METHOD

After explaining the nature of the therapy, written consent was obtained for 30-minute pranic healing session on two consecutive days. Subjects were requested to wear thin cotton casual dress for the healing session. After initial assessments in the laboratory, subjects were seated on a comfortable stable stool in the annexure room of the laboratory which is quiet, safe and open. Subjects were blind-folded and checked for comfort and accuracy.

The healer began her therapy with an initial prayer, energizing the palm of her hand (two min.), and moving her hand over the surface of the body (about five centimeters away) in a systematic manner from head to toe.

The healing procedure involves working with the prana (subtle energy) body which is supposed to be felt and or seen by the trained healer as an aura around the physical body. The healing involves three steps:

Step one.

Scanning for abnormalities in the energy field (aura) and energy pools (charkas)

Step two.

The healer 'cleanses' the abnormalities.

Step three.

'Energizing' with suitable quality and quantity of energy to the required part.
All these actions are done by hand movement of the healer all around the body by the non-touch method.
The session ends by 'de-linking' the healer and the healed through hand movement and a closing mental prayer. The whole procedure lasts 25 minutes.

The same healer carried out the placebo session (P) on the next day keeping all other conditions constant. This time the healer moved her hands at the same distance from the body for the same distance from the body for the same duration(25 minutes) but in a random way, without going through the standard organized three step healing procedure. For an untrained person these movements appear similar to the healing session.

Patients were told that both days were healing sessions and were again blindfolded. All other conditions were kept constant to make it a single blind study.

Some 25 subjects (group A) had the control session on the first day and PH sessions on the second day were reversed with PH session on first day and control session on second day in 25 subject s (group B). Assessments were done immediately before and after the session on the both days, using the following tests.

Pain analogue scale

This is considered to be a simple and reliable measure of pain consisting of a 10 centimeters horizontal line marked in the center of a clean white sheet with 'nil pain' and 'worst possible pain' written in words at the two extremes and used to assess the severity of pain. The subject indicates his degree of pain by marking a dot on this line. Different sheets were used before and after the session, coded and kept away for measurements by a non-healer.

Physiological measures

Autonomic nervous functions - namely, heart rate, respiratory rate, galvanic skin conductance and finger plethysmography were recorded before and after each session on a model 10 polygraph (Recorded and Medicare, Chandigarh, India).

Blood Pressure
This was recorded by using a mercury sphigmoinanometer (Diamond Company)

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