Are the Benefits of Energy Healing Simply the Result of the Placebo Effect?

The placebo effect is defined as “the aspect of treatment not attributable to any pharmacological or physiological properties”. There are 3 components that comprise the placebo effect:

1. The patient must have positive expectations and beliefs that the treatment will work.
2. The caregiver or provider must have positive expectations and beliefs that the treatment will work.
3. There must be a good relationship between caregiver and patient.

When a person has an illness or injury and actively seeks out an energy worker to help treat this problem, it is reasonable to assume that the placebo effect may play a role in the person having a beneficial response to the session, since the individual clearly had at least some faith that the treatment might be of help. However, can the beneficial effects of an energy session always be attributed to the placebo effect? As a practitioner of various energy modalities myself, I have encountered numerous instances where one or all 3 of the components of the placebo effect were missing and there was still a very beneficial result from the session. To better illustrate, I will provide examples where each of the placebo effect components were countered.

Component #1- The patient must have a positive expectation or belief that the treatment will work. What about the times the client doesn’t know what the particular energy modality is or thinks it’s a complete waste of time? An example of this situation immediately comes to my mind. I was working at a hospital in the X-Ray department and a technologist was feeling incredibly stressed. I asked her if she would be willing to let me try something that might help. She asked what I was going to do and I simply said, “I’m just going to rest my hands on your shoulders. All you have to do is sit there.” Her response wasn’t exactly positive but it wasn’t negative or hostile, either. She stared at me for a bit, as though I were crazy and said, “Yeah and how’s that going to help me relax?” After a little coaxing, convincing her that she wouldn’t be out anything if it didn’t work, she did consent to allow me to place my hands on her shoulders. I would like to point out that I never mentioned the word energy, nor did I tell her what she could “expect” (a feeling of warmth or tingling or feeling more relaxed, etc.) after my hands were placed. It only took about 1 minute before she noticeably relaxed in her seat. At that, I asked her how she felt and her response was, “I feel like Jell-O. I could fall asleep right here.” I removed my hands and she asked me what I had done. I only told her it was a relaxation technique and she said, “Well it works!” She then promptly returned to the main department and began telling the other technologists to try out what I had just done for her.

Another example was the time I offered to help a friend with her fear of bats. She was very skeptical and only agreed to let me do this to humor me. However, after 10 minutes of working with her, a fear she had had for 26 years was completely gone. Interestingly, she had an encounter with a bat that very night while at a concert. She said she was sitting in the bleachers and noticed a bat was flying around one of the lights which was only a few feet from her head. She went on to say that she would normally have been terrified but, this time, felt no fear at all.

Component #2- The caregiver must have positive expectations or beliefs that the treatment will work. What if the provider places no expectations on the treatment? Most energy healing practitioners are taught not to place expectations on a session. I was taught to clear my mind, be present in the moment and simply let the energy flow. Whenever I give a session, I employ a “Let’s see what this does” attitude and gauge the session by periodically asking the client how he or she feels. Based on the feedback I get, I adjust my session accordingly.

Component #3- There must be a good relationship between the caregiver and patient. What if the client is apprehensive about or resistant to receiving the treatment? This happens quite regularly if a practitioner offers a session rather than being asked for one. Though the client might agree to receive the energy, his or her attitude is often one of disinterest or disbelief, as clearly illustrated in the two examples given in component #1. It is only after the session ends and the client sees a difference that he or she displays open receptivity to the treatment.

I think if a wide range of energy healing experiences were examined, it would be fairly easy to see that there is more to the beneficial results of a session than just the placebo effect. In fact, Dr. Gary E. Schwartz has studied energy healing for eleven years and has written a book on his findings-The Energy Healing Experiments. After conducting numerous laboratory experiments, Dr. Schwartz has found that there is legitimacy to the claims being made by clients of energy healers.

Having said this, however, I’m compelled to ask the following question: why are we so quick to dismiss beneficial effects of any type of treatment as being “just a placebo effect”? It’s like saying, “If the benefit wasn’t a result of a pharmacological or physiological response, it isn’t valid.” Regardless of the mechanism, isn’t what really matters the fact that the client or patient feels better? If someone with great faith in energy healing came to me complaining of a headache and I gave him or her a session and, afterward, the headache had improved or dissipated, does it really matter if the result was due to the energy or the placebo effect?

Another issue that I think adds to the placebo being shrugged off as a legitimate means of treatment is a lack of understanding its true power. *A man named Wright was diagnosed with advanced lymphoma which was unresponsive to all forms of traditional treatment. His body was covered with tumors the size of oranges and his spleen and liver were so enlarged that 2 quarts of fluid had to be drained from his chest every day. Hearing of an experimental drug called Krebiozen, he begged his doctor to try it. At first, the doctor refused but, after repeated requests, he finally relented. On Friday, the doctor injected Mr. Wright with Krebiozen and went home. To his amazement, the following Monday Mr. Wright was out of bed walking around. The doctor noted that the tumors had reduced by half their size, which was a faster reduction than could’ve been achieved with even the most powerful radiation treatments. Ten days after the Krebiozen was administered, Mr. Wright left the hospital with no signs of cancer. For two months, he remained well until he began seeing articles in medical journals indicating that Krebiozen had no effect on lymphoma. Soon, he became depressed, relapsed and had to be re-admitted to the hospital. As an experiment, Mr. Wright’s doctor told him that the initial supplies, the ones the articles had been written about, had deteriorated but he now had a new shipment in that was a more concentrated version. In truth, however, the doctor only used saline solution. Once again, Mr. Wright had dramatic results. Tumors disappeared, fluid vanished and he was back on his feet in a few days, cancer free and feeling great. Another two months passed before Mr. Wright began saw an announcement from the American Medical Association stating that Krebiozen was worthless in the treatment of cancer. Mr. Wright’s faith was shattered, he relapsed again and died two days later. *(The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot, p. 93)

There is an alternative term sometimes applied to the placebo effect that I think is worthy of consideration. That term is remembered wellness. The mind clearly has the ability to heal the body of ailments ranging from very minor to the most severe. Apparently, the mind is capable of remembering a sate of wellness within the body and steering it back to that state. If this ability of the mind to access a state of remembered wellness is the basis of the placebo effect, it seems to me that more time and energy should be spent on understanding this mechanism so that it can be reliably reproduced when needed. I’m sure that any physician would agree that relying on the body’s natural ability to heal itself instead of resorting to external and artificial means would be ideal in all situations.

Blessings,

Jason Hundley