I am enjoying the comment section here just as much as the article. Not many here will pull more comments than points. I cant see the word "Reiki" without hearing "URAMESHI!"
To me, most new-age medicine is an exercise in low grade mental programming. By forming and guiding behavior under close supervision, positive reinforcement helps to remake harmful neural short-circuits. By giving your treatment a name, a method, and a history, you are creating a corrective program that is then delicately implanted in the patient, then activated in the physical sessions. If coercive brainwashing and mind-control is black magic, what these people and other similar healers do can best be called white magic. Braincleaning.
In the article, they especially note that these treatments are effective on problems that cannot be fixed with surgery or medicine, thus are almost totally in the mind. There is such a thing as psychosomatic illness, and the nervous system doesnt end at the spinal cord. Your muscles have a simple, low-level form of memory in the patterns of nerves and motor neurons, and this extends throughout the body. Sometimes these systems get badly imbalanced, and the body's failsafe mechanisms, the sympathetic, parasympathetic, lymphatic and immune systems cannot correct it. Rolfing, chiropractice, and massage techniques act physically on this system to reset muscles and nerves, putting them back into line. By combining a physical regime with psychological correction, you can clear the nervous system of stubborn low-grade problems.
True, in a double-blind experimental setup, it may be difficult or impossible to reproduce the results. This is because the results hinge on a relationship between patient and practitioner, the experimental setup tends to nullify the methods that this relationship advances on. Its programming, brainwashing, but to benefit the person; not just turning them into a cultist.
To me, most new-age medicine is an exercise in low grade mental programming. By forming and guiding behavior under close supervision, positive reinforcement helps to remake harmful neural short-circuits. By giving your treatment a name, a method, and a history, you are creating a corrective program that is then delicately implanted in the patient, then activated in the physical sessions. If coercive brainwashing and mind-control is black magic, what these people and other similar healers do can best be called white magic. Braincleaning. In the article, they especially note that these treatments are effective on problems that cannot be fixed with surgery or medicine, thus are almost totally in the mind. There is such a thing as psychosomatic illness, and the nervous system doesnt end at the spinal cord. Your muscles have a simple, low-level form of memory in the patterns of nerves and motor neurons, and this extends throughout the body. Sometimes these systems get badly imbalanced, and the body's failsafe mechanisms, the sympathetic, parasympathetic, lymphatic and immune systems cannot correct it. Rolfing, chiropractice, and massage techniques act physically on this system to reset muscles and nerves, putting them back into line. By combining a physical regime with psychological correction, you can clear the nervous system of stubborn low-grade problems.
True, in a double-blind experimental setup, it may be difficult or impossible to reproduce the results. This is because the results hinge on a relationship between patient and practitioner, the experimental setup tends to nullify the methods that this relationship advances on. Its programming, brainwashing, but to benefit the person; not just turning them into a cultist.