The body's complicated and often mysterious system continues to baffle scientists in how it creates and responds to electric, magnetic, and electromagnetic fields, including light, sound, heat, pressure, chemical and elastic energy, and gravity.
Living tissue is a conductor of electricity. The first energy field to be documented was the heart. In 1924 Einthoven received a Nobel Prize for the electrocardiogram, which measures the bioelectric field of the heart. Other scientists established that other organs of the body produce these bioelectric fields as well. The currents set up by the heart and other muscles, and the brain and peripheral nerves produce fields in space around the body called biomagnetic fields. The SQUID (Superconducting Quantum Interference Device) developed by Nobel Prize recipient, Brian Josephson, is an extremely sensitive magnetometer used to map these biomagnetic fields in the space around the body.
Other research has found that certain magnetic fields can jump-start the healing process in fractures that have failed to heal. In 1979 the FDA approved magnetic field therapy.
Dr. John Zimmerman found that electromagnetic signals (ELF) are emitted from the hands of trained healers (as in Reiki), but not from those without training. These low band frequencies are effective in jump-starting the healing process. Additionally, a hands-on and hands-off therapy, such as Reiki, influence living tissue which are far more sensitive to external fields than first imagined, as biological systems defy the simple logic that larger stimuli produces larger responses. For many, extremely weak fields can be more effective.
One way a system like Reiki works is that it opens up the communication channels that enable the cells in the body to talk with each other. Cells are able to migrate to places where they are needed to initiate repair or to fight diseases. Another effect is the calming of the person so their immune functions can operate smoothly. Reiki then could be considered an “energy medicine.”
Regarding a higher intelligence guiding the healing, James L. Oschman, Ph.D., explains, “…the higher intelligence you refer to is…the innate intuitive inner wisdom we all possess and can access when we relax our mental processes and allow our subconscious to sort out what is really going on…Most of the information from our senses goes to our unconscious, where it is processed below our level of awareness… So if you are able to leave your thought processes behind, you will find that your hands will go to the right places as if they were drawn like a magnet…” author of Energy Medicine; and Energy Medicine in Therapeutics and Human Performance.