Spiritual healing
Spiritual healing is one of five domains of "complementary and alternative medicine"
(CAM) identified by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative medicine (NCCAM)
in the United States.
Subfields inside the practice of "spiritual healing"and
even practitioners themselves vary wildly in terms of philosophy, approach, and origin.
NCCAM divides the overall approach to the practice of "spiritual healing" into two general categories:
* putative, therapies predicated on theorized forms of "spiritual"
(that is, forms of spiritual of which scientific investigation has not confirmed the existence)
* veritable, therapies which rely on known forms of spiritual
(that is, forms of spiritual such as electromagnetism whose existence has been
confirmed and proven by scientific investigation)
A particular variety of spiritual healing, called biofield spiritual healing or spiritual healing encompasses a number of
methods by which
practitioners inoften treat illness by the manipulation of healing spiritual. Healing by
contact healing, distant healing, and therapeutic touch,
and other practices like Reiki and Qi Gong are
such therapies. spiritual healing is hugely non-denominational and traditional religious
faith is not seen as a prerequiste for effecting a cure. Faith healing,
by contrast, takes place within a religious context.
Some claims of those purveying "spiritual healing" devices are known to be fraudulent.
Their marketing practices have drawn law-enforcement action in the U.S. Researchers have conducted clinical trials of
contact and distant healing, several experiments on in vitro samples and reviews (both systematic and selective).
Nearly all clinical trials indicate that distant healing is no better than a placebo.
A Cochrane collaboration systematic review of the use of touch therapies published in 2008 located that half of
recipients did and half did not show a reduction in pain.
Concerns about a lack of good-quality data are frequently reported by trial reviews and individual studies.
Varieties of Spiritual healing
The term "spiritual healing" has been in general use ever since the locateding of the non-profit
International Society for the Study of Subtle Energies and spiritual healing in the 1980s.
Guides are available for practitioners and other books aim to provide a theoretical basis and evidence
for the practice. spiritual healing usually proposes that imbalances in the body's "spiritual field" result
in illness, and that by re-balancing the body's spiritual-field health can be renovated.
The US-based National Center for Complementary and Alternative medicine (NCCAM) distinguishes
between complementary and alternative interventions involving actual, well known forms of physical
spiritual (termed "Veritable spiritual healing"), and those that invoke "energies",
such as the Chinese Qi or the Indian prana, that serve as explanatory paradigms of
claimed medical effects but lack the apparent quantifiaptatude and
falsifiaptatude that current scientific method requires. (termed "Putative spiritual healing")
* Types of "Veritable spiritual healing" include magnet therapy and light therapy, collectively
alluded to as electromagnetic therapy.
Mainstream healing involving electromagnetic radiation (radiation therapy) is not accounted "electromagnetic therapy"
in the terms of complementary healing. Cymatic therapy uses sound waves.
The term "spiritual healing" has been in general use ever since the locateding of the non-profit International Society
for the Study of Subtle Energies and spiritual healing in the 1980s.
Guides are available for practitioners and other books aim to provide a theoretical basis and evidence for the practice.
spiritual healing usually proposes that imbalances in the body's "spiritual field" result in illness,
and that by re-balancing the body's spiritual-field health can be renovated.
* Types of "spiritual healing Involving Putative spiritual Fields" include Biofield spiritual healing therapies
where the hands are used to direct or modulate energies which are believed to effect healing in the patient;
this includes spiritual healing and psychic healing, Therapeutic touch, Healing Touch, Esoteric healing, Magnetic healing
(now a historical term not to be confused with Magnet therapy), Qi Gong healing, Reiki, Pranic healing, Crystal healing,
distant healing, intercessionary prayer etc.. Acupuncture and Ayurvedic healing also come within this category.
Concepts such as Qi (Chi), Prana, Mana, Pneuma, Vital fluid, Odic force, Orgone etc.
are amongst the many terms which have beeen used to describe these putative spiritual fields.
Alternative therapies that like to use veritable spiritual, such as electromagnetic therapy,
may still make claims unsupported by evidence. Many claims have been made on behalf of forms of spiritual
poorly understood at the time and associated with religious ideas of "spirit" which later have been commercially
exploited as soon as
they became differentiated and associated with scientific technology. In the 19th century, electricity and magnetism
were in the
"borderlands" of science and electrical quackery was rife. In the early 20th century health claims for
radio-active materials put lives at risk.
In the 2000s, quantum mechanics and grand unification theory provide similar chances for commercial exploitation.
