Therapeutic intent alters water

Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients,  Feb-March, 2007  by Jule Klotter

• E-mail
• Print
• Link

Several studies over the past 30 years have investigated the effect of intention on living systems. In an interview published in EXPLORE (May 2005), Stephan Schwartz says that cell colonies, hemoglobin, bacteria, enzymes, wound healing, human stress, and pain have all responded to therapeutic intent (TI), sometimes expressed through Therapeutic Touch. These studies have been criticized because of the naturally high variability of living systems. After all, the organism might have changed on its own. How can researchers be sure that the therapeutic intention of the healer actually has an effect?

Schwartz sought a more objective way to measure what occurs during Therapeutic Touch, Reiki, and other forms of energetic healing. Building on earlier research with water samples, Schwartz and three other researchers designed a double-blind pilot study in 1986 that used multiple internal reflection (MIR) infrared spectroscopy to measure changes in the water's hydrogen bonds. The study involved 14 healers and 14 recipients with a variety of diagnosed conditions (i.e., kidney stones, AIDS, cancer, post-surgery, arthritis, etc.). The researchers wanted to measure the TI effect during an actual therapeutic session. Half the healers had experience with some type of TI healing; the other half were "naive" volunteers. Healers were not given information about the recipients. A sealed vial of bacterial-static water, purchased from a medical supply house, was affixed to each practitioner's palm using a nylon-like pouch and Velcro[TM]. Each therapeutic session involved four randomly assigned, numbered vials of water. One vial served as a control; it did not enter the therapy session room and was not handled by the healer. The others were placed against the healer's palm for five minutes, ten minutes, and 15 minutes, respectively. A researcher, who remained blind to the spectrophotometric results, used a stopwatch to keep track of the time that each vial was exposed to the palm. When the vials had all returned to their transport tray, healers were allowed to continue the therapy session until they had finished. The vials then underwent spectrophotometric measurement by two different spectroscopists. The spectroscopists had no information about the session's vials, the participants in the session, or each other's measurement results. A fifth calibration vial, not involved in any sessions, was run by each spectroscopist at the start of the day.

The study's designers expected the experienced healers to produce more of an effect than the naive ones. They also expected time of exposure to the healer's palm to produce different results. Spectroscopy revealed measurable change in the water structure of the vials placed against a healer's palm. Both groups of healers produced significant results; but, as expected, the experienced healers produced more significant results than the naive ones. Exposed time, however, did not produce different results: "... there was no difference between the 5- and 15-minute vials." Curiously, a few of the session control vials also showed spectroscopic changes. Post hoc experiments ruled out temperature and barometric pressure as factors. The researchers do not know if these control vials were affected by contact with the treated vials or if the researcher in charge of the sessions may have had an effect. Apparently, some of the therapy sessions (which were videotaped) were emotionally powerful.

The effect of TI on the patients was not the focus of this study. Nonetheless, some patients reported a clear response. In one session, an experienced healer identified kidney stones in a woman scheduled for an ultrasound procedure three days later. He stated the intention to dissolve the stones. The woman called the research team four days later to say that X-rays taken just before the procedure found no stones.

If therapeutic intention or energy healing has an effect on water, what about the water within us? Humans consist primarily of water. In the EXPLORE interview, Schwartz explains that he searched the medical literature after this experiment and found 39 studies involving hydrogen bonding in blood. He says, "These proposed that the same measurement we had been looking at--the change in the bonding relationship--was associated with stimulation of T8 cells." In this research study, the authors allow that something other than changes in oxygen-hydrogen bonding could account for the spectroscopic effects. Still, therapeutic intention produced an effect on water, a non-living system, in the infrared at the same frequency as the O-H bonding. Schwartz says, "You would have a completely different kind of healthcare system if practitioners, whatever their specialty or technical skills, understood that the consciousness with which they were interacting with the patient was going to be part of the therapeutic treatment the patient was getting."

Schwartz S, Horrigan BJ. Stephan Schwartz--The realm of the will (interview). EXPLORE. May 2005; 1 (3): 199-207.