Health

There's a series of enrichment lectures at Google (the company) and they make them available for public viewing on YouTube. The lectures are not strictly technical and encompass a wide variety of topics with guest speakers.

The below video is of a lecture describing the basics of Oriental medicine practices, especially acupuncture and acupressure. There's also specific attention to stress in traditional western medicine and in eastern. 

In the second part, after the description, an eastern medicine doctor applies short acupunture treratment to some of the listeners and guides through a short relaxation meditation.

Does your head feel heavy sometimes? Maybe you are tired after driving or staring at TV or computermonitors?

Several years ago I’ve learned quite a simple technique that helps to alleviate the heaviness in head. It’s not a cure for any illness but it doesn’t require anything except a little time and healthy imagination. No drugs, even “alternative”, so, it won’t hurt you in anyway.

Like my advice on how to get rid of stuffy nose, which has helped hundreds or thousands of people, this will not work for everyone at all times but it’s sure worth to try. So let’s get started, because something is pushing on your head, right?

You can do it seated or standing up, but it’s better not to lie down. You’ll see why shortly.

1. Close your eyes and concentrate on the feeling in your head.
2. Try to imagine that the heaviness that pushes on your head is like a concrete block or like a manhole lid lying on your head and that’s why it feels so heavy – it is pushing on you with its weight.
3. Now, visualize a construction crane and imagine it lifting the lid off your head up and away. At this moment you should feel a little alleviation of the heaviness. The head should feel a little lighter for a moment. Don’t open your eyes and don’t loose concentration.
4. Most probably all or some of the “weight” will return very fast. So just repeat the lifting. Imagine pushing it away with your hands maybe or imagine the crane lifting it again.
5. If it works well, after some repetitions the weight should feel lighter. You may continue with this as long as you helps, probably a couple of minutes.

Be warned though that since this is a visualization based technique it won’t help you in cases where a real physical problem such as sinusitis causes your pain in the head. It’s not a cure for any illness. The technique is just a tool that can help you deal with the feeling of a heavy head, usually because of some fatigue, physical or mental.

Of course, you should complement the technique with other things like rest, drinking water etc, which will address the underlying source of the heaviness.

Burul Payne, a researcher of biofield, or spin force, and the creator of the Biofield Meter, posts results of his latest research.

Remote Healing Measured by the Biofield Meter

Buryl Payne, Ph. D. Psychology, Psychophysics Laboratories, P.O. Box 514, Soquel, CA. 95073

Abstract

A force around the human body different from electric, magnetic, gravitic, photic, or thermal has previously been discovered and was used in this research. Originally called a ‘biofield’ and now called a ‘spin force’, it was found to vary in amplitude with lunar phase, solar activity, vitality of the subject and other factors. It was found to vary in amplitude with intended remote healing attempts. In 17 out of 20 trials in this pilot study, with healers from 50 to 3,000 miles distant, a clear change in amplitude of the spin force was observed.

Keywords: remote healing, subtle magnetism, biofield, spin force

Introduction

It is known by experience that prayer and other means of visualization at a distance enhance healing, although no satisfactory explanation has been found to explain this effect. This study shows the operation of a different type of force may be involved. Called a spin force, torque, or rotational force, it is hypothesized to exist around all living organisms.

Biological spin force was accidentally discovered by the author while investigating ‘pyramid energy’ in 1976. The author’s device, called a Biofield Meter, displays a spin force when placed around an organism. It was found to exist around every human tested, a couple of plants, a grapefruit, watermelon, cat, dog and horse. Presumably it exists around all living organisms and its existence has been observed by other researchers. The amplitude of rotation of the Biofield Meter varies with solar and geomagnetic activity, changes direction temporarily at times of new and full moon and varies to some degree with the health of the subject.

Several researchers have observed some physiological changes in humans as a response to remote healing. Ron Hruby, a retired NASA electrical engineer, made his own version of the Biofield Meter and hypothesized that it might respond to distant healing attempts on a subject. He found this to be the case. In 18 trials with four

subjects, he found 100% correlation of changes of the Biofield Meter amplitude of rotation with attempted healings by a small group ten miles distant from the subject. This study expands upon the work of Ron Hruby, and attempts to verify his results while using variable distances between the healers and the subjects.

Materials and Methods

The Biofield Meter consists of a square frame, made of 0.25 inch diameter wood dowels, 16 in. on each side. Six ring magnets are centered on each dowel and 16 in. long strings are attached in the center of the six magnets on each dowel. The strings angle to a center where a set of two mirrors of 1.5 inch diameter are glued back to back. A hook and additional string is used to hang the apparatus over the subject’s head at eye level. The device looks roughly like a pyramid frame.

In practice, the Biofield Meter rotates a few degrees after being placed over a subject. Given an initial impulse, and because it is a string suspension, the torque on the string, or winding force, limits continuous rotational movement. It winds up and unwinds, in other words, oscillating back and forth for a few minutes. The number of degrees of initial rotation was used as a measure of spin force around the body.

This experiment was conducted in Santa Cruz, California. Twenty trials were conducted May to June, 2005. The first trial was completed with a small group of remote healers in Sheffield, Massachusetts, a distance of 3,000 miles from Santa Cruz. Three Biofield Meters were set up around three subjects. The subjects’ first names were supplied to the distant healers. The healers chose one subject for the healing attempt, which was unknown to the observer. A start time was determined for the healing attempt, and observation of the biofield meters began at that time. Movement of the three biofield meters were measured and recorded during the trial period. Following the trial period, the name of the chosen subject was revealed to the observer.

In addition to this initial trial, seventeen other remote healers were invited to attempt distant healing on one of two subjects chose by the experimenter. Seventeen subsequent trials involved one to three subjects and one to four remote healers. It was not feasible to repeat tests using multiple subjects as it was too difficult to coordinate them. Two more trials were conducted on a radio show called ‘Out of Time’ in Hot Springs, Arkansas. On this show the author invited the listening audience to attempt remote healing on a subject sitting next to him. There were two main subjects who where involved in most of the trials.

Results

In the first trial, one of the three Biofield Meters rotated more than 720 degrees, (more than 2 complete rotations). Later phone communication showed that this was the subject chosen for the healing attempt. The subject did not report any sensations or feelings at the time of the attempted healing or on the following days. In seventeen out of twenty trials, the Biofield Meter showed deflections from about 3 degrees to four full turns (1440 degrees) around the subject chosen for healing. These seventeen included the trials involving the radio show audience.

No obvious ‘healing’ effects or sensations were observed by one of the two main subjects. The other subject felt sensations four times which resulted in some healing one time. In three trials where it was offered the remote healers correctly identified problem areas for one subject.

A new member at our healing forums posted about a simple yet effective, so he claims, technique to fight with various health conditions. Specifically he tells about a woman whom he told it, who could help her get over bad cold in about 17 minutes.

Here’s an excerpt of what he wrote:

I finally found a woman friend with a severe cold that after 12 days was actually getting worse and while on the phone would be consumed with coughing for like 30-45 seconds straight, She did that 3 times n 5 minutes while I was on the phone with her, and she was feeling so bad and not doing any housework etc and was in consultation with her Doctor for it who told her it sounded like a virus that a lot of people were getting and it was taking them longer than 2 weeks to cure.

She stared at a small patch of skin on her hand , for 17 minutes. She reports that in 5 minutes she was about 25% better, in 10 minutes she was well over 50 percent better and and after 17 total minutes she stopped and was almost cured, felt fine, then did all the work that had been building up and didn’t cough a single time the rest of this evening, with the only remnant of her cold being a fraction of the nasal congestion.

To read more about the background and the application of the proposed method, read the original post about curing cold for free.

The book I’m reviewing today, Personal Development for Smart People, by Steve Pavlina was one of my most anticipated books lately, since Steve announced it. And I was fortunate to be sent a review copy.

I’ve already written about Steve Pavlina here and there on this site, mostly as related to his and his wife’s experiences with developing psychic abilities, mostly mediumship. I’ve also interviewed Steve’s wife, Erin Pavlina in June 2007. She is a psychic medium. But this book is not about psychic abilities at all.

Steve is one of the most known personal development bloggers today. I’ve known his site for several years now and have found him to be one of the most original and prolific bloggers on the subject. He had many unique ideas and views on many topics and his writing style is very much to my taste.

Steve has published several hundred articles on his site on various topics and it was interesting to see what he could innovate in his book. Steve promised that the book won’t be a rehash of site’s content and I’m glad to say that he delivered.

The book is just about 150 pages but it is so packed with original ideas and concepts that other writers would have smeared it at least on a handful of books. Luckily for the readers, Steve’s ability to present his ideas succinctly, without much repetition packed the book dense with information.

So what is this book about? The book presents a way of how to look at conscious personal development. The book is built from the ground, in a bottoms up approach, which gives it a somewhat philosophical kind of depth. Indeed, Steve has tried, for the purpose of writing the book, to analyze, in his mind, many of the existing successful growth practices. He analyzed them by trying to identify the most basic principles that unite all of them.

His goal was to find a set of basic principles that would be universal, meaning that they should be for everyone and for all areas of personal development and life. They should be timeless – work in the future and should have been working thousands of years ago as well. They should be collectively complete, meaning that all laws of personal growth should be based on them. And the primary principles should be irreducible. Of course, they also shouldn’t conflict with each other.

Steve then introduces the seven principles. Three core principles: Truth, Love and Power. And four secondary principles, oneness, authority, courage and intelligence. These secondary principles are based on the first 3 in different combinations.

So, part I of the book explores these principles. There’s a chapter for each of them. This is the more “dry”, philosophical part of the book, where the reader builds the foundation.

The second part of the book shows how to apply each of these principles in various areas of one’s growth process. There are chapters for habits, career, money, health, relationship and spirituality. Every area is explorer through the lens of the principles.

Some of these chapter include practical advice as to how one should analyze his situation in the given area. Usually this is done by truthfully answering some very difficult questions. Sometimes feelings and emotion are the guide. But everywhere Steve tries to be only the guide, asking the questions and showing the way one should take to analyze his situation and find the correct answer for himself, which might be different for everyone.

Whoever follows Steve’s blog knows that he changed his diet, from regular to vegetarian, then to vegan. In the last year he switched to eating only raw food. One of the positive effects that Steve mentioned from these changes and that his mental clarity improved with each of this changes. His thinking abilities improved since concentration was easier and mental fog dissipated. This book clearly shows that Steve’s mind capable of going into real depths of thought, giving the process of personal development an almost scientific approach.

The book is titled “Personal Development for Smart People”. And it delivers.

One of Britain’s leading researchers into complementary medicine offered £10,000 to the first person to prove homeopathy works.

Professor Edzard Ernst – a former homeopath himself who now researches complementary medicine at Exeter University – said 200 strictly controlled trials had failed to find any evidence that homeopathy worked.

‘If you do a systematic look at all the evidence you fail to demonstrate strong evidence in favour of homeopathy,’ he added.

Some selectively pick studies that support the treatment, but ignore those that don’t, or misquote the findings of trials, or rely on flawed studies, he claimed.

Dr Simon Singh, who co-authored the book Trick or Treatment with Professor Ernst, said homeopathy only worked as a placebo.

‘If homeopathy could be proven to be effective it might earn the researcher a Nobel Prize in Medicine,’ he said.

‘He or she would also deserve Nobel prizes in chemistry and physics because the laws of science would need to be re-written.’

To win the money, homeopaths will need to publish evidence through the Cochrane Collaboration, a respected UK independent group which investigates medicines.

Last night, the British Homeopathic Association claimed the challenge was nothing more than a gimmick to boost sales of Professor Ernst’s book.

Source: Daily mail

This is a guest post by Heather Johnson.

The current state of our nation’s healthcare has turned many people to alternative medicine. Some uses are as old as humanity itself and have been effective forever. So why don’t more people trust this age-old healing process? There are many myths out there concerning holistic healing. Many people think that it’s only for hippies or bizarre people. Whatever the reason for people’s hesitance there are just as many people that are believers. Here are five tips for the people that are serious about feeling better through non-traditional method:

1. Continue with prescription drug use. If you’re turning to holistic healing then it doesn’t mean you should ditch the medication that has been prescribed for you. Eventually you may be able to wean yourself off your prescriptions but it doesn’t mean that you can automatically stop taking the drugs that a physician has deemed proper for your care. The hope is that you’ll eventually be in a position where you can stop relying on your prescriptions but holistic healing isn’t going to instantly prove miraculous.
2. Comfort is crucial. You have to make sure that you’re comfortable with your holistic healer. If you’re feeling uneasy about your relationship then try out a few until you have the right fit. Trust is the biggest thing you have to achieve with your healer before you can totally put yourself in their hands.
3. Know your practitioners’ education. If you feel that your practitioner isn’t the most qualified person then find out where they’ve studied. People can get degrees from less than reputable institutions and if this frightens you then do some research to find out where they’ve learned their craft.
4. Don’t be worried if you feel worse before feeling better. With holistic healing chances are that you’re going to feel worse before you start to feel better. This is called the healing crisis. Don’t be worried about this period as it’s completely natural to go through a period where the treatment is beginning to take effect.
5. Embrace the non-conventional. Alternative medicine doesn’t focus on surgery and drugs. Rather, it centers on nutrition, herbs and other natural sources. It will take a while to realize that you’re not receiving the care you’re used to. Most people will be wary at first, but realize that this is a process that has been around for thousands of years or as long as man has roamed the earth.

By-line:

Heather Johnson is a regular commentator on the subject of Online CNA Certification . She welcomes your feedback and potential job inquiries at heatherjohnson2323 at gmail dot com.

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.