"Pranic Healing" for healthcare providers

Nurses General Nursing

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I recently recieved a pamphlet in the mail for a "Pranic Healing" weekend seminar for healthcare providers. Course fee: $400. For $400 the course promises to teach me how to heal my patients with techniques that utilize "prana" to energize and balance the energy field... Here's an excerpt from the pamphlet:

"Pranic Healing is based on the prinicle that the body is a "self-repairing" living entity that possesses the innate ability to heal itself. It recognizes that the healing process can be accelerated by increasing the life force (vital energy, prana, chi) to affected parts of the physical body... techniques are applied to the bioelectromagnetic field known as the aura or bioplasmic body. This invisible energy field interpenetrates the physical body and extends beyond it by four or five inches. If there are blockages or imbalances in this energy field, there are corresponding changes in the physical body that may manifest as illness."

The course presenter is a "Certified Pranic Healing Instructor, a Senior Certified Pranic Healer, and coordinator of the Pranic Healing Certification Program..." Does this mean she certified herself? And if the body is a "self-repairing" entity, why does it need a pranic healer? Shouldn't it be fixing itself? And I love, "bioelectromagnetic field known as the aura or bioplasmic body," Hummm.... write that is a progress note...

If I'm ever in the ER with a stoke and a BP of 260/130 I hope my healthcare provider is using drugs to dilate my vessels or dissolve the clot, not using pranic healing. Maybe I'm just to close minded. What you all think?

I don't do TT but I certainly wouldn't keep posting that link as JAMA wishes they had never published that "study." It was one reason their editor was fired later. A "prestigious" journal would never publish a study by an adolescent who's mother was a member of a skeptic organization and particularly since the study had nothing whatsoever to do with TT.

Sensing or seeing energy is really not an "unusual" ability. You can be taught it in a few minutes. Then you can run the Randi hurdles and try for the $$$$.

Also, if you could link where JAMA wishes they had never published the study, I'd be interested to read it. I'm seriously not trying to be a pain, it's just that I'm totally interested in this concept and I personally feel that one MUST have a sense of skepticism when evaluating claims that demand proof. I use the word skepticism to mean "questioning nature", not necessarily to mean absolute closed mindedness despite evidence to the contrary. What's that phrase...incredible claims require incredible evidence? Plus according to logic, it's the responsibility of those making incredible claims to prove them, not the responsibility of the skeptic to disprove them. ;)

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Also, if you could link where JAMA wishes they had never published the study, I'd be interested to read it. I'm seriously not trying to be a pain, it's just that I'm totally interested in this concept...

Well you are cause I have a huge library and don't want to spent too much time looking. :lol2: I think I posted it here once before but not sure. I'm on the way to Bangkok now so might look when I get back. Did read this "Ten things wrong with medical journals" today at http://www.thelastpsychiatrist.com/

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Well you are cause I have a huge library and don't want to spent too much time looking. :lol2: I think I posted it here once before but not sure. I'm on the way to Bangkok now so might look when I get back. Did read this "Ten things wrong with medical journals" today at http://www.thelastpsychiatrist.com/

Yeah, that was an interesting link. It's someone's blog. And no mention of JAMA, Lundberg's firing, TT study, nothin'.

Have a good trip to Bangkok, sounds like fun. If I were with you, I'd buy you a beer. :cheers: Lemme know if you ever find the article. You can PM me if you'd like.

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This is one of those things where I feel if you are interested in the idea, have $400.00 left over after you meet all of your financial obligations and have nothing else that you need or want to do with the time the class takes, why not? You may learn something.

I also feel that you shouldn't use this on your patients. Since it wasn't part of Kaplan's NCLEX preparation class, I would wager that energy manipulation is out of our scope of practice.

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I also feel that you shouldn't use this on your patients. Since it wasn't part of Kaplan's NCLEX preparation class, I would wager that energy manipulation is out of our scope of practice.

Despite it not being a part of the Kaplan NCLEX prep, many nursing programs still teach it. It is irresponsible junk science. I recently read an interesting analogy to this:

Therapeutic touching is a method of making something seem legitimate when it is not (has never been proven, not even come close), just like creationists are now calling what they do as "Intelligent design".

UNTIL TT can be proven, it is absolutely irresponsible for anyone to lead a patient to believe that it can help them. It has NO basis in science and nursing is suppose to be science based (evidence based). NANDA has lost several credibility points for including this dx.

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Wow! We had a half day lecture about it, but were never tested on the material.

Say, can you use "energy field disturbance" as a diagnosis for a person who repeatedly causes light bulbs to not only become unusable, but also issue a loud pop, and, many times shatter, when they flip the switch? I am not talking about every so often they flip a light switch and the light bulb doesn't work. I am talking about phases that last for days.

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Wow! We had a half day lecture about it, but were never tested on the material.

Say, can you use "energy field disturbance" as a diagnosis for a person who repeatedly causes light bulbs to not only become unusable, but also issue a loud pop, and, many times shatter, when they flip the switch? I am not talking about every so often they flip a light switch and the light bulb doesn't work. I am talking about phases that last for days.

LOL, that's actually quite funny. Seems to me that if your energy field was truly disturbed, it would be evident in some physical way. The whole light bulb thing made me LOL IRL cuz it seems like if a light bulb is gonna pop, it waits until I enter the room. OH NO! My energy field MUST be disturbed. Can't wait until I tell my primary physician about it, I wonder what he'll prescribe? Obviously something to calm my energy field, but I'm already taking benzo's so what other choices are there? LOL. :lol2:

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Specializes in LTC, Med/Surg, Peds, ICU, Tele.

I think pranic healing could be part of a holistic healing center. The ancients knew a lot in my opinion, even though they didn't have all the fancy stuff that we have. But Western medicine tends to treat problems after they have gotten out of hand, and some of our methods also cause other imbalances in the body.

I don't know much about pranic healing, but I have a lot of respect for the intelligence and knowledge of people from that part of the world where civilization has existed for such a long time.

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Also, if you could link where JAMA wishes they had never published the study, I'd be interested to read it. I'm seriously not trying to be a pain, it's just that I'm totally interested in this concept and I personally feel that one MUST have a sense of skepticism when evaluating claims that demand proof. I use the word skepticism to mean "questioning nature", not necessarily to mean absolute closed mindedness despite evidence to the contrary. What's that phrase...incredible claims require incredible evidence? Plus according to logic, it's the responsibility of those making incredible claims to prove them, not the responsibility of the skeptic to disprove them. ;)

This link http://www.csicop.org/articles/19990121-jama/ has the details about the firing of the editor, including his poor selection of articles to publish, including the TT article. Maybe I was picking up that JAMA "wished they had oversight" on their editor and therefore wished they had never published it. You can find a lot by posting "JAMA therapeutic touch" into google.

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Yeah, that was an interesting link. It's someone's blog. And no mention of JAMA, Lundberg's firing, TT study, nothin'.

Have a good trip to Bangkok, sounds like fun. If I were with you, I'd buy you a beer. :cheers: Lemme know if you ever find the article. You can PM me if you'd like.

No the blog had nothing to do with the "old news" but it was interesting about medical journals. I've asked him to do the same regarding double-blind studies.

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This link http://www.csicop.org/articles/19990121-jama/ has the details about the firing of the editor, including his poor selection of articles to publish, including the TT article. Maybe I was picking up that JAMA "wished they had oversight" on their editor and therefore wished they had never published it. You can find a lot by posting "JAMA therapeutic touch" into google.

Here is what the article you linked to me said:

" Media reports, however, speculated that the sex study was just the latest in a series of editorial decisions on topics of current controversy and public debate that caused the AMA to shudder. Lundberg devoted a November JAMA issue to alternative medicine and approved recent controversial articles on euthanasia, and an eleven year-old's debunking of therapeutic touch."

I've underlined and put into bold some key words that make it clear to me that the JAMA did not fire him for publishing the study on TT and that it did not "wish they had never published it". In fact, all the articles I read on google come to his defense of providing, while controversial, interesting information. It was the Clinton "oral sex question" and its timing that got him fired.

The media can speculate all it wants, but so far I haven't found a single reference to JAMA wishing they hadn't "allowed" him to publish the TT study. He was a controversial guy, that upsets people.

Regarding TT, weather or not JAMA debunked it or not is not all that important. It's the faulty science behind the theory of TT that debunks it all by itself. The more important question is "Why is NANDA including this as a nursing DX without having a scientific basis for it"? In my opinion, this is just an example of NANDA jumping on the holistic bandwagon without taking the time to consider the plausibility of TT.

Anyhow, hope ya had a good time in Bangkok.

P.S. Do not assume based on what I have written that I summarily disregard holistic remedies or treatments, it's just that in the realm of medical/nursing science, it should be proven to be effective, not merely anecdotal.

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In fact, all the articles I read on google come to his defense of providing, while controversial, interesting information. It was the Clinton "oral sex question" and its timing that got him fired.

The Rocky Mountain Skeptics said: "The Journal of the American Medical Association is a well-established publication with a reputation for printing reliable information that physicians can use to cure diseases and save lives. It is among the most prestigious and accepted science-based magazines in the world. It is listened to; its publication is eagerly anticipated every week and the popular media frequently report on significant or interesting information that it contains.

It is therefore, doubly egregious, indeed, completely irresponsible, for JAMA editors to give space to work that, at the very best, can be described as competent for a 4th grade science project. As shown above, the quality of the research is exemplary of either very bad science or adequate school work. No matter how desperate we in the skeptical community are for a win in our column, JAMA, as a respected member of this community, did us no service by either the publication of a schoolgirl's project or the subsequent over-promotion of the results and pronouncements about the works' significance and policy implications."

It's pretty bad when the skeptics "chew you out." This was just a link or so away from the other link.

Has there been any studies on TT published in a peer-reviewed journal? I might take a gander if I get time but my plate is full with shamanism, lol.

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