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healing make a strong argument for a mind-to-mind hypothesis, rather than that the healer directly affects the physiological processes of the patient. |
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In this chapter we have discussed the relevant research in the field of healing that suggests a relationship between a healer's focused intention and physical changes in human patients. Our feeling is that a spiritual healer may facilitate a connection between an organizing and purposeful principle (which some people call God) and the healee. Jane's sense is that the experience she has in healing interactions may enable an influx of information that "activate[s] the healee's self-healing capabilities in the direction of balance, and away from previously distorting or interfering influences."
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In addition, some healers may well have the potential for changing the electrostatic charge and temperature of their hands. This effect might create a type of local field that is effective for healing, such as in promoting muscle relaxation, and affecting the vasculature of the patient, which would, in turn, promote the reduction of pain, itching, and swelling of tissues. In a comprehensive review of mental healing experiments, psychologist Dr. Jerry Solfvin concluded that such healing probably involved both interpersonal as well as transpersonal elements, or what we are calling local as well as nonlocal processes.46 |
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William Braud has written that the effort to isolate the type or source of the psi in psychic healing is misguided. "In short," he says: |
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I don't think it is a useful question to ask. Indeed, the "bottom line" of all psi findings seems to be a lesson that such questions about who's doing the psi, what type of psi is it, etc. are not appropriate ones, and that such questions presuppose a worldview that is different from the one that psi findings are presenting to us.47 |
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The emerging view of psi is that it is a "dynamic process that involves a field of persons and events a field that is transspatial, transtemporal, and transpersonal (to again quote Braud)."48 |
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We have described the evidence that makes us believe that the interaction between healer and healee in distant healing is primarily mind-to-mind rather than mind-to-body in nature. The reason is at least twofold: In the |
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