What is the human Biofield?

The “biofield,” a term coined by the National Institute of Health, is fascinating. It refers to the field of energy and information that envelops and permeates the human body. This field is a blend of veritable energies, such as electromagnetic, thermal, and putative energies, which are subtle and yet to be fully understood by Western science. In Eastern medicine, these energies are known as “chi” or prana.

The human biofield, also known as the “energy field” or the “living matrix”, is a remarkable network. It not only integrates the functions and systems within a living organism but also connects them with the energetic and physical functions and systems in the organism’s environment. This interconnectedness extends beyond the physical boundaries of the body, creating a subtle zone of exchange between individuals and their environment. This notion of unity and harmony is a key aspect of the biofield.

Most investigators in this area define the biofield in terms of low-level but measurable electromagnetic activities that play a critical role in maintaining health.

The Aura is part of the human biofield and extends up to five feet or more from the body. It is considered “metaphysical” by mainstream medicine as there is no agreed-upon scientific definition of the “putative” or subtle energies. The prevailing paradigm in Western science says that we are chemical, mechanical beings. However, a new paradigm is beginning to emerge that suggests that we are fundamentally electromagnetic and vibrational. It suggests that we, and the cosmos that is our home, are made up of light and sound and waveforms across an unimaginably vast array of frequencies.

Vibrational frequency, like electrical fields, is measured in hertz (Hz) and represents the number of complete cycles per second. For example, a sound wave that vibrates at 440 Hz is perceived as a standard pitch.

In recent years, scientists have discovered that every cell, organ, and system in the human body emits a specific vibrational frequency. Illnesses and emotional imbalances can alter this frequency, ultimately negatively impacting the health and well-being of all living beings.

There is a subtle electromagnetic field around the body

EM field of the heart is at least 100 times (some sources say 500x) greater than that of the brain.

Has been measured by a SQUID magnetometer up to three feet or more off the body (The SQUID, or super conducting quantum interference device, is an extremely sensitive magnetometer, capable of measuring the biomagnetic field produced by a single heartbeat, muscle twitch, or pattern of neural activity in the brain)

I cannot write this article without sharing the work of Eileen McKusick, a pioneer researcher in this field. Both of her books, “The Human Biofield” and “Electric Body, Electric Health,” are mindblowing and really get you to rethink your reality. I excerpteda few passages of her book below.

Eileen Day McKusick is a pioneering researcher, writer, inventor, practitioner, educator and speaker in the fields of therapeutic sound, the human biofield and electric health. She has an MA in Integrative Education and has been studying the effects of sound on the human body and its electromagnetic system since 1996. Eileen’s work leads people from a chemical/mechanical perspective of life, health and the universe, to an electro-sonic one. This new perspective makes health and life easier, connects the dots, and ties together multiple concepts in an elegant, easy to grasp way.

McKusick Biofield Hypothesis is that the biofield is a diffuse bioplasmic magnetic medium that stores the record of all our life experiences in standing waves. It is compartmentalized, with the record of different emotional experiences being stored in different, stratified locations in the field, different emotions and different pathologies have different “frequency signatures”.

It is time lined, with information at the outer edge of the field relating to gestation, birth and earliest childhood and information close to the body being recent or current. All other years fall in between like rings in a tree

The Human Biofield history

In 1773, German Physician Franz Anton Mesmer began using magnets for healing. He claimed that he detected a magnetic field surrounding the body. He proposed that everything in the universe, including the human body, was governed by a magnetic fluid that can become imbalanced and cause illnesses. Based on his study “Animal Magnetism”, Mesmer formulated a theory of energy flow in the body that roughly aligns with that of Chinese medicine. Through his clinical work and experiments, he came to view health as the free circulation of life force through the body’s many energy channels and illness resulting from blockages in this flow. His work was rejected, and he was denied the right to practice medicine, mainly because of the important place of religion in this era.

Harold Saxton Burr was a mid 20th century Anatomy professor at Yale. He became one of the first americans to do extensive research on the electromagnetic fields surrounding matter. He claimed that an electromagnetic field was present in every living things. It was the subject of his book “the fields of life that came our in 1973.

Robert O. Becker was the author of “The body Electric: Electromagnetism and the foundation of life” published in 1985. Becker often referred as the father of electromedicine conducted fifty years worth of research on human bioelectricity.

Invented in 1964 the SQUID device ( superconducting quantum interference device) was invented. After that a few detectors and recorders have been developped by doctors from Stanford and UCLA.

The structure of the biofield

Modern biofield science has yet to detail the structure and activity of the body’s energy field. But if we look back to ancient vedic and Chinese medicine systems, we find a codification of the workings of a life force energy in the body that kept us alive and healthy, and when blocked created illness and low vitality.

This life force energy was known to flow through certain channels, known as nadis in the yogic tradition and meridians in Chinese medicine. The ancient yogic texts, the upanishads, describe the nadis as a near infinite network of tubular organs or channels of energy flowfelt throghout the body, with the seven chakras beings the epicenters and origins of this energy flow. From the chakras which are like transponders of particulae frequencies, the energy then moves outward throughout and beyond the body through the pathways of the nadis, becoming finer and more diffuse the farther away it travels from these main energy centers.

Biofield concepts are foundational for many systems of healing (particularly Asian medical traditions such as Chinese Medicine and Ayurveda), the biofield perspective is still widely viewed as incompatible with the Allopathic Western medical model. Despite these barriers, biofield scientists across the globe continue to conduct high-quality small-scale studies that show strong promise for impacting health and healing.