Reflections on Energy Medicine and James Oschman
by Robert Lever, after reading Oschman's Energy Medicine: the Scientific Basis and Energy Medicine in Therapeutics and Human Performance.
The complementary and alternative medical professions (CAMs) have always had a troubled relationship with conventional science. To some extent, these unorthodox systems have rightly tried to incorporate established medical science as a base. This has been both valuable and politically expedient as any valid alternative has to take root in its culture and its society in order to be of use and of service. But this can lead to an over-emphasis on the principles and approach that are basically mainstream and the result is a very poor fit.
The problem in attempting to promote unconventional bases for any system is the risk of scientific and social ostracism; but in the end, there is no choice. We have to aspire to the perfect fit and therefore we have to embrace and integrate much that is unconventional and unproven whilst we develop it strongly enough to reveal its truth.
The great pioneers in CAMs have done this with varying degrees of sophistication as their systems have evolved through history. The thrill of validation as analytical scrutiny and scientific exploration, albeit sometimes on the fringes, gradually explore and explain the pieces of the puzzle is extremely satisfying. James Oschman, in his book Energy Medicine in Therapeutics and Human Performance and its predecessor, Energy Medicine: the Scientific Basis, assembles an extraordinary array of such exploratory efforts, most of which are spawned by remarkable scientific minds attempting to break equally remarkable new ground.
Oschman's work is relevant to most, if not all, holistic CAM's but its relevance to osteopathy is what concerns us here. It is also inextricably linked to the bioscientific quest for the greater understanding of life, living matter, living organisms and even consciousness itself.
To these ends Oschman expounds on the living organism, its intrinsic functions and its relationship with its environment in truly exciting ways. And whilst embracing the enormous contribution of established scientific rationales, is fascinating in his account of their limitations and of the enormous chasm left by them in attempts to explain biological function.
Much of this material is sparked by one of the most important contributions of science in the last century and that is the profound biological significance of interconnectedness. This is a central tenet to any wholistic or 'systems' approach and was thrust into the scientific world with quantum theory 100 years ago. Although many have cautioned against the application of quantum theory to the 'macro' world, whilst condoning its relevance to the 'micro' or sub atomic, this represents an awkward denial of the significance of the 'micro' to the 'macro' in any system or study of systems.
With wholistic medicine and in osteopathy, of course, the subtle nature of interconnectedness - what we sometimes refer to as 'reciprocity' - and its manifestation through extremely subtle forces are, to many of us, axiomatic; whilst quantum theory itself proposes that particles only exist as manifestations of their relationship to others.
If interconnectedness is a vital component of our understanding of living (and other) things, it is natural to want to explore the nature and mechanisms that enable such functional interconnectedness to operate; how the bits communicate. And here Oschman gets very exciting, since the mechanisms that he explores and the research behind them not only underpin aspects of body function and intrinsic communication mechanisms but reflect emphatically on the ways that organisms communicate with one another and with force fields and patterns of energy in the environment and throughout our natural and sometimes unnatural world.
Oschman describes the limitation in the speed and quality of communication mediated by the nervous and circulatory systems (including the transport of chemical mediators) and examines the ways that the body's mechanisms, cells, even molecules transmit patterns of information between them. The largest anatomical medium for this communication and the arena on which the myriad elements comprising the body interact and interconnect is the 'living matrix' or the connective tissue matrix. How fascinating to explore the dynamics within this system as we recall Still and Sutherland in their emphasis on the fascia and connective tissue as the interface between so many aspects of structure and function. The significance of electro-magnetic and piezoelectric properties in both collagen and in water itself, and the patterned information formed by hydrogen bonding in water remind one constantly of Sutherland and his description of the 'potency in the fluid'. Despite Sutherland's emphasis on the CSF it was the fluid of the extracellular matrix that he saw as the repository for the vitality that created the 'healing within'. Distortions within this 'system' not only relate to a breakdown in structural integrity but also predispose to the physiological breakdown that we associate with disorder and disease.
Oschman examines the dynamics that help us to view the expression of this vitality and the distortions to which it is subject, linking structure and physiology in a far more sophisticated way than science allowed in Still's day. Even so, the vision of the early pioneers within osteopathy, (as well as other CAM professions), of the body as a rhythmically oscillating field within which there is an almost infinite interplay of interconnected elements, seems vehemently supported; whilst the principles of 'tensegrity' expressed throughout the connective tissue and musculo-skeletal systems (expanding the entire concept of biomechanics), complement the resonant quality of living tissues in ways that truly breathe life into structural function.
This interplay of forces and the interaction of force fields that Oschman explores with reference to soliton waves, quantum coherence, non-locality and numerous other phenomena often difficult to the non-physicist like most of us in the profession, illuminate aspects of the patient-practitioner exchange and the 'energetic dance' that underlies the treatment process as well as the complex interactions between ourselves and our world.
The paradigm shift from the mechanistic to the 'electrical', the emphasis on the subtle and the 'energetic' in Oschman's writing might suggest a relevance only to the 'cranial' sphere in osteopathy and subtle forms of healing. But this would be to misinterpret their significance. Oschman's material illuminates mechanisms that underpin all of osteopathy and its principles: mechanical interactions or reciprocity, the significance of the connective tissue matrix as the interface of structure and function, the wholistic nature of body function and the importance of the breakdown of integration and adaptation etc. The structural integrity of the body, the 'structure-function' relationships, the efficiency of arterial, venous, lymphatic, CSF and extracellular fluid dynamics, the integrated nature of nervous system functioning, all so much a part of the osteopathic canon, are expressions of Oschman's material in the field of 'structure'. Indeed, it is the yoking of the infinitely complex expression of the energetic fields under discussion to the model of the osteopathic method that gives our discipline great potency as a healing art. Each CAM system conjoins its own model in this way to give it its own flavour and value. But the energetic substrate not only gives our therapeutic systems greater meaning, it illuminates aspects of the human condition and our world that bring the spiritual, metaphysical and the scientific a tantalizing step closer to one another.
Finally, as a profession, we constantly crave research-based validation for our methods. Oschman's pages are crammed with research that powerfully proclaims its relevance to our work and the work of similar professions of CAM. In acknowledging its connection with osteopathy, we access a pool of information made available by extraordinary and expert scientific minds with the ability and resource to explore the minutiae of biophysics that are largely out of reach of most within the profession. But it is there for us to borrow and apply. Indeed we have an obligation to do so and partly through James Oschman's work, it is there for the taking.
Robert Lever BA(Lond) DO, November 2004