How Does Distance Healing Work?

Melanie requested an energy healing session from me for her debilitating migraines. After I reviewed her medical history, my hands got to work, hovering near and resting on her body. The heat of her right knee prompted me to wrap my hands around it, and a nudge compelled me to energetically “rake” the space around her belly. Approaching her shoulders, I heard the word forgive repeated, and I envisioned a man pushing her violently against a wall. Then I softened an energy protrusion at her temple. Upon completion of the appointment, I shared my experience with her.

Melanie told me she’d forgotten to mention a possible knee surgery for a torn meniscus. The man I envisioned, she explained, was her father who physically abused her when she was a teen—another detail she hadn’t previously mentioned. She’d forgiven him but not herself, she said, before adding that the migraine was gone.

The ability to detect bodily phenomena without instruments like a stethoscope or a test like an EEG is remarkable in and of itself. In place of allopathic tools, energy healers rely on their hands, intuition, and extrasensory awareness, which is a combination of heightened kinesthetic, proprioceptive, visual, and auditory inner senses. The signs that appear—subtle, fleeting, or obvious—are all worthy of attention. All contain valuable information for healing.

But what made the impressions from Melanie even more noteworthy is that she lives 1250 miles away from my massage table. Our session was not in person, but carried out as a distance healing session—she in her apartment, me in my home.

The Power of Distance Healing

Distance healing is part of energy medicine practices such as Reiki, Healing Touch, Reconnective Healing, and Pranic Healing. With each, the proximity between practitioner and client—whether 10 feet or 1000 miles—makes no difference. The primary requirements are a practitioner’s focus, awareness, and intention to engage healing energies.

How does distance healing work? How can actions separated by highways, mountains, lakes, and oceans be intimately connected?

Physicists would point to quantum entanglement—referred to by Einstein as “spooky action at a distance” and called quantum interconnectedness by physicists like David Bohm. Physicists speculate that disparate subatomic particles and waves work in tandem regardless of distance and time and are part of an integrated whole. Quantum entanglement recognizes electrons, neutrons, and protons as correlated. They influence each other, tethered into a complex fabric. They share pattern similarities with neuronal maps and mycorrhizal networks, the invisible fungal threads in the ground that assist trees and other plants in communicating with one another.

Researchers suggest that distance healing works because we are all connected through a common network or field. This field is full of chi, which, depending on culture and tradition, may alternatively be called prana, ki, universal energy, or bioenergy, among other terms. Energy healers readily tap into this field, which permeates and surrounds the body.

Most researchers lack in their understanding of distance healing. Part of the problem is that it’s hard to create studies and find effective instruments to provide required evidence. Additionally, research money goes to allopathic methods, which reinforces a cultural bias. Further understanding of the mechanisms at play in distance healing and energy medicine in general would benefit those suffering from illnesses that confound the medical community.

Scientific information is welcome; however, distance healing practitioners don’t need a scientific basis as a prerequisite before applying their skills. Personal experience and feedback from clients show what works and what doesn’t.

How to Access Distance Healing

Below are a few tips for those seeking a distance healing session.

• When vetting a practitioner, visit the practitioner’s website, read their testimonials, and seek out other information available on their process. Check your intuition to determine if the healer is a good fit for you.

• Determine whether to connect via Zoom, Skype, phone, or another method.

• Clarify your objectives ahead of the session and share them with the practitioner.

• Be prepared to discuss details of your medical history.

• Ask questions. What should you do during the session? Is there a body position that is better than another? What might you experience during and after the session? How long will the results last? How many sessions may reduce or eliminate your symptoms?

Were you to watch me during a distance healing session, you’d see me sitting with closed eyes in meditative quiet, arms periodically gesturing as if conducting ethereal music. Mentally and energetically, I’m walking around the massage table engaged with chi while performing any number of the healing techniques I might use were a client and I in the same room. Every practitioner discovers what works best for them; some prefer to stand at their massage table with a blanket doubling as the client’s body.

Some clients prefer distance healing because an effective healer lives too far away or the client is unable to leave their home. Others prefer the feel of warm, attentive hands on their body and will go out of their way for an in-person treatment.

My work with clients who live a city, state, or continent away is indicative of how we’re all connected energetically. Participation in this dynamic interactive field challenges assumptions about the nature of time and space, and challenges our perceptions of healing abilities.

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