| Summary | Oschman, a former cell biology researcher, applies his scientific training to the emerging field of energy medicine. While previous investigators (Franz Anton Mesmer, Guillaume Benjamin Armand Duchenne, Edwin D. Babbitt, Harold Saxon Burr) were either ignored or selectively accepted, healers from ancient times have used touch to heal or even cure the human body, and the human body itself has sophisticated strategies to heal itself. Oschman shows how the body is a living crystal with electricity, magnetism, and light flowing through it, often at higher speeds than the standard neurology model. Quantum physics applies here, as well as piezoelectricity (pressure electricity), explaining how energy flows through water molecules in the collagen that invests every internal structure of the body. Proteins in the body are semiconductors, and our brain waves may even be tuned to standing energy waves (Schumann resonance) that surround the earth itself. Oschman collects data and illustrations widely, from acupuncture, Qi Gong, massage, yoga, meditation, Zen, and of course, standard medicine. The latter, he argues, whether through scalpels or pharmaceuticals, can be understood as energy medicine. Even better, in his point of view, would be an imaginative synthesis of standard medicine with many (other) forms of energy medicine. |
| Commentary | The book is a collection of well-researched but clearly presented ideas, some of them highly speculative but well argued. Many diagrams, charts, photos, and other art clarify his ideas, especially spatial models, including microscopic or even subatomic information. This is a revolutionary work, attempting to transcend the semi-Newtonian view of the body as a series of more-or-less discrete systems all ruled by the brain. Similarly, old-style cell models (a bag of water) and neurology are insufficient, Oschman believes, to understand how cells are in active conversation with the rest of the body and that emotions and thoughts are also holographically represented throughout the body. It's an exciting book for readers interested in bodywork, self-regulation of the body, mind-body-spirit syntheses, and progressive ideas of medicine, especially areas of health maintenance and preventive medicine. |
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