Frequently Unasked Questions

Mainly for the initiated or the speculative!

What About Bio-Resonance?

All bioresonance practitioners find themselves from time to time being asked ‘Well how does it work?’ and expected to give a thirty second explanation of what is really a complex subject.

They are often told by biologists or orthodox practitioners that it is nonsense.  Acupuncture meridians do not really exist; even if they did, it would not be possible to measure the flow of the energy in them (called Chi(Qi) by the Chinese), because that doesn’t exist either; even if you could do so, the method used is not a reliable one; even if it were, it could not tell you anything about the state of specific organs or tissues; and since Bioresonance therapy is a fairy tale, any effects from it must be a placebo effect.  And underlying all these points is the view that there is no good evidence to indicate that this sort of thing could have the effects which are claimed for it.

Now it is certainly true that there is little clinical and experimental evidence for Mora or similar treatment.  But this is not all that surprising, when you consider that this is a technique which is difficult and time-consuming to learn, little known even by most complementary therapists, and in most parts of the world, practiced by only a handful of people.  There have been no funds for experimental research, and existing practitioners are usually too constrained by the need to earn a living to devote the necessary time and resources to good quality research.

Nonetheless, there is one compelling indicator of the value of bioresonance.  This treatment developed from the pioneering work in Germany of Dr Rheinhold Voll and his collaborators, from the late 1940’s onwards.  The specifics of bioresonance were worked out from the 1990’s by Dr Franz Morrell and Erich Rasche, and has attracted a small group of practitioners in various western countries.  However during the Cold War, the Russians also became aware of this work, found it worked, and developed its use quite extensively.  When two groups working independently develop a technique because they find it valuable, it is a good prima facie indicator of something significant being involved, even if, in orthodox terms, it is impossible.  Compared to the western world, the Russian experience is extensive; it is estimated that over 7 million treatments have been given, it is used in both civil and military settings, and the Russian Army even uses it as a treatment for alcoholism.  The head of the Russian government agency FASIE said recently ‘Only someone very lazy does not develop or use bioenergetic for different purposes – medicine, agriculture, etc’.

So, although there is little controlled experimental evidence, there is actually a lot more clinical experience than it might at first appear,  Most of those who are only too ready to dismiss bioresonance therapy are unaware of this body of experience.  When they say that there is little scientific evidence to support it, they are usually unaware that there is actually quite a lot, and that it is growing apace as completely new ways are developing of understanding the unbelievable complexity of the human.

As one notable practitioner has said: in bioresonance ‘we are not channelling Seth’, in other words, it is far from some of the strange and esoteric practices in the wide realm of complementary medicine.  Bioresonance practitioners are using and developing a precise and very subtle, gentle technique, for which there is a great deal of supporting evidence.   Not only is there very recent learning which bears on the working of bioresonance treatment, but there are historical precursors going back centuries.  They have been a neglected strand in western scientific and medical thought, but are now, in various fields, coming into their own.

In the remainder of this introduction to bioresonance we look at the following areas.

  1. Just what is it; and how does it work?
  2. The forefathers of bioresonance.
  3. Currently developing knowledge which relates to it.
  4. Can it really deliver effective treatment – some common objections to it.

It will quickly become obvious that there are huge areas of relevant knowledge, so this introductory leaflet can give only the briefest sketch of the state of affairs.  A short book list is provided for those who want to follow it up in more detail.

What is Bioresonance and how does it work?

Robert Becker gives a useful definition of the general meaning of the resonance phenomenon.

‘In general this refers to the circumstances in which some aspect of a force – sound waves, for example – has a physical characteristic that ‘matches’ a characteristic of a physical structure, such as the mass of a building, in which case the sound wave will produce vibrations in the building. In the case of electro-magnetic radiation, resonance implies a ‘match’ between the wavelength of such radiation with the physical size of the structure.  When resonance occurs, the power in the force is maximally transferred to the physical structure.’

In our case, of course, the structure is the body, or any of its contents.  The force is the small SIGNAL coming from the instrument, and the characteristics of it are the modifications of the basic body signal which the instrument creates.  They may be further modulated by the addition of external frequencies, for example from a food, a homeopathic remedy, or a colour.

In saying ‘the power in the force is maximally transferred,’ Becker highlights a feature which often puzzles those who receive treatment.  They ask whether it can possibly have any affect at all.  Oschman alludes to this, and gives a dramatic example of the power of resonant transfer.

“Resonance is an important mechanism involved in energy healing, whether it involves electronic devices or energy therapists.  It is not widely appreciated that molecules are resonant antennas, emitting characteristic signals and responding to tiny signals of the appropriate frequency. Much like a radio transmitter emits frequencies that entrain rhythmic oscillations in a distant receiver (See figure 16-5).

A dramatic example of the remarkable capacity of resonance to transfer information over incredible distances took place in March 2002.  To celebrate the thirteenth anniversary of its launch, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) beamed a message to Pioneer 10 across 7.4 billion miles of space.  The signal was sent from a radio telescope in the desert east of Los Angeles, California and a radio telescope in Spain received a response 22 hours 6 minutes later.

In 1983, Pioneer 10 became the first manmade object to leave the solar system. Its transmitter has the power of a few watts, comparable to a small flashlight (NASA 2002) or to the output of the human heart (see Foreword). A tiny amount of power sent a return signal some 3.7 billion miles back to earth. The signal travelled at the speed of light for some 11 hours 3 minutes. This phenomenon hints at the effectiveness of resonant electromagnetic interactions taking place between living organisms over the much shorter distances involved in hands-on or energy healing or even distant healing (prayer).

Because of amplification and resonance, the general trend in energy medicine is toward devices or techniques using increasingly less energy and effort on the part of therapists. Once the appropriate frequency and amplitude are discovered, virtually any physiological process in the body can be influenced with a tiny signal."

Becker's own work is another dramatic testimony to the power of the vanishingly small in biological matters, sometimes expressed along the lines of 'in therapy, less is very often more.'  He demonstrate that non-healing bone fractures could be induced to heal by the application of an electrical current but that this current had to be extremely small - 0.1 microamperes, or one trillionth of an amp.  With a stronger current, healing would not occur.  Perhaps there is a parallel here with homeopathy; most certainly there is one with hormesis hormones.

The best simple or summary of the process of bioresonance therapy is perhaps Keith Scott-Mumby's
modified version of that by Hans Brugemann (which was itself based on the ideas and work of Dr Franz Morrell).

  1. In and around the human body there are electromagnetic oscillations. These oscillations are superordinate to the biochemical processes going on in the tissues and are the real control mechanism of tissue function.
  2. As well as physiological oscillations there are also pathological interfering oscillations in every person, caused by toxin overload, injury, infection, unresolved disease processes and psychologically negative states (so-called emotional toxins).
  3. Both natural and pathological oscillations can be picked up from the skin surface (antenna effect) and led to a suitably tuned therapeutic device.
  4. The mixed oscillations from the patient can be modulated in three main ways: (i) healthy signals amplified, (ii) pathological signals inverted (and thus cancelled out); and (Hi) filtered, to separate the desirable frequencies from the pathological ones (the latter are, of course, eliminated in this process). NB The separation filter used in the Mora device was originally suggested and designed by Ludger Mersmann Ph.D., - a PhD student of the noted biophysicist Fritz Popp.
  5. No technologically-generated artificial frequencies are needed; only oscillations from the patient which have been modified as given in 4. The basic aim is to strengthen the good oscillations and eliminate the unwanted ones.
  6. The body takes its cue from the modulated therapeutic signals and continues to produce enhanced physiological signals and appears to reprogramme itself, so that in future a renewal of the pathological signals is guarded against. Thus the treated harmonious levels of electromagnetic energy go beyond the merely temporary stage of treatment sessions.
  7. Beneficial changes in the energy field are followed by a subsequent modification and improvement in biochemical function and physical structure.
  8. BRT is successful when the body's own endogenous regulatory forces reassert control and lead to normalization and maintained health.

For the practitioners of the various systems of medicine, theirs is the true word, the only correct way to work, to treat, and to conceptualise the working of the human entity.

Interestingly, many, maybe all of them, work. Some of them perhaps work better or more extensively than others, but they all work, and at the same time each has its limitations or areas of relative ineffectiveness.

Valerie Hunt (in her book Infinite Mind) was one of the first to recognise that the connective tissue of the body is in fact its electrical matrix. Oschman's 'Living Matrix, Volls's 'Mesenchyme' (see below), and Pischinger's 'Ground Matrix' are closely related concepts. The 'Living Matrix' is the most up-to-date, and perhaps best formulated of these concepts.

Oschman's book is an excellent and detailed introduction to this field; however, perhaps wisely, he only just touches towards the end of the book on a related problem which remains enormously contentious, and yet can no longer be shirked - that of consciousness. This means reconciling the findings of psychology and more particularly and controversially of parapsychology, with the developing framework of energy, or electromagnetic medicine. If this is not done, and done urgently, important and related strands of knowledge will remain fragmented, and we shall all be much the poorer. Those interested in pursuing this line of enquiry are recommended, as a starting point, to 'Margins of Reality' by Jahn and Dunne, and to 'The Conscious Universe' by Radin.
When we turn from the emergent background scientific knowledge to the specific techniques of bio-resonance and related therapies, there is only one book which provides a useful and accessible introduction for those who are not practitioners in this field.  ‘Virtual Medicine’ by Keith Scott-Mumby describes the origins, methods, and instrumentation of present day practice.

The basic rationale of bioresonance medicine is as follows. The human entity has a remarkable capacity to resist illness and ill health. It is profoundly self-correcting and self-renewing. Just as the ancient Chinese thought, when there is an even and unobstructed flow of energy and information in the system, the body and mind will resist illness, disease, and to some extent morbific environmental influences. Its self-healing and self-regenerating capacities are in fact remarkable. However, when that flow is blocked or disrupted, disharmony results, and if and as it grows, illness becomes harder to resist.

So far, this is very similar to many traditional medical and naturopathic views. Practitioners of these disciplines consider that the disruption of the innate harmony and resilience of the organism results from the accumulation of wastes and toxins within the organism, and these must be excreted before healing can occur. Bioresonance practitioners take this further, however, because they find that these wastes and toxins exist not only in the blood, lymph, brain etc, but also in the mesenchyme - the connective tissues, and the intra- and inter-cellular fluids of the body - where they exist as frequency or informational signals. Because the mesenchyme - the 'Living Matrix' - is a higher level control system for the physical body, elimination of physical wastes and toxins from the body does not necessarily result in detoxification of the mesenchyme; but if the mesenchyme is cleansed as well, elimination is complete. "The higher vibrations permeate the lower; but the lower do not permeate the higher." (R Cass).   This can only be accomplished by means of bioenergetic remedies; frequency signals delivered through a bioresonance instrument, or through homeopathics, for example.

Homeopaths share many of the concepts above. Where an acupuncturist speaks of Chi energy, or a bioresonance therapist of bio-energy, a homeopath speaks of the Vital Force. Homeopathic remedies are in fact frequency remedies too.  An acupuncturist works by modifying the body energy flow, a homeopath by stimulating the Vital Force to expel or to overcome pathological burdens, a naturopath by freeing the body from accumulated wastes. A bioresonance therapist may use all of these techniques, but will also use the unique ability of the Bioresonance instrumentation to cleanse and free the Living Matrix-the mesenchyme.

So it is likely that a bioresonance treatment will proceed in stages, working gently and naturally, over a period of time. What the patient can expect in a series of bioresonance treatments, is summarised below.

Initial treatment will focus on reducing the 'energetic chaos' which is the normal state for most people these days. This strengthens the harmonious energies of the patient and reduces or eliminates the superficial disharmonious signals. Doing this not only reduces the chaos and fortifies the patient, but it allows the important problems to begin to stand out more clearly. Alongside this work, a programme of medicaments to improve the efficiency of all the eliminatory and excretory organs of the body may take place - 'cleansing the emunctories.' During treatments with the instrument, some of the patient's saliva, blood, urine, or other relevant tissue or fluid may be used in the circuit, to gain the strongest feasible input of pathological signals.

During this first phase of treatment, the practitioner may also review and adjust, or arrange adjustment of, postural problems in jaw or back, may consider the possibility of adverse geopathic influences in the patient's work or home environment, and may check and deal with food, or environmental sensitivities, because all of these can create additional burdens which increase - or alternatively mask, the true and underlying causative problems.

A good practitioner will always be looking for this underlying cause, and will avoid whenever possible simply treating the symptoms. In bioresonance work - unlike in orthodox medicine - a symptom may have a cause in any part of the system, perhaps because we are dealing here with an energy system, not a hard-wired physical system, and we are dealing with a mechanism of resonant transfer, which may have wide ranging, rather than specific effects. So if, in a single day, four patients appeared each with a headache, the underlying cause, and hence the treatment, might be totally different for each.  Purely treating the symptom - the headache - might actually make the problem worse or harder to resolve. The headache might go away, but the real problem might resurface later, in a new and possibly more serious form.

When the first phase is complete, the practitioner will move to identifying and dealing with the causative factor. This may involve using the knowledge of the traditional Chinese 5-Element acupuncture system to identify the 'element' and meridian which is for each individual constitutionally their weakest area. Treating this meridian will tend to normalise the whole system, and by working with it repeatedly over a period a profound restabilisation can occur.

The practitioner will also use the meridians and points diagnostically, to pinpoint the physiological focus of the underlying problem, and deal with this. Quite often this may involve paying attention to the teeth, jaws and tonsils, which are very frequently implicated in bioenergetic disturbances.

Attention will also be paid to lifestyle factors, to mental and emotional issues, and to identifying and remedying nutritional deficiencies. Any of these can reduce the effectiveness of bioresonance therapy, or even block it completely. As the Neuro-Linguistic Programmers like to say 'If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got.'

Forefathers and fathers of Bioresonance

Paracelsus

Going back into pre-scientific times, this remarkable doctor had a profound effect on medicine during and after his life. As far as bioresonance is concerned, his early recognition of the importance of what we call electromagnetism is important, and he seems to have incorporated primitive magnetic therapy into his work.

Galvani

Discovered the role of electricity in the body by observing the contraction of muscles when a current was passed through them. He identified the generation of electricity in muscles, and used the term 'animal electricity.'

Mesmer

This famously vilified man is receiving something of a re-evaluation recently. Hispractice foreshadowed elements both of hypnotism ('Mesmerism') and of bioenergetic medicine (Animal Magnetism).

Reichenbach   

A distinguished scientist and chemist in his own right - the inventor of creosote - his astonishing book 'Researches on Magnetism' investigated the exceptional sensitivity of unusually aware individuals to what he called magnetism, and what we might today call bio-fields. He examined the nature, form, conductibility, effects etc, of such fields.

Abrams

Often, and perhaps wrongly, called the father of radionics, this distinguished doctor and researcher examined the sensitivities of his subjects' biofields, and discovered the effectiveness of signal inversion in treatment.

Burr

Professor of anatomy at Yale, he came to the conclusion that all living things are moulded and controlled by electro-magnetic fields, which he called L-fields. These fields are genetic in origin, and are the total patterning of the organism, reciprocally responsive to, but superior to, the chemical and physiological aspects of the body.

Eeman

An almost completely forgotten and highly individualistic practitioner who found that the body's energy fields are healing, corrective and can be interlinked to achieve this.  He devised physical circuits, to relax, to stimulate, or to heal, and collaborated in a lengthy series of experiments with the physicist J C Maby.  He also found such fields could be transferred from substances and used as remedies just like the original substances.

Kirlian

The development of the 'photography' which now bears his name.  It is actually a way of imaging the natural 'corona discharge' of the body, which is a component of the body field. Changes in the discharge pattern and intensity correlate with changes in health and disease, and (as with Burr's L-fields) may appear long before any problem is apparent physiologically. His famous 'phantom leaf effect' is often cited as evidence of the pattern forming effect of the body field. Many of the problems of reliability and replicability which affected Kirlian photography appear to have been solved in recent years by Konstantin Korotkov, and this may be able to make Kirlian photography a clinically useful tool.

Lund

Professor heading research team at Texas State University. Found that electrical patterns in plants change half an hour before growth hormones are activated. Claimed (c.p. Burr, above) that the fields control the growth of plants more than the hormones.

Lakhovsky

Claimed that disease is a disequilibrium in cellular oscillation, and that each cell has its own resonant frequency. Invented a treatment instrument (The Multiple Wave Oscillator) which apparently had significant success in a Paris hospital in the 1930's.

Gurwitsch

Russian scientist who showed that bacterial information can be transmitted through quartz glass, and that this indicated its information frequency lies in the UV range. His experiment (which he conducted many hundreds of times, was successfully replicated in Germany in the 1950s.

Frolich

Professor of Physics at Liverpool University. Suggested that ultra-weak microwave emissions from body fields may act as a trigger for some bio-effects; that microwaves which do not have thermal effects can still have biological effects at some frequencies; and that collections of cells within the body may act coherently in some states.

Popp

Contemporary researcher who has shown that cells communicate through ultra-weak biophoton emission, that that in some situations groups of cells act co­operatively (in culture) to combat threat. Also that disease manifests as a disruption of the body's electromagnetic field before it manifests in physical symptoms (cp Burr and Lund).

Endler

Contemporary researcher who had demonstrated that a high dilution of thyroxin (homeopathic 32C) in a sealed ampoule suspended in water affected the behaviour and growth of tadpoles in a way which could not be due to chemical transfer, so that another mechanism of information transfer had to be active. Also established that the informational characteristics of one substance could be transferred to another carrier substance.

Becker

Contemporary researcher who has demonstrated the role of ultra weak electromagnetic fields in the healing of bone in humans and animals; and the existence of a second 'nervous system', the perineural system of the body.

Voll

German physician and acupuncturist who founded and extensively developed the system of electro-acupuncture diagnosis known as EAV (Electro Acupuncture after Voll), and the phenomenon of medicament testing, central to bioresonance practice.

Morrell

German physician, acupuncturist and colleague of Voll who developed bioresonance therapy^- taking the patient's own signals, and feeding them back in a modified form as a treatment, co-developer of the Mora treatment with Erich Rasche.

Currently Developing Knowledge

Developments in energy medicine.

Human beings, and other mammals, are extraordinarily complex entities. I am not at all sure that we are actually capable of seeing ourselves - or anything else, for that matter - as we really are. Medicine, throughout time, seems to have consisted of two fundamental enterprises: finding techniques which are helpful in relieving illness and suffering, and seeking ways to describe what we are like. In some times and places one has been emphasised more or less to the exclusion of the other; in other times and places they have been more closely intertwined. Always the descriptors of our nature and systems have mirrored, and have been couched in terms of, our current understanding and manipulation of the world about us. A few examples:-

Can it really deliver effective treatment - Common Objections to Bio Resonance.

OBJECTION 1 - Acupuncture points and meridians don't really exist.

Those who take this view are really long out of date. They need to explain how, if their view is correct, it comes about that -

Admittedly, there is very little known yet about what the structure and nature of an acupuncture point or meridian actually is, and much disagreement. This knowledge is in its infancy, though actually a huge amount of research on meridians and points has already been done (detailed in Alan Bensoussan's book The Vital Meridian'). But that they exist is no longer in doubt.

OBJECTION 2 - Even if the meridians and points do exist, there is no evidence for the reality of the Chi energy which is supposed to flow in them, and no way to measure it.

It is true that we cannot scientifically spotlight and measure Chi, but this is because we do not have any instruments specifically capable of measuring Chi. What we do have is a wide range of chemical and electromagnetic detectors, and many people take the view that in fact Chi is electromagnetism, and can therefore be detected and measured through instrumentation. However, Chi is a complex phenomenon in Chinese literature and practice; there are a number of different forms of Chi, which are used and behave in different ways in the body, and which relate to different strata of the meridian system. It may be that from a scientific point of view, each would need to be investigated separately; but there does not appear to be any available instrumentation to do this.

The view that Chi is equivalent to electromagnetism runs into difficulties in that some of the characteristics and use of Chi, especially in martial arts settings (for example, the capacity to be projected), do not readily fit which what we know of electro-magnetism.

Nonetheless, the elusiveness of Chi, is not a problem from the point of bioresonance.  In measurement, we use the resistivity of the skin at acupuncture points.  This clearly does exist and clearly varies in relationship to the energetic status of the meridian or associated organs/tissues.  It is therefore legitimate to use these measurements as an indicator of energetic or physical states.  This is exactly analogous to what a physician does when taking a routine blood test.  His aim is to gain an understanding of the health and state of the cells of the body, which compose the tissues, organs and glands, whose smooth functions constitutes health. It is very difficult to measure all the varieties and locations of cells directly, but the results of the blood test give us, far more accurately, a good indicator of the state of those cells.

In treatment, we treat the body energy as if it were electro-magnetism.  It is very possible that Chi 'piggybacks' with electromagnetism, just as electricity and magnetism do themselves. Alternatively, we are at this point using electromagnetism pure and simple, and using it to very gently coax a response in the body, which must imply a response in Chi.

Oschman comments:

'Acupuncture is one aspect of a larger system that includes the martial arts.  The phenomena involved in the martial arts reveal aspects of biological communication and energy flow that are of great interest and of great medical importance.'  It is tremendously exciting to be at the interface between various fields of enquiry related to energy medicine. Many kinds of sophisticated electronic devices are being developed.  These devices work because they interact with the organism as an electronic/protonic/electromagnetic/photonic/ acoustic/ thermal/vibrational system.  These devices are teaching us about how the organism operates as an energetic network.  Moreover the devices are teaching therapists about what can be accomplished with the appropriate input of energy.'

OBJECTION 3 - Even if you could measure the flow of Chi, EAV (and therefore bioresonance) is not a reliable way to do so.

One of the problems for the growing number of scientists who are now involved in serious investigation of the human energy field, is that apart from being indescribably complex - far more complex than the body itself- it is also hyper-reactive, and reacts instantly to any stimulus. Indeed bioresonance uses this principle to permit food and remedy testing, and allergy desensitisation.  It is also responsive to mind-body interactions.  This has led a number of investigators to conclude that point-testing is unreliable, and seek alternatives.

This attempt to eliminate the human factor may perhaps be mistaken - the human being is the most sensitive and wide ranging biodetector we have, by many orders of magnitude; and the same is true for the human healer.  However, there is undoubtedly a need for prolonged and complex training of the human operator, and it is worrying that the training standards in this field are so low at present.

Given good training, good results are possible, and reliability can be achieved.  Two studies at Utrecht University in 1989 and 1992 have demonstrated this (Scott Mumby p87). Studies by Tsuei et al on EAV allergy testing showed good correlation with results from other types of tests - skin tests, RAST, IgE levels, and food challenge tests.  EAV test results on hypertensive individuals correlated well with orthodox measurements of systolic and diastolic blood pressure, and left ventricular mass.

It is hard to see much in common ground between the understanding of a specific patient's condition in, say, neurological terms, and in 5-element acupuncture.  Yet they may both work.  This suggests to me that the reality of the human being concerned is not directly perceptible at all, and can be understood only through the agency of an analogy.  The analogy, naturally enough, is drawn by each age or culture in terms of its dominant preoccupations.

It is natural, then, that a new paradigm should arise in medicine at a time when we are moving away from the absolute primacy of materialism and technology which characterised the twentieth century.  It could perhaps be said that the primary political struggle of the 19th Century was that of democracy with monarchy; in the 20th century, that of democracy with totalitarianism, and that of the 21st century is likely to be a far more desperate battle of democracy with globalised businesses and finance, and enormously destructive military capability.  There may yet be just as bitter a struggle with pharmacological medicine as energy medicine - medicine which works through the electromagnetic control systems of the body - gathers momentum. Beyond it lies medicine based on healing and the as-yet barely tapped resources of the deep states of the mind.  But that, if we survive, may be twenty-second century medicine.

To attempt to summarise this complex new horizon in biology is quite beyond present scope. The best guides to this field for the layman are the two books by Robert Becker (The Body Electric and Cross Currents) and James Oschman's 'Energy Medicine in Therapeutics and Human Performance’.  It is worth quoting the start of Oschman's book:

'After decades of being "off limits" to academic science and medicine, we are witnessing a veritable explosion of research and exploration into energetic approaches to life and health.  There is a growing appreciation that all medicine is energy medicine and that the energetic perspective holds the key to the future of the entire medical enterprise.
Several major trends have brought this about, and they are intersecting.  One trend is increasing awareness in the biomedical community that electrical and magnetic fields, as well as light and sound, affect cellular processes and can be found to stimulate healing in various tissues.  After a period I refer to as "the dark ages" from around 1910 to 1950, when even mention of "energy medicine" was politically incorrect in academic circles, clinical researchers rediscovered the application of different forms of energy for "jump-starting" the healing process.'

And a little later:

'It often is stated that the human energy field, if it does in fact exist, is theoretical.  Healing energy, energy medicine, and life force, are all concepts that properly belong to science fiction.  However, there is actually a substantial logical and experimental basis for the existence of energy fields within and around the human body, and these fields are vitally important to the health of the organism. Indeed, these energy fields, which give rise to real 'forces', as the word is used in physics, go to the core of life. Physicians and researchers actually know this, but many simply to not realise that they know it.'

Fundamentally the book details the shift that is now well under way, from seeing ourselves as primarily biochemical beings, who require pharmaceutical treatments, to realising that at a more fundamental level' we are energetic and information beings with sophisticated, high speed communications systems mediating a complex information flow within our bodies.'  We are now recognising that there are whole new communications systems whose importance, and whose ways of working we are only just on the fringe of being able to understand.

DEMYSTIFICATION.

This book brings the emerging information on energy medicine into focus by discussing some common denominators for a wide range of profound experiences that have seemed mysterious and virtually inexplicable in the past.  Examples of these experiences are drawn from the realms of "spontaneous healing," cutting-edge athletic and artistic performance, the martial arts, and various contemplative and spiritual practices, as well as from science itself. I believe that these phenomena not only are worthy of study, but that they are vital clues that must be pursued.

The book also discusses some common experiences that have been too difficult or fuzzy for scientists to come to grips with. Just exactly what are intuition and the subconscious? What is consciousness? How are traumas and traumatic memories stored in cells and tissues? In the realms of human performance, precisely what is involved in practice, recover from injury, coordination, and awareness?

To begin to answer these questions we will look at current research on biological communication and energetics.  The human body is composed of thousands of billions of cells that must cooperate to enable us to carry out our daily activities. A major part of the success of living systems arises from the ability of cells to communicate with each other through various signalling tactics.  In the past, most of the emphasis has been on chemical messengers such as hormones, neurotransmitters, and growth factors.  Electrical communication is well documented in the nervous system, but there has been far less interest in exploring the roles of other forms of signalling such as light, sound, magnetism, and electronic conduction, even thought there is documentation that all of these mechanisms exist and are important.  Because these other kinds of communication have been relatively unappreciated by academic science, the use of various kinds of energy as therapies has been slow to catch on in conventional bio-medicine.

We will see that there is a system or substrate within the human body that transfers and processes energy and information that are different from the nervous, hormonal, and biochemical systems as they usually are portrayed.  This substrate consists of the well-known materials of which the body is composed: the connective tissues and the fabrics within all of the cells throughout the body; the genetic material; and the atoms, subatomic particles and "empty" space that is actually the body's most pervasive component. Water is an intimate and functional part of this matrix.  My appreciation of the properties of this substrate has come from three primary sources: the scientists I have met, the scientific literature, and the experiences of therapists and performers of all kinds.

SYSTEMIC INTERCONNECTEDNESS

The exhilarating scientific enterprise of dissecting living systems into increasingly smaller pieces has led to spectacular advances, but in the process the essence of life and health has nearly slipped through our fingers.  We have separated out and nearly discarded the single most important attribute of the organism: its systemic interconnectness.  We can now put this vital component back into our picture of life and thereby join together the enhanced understandings that modern science has achieved.

We are learning the fabric of life consists of a physical matrix and the communications and energies that are conveyed from a place within it.  This energetic and information fabric has a physical reality and a set of properties that can be described and measured. Viewing the nervous and circulatory systems as the primary communication pathways in the body has hindered us from considering that there might be others.  The structures of the anatomist, histologist, and cell biologist now are being looked at as the interconnected circuitry of the body.

In the past, science has focused mainly on the chemistry of energy and information - on molecular interactions. What we are learning now is that there is vastly more to the story.

"Molecules do not have to touch each other to interact. Energy can flow through ....the electromagnetic field....  The electromagnetic field along with water forms the matrix of life." (Szent-Gyorgyi (1988))

There is nothing wrong with biochemistry or with its medical application as pharmacology.  It is just that by focusing most of our attention on molecular reactions we have missed the rest of the story: the roles of electrons, electromagnetic fields, and related energetic and quantum processes; the properties of space; and consciousness itself.  This is the story that will be documented in this book.

INTUITION AND INSIGHT

Complementary therapists have been interacting with these energetic and communication systems and processes for a long time but they have had difficulty discussing some of their most significant and exciting observations with the scientific community.  Because of the illusion of a lack of a sound scientific and logical foundation for the concepts they wish to discuss, many therapist have felt they had to work on the basis of insight and intuition and that science would never be able to appreciate their most exciting observations and discoveries.

There is nothing wrong with intuition or with observation made through intuitive processes.  Huge progress has been made this way. Indeed, mature scientists recognize that virtually all research springs from insights about mysteries; however, the therapists who work intuitively often have lacked a scientific language for expressing themselves, and science simply has not had a logical and testable framework to even begin to consider some of their most important observations.  This situation has changed, for reasons you will learn about in this book.

THE BODY'S OPERATING SYSTEM

The story that is emerging is that the various entities comprising the body and their interactions, taken together, constitute a sort of "operating system" of the body, which like the operating system of a computer, works silently in the background, coordinating and regulating all living processes at all levels. These processes include sensation, movement, the formation and reformation of body structures, consciousness, and physiological functioning, as well as the ways these processes come together in the perfect performance or in perfect health.  Complementary therapists have invented various successful ways of interacting with the mysterious aspects of the living system, but, as just mentioned, they have had difficulty articulating what it is they are doing.

OBJECTION 4 - The changing characteristics of the acupuncture points is not really related to the states of the organs and tissues.

Given what we are coming to know about the holistic functions of the body, those who raise this objection should really be asked to show how they could fail to be.  The whole practice of acupuncture is based on this premise, and therefore any successful results demonstrated are prima facie evidence that this view is wrong. For details of research see Bensoussan.  See also recent research demonstrating electro-physiological changes in the brain as a result of needling of the point HeGU4.  Oschman also has two chapters on acupuncture, and many research references.

OBJECTION 5 - If anything does result from bioresonance treatment, it must be purely the placebo effect.

Two points need to be made here!  Firstly the placebo effect (= the organism heals itself) is what healing comes down to in the end, and it should be encouraged by every means possible, and not shunned, as is currently the case in 'scientific' medicine.
Secondly, there is a small amount of experimental evidence showing bioresonance to be effective in situations where it is difficult to imagine the placebo effect operating.