Re: Disturbed Energy Field? Yes or No?

Originally Posted by feralnostalgia

for future reference, coming right out and telling me you think I'm full of it would be appreciated, rather than pretending to entertain the slightest bit of respect or openmindedness on this subject.

Wow, I must have completely misread woodenpug, because I didn't see anything like that in his post. He beat me to the punch, incidentally - I, too, was going to say how great that is. If it could be reproduced in a blinded setting you'd not only be able to confront skeptics but also be eligible for James Randi's $1M.

For what it's worth, I am an anthropologist, or at least that's the discipline my PhD will be in, a sociologist (Masters), a nurse and have a mind that's open but not so open my brain falls out. Not everyone who wants proof beyond the annecdotal is an "extreme skeptic" whose mind blares "this is BS."

And I completely agree that if human energy fields of the kind Touch Therapy proposes exist, and if manipulation of these energy fields is possible, it's not the kind of thing that anyone could achieve proficiency in without a great deal of dedication and practice.

Re: Disturbed Energy Field? Yes or No?

Originally Posted by talaxandra

Wow, I must have completely misread woodenpug, because I didn't see anything like that in his post.

I understood the post to be rather sarcastic, my apologies if my interpretation of the word choice was mistaken. I understand not everyone is an extreme skeptic, but I've never heard anyone phrase things the way woodenpug did without trying to be patronizing. "surely you're not so selfish", "subject patients to" - I didn't read those as sincere interest or the sort of thing people say to each other when not being dismissive. either way discussing this on the internet was probably a bad idea in the first place.

it just feels like no one would have taken the same tone if this were a thread about prayer - and there's no functional difference for someone with my worldview. I didn't intend to claim I had empirical evidence, and frankly I'm not sure any responsible and thoughtful person would give the community responsible for everything from botox to the atomic bomb a starting point towards exploiting this particular force of nature. I'm not sure exactly what proportion of medical advancements were weaponized before they were turned into therapy, but it's uncomfortably high. (thinking of radiation therapy here. it was developed to destroy communists, not tumors.)

I believe the two domains compliment each other but I'm not trying to say they're the same thing.

for the record, I think Randi is a joke. again, the majority of these phenomena are related to consciousness and there are no controls for that in the experiments (even if he does get participants to agree to them, that doesn't mean the experiments are legit, just that the subjects are a bit slow, or frauds themselves.) Randi goes into the same category with Dawkins in my mind...smug, culturally imperialist media personalities who enjoy pushing bourgeois eurocentrism on the world at large. (one also wonders exactly what kind of yogi or shaman would care for a cash prize to begin with...)

I remember a bit of "Mountains Beyond Mountains", the biography of Dr. Paul Farmer, where he was talking with Haitian peasants, wondering if a campaign to disprove endemic native belief in magic was necessary to get people to bother taking medicine. when he confronted an old woman for what he perceived as a logical inconsistency in admitting to both taking her pills and believing her infection to be the result of a curse, she responded with the kreyol equivalent of "are you not capable of subtlety?" having been rather harassed by hordes of Dawkins fanboy types every time I admit to believing in a spiritual dimension to reality, I have similar feelings. -_- if my defensiveness was premature, my apologies.

Re: Disturbed Energy Field? Yes or No?

Only woodenpug knows if he was being sarky, and I have to admit that I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt, particularly as I've been misinterpreted on other occasions. Face to face communication would be impossible on an allnurses scale but at least it would be less ambiguous It's hard when one feels strongly about something not to see opposition to it as dismissive, ignorant, provocative or antagonistic. I congratulate you on maintaining some distance, and try to do the same when countered. I have no doubt you're right that a prayer thread wouldn't be subjected to any criticism here, at least not on the grounds of provability of the existence of God - there have been heated discussions about prayer and patients, though. If you're interested in seeing prayer and faith being as hotly debated as this topic is here, check out beliefnet.com - the flame wars there can get really firey!

Re: Disturbed Energy Field? Yes or No?

it just feels like no one would have taken the same tone if this were a thread about prayer - and there's no functional difference for someone with my worldview. I didn't intend to claim I had empirical evidence, and frankly I'm not sure any responsible and thoughtful person would give the community responsible for everything from botox to the atomic bomb a starting point towards exploiting this particular force of nature. I'm not sure exactly what proportion of medical advancements were weaponized before they were turned into therapy, but it's uncomfortably high.[/quote]

What does this mean? What community are you talking about? If it's Western science, are you painting with the broad brush people like Salk, the Curies, DeBakey, and on and on? If a weapon is developed based on the science of others are they also to blame? If some bad guy develops the mutant monster from hell is it the fault of Watson and Crick?

No one needs to "give" anyone else their capacity for spirituality. It's not conferred from any group whether they are thoughtful and responsible or not.

Anyways, there are threads about prayer. The focus of this thread was questioning whether or not a nursing diagnosis of "Disturbed Energy Field" is appropriate. Please don't think I am in any way ridiculing your experiences. I think it would be kind and generous of you to use the gifts you have to help your patients. If I knew, for example that a nurse was focusing on me bathed in a white light or something like that, I would be grateful.

Re: Disturbed Energy Field? Yes or No?

I am sorry if my post seemed sarcastic or patronizing. I was attempting to be polite and succinct.
I am fairly convinced that energy fields, as described by the NANDA diagnosis, do not exist, but I sincerely would like to be wrong on this.
I would not want to offend someone who could help me.

Re: Disturbed Energy Field? Yes or No?

Originally Posted by Woodenpug

I am sorry if my post seemed sarcastic or patronizing. I was attempting to be polite and succinct.
I am fairly convinced that energy fields, as described by the NANDA diagnosis, do not exist, but I sincerely would like to be wrong on this.
I would not want to offend someone who could help me.

Sit in the middle of say, a gym floor with your eyes covered and ear plugs in. Have someone sneak up on you from all directions and whack you with a bamboo pole. After about an hour you'll feel their "energy field" approaching and be able to avoid their whack.

Re: Disturbed Energy Field? Yes or No?

LOL. But it is along the right lines. I would have proof that I can accept even if scientific proof is not possible. The zenman approach could lead to an acceptable scientific experiment as I consistently avoided that pole.
I've emailed several therapeutic touch practictioners. This was a couple years ago. I just explained that I'm a nurse and would need some type of recognition for their work. From a list of about 10, I got one reply. That reply was from someone who said he did not have any outside recognition, but he was sure his teacher did. His teacher was on my original list, so I sent him another email. No reply.
Therapeutic touch works as long as you pay for my thirty hour course and thirty hour fellowiship. Oh, and as long as you don't look too closely or expect any type of results other than my word that it worked.
I would still like to see this be a real thing. I would give it a fair chance.

Re: Disturbed Energy Field? Yes or No?

This was so funny. My wife had her last day at her old school June 11th. All the principals and superintendant were telling a little about each teacher that was not returning next year. The high school principal got up and one of her comments was that, "I had this really bad headache and Karen did something around my head and it went away." I almost burst out laughing!

Karen doesn't practice any recognized modality as she doesn't like any "rules and protocols." However, she can make you feel a good buzz.

Re: Disturbed Energy Field? Yes or No?

Originally Posted by zenman

Sit in the middle of say, a gym floor with your eyes covered and ear plugs in. Have someone sneak up on you from all directions and whack you with a bamboo pole. After about an hour you'll feel their "energy field" approaching and be able to avoid their whack.

What type of energy is their energy field consisting of, pray tell?


In the scenario you highlight I dare say what is really happening is an increased sensitivity in your non aural/visual senses. Sense of touch, especially, if focused on, can pick up minute changes in surrounding by the effects of air on hairs. Olfactory changes are also able to be detected. Interestingly enough, many animals use exactly this. Mammalian whiskers and insect antennae are examples off the top of my head.

In addition, considering humans typically are warmer than room temperature, it is possible to detect an increase in infrared energy radiation from the person along with ambient temperature increase from air convection. I'd imagine removing our two most-used senses helps one focus on this phenomena. Infrared, being a type of electromagnetic energy, follows the inverse-square law and therefore it especially is quite useful to gauge distance from its source.

Purely speculative, here, but I'll wager we are sensitive enough to pick up on minute ground vibrations of someone sneaking in on us, too, if we try hard to.


No energy fields or god of the gaps (same principle) required.

Re: Disturbed Energy Field? Yes or No?

Zenman, sounds like your wife got a great send-off! Your description of a heightened sense in the stick-whack scenario is interesting. In general, it's likely true that we often respond to things outside the traditional five senses. The stick-whack scenario, for example added fear to the mix and what physiological changes occur as a result of that. Very fascinating.

Whether or not energy fields are measured, codified and standardized, I will not take the attitude that "if I can't see it, it doesn't exist." Too many weird anecdotal things have happened to me to make such a statement. I am very interested in hearing about how "intuition", for lack of a better word, is experienced by health care workers. We're not supposed to use intuition formally, but probably most of us have had unspecified "feelings" about a patient's prognosis or diagnosis that they can't explain.

If you and your wife are planning to travel this summer, have fun and I'm jealous