Mod+ 252. BERNADETTE DORAN ON ENERGY HEALING

Here is how to do the Bengston method as of 2007:

http://www.livingwaterunity.org/picks/Documents/JACM - Methods Paper.pdf


Commentary: A Method Used to Train Skeptical
Volunteers to Heal in an Experimental Setting
WILLIAM F. BENGSTON, Ph.D.
...
This paper describes
the training methods used in those experiments.
....
Second, it is logically possible that the apparent healing
in my research is not actually learned through the techniques
described, but is rather somehow passed on from person to
person. At this point in my research, I simply don’t know
how important the above two caveats are.
 
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I entirely agree. But undeniably, different techniques have different success rates so the technique is not irrelevant. Some day, the technique may be irrelevant (as it may already be for a few master healers).
What evidence are you basing this statement on? Comparing Spiritual healing, the Bengston method, qigong and reiki, I would hypothesize that they would all have the same effect. I suspect that any differences would be due to the innate abilities of the healers not the technique. It will be hard to test this since you would need to do an experiment with healers that were trained in different techniques for that experiment and you would need enough healers to average out individual differences in ability. If you compared existing practitioners, I would put my money on qigong masters ( http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2009/06/sensing-qualities-of-qi.html )
I go through the cycle for about a minute, gradually accelerating, then make the 'leap of faith' to not consciously cycling, such that the physical sensation begins; I sometimes think of a huge jet lifting off the runway at that point. The reason I prefer to meditate rather than read a book or carry on a conversation is that I lack confidence in my ability to multitask that way.
Is there any hypothesis as to why image cycling for one minute would have effects that last throughout the entire healing session?
Speaking of confidence, I hasten to emphasize that I don't have a proven successful record so take what I say for what it's worth. I think it's mostly a faithful image of Bill's views at the time of the workshop.
 
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Do you need to get the book or attend a seminar to obtain the full explanation of the image cycling technique? Or is there a full explanation online somewhere?

Thanks.

I recommend buying the CD set - the book has more interesting story material but the CD set contains everything you need to master the technique (along with the clarifications I've listed above, of course;)). When I finished with my set, I gave it away to a friend, or you could sell it. Some big city libraries may stock it.
 
One other queer point. Nobody knows where the healing is coming from, a point Bill emphasizes. Is it coming from the trained volunteer? Only from trainees who've been in Bill's presence? From Bill directly? From Ben, Bill's psychic friend who is now no doubt enjoying his reward in paradise? From the universe, the One Mind? The question of who may be meaningless, of course.

Also Bill insists (as of the date of the workshop) that it is still unproven whether the technique can be taught in the strict sense. They're still struggling to sort those things out.

Edit - I see Jim_Smith touched on this latter point a couple of posts earlier.
 
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One other queer point. Nobody knows where the healing is coming from, a point Bill emphasizes. Is it coming from the trained volunteer? Only from trainees who've been in Bill's presence? From Bill directly? From Ben, Bill's psychic friend who is now no doubt enjoying his reward in paradise? From the universe, the One Mind? The question of who may be meaningless, of course.

Also Bill insists (as of the date of the workshop) that it is still unproven whether the technique can be taught in the strict sense. They're still struggling to sort those things out.

Spiritualists learn to obtaining the healing energy from "a higher plane" we call it the God force, it is believed to be mediated by spirit guides, the healer only functions as a conduit and transformer. It is important to get the healing energy from outside yourself because otherwise you could deplete your own energy. These beliefs come from information obtained though evidential mediums.

In qigong they believe they avoid depleting their own chi by taking in chi from the environment before using it to heal. Their belief system was developed through empirical methods.

Healing can be taught in the sense that people have to know about it to use it. But in another sense I suspect the innate ability of the healer is more important than the technique. Effectiveness increases with practice. I don't think ability is transferred from the teacher although guides might be assigned in that way. People develop healing ability spontaneously as Bengston discovered.
 
What evidence are you basing this statement on?

The main thing is the peer reviewed research literature showing extraordinary results in the cancer studies - no healing method of any kind has ever achieved a track record approaching that. For me as a scientist, with little personal experience with energy healing in general, that causes Bengston's work to shine out from the others like a nova. The others may be as good, but that's never been demonstrated so we'll have to wait for the evidence.

Bernadette Doran, who is familiar with many techniques and proficient in several (as I understand it), compared the Bengston method to Niagara Falls in terms of its power, while Reiki is a mountain stream. That's consistent with a comparison of the published studies of the two techniques. I know another healer who is proficient in several modalities and uses Bengston for his toughest cases. Of course, this is all anecdotal.


Is there any hypothesis as to why image cycling for one minute would have effects that last throughout the entire healing session?

When Bill was pressed hard at the workshop for a theory, he offered a thought 'off the record' (so burn this after reading!) He said his best guess was that you are setting up a different address in the future. Make of that what you will. For me, it's consistent with the concept of an information-based reality (rather than matter- or energy-based, for example), which seems to be emerging as an important concept in physics and cosmology. I suspect that's where he's coming from - he's a brilliant fellow.
 
The main thing is the peer reviewed research literature showing extraordinary results in the cancer studies - no healing method of any kind has ever achieved a track record approaching that.
Have other healing methods been tested this way? I understand the research demonstrates the effectiveness of Bengston's method but I don't see how that research shows it is superior to other methods. Also, I think you have to be careful extrapolating from a model disease used in scientific research: a certain line of cancer cells injected into a strain of genetically identical mice, to humans where each cancer is different and each patient is different.
 
When Bill was pressed hard at the workshop for a theory, he offered a thought 'off the record' (so burn this after reading!) He said his best guess was that you are setting up a different address in the future. Make of that what you will. For me, it's consistent with the concept of an information-based reality (rather than matter- or energy-based, for example), which seems to be emerging as an important concept in physics and cosmology. I suspect that's where he's coming from - he's a brilliant fellow.

I don't really understand this. How does image cycling set up a different address in the future? What is an address in the future? How is it consistent with an information-based reality?
 
That's consistent with a comparison of the published studies of the two techniques.

Can you post references or links for this? Do the studies compare existing practitioners or were healers trained for the experiment from the same pool of potential healers? Are they using the same patient pool, and providing healing for the same time intervals? Was the comparison of studies done in a statically, scientifically valid way?
 
http://www.livingwaterunity.org/picks/Documents/JACM - Methods Paper.pdf
The hands-on healing technique involved little more than
the intent, with as little effort as possible by the volunteer,
to feel an energy flowing out of the palms of their hands.
Because my volunteers had no experience or belief in handson
healing, in the group sessions they had to practice this
technique on one another to help each other get over the initial
sense of feeling foolish. Typically, they would stand behind
one another and place their hands on each other’s shoulders
for approximately 15 minutes. Each volunteer, and I,
would go around the room and treat every other person during
the course of a training session. Of course, when they
felt foolish they were to practice the cycling technique. After
much practice, some, but not all, volunteers experienced
what they thought was a change in their hands. Some, but
not all, reported a sensation of something flowing out of
them. They were encouraged to practice this technique on
friends and even pets between training sessions.

This is pretty much what we do in Spiritualist healing classes. But I was taught to visualize "healing light" instead of image cycling.
 
Have other healing methods been tested this way? I understand the research demonstrates the effectiveness of Bengston's method but I don't see how that research shows it is superior to other methods.

Other methods have been tested many times under various laboratory conditions. Bengston's is the only one demonstrated (and published) to have a high cure rate for cancer under controlled conditions. Curing cancer is the holy grail in our culture! Cancer causes untold misery and heartbreak for millions of people in this country every year. It's very high profile. It has my attention because of a family history.

Other energy healing methods may also be capable of achieving similar success rates, but that has not been demonstrated and published, and isn't even rumored so far as I know, so the information's not available to us if it exists (set me straight if I'm missing something).

Also, I think you have to be careful extrapolating from a model disease used in scientific research: a certain line of cancer cells injected into a strain of genetically identical mice, to humans where each cancer is different and each patient is different.

Agreed. It's been successfully tested on at least two animal cancers in the lab and used successfully on many different cancers in humans and animals, anecdotally. His experience is, the more aggressive the cancer, the faster the cure. Also he says veterinarians love the method because it gives them a way of dealing with animal cancers and other difficult health problems that were previously nearly hopeless.
 
Can you post references or links for this? Do the studies compare existing practitioners or were healers trained for the experiment from the same pool of potential healers? Are they using the same patient pool, and providing healing for the same time intervals? Was the comparison of studies done in a statically, scientifically valid way?

Sorry - I was afraid my wording might not have been completely clear. I know of no experiments comparing Bengston's method with another method head-to-head. Someone may be doing that now, I don't know (Equilibrium-e3?). I was making an informal comparison of the published results I've seen from Bengston, and the published results I've seen from other healing modalities. I'm convinced that if anyone else were curing cancer in the lab at the 90+% level, year after year, we'd have gotten wind of it in the extended-consciousness literature unless it's top secret.
 
I don't really understand this. How does image cycling set up a different address in the future? What is an address in the future? How is it consistent with an information-based reality?

My own concepts are too unsettled to be helpful here. As to information-based reality from the standpoint of materialist philosophy, search on simulism and Nick Bostrom to get started, but get ready for a heavy intellectual grind.

For a more spiritual but still scientifically grounded approach, you can't do better than Tom Campbell. You may know he's a physicist who helped Robert Monroe develop and test HemiSync (binaural beat brainwave entrainment technology) in the early days. In the course of that work, Tom had profound experiences that changed his view of reality. He mulled it all over for decades while working as a physicist and has published a massive tome, My Big TOE (for Theory of Everything), that explains his theory of reality as being information-based (you don't need to know physics at all); it's available as a free download.

I found that massive book a slog, so for a more pleasant introduction, check out some of his more recent talks and interviews on YouTube - they are very accessible and worth learning a little about if one is not completely certain of one's worldview - or go to his website, www.my-big-toe.com. Tom does healing and talks about that some, though it's not his main emphasis.

Edit: Late breaking news - In the interview Bernadette Doran recommended the book, The Basic Code of the Universe, by Massimo Citro, for an explanation of how healing works. I ordered the book and just started reading it. It turns out the book is substantially about the concept of an information-based reality. Quoting from the forward, "The universe as a field of information is the new concept of reality, more exactly, the newly rediscovered perennial concept that has been ignored and even denied in the mainstream of modern science."

There is evidence that events are affected by backward causation from the future:eek:, by what are called attractors:eek:, as well as the normal cause and effect that we're familiar with. Attractors are basically thought to be sets of properties or goals:eek: toward which a system tends to evolve:eek:. When Bengston talks about setting a new address in the future, my take is that he theorizes (maybe not in these exact terms) that you can use these techniques to change the relevant attractor(s) :eek: or switch to preferable attractors :eek: such that events begin to evolve toward a probable cure rather than death:eek:. (I hope you can tell from all the :eek: faces that I'm out of my depth here).

Edited 2014/09/04 7:50 AM PDT
 
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I know of no experiments comparing Bengston's method with another method head-to-head.

I understand they need to amass scientific evidence that healing works in order to get acceptance and funding and that is probably their current priority. But ultimately, to get a better understanding of how and why it works and to develop the best possible healing method, they will have to start experimenting to see what parts of the technique produce the effect and compare the different techniques for effectiveness. As someone who has his own evidence of the effectiveness of energy healing, I am more interested in evidence that demonstrates what part of the technique causes healing because that will illuminate the mechanism of the healing that the technique produces.. Also, as someone who practices Spiritual healing I would like to know what the best technique is ... so that I can use it.
 
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About what I was saying before... even if not directly related to energy-healing:


Doctors have a hard time admitting high dose vitamin C can do remarkable things... which is still a very material, quantifiable, non supernatural substance :D
I can't watch the video at the moment and am too impatient to keep from replying. Have you read 'the cancer industry' by Ralph Moss? He goes into vitamin C (in liquid form) a bit . . . The book's a must read, IMO.
 
I can't watch the video at the moment and am too impatient to keep from replying. Have you read 'the cancer industry' by Ralph Moss? He goes into vitamin C (in liquid form) a bit . . . The book's a must read, IMO.
No, I haven't but I've added to my Amazon wish list, thanks.
I've read similar material for decades, it's quite depressing... :(
 
I can't watch the video at the moment and am too impatient to keep from replying. Have you read 'the cancer industry' by Ralph Moss? He goes into vitamin C (in liquid form) a bit . . . The book's a must read, IMO.

You should watch it: it may be Semmelweis all over again. There are no more egregious examples of stupidity and bigotry than you'll find in the annals of medical history.
 
About what I was saying before... even if not directly related to energy-healing:


Doctors have a hard time admitting high dose vitamin C can do remarkable things... which is still a very material, quantifiable, non supernatural substance :D
Hard to know what to write, really . . . I struggle . . . b/c it's such powerful information, and also b/c there's a considerable amount more (of like stuff) out there . . . Gerson therapy, for starters, being one, which, as you likely know, was booted out of the states . . . and it's these sorts of thing being rejected for things such as chemo and radiation . . . I know a girl who just died (almost certainly) as a result of "treatment," although, on paper her cause of death was cancer. I'm not sure how correct this is, but allegedly reported in JAMA, even, amongst other places, it's said that people who do nothing whatsoever for cancer fair better statistically in terms of living longer (and probably quality of life, too).

Yeah, I think it's Linus Pauling that the book I mentioned talks about, concerning the Vitamin C . . .

. . . I laughed a a good deal watching the video after they said that "turning Mr. Smith prone probably made the biggest difference" . . . the sh!t's just f'n ridiculous.
 
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