as the mystery of long-term potentiation (synapse growth) as an unknown function frequency and amplitude?

The answer is amazingly found in the most famous short-story of Edgar Allen Poe who, as Edmund Wilson quotes, wrote that his goal in writing was the “indeterminateness of music.” Poe, the creator of the mystery story, gives the reversal to Freud who, Sacks states: “despised music.” In Poe’s psychoanalysis we find a direct answer to Sack’s contradiction of the phantom limb as an “overflow” of neuron sensations, in contrast to the overflowing OBE as related to a musical hallucination. It’s exactly in the primal language of rhythm, more specifically Sack’s susceptibility for syncopation, that we also solve the mind-body mystery which Poe also addressed in his famous solution composed as his short story The Purloined Letter.

My teacher reports some very remarkable abilities that his teacher has. The abilities of course come from his lifelong training. He says that kung fu master become only better and stronger with the years and he looks forward to him being 80. From his story I can understand how far is our group of westerners from his abilities. The most sad part of my teacher’s story is that no one of his master’s students in China (Hong Kong) reaches even 30% of his ability. He was speaking about how the master should see and adapt the training for each student. It seems that after he passes away (which might take 30 or more years) there’ll be no follower who’ll come close to his abilities in this specific qigong variant.

Those of who are interested in scientific research of healing might find interest in the Journal of Science and Healing called Explore. The current issue is free and its papers can be downloaded in PDF format. The latest issue includes a paper by Dr. Dean Radin, Gail Hayssen and James Walshcalled, called Effects of Intentionally Enhanced Chocolate on Mood which shows through a double-blind, randomized and placebo-controlled study that people who ate chocolate that was exposed to “good intentions” had better mood than those eating unexposed chocolate. If you want a more detailed review of the chocolate study read here.

Other papers include a study by a group of Chinese doctors on The Effect of Chinese Medicinal Herbs in Relieving Menopausal Symptoms in Ovariectomized Chinese Women. This study tested an established formula of Chinese medicinal herbs in elieving menopausal symptoms in ovariectomized women (whatever that means). What’s important is that the results showed that ” Chinese herbs may be a useful alternative treatment for ovariectomized women suffering from menopausal symptoms, who are unable or do not want to receive hormone replacement therapy (HRT).”.

Another article discusses new studies that support the therapeutic value of meditation. These are only 3 articles from a larger variety available in the current issue. Going into the archives shows that two more issues of the journal have free access. One can also subscribe to the actual paper journal for a price.

Enjoy your reading.

Another interesting article by Drew Hempel, who earlier published here The Secret of Psychic Music Healing and You Can’t Fake The Full-lotus! Testimony of a qigong practitioner in the context of parapsychology.

The Highest Technology of All Technologies: The Yan Xin Secret

By Drew Hempel, MA

anti-copyright (free distribution)

Yan Xin qigong is a simple, yet very powerful free energy practice that Yan Xin calls “the highest technology of all technologies.” I first was introduced to his qigong practice ten years ago by the Chinese community at the University of Minnesota, hosting a Canadian-Chinese Yan Xin presentation from Toronto. The practice worked amazingly well but I just didn’t understand why. Now after, of course, learning the “hard way,” I have figured out the secret and it’s just as effective as flipping a switch to produce free full-spectrum, healing energy.

Qigong master Yan Xin is a “national treasure” of the Chinese government, an official designation that puts him under their protection and supposed control. The Chinese government even produced a documentary called “Yan Xin Supermaster” that I was able to see with the Yan Xin Chinese community at the University of Minnesota. Qigong master Yan Xin was doing “qi-emitting” lectures that were 7 hours straight and were healing thousands of people at a time. One person healed was the now qigong master Chunyi Lin who even studied with Yan Xin’s teacher. Master Chunyi Lin now teaches his http://springforestqigong.com in Minnesota and he himself does amazing healing. I was able to take Master Chunyi Lin’s classes for several years, receiving his energy transmissions.

Dr. David A. Palmer’s new book: “Qigong Fever: Body, science and utopia in China” (Columbia University Press, 2007) gives further details about the efficacy of Yan Xin’s qigong. The Chinese military had qigong master Yan Xin actually put out a vast forest fire! Master Yan Xin also went to the U.S. White House eight times to give energy treatments to President Bush, Sr., which gives some explanation to Bush’s paratroop jump in his 80s! Master Yan Xin continues to do mind-blowing medical healing experiments in collaboration with western-trained scientists—studies published in peer-reviewed international neuroscience journals.

In 1999 there was a big crackdown on qigong in China against Falun Gong and several other practices that had huge movements, larger than the Communist party. At this same time Yan Xin’s chi-emitting lectures were stopped and his international community stopped selling Yan Xin’s meditation tapes, unless a lengthy training course was first completed. There is even claim now that the Chinese military has developed a secret post-apocalypse qigong weapon, which we can guess is probably based on their national treasure: Supermaster Yan Xin.

Two days ago I got home and saw that I have a voice mail on my line that was dedicated to the Psi experiments that I run (or ran) and to another business of mine. On the phone was a message recorded by a seemingly old man where was talking about his mail returning from the Public Parapsychology website, which is run by Annalisa Ventola. He was looking for some help and apparently he thought that he called her. He left his email address and phone number to return information to him. His email contained the name Alex in it.

I used reverse phone lookup and got up with someone, A. Imich. “A” must be Alexander, I thought and was right. I looked up Alexander Imich on the internet, and, ta da, Dr. Alexander Imich is a known parapsychologist from New York. One of the first results was an interview with the man and in the interview started with the fact that at the time of the interview he was 103 years old (although I now believe he was 102 at the time). The interview was dated July 2005.

Today Dr. Imich is 104 years old and, apparently is still active in the field of parapsychology, which he was exploring back in the 1930ies, when he researched mediums of that time. I’ve found more about the man and he appears to be an interesting man (below quote is from the foreword for his New Nobel prize article).

Dr. Imich is a well-known researcher in the science of parapsychology and the author of Incredible Tales of the Paranormal: Documented Accounts of Poltergeist, Levitations, Phantoms, and Other Phenomena. At the age of 93, Dr. Imich enrolled in a course of study at the IM School of Healing Arts in Manhattan and graduated at age 96. In 1999, he founded the Anomalous Phenomena Research Center and is working hard to raise money for a research project, The Crucial Demonstration, the goal of which is to demonstrate incontrovertibly the reality of paranormal phenomena to mainstream scientists and the general public.

Of course I called the man back and helped him to find the information he was looking for. I was thrilled to talk to man who’s still totally in his mind at the age of 104 years. I wonder if I’ll have another chance in my life to talk to such an old man. Let me propose to Alex Tsakiris to invite him to his Skeptiko podcast. I’m sure he has lots to tell about psi research done before WW2 and not only.

During my search for information on this man I’ve found a very interesting research subject he was testing. I’ll write about him next time. The world can sometimes be a very strange and interesting place, it seems.