Reiki and Physics

Yes, this post is about to get into the science behind Reiki. Now, before you shudder, thinking that you’ll need to draw on your high school maths and come up with equations for force (mass x acceleration = force), don’t worry – we’re not going that deeply into physics.

And just before we go beyond this point, I’d like to note that all of this information has come from renowned healer and physicist Barbara Brennan (B.S. in physics and an M.S. degree in atmospheric physics, researcher with weather satellite instrumentation for NASA for five years) in her book Hands of Light, published by Bantam Books, 1988. I realise this has come from a single source, but there is an extensive bibliography at the end of Hands of Light that you can look at.

Okay, now that we have gotten past the obligatory reference, let’s get into the basics of energy, connectedness and how we all relate to one another. But to do so, we must first look at historical scientific views of reality.

Newtonian Physics

Modern Newtonian physics describes a universe composed of fundamental building blocks called atoms. Much like how the planets revolve around the sun, so too do electrons revolve around the protons and neutrons of nuclei.

Newtonian mechanics was incredibly successful in describing much of our world (planets, machines, fluids in constant motion). As such, physicist believed that the universe was a giant mechanical system based on Newtonian laws of motion – everything could be described objectively. All physical reactions were seen to have a physical cause, like balls colliding on a pool table, negatively and positively charged particles attracted each other.

Even now, we experience our bodies in a mechanical way. We have organs and bones, and if one organ isn’t working properly, it throws the rest of the body out of whack (scientific term).

But this Newtonian view of reality leaves us with some unanswered questions. Like, aren’t atoms effectively 99.9% empty space? How is it possible that we’re basically empty space when I can feel that I’m solid?

Not only that, but Newtonian physics failed was in describing electromagnetic energy (see, we’re getting into energy now). 

Field Theory

And this is where a different scientific view of reality comes in.  A field is described as a condition in space which has the potential of producing a force. Now, instead of the Newtonian “opposites attract”, we have Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell saying that each atomic charge creates a “condition” in the space around it, which acts as a force on the other charge. In other words, atomic charges create a “disturbance” in the force (or maybe that’s just my interpretation).

So, now we have the scientific framework of a universe full of fields which interact with each other through forces. And this explains how we can affect people over a distance without speaking to or seeing them. Examples include knowing that you “should” call someone and finding out they really needed you at that time; a particularly poignant card dropping from an angel card deck; getting a positive or negative “vibe” from a room or someone that later turns out to be accurate. Basically, Field Theory can describe psychic phenomena with a scientific basis.

Now, onto Relativity!

According to Einstein, space and time are one and the same. There is no separation. Also, time is relative to the observer.

Say a person gets an intuitive vision flash of something bad happening to a friend and they call to see if the friend is all right, but nothing bad happened.

According to Newtonian mechanics (where time is linear), that psychic flash was mere imagination.

However, with the theory of Relativity (where time is wibbly-wobbly, timey-whimey … or, you know, just “not linear”), that was a true intuitive vision and it may have already occurred, or will occur in the future, or it may never even happen (due to probabilities waves (“things” are actually “events” or paths that might become events), parallel universes and such). But just because it doesn’t occur when you think it will, doesn’t mean our intuition is off.

Relativity also described how matter and energy are interchangeable, and how energy is never destroyed – just changed into matter. Our bodies are matter, a form of energy.

Subatomic physics discovered that there are too many elementary particles to be a “basic building block of life” and Newtonian physics had to be abandoned. The subatomic physicists also discovered that all particles can be transmuted into other particles.  

Enter the Holographic Universe (which also includes fractals)

If the universe is one giant interaction of fields and an observer can affect the outcome of whether or not a photon is a wave or particle, this means the “universe is … a dynamic inseparable whole which always includes the observer in an essential way.” This also means that all experience is interconnected.

Therefore, considering we are one with everything (according to physics and many spiritual beliefs) and considering our physical bodies and our life are made up of matter and space-time and consciousness (observation), we can be influenced by different forms of energy (whether this be electricity, magnetic, “vibes” or Reiki).