Energy Medicine. C. Norman Shealy
concepts of yin (feminine) and yang (masculine) energies. The balance between yin and yang is essential for health, it is maintained, as imbalance creates disease. As in yogic practice, breathing and meditation have always been important components of Qi Gong. Specific breathing techniques are used to concentrate chi. When chi was incorporated into Qi Gong (ca. 500 when it was a martial art), it was observed to improve health, increase physical strength, as well as improve fighting ability.
Philosophically speaking, there are five forms of Qi Gong:
• Confucianist seeks to attain the highest moral character and intelligence.
• Buddhist seeks to liberate the mind.
• Daoist Qi Gong emphasizes preserving the physical body and higher levels of spiritual cultivation.
• Martial arts emphasizes self-defense.
• Medical focuses on healing of self and others.
Qi Gong employs meditation, mental concentration, and visualization combined with very slow, specified movements and sensory awareness of the flow of chi in the body. The starting point, as with pranayama, is quieting of the mind.
Qi Gong has many similarities to Tai Chi. Some fifteen plus years ago, Roger Jahnke, a Tai Chi Master, and I were talking, and I suggested that I would take up Tai Chi when I was seventy-five, as I figured it would take a full year to learn this complex system. His response was, “Norm, Tai Chi is simply movement meditation. You know how to meditate and you know how to move.” Thus, I began doing what I call free-form Tai Chi which I have done daily to some extent for the past thirty-five years. Basically it consists of my “listening” to, which means feeling, every aspect of my body, sensing areas that need to be relaxed or stretched, and moving into and through those areas. Some years later, I was talking with a Qi Gong master in Minneapolis and discussed what I was doing. He said, “Ah, that is free-form Qi Gong.” So that gives us some indication of how similar the movements are in Qi Gong and Tai Chi. Roger Jahnke said that there are at least “sixty masters” of Tai Chi who have their own specific recommendations, but those are primarily to attract you to study their particular approach.
Qi Gong is widely used throughout China, where there have been reports of cures for many diseases, including cancer. I cannot be certain, other than some of its particular rituals, that it is significantly different from Pranic Healing or any other form of spiritual healing. Obviously the martial arts component of the meditative aspects of Qi Gong are somewhat unique to this particular practice.
Dowsing
Dowsing appears to have originated in the fifteenth century in Germany where it was used to find metals underground. In 1518, Martin Luther considered dowsing to be occultism and stated that it broke the First Commandment. Despite its rejection by some in the Christian faith, the early leaders of the Mormon Church used the rod for revelatory purposes. Smith thought it to be a divine gift.
In many ways, dowsing is just one of many mantric tools; that is, tools that are used theoretically to allow the subconscious to answer questions. They are adjuncts to awake intuition. Thus the use of a pendulum is quite similar to dowsing and can be used to answer questions about anything. It is in that respect somewhat similar to radionics, which will be discussed later in this chapter. Some individuals believe that reading the tarot cards is another mantric tool; that is, the images that come forth are just tools to help one’s intuition bring forth an answer. The I-Ching is another such device to stimulate intuitive insight. Despite this, there are always skeptics and those who denounce everything that defies current so-called science.
In 1986, an article in Nature concluded that dowsing is really the result of expectancy, effects, and probability and essentially the individual dowser’s subconscious mind being expressed through the dowsing rods. (See David F. Marks, Nature, March 13, 1986, “Investigating the Paranormal,” Vol. 320, pages 119–124). Perhaps not well known is the fact that Uri Gellar, best known for his various spoon-bending and watch-stopping effects, told me personally that he had made some millions of dollars in royalties through dowsing for oil. In general, I tend to agree that such results are most likely a manifestation of intuition.
Parapsychology, Extrasensory Perception, and Psychokinesis
Parapsychology is perhaps one of the most debated and reviled subjects in the scientific world. The term parapsychology was coined in 1889 by philosopher Max Dessoir. It was then adopted in the 1930s by J.B. Rhine to replace the term “psychical research.” The Society for Psychical Research, founded in London in 1882, included a number of well known philosophers and scholars such as Henry Sidgwick, Arthur Balfour, William Crookes, and Charles Rachet. Studies included telepathy, hypnotism, apparitions, and ghosts.
In the United States, William James, perhaps the most famous American psychologist of all time, assisted in founding the American Society of Psychical Research in 1885. In 1911, Stanford University was the first academic university to study extrasensory perception and psychokinesis in a laboratory setting. In 1930, Duke University became the second major academic institution in the United States to engage in the critical study of extrasensory perception and psychokinesis under the guidance of William McDougall. It became most famous under Joseph B. Rhine, whose work largely dealt with statistical analysis of intuitive perception of the Zener ESP testing cards, whose symbols were intuited by his research subjects with an accuracy well above chance. He also did a great deal of work with psychokinesis (movement of physical objects with the mind alone) in determining the throw of dice. As one would expect, the experiments at Duke evoked much more criticism than they did praise. After Rhine’s retirement in 1965, the Department of Parapsychology was “separated” from the university; but the Institute of Parapsychology remained, where the Rhine Research Center continues to this day. The Parapsychological Association was created in Durham, North Carolina in 1957 and, through the energy of anthropologist Margaret Mead, the Parapsychological Association became affiliated in 1969 with the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the largest scientific society in the world.
Perhaps the most remarkable scientific work in the field of parapsychology has been done at the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory under the direction of Dr. Robert G. Jahn, who was Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science. From 1979 until its closing in 2007, the interdisciplinary staff of engineers, physicists, psychologists, and others conducted numerous experiments demonstrating significant psychokinetic effects upon a random number generator as well as work with remote viewing. In the random number generator experiments, subjects mentally altered the distribution of the random numbers in a small but highly statistically significant way. Remote viewing experiments done at Princeton confirmed similar studies that had been done at the Stanford Research Institute.
Parapsychological research has had such strong opposition from traditional academic departments that it has dwindled considerably in the last three decades. Remaining today is the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia, Department of Psychiatric Medicine, which studies the possibility of survival of consciousness after bodily death. Incidentally, that is also the university at which Dr. Ian Stephenson conducted studies of over a thousand children who appeared to have unequivocal proof of having lived before. His work continues under the direction of Dr. James Tucker. Additionally, the University of Arizona sponsors the Veritas Laboratory, which conducts laboratory studies investigating some mediums.
In summary, parapsychology includes the study of a variety of paranormal phenomena, including:
• Telepathy is the transfer of informational thoughts and feelings between individuals without the use of the ordinary five senses.
• Precognition is sensing, seeing, hearing about future events before they take place.
• Clairvoyance which I consider to be the broadest field of intuition, essentially means obtaining information by unknown means without known facts.
• Psychokinesis is the ability to influence matter, time, space or energy.
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