What is Energy Healing and Can it Help Autism?

Warren Gouin last month

9 MIN READ

Energy healing is an ancient practice that dates back thousands of years. In fact, there are records of healers working with patients for centuries.

The theory of energy healing is based on the idea that the body has an energy system that can be manipulated to promote health and wellbeing. This energy system is believed to be made up of a network of pathways, or meridians, through which energy flows. The flow of this energy is thought to be disrupted when we experience physical or emotional stress, leading to illness and disease. Energy healing works by restoring balance in the body's energy system, allowing for the free flow of energy throughout the body. This helps to reduce stress and promote healing.

Energy healing has been used to address a variety of health issues, including chronic pain, high blood pressure, mental health issues and emotional pain. It is believed that energy healing can help to restore balance in the body's energy system, allowing for the free flow of energy throughout the body. This helps to reduce stress and promote healing. Energy healing can be used to treat physical ailments such as chronic pain, as well as mental and emotional issues such as depression or anxiety. It can also be used to help manage high blood pressure by helping to reduce stress levels. Energy healing is a powerful tool that can be used to address a range of health issues and promote overall wellbeing.

There are various forms of energy healing used today. Some of the common examples are listed below.

1. Acupuncture: This traditional Chinese practice involves the insertion of thin needles into specific points on the body to help balance energy and promote healing.

2. Reiki: Reiki is a form of energy healing that involves the transfer of energy from the practitioner to the patient. It is based on the belief that life force energy flows through all living things and can be used to heal physical, mental, and emotional ailments. The practitioner uses their hands to channel this energy into the patient in order to restore balance and promote healing.

3. Qi Gong: This ancient Chinese practice combines physical postures, breathing techniques, and meditation to help restore balance and harmony in the body’s energy system.

4. Ayurveda: This holistic healing system from India uses herbs, diet, yoga, massage, and other natural therapies to restore balance in the body’s energy system.

5. Homeopathy: This alternative medicine practice uses diluted substances to stimulate the body’s natural healing processes.

6. Crystal Healing: This practice involves using crystals or gemstones to channel positive energy into the patient’s body for healing purposes.

7. Sound Therapy: This type of therapy uses sound waves to create vibrations that can help reduce stress and promote relaxation in the body’s energy system.

8. Colour Therapy: Also known as chromotherapy, this type of therapy uses different colours of light to help balance out a person's energy field and promote healing.

9. Energy Healers: An energy healer is someone who has been trained in the use of energy healing techniques to help restore balance and promote healing. Energy healers are able to detect and manipulate the body’s energy system, using their hands or other tools such as crystals or sound waves.

10. Microcurrent devices: These devices are sometimes used by practitioners to measure a person's energetic imbalances, then provide a microcurrent therapy to correct the energetic imbalance. Recently, cost-effective microcurrent devices have been developed for home use.

If you are curious to know more about energy healing and how it may help your child with autism, it's important to know that energy healing is not a treatment for autism. Energy healing methods are designed to bring balance, health, and increase vital energy. They are not used to target specific health conditions. However, energy healing can improve the symptoms and root causes of a health condition as a result of balancing the energies of the body.

There may be mild to moderate adverse effects to energy healing, such as cold-like symptoms and aches and pains associated with the body cleaning out toxins.

It's important to remain cautious as there may be mild to moderate side effects associated with energy healing. These can include cold-like symptoms, aches and pains, as well as the body naturally cleaning out toxins.

Can Energy Healing Actually Work?

As parents, it can be difficult to know what the best course of action is for our children with autism. We often look for anything that could be helpful in improving their health and wellbeing. That's why so many people are curious to hear more about energy healing as a potential option. The body is a complex machine made up of electrical, chemical and mechanical components, so it makes sense that electrical energy, chemicals and movement all work together to affect our health. Investigating energy healing may provide some new useful insights as you search for ways to help your child with autism improve their mental, physical, and emotional wellbeing.

Furthermore, there is more to human beings than simply being machines. We are emotional creatures with the capacity for thought and learning. Energy healing may provide an additional approach for supporting the development of children on the autism spectrum, as well as bringing comfort, care and compassion to those who require it.

Do you feel sceptical about energy healing as a potential therapy for autism? If so, you are not alone. There is a wide range of opinions surrounding the effectiveness of energy healing, and this can make it difficult for parents to decide if it is worth pursuing. Many people swear by the benefits of energy healing and have had positive experiences, while other people believe it does not work at all.

I'm sure that not all energy healing techniques work. If there are energy therapies that do work, not every practitioner of that technique has success. For those reasons, I'm not going to get caught up in the weeds debating each case and each person's opinion. I'm just going to keep it simple and explore if there's evidence of energy healing working at all. If there's at least one technique and one person that uses the technique with success, then it's possible. If it's possible, we need to improve the use and access of energy healing.

Whether you believe in the possibility of energy healing, or complete deny the possibility exists, we need to keep the conversation intelligent. The modern way of the sceptic is to use less scientific arguments and emotionally degrade the other side.

With that in mind, I'm going to list some common arguments against energy healing, that just deserve rolling of the eyes. These aren't helpful, unless you're just trying to confuse people and steer them away from exploring alternative ways to improve health.

People that believe in energy healing are just tin-foil hat-wearing idiots.
My friend had 5 Reiki sessions, and didn't have any improvement, so energy healing doesn't work.
Energy healing can't work, therefore it doesn't work.
If people think energy healing works, then it's just the placebo effect, because energy healing does nothing.
There's no evidence that energy healing works.

None of the arguments above arguments hold any weight. Some people have the view that science is settled, so if it did work, we would know for sure and have clinical trials to back it up. The reality is, clinical trials are expensive, so they will probably never be done for any form of energy healing. Clinical trials are worth the investment if there's a multi-million dollar market and the product is patentable, so that the manufacturer has exclusivity of the product.

A true scientist remains curious, asks questions and investigates. Forming a conclusion before these steps are done holds no weight. If people believe that a molecule is needed to improve health, and electromagnetism or other forms of energy cannot, they lose their curiosity, don't ask questions or investigate.

There are many people that have reported health improvements after using energy healing. This doesn't mean the energy healing was directly responsible for this improvement, however. For example, the healing may be due to the placebo effect where the person had a positive expectation of the healing and this resulted in their improved health through the power of positive thought.

Whether it's the placebo effect or the healing energy, does it really matter? Isn't being healed the important bit?

As a parent, you want to do whatever you can to help your child live the best life they possibly can. While the debate of whether healing is caused by placebo effect or actual healing energy continues on, all that matters is that your child improves. Isn't this the most important part?

For the individual, it really doesn't matter, but for us trying to decide if energy healing is worth our time and money, it does matter. We want to know if we should try energy healing.

So, is there solid scientific evidence of positive effects of energy healing?

Energy healing theory and evidence.

As a parent, you may feel optimistic when you learn about energy healing. It is based on the idea that our bodies are composed of both physical matter and energy. Every person has a unique vibration, which can be balanced with the right modalities such as acupuncture, Reiki, massage and other forms of energy work. These adjustments help restore balance to our body’s energetic system and promote physical health.

Currently, western medicine doesn't acknowledge the benefits of many, if any, healing therapies. This includes energy healing practices. Western medicine is still very focussed on using molecules to affect our body's ability to produce certain chemicals, or to supply those chemicals directly. Western medicine treatments will usually involve medicines and medical treatments such as surgery. The electrical nature of the human body is rarely considered.

There's evidence, both anecdotal and scientific, that suggests energy medicine may help some people. Although there is some scientific evidence that suggests the effectiveness of energy healing, more research needs to be done in order to provide definitive proof that it works. As its popularity continues to grow, we can expect to see more studies conducted on this intriguing form of alternative medicine.

When it comes to energy healing, there are many positive testimonials from grateful people. Although testimonials are out of scope for this post, researching these can offer hope to parents eager to see improvements in their child's health.

For this post, I'll focus on scientific evidence that has been measured and documented. Studying the theory behind energy healing as well as looking through empirical evidence can give you good reasons to feel optimistic while pursuing an alternative approach to treating autism.

Research studies have been conducted in this field, although they often have difficulty collecting data from large sample sizes. This is especially true for one-on-one practices with a practitioner such as Reiki sessions. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine has published a Reiki study with a sample size of one patient that showed extremely promising results about the effect on the patient's absolute neutrophil count (improving an aspect of the immune system). This serves to further encourage and motivate parents who are seeking out natural remedies for their loved ones on the autism spectrum.

Energy healing has been used to help with a variety of conditions, including autism. Studies have indicated that energy healing can be beneficial for children with autism, helping to reduce symptoms such as anxiety and aggression. Energy healing can also help to improve communication skills, social interaction, and overall quality of life for those with autism.

Although a lot of the reported benefits of energy healing are anecdotal, microcurrent stimulation as a method of energy healing has been more widely studied.

A study conducted by Ngok Cheng et al, showed the effects of microcurrent stimulation of the skin in rats to increase amino acid transport, protein synthesis and ATP production in those cells. This indicates an increased ability to produce energy and heal tissue. The reason that evidence of healing and cellular energy increases are important for autism and health in general is that these effects help our whole body, not just one part of our body. Autism is complex and can seem to have multiple causes, however solutions that potentially affect multiple causes together are important to explore.

There are many other studies showing the benefits of electrical stimulation and other energy healing variations. They cover challenges with cellular function, pain, arthritis, fibromyalgia, muscle function, wound healing, anxiety, depression, stress, phobias, learning, attention, concentration, insomnia, skin, aggression, cravings, macular degeneration and postoperative rehabilitation.

Children diagnosed with autism will usually have issues with at least one of the challenges listed above, which is why parents use and often have success when using energy healing.

Takeaways, and what I personally do.

I personally believe that energy healing has a role in the modern world of health. Actually, I believe its role in health will greatly increase over the next few years and the longer term.

The ways in which people will use energy healing will vary. It will be a personal choice for everyone. If you are looking to find an energy healing practitioner, finding one through a referral from a friend you trust would be a good idea. There will probably be more energy healers that won't help you, than those that will. Don't fall into the trap of feeling that you need to provide positive feedback, when you don't really know if it's helped. If you don't think it has helped you, say so. Be cautious about referring others when you aren't convinced that it's helped you.

Now to what I personally do. I'm a scientist and an engineer that loves my tech. I've tried all sorts of health gadgets, mainly relating to biofeedback to assist with calmness and mood.

I have never used a Reiki practitioner or similar, however I have used a practitioner trained in NES. NES used a device to measure the person's field, then suggest frequencies that can be applied to improve health specifically for each person. You then go home with some vials of liquid that you drop into water and drink, which are designed to correct energy imbalances.

I experienced some benefit with these sessions. The practitioner would spend some time providing some energy healing similar to Reiki, which helped me to relax and feel better.

What I use now is the Healy device. The Healy device is a German-made electronic device that can measure our field, then suggest and run an appropriate energy healing signal to support the body. The benefit of this device is that I can use it as much as I like for everyone in our family. I can even use it with friends and extended family. With this device I have experienced a noticeable increase in calmness and energy.

The most immediate and noticeable effect of the Healy device that I noticed was the removal of a feeling that I would consistently feel at the bottom of my rib cage when I thought certain thoughts. I guess this was a feeling that my body gave me when a thought stimulated anxiety.

The Healy analysis indicated that my solar plexus chakra was very imbalanced, and then gave me microcurrent sessions to correct this imbalance. Within a couple of days, the effect was very noticeable in the way I felt. It is very interesting to me that a device could analyse me and describe areas of my life that I'm struggling with so accurately, then provide healing to help me.

At the moment, my go-to will be the Healy Device. If you have tried the Healy, please let me know of your experience in the comments.

Author

Warren Gouin

I'm a parent of a child that was diagnosed with autism. I'm an engineer and scientist with most of my career in the diagnostic pathology industry. I'm passionate about improve health and I want to help other parents of children with autism.