Mind Body Performance Program – The Scientific Foundation

This section will familiarize the student with current research and provide a deeper understanding of the origins of the Mind Body Performance Program. We will examine the three disciplines that are used in this program. It is important to understand that none of these disciplines have any inherent religious content. They are tools to enhance mind body performance. They include:

• yogic breathing
• meditation
• kundalini connection

Yogic Breathing

Yogic breathing is the foundation of yoga. It involves purification and self discipline, joining together mind and body. The documented benefits of regular practiced breathing include:

• reduced stress
• reduced anxiety
• lower blood pressure
• increased energy levels

Meditation

Meditation is a focused state of awareness that cultivates a calm and positive mind. The documented benefits of regular meditation include:

• reduced stress
• reduced anxiety
• reduced implicit bias
• increased attention span
• increased brain performance

Kundalini Connection

The kundalini connection is part of the reiki mind discipline that connects a teacher to a student on a deep foundational level. It is a form of deep therapeutic nonverbal communication. The teacher engages their own deep level of awareness and then invites the student to share this engagement. The sharing is the learning. This process takes about 30 minutes per session.

This deep awareness is a product of our evolutionary development. It is common in all life forms. We have simply drifted away from it and need to be re-acquainted. The documented benefits of kundalini reiki include:

• Reduced stress
• Reduced anxiety
• Reduced physical and emotional pain
• Increased mental clarity

Understanding the unfamiliar can be a challenge. This presentation is not intended to be a definitive academic paper, but rather to provide a point of reference that will locate the disciplines of the Mind Body Performance Program in the physical world.

All three disciplines engage the mind and body in a complementary manner. They change the way we function in the world. Breathing (American Sniper) and meditation (Fight Club) are fairly well known, however no one has yet made a Hollywood movie using kundalini reiki, so we will begin with that discipline.

The United States National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) categorizes reiki as a biofield therapy. This therapy focuses on the interaction of mind, body and behavior to improve physical functioning and to promote health.

Reiki therapy is well known and in common use by over 75 major hospitals around the world. A few of the hospitals and organizations offering reiki for patient care and wellbeing would include:

• Cleveland Clinic
• Johns Hopkins
• Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
• Mayo Clinic
• Yale New Haven
• Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center
• The Department of Veterans Affairs
• Wounded Warrior Program

Human beings are naturally curious, so let’s ask the obvious questions. What makes reiki a viable therapy? How can one individual engage in a positive interaction with another individual without verbal, visual or physical contact? The answer is found in the study of quantum biology.
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For most of us, our understanding of the physical world hasn’t changed much since the 17th century. If a book is placed on a table, it will occupy space and it will stay put. If it gets tossed across the room, it will move until it hits something, drop to the floor and then again…just stay put. This was Newton’s explanation of the world. It is still valid today, but with 300 years of additional work, physicists, mathematicians and inspired thinkers, have figured out a lot more.

By the end of the 19th century, the subatomic particles, electrons, protons and neutrons, were discovered. This opened up a whole new level of understanding and has served as the gateway for modern physics.

Brian Skinner is a postdoctoral researcher at MIT. He has written a book, “A Children’s Picture Book Introduction to Quantum Field Theory”. In it, he suggests that a five year old might ask the question…

And that, is where we run into the hard limit of our scientific understanding. To the best of our current scientific knowledge, the universe is made of quantum fields, and there is nothing smaller than that. Welcome to Quantum Field Theory.

Since 1927, when the British physicist Paul Dirac published his paper on quantum electrodynamics, quantum field theory has been the mathematical framework used to understand what the universe is made of and to explain how it all works. To visualize this quantum field, try to imagine the following.

There is no empty space. What appears to be empty, is in fact a rich and infinite sea of fluctuation. This is a multi dimensional sea that is never still. Everything that exists is in a constant state of motion. It is at this level where energy influences the field and where the field influences the elemental particles.

We know that each of these particles exists, not just as a bit of matter, but also as a continuous waveform. The electron is a wave on the electron field. The photon is a wave on the electromagnetic photon field. Together, these fields define the universe. They determine what can exist. They determine how all things will interact.

We are made of quantum fields. We interact with the world at the quantum field level and we can do so with intention.

Let’s take another look at what we are made of. This time, we will add some common medical interactions, just to see which level they engage our biological system. This chart progresses from large at the top to small at the bottom.

As you can see, while other medical interactions work on the upper levels of our system, biofield therapy engages our system at the lowest, most foundational level. This engagement is common, not just in people, but in all things. As it turns out, in the biological world, working with quantum fields is fairly common. Plants do it every day with photosynthesis, the highly efficient process of transferring photons of light energy, through coupled electrons, into organic chemical compounds which, for the plant, is food.

Animals can also engage quantum fields and they do so in a way that is critical to their survival. Migratory birds are a favorite example. How do they navigate thousands of miles, without getting lost? Experiments have shown that they can see and follow the magnetic field of the earth. In their eye is a protein called cryptochrome. When struck by a photon of light, two unpaired electrons are released. It is the interaction between these released electrons and the earth’s magnetic field that allows them to visualize the magnetic field. How do we know?

An experiment was done on fruit flies. On a small magnetic field, they were trained to go north to find food. The cryptochrome protein was removed from their retina. They could no longer see north or find the food. The cryptochrome was reintroduced and they could see the magnetic field and navigate to the food.

Here’s the interesting part. The experiment was repeated, but this time it was human cryptochrome that was reintroduced. The results were the same, the fruit flies could “see” north. Now what are humans doing with cryptochrome in their retinas?

Evolution tends to reward those life forms that make use of every advantage. At some time, seeing north was more useful for human biological survival than it is today. Cryptochrome, instead of being discarded, has been stored in our DNA, perhaps for some future time when we may need it again. Evolution has engineered us to work with quantum fields.

Now we get to the geeky part, the scientific studies on the mind body disciplines. The following selected studies have all been published on the website of The National Institute of Health. The first three focus on simple life forms that do not have preconceived opinions on biofield therapy. The results are quantifiable…the numbers are either higher or lower. The last five studies deal with quality of life, including burnout syndrome in medical professionals and stress reduction for inmate populations.

Scientific Studies of Mind Body Disciplines

1. In Vitro Effect of Reiki Treatment on Bacterial Cultures: Role of Experimental Context and Practitioner Well-Being.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16494563

Objective:​ To measure effects of Reiki treatments on growth of heat-shocked bacteria, and to determine the influence of healing context and practitioner well-being.

Results:​ In the healing context, the Reiki treated cultures overall exhibited significantly more bacteria than controls (p < 0.05). Practitioner social (p < 0.013) and emotional well-being (p < 0.021) correlated with Reiki treatment outcome on bacterial cultures in the nonhealing context. Practitioner social (p < 0.031), physical (p < 0.030), and emotional (p < 0.026) well-being correlated with Reiki treatment outcome on the bacterial cultures in the healing context. For practitioners starting with diminished well-being, control counts were likely to be higher than Reiki-treated bacterial counts. For practitioners starting with a higher level of well-being, Reiki counts were likely to be higher than control counts.

Conclusions:​ Reiki improved growth of heat-shocked bacterial cultures in a healing context. The initial level of well-being of the Reiki practitioners correlates with the outcome of Reiki on bacterial culture growth and is key to the results obtained.

2. Therapeutic touch stimulates the proliferation of human cells in culture

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18370579

Objective:​ To assess the effect of Therapeutic Touch (TT) on the proliferation of normal human cells in culture compared to sham and no treatment. Several proliferation techniques were used to confirm the results, and the effect of multiple 10-minute TT treatments was studied.

Results:​ TT administered twice a week for 2 weeks significantly stimulated proliferation of fibroblasts, tenocytes, and osteoblasts in culture (p = 0.04, 0.01, and 0.01, respectively) compared to untreated control. These data were confirmed by PCNA immunocytochemistry. In the same experiments, sham healer treatment was not significantly different from the untreated cultures in any group, and was significantly less than TT treatment in fibroblast and tenocyte cultures. In 1-week studies involving the administration of multiple 10-minute TT treatments, four and five applications significantly increased [(3)H]-thymidine incorporation in fibroblasts and tenocytes, respectively, but not in osteoblasts. With different doses of TT for 2 weeks, two 10-minute TT treatments per week significantly stimulated proliferation in all cell types. Osteoblasts also responded to four treatments per week with a significant increase in proliferation. Additional TT treatments (five per week for 2 weeks) were not effective in eliciting increased proliferation compared to control in any cell type.

Conclusions:​ A specific pattern of TT treatment produced a significant increase in proliferation of
fibroblasts, osteoblasts, and tenocytes in culture. Therefore, TT may affect normal cells by stimulating cell proliferation

3. Effect of a Japanese energy healing method known as Johrei on viability and proliferation of cultured cancer cells in vitro.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22385045

Objective:​ To explore the effect of a Japanese energy healing method known as Johrei on the viability
and proliferation of cultured human cancer cells in vitro.

Results:​ The viability loss of cultured human cancer cells in the Johrei group was significantly higher
than that of either of the control groups, despite the fact that the responsiveness to Johrei varied with
different cancer cell types. The proliferation rate of gastric cancer cells exposed to Johrei treatments for
72 hours was more significantly decreased compared with that of the untreated cells, whereas the
extent of dying and/or dead cells in the Johrei group was more profound than that of the untreated cells

Conclusions:​ These results provide evidence that Johrei treatment induces the viability loss of various
cancer cells in vitro, mainly due to the increased cell death and the decreased proliferation.

4. Effect of transcendental meditation on employee stress, depression, and burnout: a randomized controlled study

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24626068

Abstract:​ Workplace stress and burnout are pervasive problems, affecting employee performance and personal health.To evaluate the effects of the Transcendental Meditation program on psychological distress and burnout among staff at a residential therapeutic school for students with severe behavioral problems.A total of 40 secondary school teachers and support staff at the Bennington School in Vermont, a therapeutic school for children with behavioral problems, were randomly assigned to either practice of the Transcendental Meditation program or a wait-list control group. The Transcendental Meditation course was provided by certified instructors.

Results:​ The Transcendental Meditation program was effective in reducing psychological distress in
teachers and support staff working in a therapeutic school for students with behavioral problems. These findings have important implications for employees’ job performance as well as their mental and physical health.

5: A yoga program for cognitive enhancement

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5544241

Abstract:​ Recent studies suggest that yoga practice may improve cognitive functioning. Although preliminary data indicate that yoga improves working memory (WM), high-resolution information about the type of WM subconstructs, namely maintenance and manipulation, is not available. Furthermore, the association between cognitive enhancement and improved mindfulness as a result of yoga practice requires empirical examination. The aim of the present study is to assess the impact of a brief yoga program on WM maintenance, WM manipulation and attentive mindfulness.

Results:​ A 6-session yoga program was associated with improvement on manipulation and maintenance WM measures as well as enhanced mindfulness scores. Additional research is needed to understand the extent of yoga-related cognitive enhancement and mechanisms by which yoga may enhance cognition, ideally by utilizing randomized controlled trials and more comprehensive neuropsychological batteries.

6: Yoga improves behavioural control and decreases psychological distress in a prison population

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23866738/

Abstract:​ Yoga and meditation have been shown to be effective in alleviating symptoms of depression and anxiety in healthy volunteers and psychiatric populations. Recent work has also indicated that yoga can improve cognitive-behavioural performance and control. Although there have been no controlled studies of the effects of yoga in a prison population, we reasoned that yoga could have beneficial effects in a setting where psychosocial functioning is often low, and the frequency of impulsive behaviours is high.

Results:​ Participants in the yoga group showed increased self-reported positive affect, and reduced stress and psychological distress, compared to participants in the control group. Participants who completed the yoga course also showed better performance in the cognitive-behavioural task, making significantly fewer errors of omission in Go trials and fewer errors of commission on No-Go trials, compared to control participants.

7: The application of Reiki in nurses diagnosed with Burnout Syndrome has beneficial effects on concentration of salivary IgA and blood pressure.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22030577

Abstract:​ This study aimed to investigate the immediate effects of the secretory immunoglobulin A (sIgA), α-amylase activity and blood pressure levels after the application of a Reiki session in nurses with Burnout Syndrome.

Results:​ A Reiki session can produce an immediate and statistically significant improvement in sIgA concentration and diastolic blood pressure in nurses with Burnout Syndrome.

8: The effectiveness of Tai Chi, yoga, meditation, and Reiki healing sessions in promoting health and enhancing problem solving abilities of registered nurses.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17957554/

Abstract:​ Given the current necessity of retaining qualified nurses, a self-care program consisting of Yoga, Tai Chi, Meditation classes, and Reiki healing sessions was designed for a university-based hospital. The effectiveness of these interventions was evaluated using self-care journals and analyzed using a Heideggerian phenomenological approach.

Results:​ :​ Outcomes of the self-care classes described by nurses included: (a) noticing sensations of warmth, tingling, and pulsation which were relaxing, (b) becoming aware of an enhanced problem solving ability, and (c) noticing an increased ability to focus on patient needs. Hospitals willing to invest in self-care options for nurses can anticipate patient and work related benefits