Rockefeller-Samueli Center for Research in Mind-Body Energy

This Center was established in 2002. The goals of the program are to promote and support scientifically credible research on spiritual and energy healing. The purpose of the program is to test the impact of healing energy on patients, and explore the mechanism of healing energy in the laboratory. Development of objective and clinically relevant measures is a key focus of the program. These measurements include patients’ quality of life, changes in health, effect on brain function, cell and gene changes and the overall risks, benefits and costs associated with delivery of these healing practices in healthcare.

Background
Although the American public and health providers are beginning to accept the integration of some complementary practices as bonafide interventions for various illnesses, energy medicine has yet to have an impact. A major problem with energy medicine is the inconsistency of clinical results, and too often, poor quality science in the area. One contributing factor is there are no objective methods to determine if healing energy is being transmitted or received either from outside the individual or within. Thus, before integration of energy medicine in healthcare can be achieved, it is legitimate to ask does healing energy really exist and work?

The focus of the Center has several components. A primary one is the identification of credible basic and clinical science investigators with bonafide track records in research. The focus of these investigators, in various capacities, is to identify and measure healing energy in its basic and elemental form, measure when a healer is generating healing energy, provide research guidelines to investigators, providers and patients, and to evaluate the effect of healing energy in the prevention and treatment of illness

Current Healing Energy Research Program
A number of competent scientists have now been funded in this program. The principle investigators and the titles of their research are:

Heping [Peace] Cheng PhD
Laboratory of Cardiovascular Science
National Institute on Aging, NIH
Title: Ca2+ Sparks as Biosensors of External Qi of Qigong

Edwin C May PhD
The Laboratories for Fundamental Research
Title: Prestimulus Response in the Human Autonomic Nervous System
Title: Testing Competing Models for Anomalous Skin Conductance
Responses

Dean Radin PhD
Institute for the Noetic Sciences
Title: Experiments Exploring Causal versus Retrocausal Models of Mind-Matter Interaction

Juliann Kiang PhD
Department of Medicine
Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences
Title: Cytoprotection of External Bioenergy from Injury Caused by Hypoxia and Oxidative Stress

Shin Lin PhD
Office of Biomedical Initiatives
University of California at Irvine
Title: Systematic Studies on Physiological Changes Accompanying Mind/Body Practice and Therapies

Roeland Van Wijk PhD
International Institute of Biophysics Neuss Germany; Utrecht University,
the Netherlands
Title: Human Photon Emission in Health and Disease

Stefan Schmidt PhD
Institute of Environmental Medicine and Hospital Epidemiology, University Hospital Freiburg Germany
Title: Mindfulness-based stress reduction program as an intervention in patients with fibromyalgia – A three-armed randomized clinical study

Michael J. Baime, MD
University of Pennsylvania, Penn Program for Stress Management
Title: Creating a healing environment: The fostering of compassionate love via mindfulness-based training of health care providers.

Garret Yount, Ph.D.
California Pacific Medical Center, San Francisco
Title: Development of Cell Culture Models of Spiritual Healing

Contact Information
Investigators who are interested in applying for funds in this program should contact Tory Carper [email protected] to discuss their interests. The Samueli Institute has a Concept Proposal form which is the first step in the process of evaluation. The final steps are peer review of a full and complete application form, and approval by the program’s Board of Directors.