Energy Medicine (also called Energy Healing) is a type of alternative, complementary, or traditional medicine in which it’s thought that practitioners (or healers) can work with the “energy field” or “subtle energy” of a patient to achieve health benefits.
Depending on the underlying concepts or systems, this subtle energy is explained in various ways, which may include Vital Life Force (Prana, Qi, rLung, and so on), magnetic fields, electricity, electromagnetic fields and currents, ether, biophotons, or certain “special particles,” and so on.
Within Energy Medicine practices, it’s typically stated that imbalances or blockages in the body’s Energy Field or Biofield can cause discomforts and illnesses, and that by re-balancing or harmonizing the patient’s Energy Field healing can be achieved.
Energy Medicine sessions may include hands-on, manual touch therapy, or non-touch therapeutic work, and even distant healing.
There are many different types of treatment modalities that are considered Energy Medicine, such as Biofield Healing, Healing Touch (HT), Therapeutic Touch (TT), Magnetism, Aura Healing, some types of Yoga, Reiki, Tai Chi, and Qigong, to give a few examples.
Although Energy Medicine is widely used nowadays, there’s no evidence-based support for actual repeatable clinical effects of Energy Healing, and within the scientific community positive therapeutic results are usually seen as the result of known psychological mechanisms, such as placebo effects or cognitive dissonance.