Well, I don't know how authentically helpful it'd be, but I bet it'd be soothing at the very least. Unfortunately I have not much experience with this but perhaps others do. Also, perhaps you wouldn't mind sharing your experiences here after you've done so? I find it intriguing, and relayed accounts are inherently interesting to me.
Energetic work is highly debated, and we have plenty of people on EC who will tell you it's all bullshit and nonexistent crap and you're wasting your money and so forth. But I'm here to tell you that for some people, energetic work can be really beneficial, can help to release pent-up emotions, and help you feel more grounded and balanced. For some, a single session can have effects for weeks or months. Others don't seem to get a lot of benefit. (And, interestingly, one's openmindedness going in doesn't seem to have a very high correlation with reporting benefit afterwards. )
Oh yes. I'm one of them, as I'm sure you know. I'll believe it when someone wins the Randi Challenge or is properly documented passing similarly strict testing. And yes to that too. Therapy is therapy, meditation is meditation, placebos are placebos, whether chakras are involved or not. If you would like to go and if the rates are not extortionate, sure, do it. The "it works regardless of your openmindedness" thing has been documented before. Partly in this case, the procedure may have real benefit outside of any chakras that may or may not exist, but also we are really good at fooling ourselves, even when we should know better. Dr Paul Brand's book Pain: The Gift Nobody Wants gave account of a doctor (a trained Western doctor who normally did serious work) doing things like waving a black wand through green fire, tapping a wart, and saying that the wart would fall off in exactly three weeks -- and it often would, despite neither him nor the patient believing in magic.
It is free. I know someone who is studying all of this and wants practice. She does hypnotherapy and past life regression, but I feel like I am not ready for all of that. I am, by nature, a skeptical person, but I am also open minded. I decided to let her do it because she did some stuff with my husband and while he remains skeptical, he also feel like it was helpful. He met his angel and had a tarot card reading. If the story I heard was coming from anyone but him, I would have called bullshit, but he said it seemed legit. I'll share my experience after I get it done.
For what it's worth, not that it will change the mind of the skeptics, there was an interesting study published a few years ago on a methodology called Healing Touch that is similar to chakra work. In this study, the authors taught a group of people to make the same movements as the Healing Touch practitioners, but without the intent. They then matched two groups of people with similar diagnoses and treatment plans, and had half of them receive the bogus healing touch, and the other half receive the real thing. Neither the patients nor the medical staff treating them knew which group was receiving the real vs. the bogus treatment, and the fake and real practitioners looked so similar that a person knowledgeable in the technique could not tell them apart. A third group received no treatment at all. In other words, this was a fully double-blind study. Those receiving the real healing touch treatment had substantially better outcomes -- substantially decreased pain, shorter hospitalization time -- than the placebo treated counterparts. I don't remember the specific numbers, but it was something like 65% better outcome than no treatment at all, and 40% better than the faux treatment. There is also little to no communication during treatment, so it's very unlikely that the "talk therapy" part of the work is having the effect. So, at least with this modality, within the limits of this study, there was a demonstrated benefit beyond placebo. The Healing Touch work has found fairly wide acceptance in hospitals for pain control, and nurses are now routinely trained in its use. As for James Randi... unfortunately, he carefully avoids offering his challenge to those who have demonstrable psychic ability. George Anderson, a noted psychic who has been tested by skeptics dozens of times, and has an accuracy rate in the 90 percentile range, offered to go and be tested by Randi for his million dollar challenge. Randi's people initially said yes... then, upon investigating him, withdrew their offer. At this point, he's more invested in proving his own beliefs correct than in finding bona fide truth, which is a shame because I am pretty certain that at one point he was genuinely skeptical-but-openminded.
I have never had this done, but I'm going to school for something similar. I've read a lot about energy healing, hypnotherapy, and holistic medicine, and it's been pretty amazing. I genuinely hope you have a great experience with this. It sounds really exciting.
Chip: Sounds promising. Can you give a link, the study's name and place of publication, or something like that so I can try and read up on it further? Currently I'm finding other stuff about "therapeutic touch" which appears negative or inconclusive. And I will bear that in mind when dealing with the Randi foundation specifically, thanks.
