The placebo effect can be quite real, lidless, that's why they do double blind experiments to eliminate it.
I have a scientific background and training. I was an atheist for much of my life. However, eventually the evidence for *more* became too much for me to ignore and I had to change my world view.
It's not
comfortable for me to use techniques that I don't clearly understand. I would prefer to have the mechanism of how these things work clearly outlined and easy to understand. But, that's not likely in my lifetime- so if I want to seek answers to problems I have that are not solvable by scientific means, I have to use techniques where I get only "cause" and apparent "effect" .
When I use energy healing techniques on my husband, and he feels
better afterwards- does it
really matter whether I'm pulling universal energy into our reality and channeling it into him? Or if the meditation techniques in preparation for doing that are really what help him? He feels better. I got the desired result. I don't know if we'll ever be able to measure "chi" energy, I'm not sure it's completely in this dimension-- but if manipulating it helps (or thinking I'm manipulating it helps) then
I have to, because standard medicine DOES NOT HELP my husband's Lyme disease symptoms.
I'd
rather believe that one can help their own body heal merely with meditative techniques, but unless I visualize extra energy coming from somewhere else,
it doesn't work.
I'll take what I can get from whatever source, to make this work. I don't care what the technique is called- what discipline it comes from- I'm an eclectic. Whatever works for me, is OK, as long as it
feels clean and wholesome. I'm not doing anything that involves the darker side of human nature, nothing that hurts anything or robs anyone of anything. I won't. I
will not use the "dark side of the force". Nothing but bad could come of it.
Errrrr, I kinda got carried away, there.
Well, anyway, lots of minor stuff actually works for me, so I feel the need to learn more, simply so I don't hurt myself in the process of finding my own way. That's why it was so cool to find this site, so well laid out and with apparent plans for teaching people. I can see what others can do, and try some things I'd never thought of before. Spinning a psi wheel with your mind, for instance, is apparently old hat to the folks on this site- yet it's something I can't seem to do at all. I'll have to read through quite a bit of material, to begin to understand what I need to do.
Whenever I get interested enough, I mean. My interest in this sort of stuff waxes and wanes. I'm only interested in the healing aspect for the moment, while my husband is suffering.