Toward an Integral Energy Medicine Model

For Understanding
The Vascular Autonomic Signal
Muriel Agnes
Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of
Greenwich University Holos University
In partial fulfillment of the requirements
For the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
In
Energy Medicine
February 200
2
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter One Introduction
The VAS and Auricular Medicine . 6
The Research Question .. 8
An Integral Energy Medicine Approach 11
Chapter Two The Context of the VAS
Historical and Cultural Context of the VAS . 15
The Current Field of Auricular Medicine .. 21
Physiological Understandings of the VAS .... 26
Chapter Three Energy Medicine Perspectives
An Integral Energy Medicine Approach ... 34
The Brain, The Mind and The Body . 36
Subtle Energy Detector . 43
Chapter Four A Clinical Demonstration of the VAS
Related Research .. 57
Methodology .... 62
Identification and Interpretation of Findings .... 67
Summary of Results . 81
Recommendations for Further Study ... 82
Chapter Five Conclusion.. 84
Matter Physiologic Sensitivity and Response ... 88
Energy Forces and Frequencies . 91
Consciousness The Intelligence .... 95
References .... 104
Appendix A .. 107
Appendix B .. 112
3
ABSTRACT
The Vascular Autonomic Signal (VAS) is a physiological response of the
neurovascular system of the body to information being brought into its energy field. This
response can be manually felt as a pulse change on the wall of the radial artery. The
discovery of the VAS by Dr. Paul Nogier in 1966 brought an energetic diagnostic tool to
the world, the science of which is not fully understood, and the potential of which has yet
to be fully realized. Dr. Nogier believed that the nature of the human body is that we are
highly sensitive and powerful instruments, responsive to subtle energy changes. The VAS
seems to be a physiological readout of this sensitivity, transducing the subtle energy into
a physical form that can be detected by a practitioner and used to identify what is
energetically out of balance and how best to intervene.
In this dissertation, the VAS is studied from an Integral Energy Medicine approach
enabling a more expansive and wholistic view of just how potent and effective is this
diagnostic tool. Specifically, this study explores both experiential knowledge and theorized
mechanisms to facilitate a better understanding of how the VAS can offer such refined
information on a persons symptomatic as well as deep causal pathology. This information
is explored through four venues: a literature review that develops an historical and cultural
context for the VAS; an exploration of current physiological as well as subtle energetic
theories; communications with currently practicing practitioners; and a clinical
demonstration of the effectiveness of the VAS in directing acupuncture needles to points
for the relief of chronic pain. In the clinical trial, a single treatment of VAS-directed
auricular acupuncture resulted in immediate pain reduction in 85% of the cases, with an
average pain reduction of all participants of 2.7 points on a 0 to 10 visual analogue scale.
As well, an 84% consistency rate was found between two separate mappings of the
dominant points indicated by the VAS to be the most important points for treatment.
The author presents the case that with an enhanced framework of understanding the
VAS, the potential of the field of auricular medicine may become more realized.
4
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude to:
Bob Nunley, Chair of my committee, for his unfailing support, encouragement and
love that kept me going - and that continues to be a source of motivation.
John Ackerman, for his belief in me and my endeavours, the hours of professional
and personal support he offered and his passion for auricular medicine and its expansion.
Berney Williams for sharing his intelligence and excitement for learning.
Tony vanGelder for inspiring me to explore the potential of auricular medicine and
for his warmth and encouragement.
Norm Shealy for his many manifestations of love into the physical reality.
Joy Emmanuel for her invaluable research assistance and friendship.
And Rose Johnston, my life partner and partner in purpose, for creating and inspiring
opportunities for my growth in this field of medicine and healing.
5
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Change in Average Pain Ratings ... 73
Figure 2: Shift in Experience of Pain Ratings 76
Figure 3: Change in Range of Motion . 78
Figure 4: An Energy Medicine Model for Understanding the VAS .. 86
Figure 5: An Energy Medicine Model of Information Transference in the
Human System .. 87
LIST OF TABLES
Table 1: Areas of the Body Identified.. 68
Table 2: Degree to Which Points on Ear Maps Match. 71
Table 3.A: Degree of Change in Pain Rating. 75
Table 3.B: Summary of Shifts in Pain Rating. 76
Table 4: Change in Range of Motion.. 77
Table 5: Change in Electromagnetic Field Readings 79
6
Chapter One
INTRODUCTION
The VAS and Auricular Medicine
Paul Nogier, a medical doctor who taught neurology at the medical school in Lyon,
France, discovered in the late 1950s that the ear holds all of the acupuncture points of the
body, replicating as a microsystem every part of the body. Nogier and his students
systematically mapped these points, opening up the field of auricular acupuncture, also
called auriculotherapy. Later, in 1966 he made the further discovery of the Vascular
Autonomic Signal (VAS) by noticing a pulse change when he touched the skin of a
patient.
1
The VAS is one physiological response of the neurovascular system of the body
to information being brought into its energy field, a response that creates a signal that can
be manually felt as a pulse change on the wall of the radial artery. This discovery of the
VAS brought an energetic diagnostic tool to the world that became the cornerstone of
auricular medicine. The potential of this discovery has yet to be fully realized.
Although the term signal as in the Vascular Autonomic Signal is the common
term that was adopted to refer to this phenomenon, current practitioners see the term
response as being more accurate. Response is the consequence of a question;
2
says
Yves Rouxeville, a Nogier student. The VAS represents the bodys specific reaction, or
response, to the question posed by the introduction of a stimulation into the energy field.
Biophoton research has found that when a body system is stressed and unhealthy,
the electromagnetic field extends further out than when a body is free of stress and healthy.
It is theorized that this extension of the field is due to an increase in disorderliness and
quantity of photons, or electromagnetic signals, being emitted by the body when under
7
stress. Thus any disturbed structure or function of the body can result in a stressed
electromagnetic field, which is reflected by one or several acupuncture points on the
microsystem of the ear. When a substance or colour (in the form of a filter) has the same
electromagnetic signature or harmonic of the signal of the stressed acupuncture point, the
two will resonate with each other. The minute irritation caused by this resonance is
reflected by a change in the tone of the arterial wall the VAS.
3
Highly developed protocols of auricular medicine have been developed through the
experimentation and clinical experience of Nogier and, in recent decades, his students.
These protocols involve the use of various filters of information brought into the energy
field of the patient while the physician feels the pulse response. Due to the sophisticated
nature of the VAS, the practitioner can discover not just the best treatment for a current
symptom, but ever more subtle levels of information about blockages to healing, layers of
pathology and their appropriate priority for treatment, as well as subclinical and causal
level issues.
Interestingly, it is the thumb that is most commonly used to read the VAS. While
the thumb is not used in allopathic pulse reading due to its sensitivity, this is the very
reason it is used in auricular medicine. The thumb and the tip of the tongue are amongst
the most sensitive skin areas of the body, as demonstrated in their capacity for two-point
discrimination,
4
and in the brain map discoveries of Wilder Penfield that demonstrate the
disproportionate area of the brain given to these most sensitive parts of the body.
5
As Nolan Cordon, one of Americas first students of Nogier, said in a recent
workshop, All you need to begin is an educated thumb! An educated thumb has been
trained to pick up the subtle pulse changes, and is attached to a practitioner whose
8
understanding of health brings clarity and meaning to those changes. Auricular medicine
is essentially a diagnostic vocation,
6
an art of listening to the body through the VAS.
Along with assessment, the VAS is also used to choose treatments in auricular medicine,
which may involve auricular acupuncture, or any other tools available to the practitioner.
The Research Question
In approaching the task of a dissertation in my area of focus of auricular medicine,
within this Energy Medicine graduate program, I initially considered researching the
effectiveness of auricular medicine through a particular protocol developed by Tony
vanGelder of Rotterdam, a student of Nogier. In spending time with vanGelder at his
clinic, we discussed areas of his work for which he would appreciate more research.
VanGelders protocol allows for the assessment of organ systems and chakras, which point
to levels of health or dysfunction as reflected in these more subtle energy fields. Selected
homeopathic remedy treatments have been found to alleviate a cascade of symptoms in the
patient. This protocol deserves much wider attention, as it is demonstrating to be a deeply
healing and effective medical approach for everything from whiplash to depression.
The more I delved into the subject, however, the more I realized that there was a
fundamental question behind any of the protocols used in auricular medicine that seemed to
be unanswered.
That question evolved into the following wording: What are the mechanisms
that allow the VAS to be such a refined tool for discrimination, enabling it to offer to
the practitioner the subtle information of a persons symptomatic as well as deep
causal pathology?
9
The VAS is used and relied upon by auricular medical practitioners around the
world as a trusted and central diagnostic indicator for the healing process of their patients.
It is a physiological, manually-felt signal that communicates a specific response to any
question posed to the human energy system. A trained practitioner can read these signals
and use them to define very specifically the area of the body under stress, the cause of
stress, intolerances and the most beneficial interventions. Practitioners report a high level
of success with patients that often have come as a last resort for serious health disorders.
The use of the VAS can also lead to an early warning of subclinical concerns and the
ability to reverse developing pathologies. There seems to be a highly ordered science here
that is only beginning to be understood.
7
We can view the human body as a finely tuned instrument, designed to read, reflect
and respond to surrounding energy of all levels, whether physical, emotional or subtle.
Some, qigong masters for example, have brought this instrument into its potential for being
harmonized within itself and, therefore, open to experiencing the most subtle stimulations.
8
In others we can see an opposite effect of how perfectly the body reflects the state of stress
of that person, physically through being over- or under-weight, or through characteristic
movements, or emotionally through denial, as examples. This fine instrument of ours will
reflect in a most refined way the extent to which we are blocking or open to our potential
order, harmony and balance. It occurs to this author that we can hide inside our bodies, but
we cannot prevent our bodies from revealing that we are hiding.
As well as reflecting our own state of health or stress, we are always reading
those around us, picking up subtle cues about their intent and desires - whether they or we
are conscious of the process or not. Walking into a room, for instance, we may
10
immediately pick up the vibes, or the collective energy of the room. Our system
responds by telling us to relax, or to be on alert.
It is possible to learn how to specifically read the signals or messages being
absorbed and reflected by the fine instrument of the body, through the sciences of
psychology, medicine, intuition, iridology and so on. The VAS, as discovered by Paul
Nogier, is one method of getting a detailed readout of the status of this finely tuned
instrument, as it answers specific questions and provides a report of the extent to which the
system is in harmony or blocked.
Beyond saying that the VAS is an indicator of the bodys response to stimuli, the
current understanding of the science behind the VAS seems to be inconsistent and
preliminary. Without a clear model of understanding the VAS, I feel that our confidence as
practitioners is limited, and that the field of auricular medicine is limited in its potential for
expansion. How can a student learn and practice the use of a diagnostic tool without
confidence in the source and pathway of information that it entails? It seems to me that a
better understanding of the communication mechanisms behind the VAS will generate
greater belief in and reliance upon the information being carried to the educated thumb.
Clinicians with years of experience in the field of auricular medicine tell me they
have great confidence in the VAS because they have seen that it works and is reliable in
their clinical practice. Without years of experience, however, reliance on this tool seems to
be less sure. It is suggested that only 10% of those who begin the study of auricular
medicine actually develop an expertise.
9
There are probably many reasons for this low
percentage, one of which may be the lack of a satisfactory level of understanding of and
confidence in the VAS itself.
11
In exploring a phenomenon - such as the VAS, our way of thinking, the model or
metaphor we use, frames the possibilities we are prepared to entertain. If our model is
inadequate to explain the fullness of a phenomenon, then our insight and our confidence are
similarly limited.
The purpose of my dissertation is to move toward a model of understanding the
VAS that is encompassing enough to enable a greater interest and confidence in what
is believed by this author to be a reliable, potent and effective diagnostic tool.
An Integral Energy Medicine Approach
The potential of auricular medicine seems infinite. It is an approach for many types
of dysfunction that is non-invasive, holistic, inexpensive, deeply respectful of the
individual, and able to reveal a unique and beneficial pathway that the patient can follow to
assist in regaining health. One German practitioner, Rita Klowersa, said what I think many
practitioners feel, The revolutionary side of this discovery still is not recognized.
10
I suggest that to explore the VAS and its potential fully, a discussion needs to be
opened about how we think. Whatever is the current accepted metaphor or model is what
will guide thinking, frame the questions and set the pace of development.
11
When we
consider how information is transferred, for instance, the range of possibilities are affected
by whether one holds an image of a uni-directional mechanical clock, or a multi-tasking
instantaneous response computer. It is useful to examine our existing metaphor, to ensure
satisfaction with the possibilities it offers for exploration, to be cognizant of its limitations,
and to be open to its revision. William Tiller, author and a former Materials Science
professor at Stanford University, cautions that science tends to be self-congratulatory,
12
believing that the accepted model is the final answer.
12
And, in Ken Wilbers words, We
are all tomorrows food!
13
A general example of metaphors used within science over this past century has been
the development of the two schools of thought, vitalism, and mechanistic thinking.
The former contends that there is an intelligence, a life force, determining molecular
change, an animating force to our systems that has the intelligence, or capacity, for order
that allows homeostasis to be maintained and to evolve. Within this model, we are seen
and studied as living, open systems that dynamically respond to information.
The school of mechanism, on the other hand, emphasizes our operation as a
complex device and studies the interactions between parts. As a mechanism, we are
studied as an apparatus with an established plan and makeup (in the genes), which guides,
controls and executes the development of the being. The laws of mechanism provide
helpful explanations of how the mechanics of our biology work but Keller and others
maintain that to study only this aspect of science focuses too much on matter and ignores
some deeper, causal level questions. Questions like, what is the force that animates life
and evolution?
Current thinkers in many fields encourage moving beyond the science of it, to
include in the study of every phenomenon an exploration of how the creative, dynamic
nature of life is being expressed.
14
This approach of forming a model that consists of more
than the study of the physical level of matter but an inclusion of the more subtle energy of
experience and consciousness is what I refer to in this paper as an Integral Energy
Medicine approach. This approach can expand the discussion toward a more holistic
understanding of this incredible discovery of Paul Nogier.
13
There is an invitation in Energy Medicine that inspires a deeper look into the
mechanisms of the VAS. The invitation lies within the philosophy of Energy Medicine,
which holds that the foundation of life is a unitive energy, operating in different frequency
patterns with varying degrees of density, the slowest of which manifests as physically
observable matter.
15
Subtle energy is considered to be the prior and causal level for
physical form, the driving force for our biochemistry and physiology, with every physical
atom being intimately connected to the higher frequency level of subtle energy. In this
model, energy is the vital driving force. Even leading edge biologists have now recognized
evidence that cellular change is more than genetic and biochemical, but is largely initiated
in response to energy changes in the environment.
16
A fundamental premise of Energy Medicine is that there is an inherent unity,
connecting all vibrations, all manifestations of energy a ubiquitous nature to life. The
assumption is that there is order in the universe that is reflected in every molecule and in
every molecular change process. An exploration of the possibilities of this science can aid
us in the development of a holistic model for understanding the mechanisms of the VAS.
As Tiller suggests, models are like rungs of a ladder, to be used to climb up to the next
level of understanding. Any model will eventually be proven incomplete its primary
purpose is to trigger the proper set of questions needed to probe deeper.
17
Anthropologist
Jeremy Narby, in his exploration of the biology of DNA, warns against applying too
rational an approach to science, as it can prevent recognition of anything beyond the
accepted framework, and minimize or even eliminate the mystery simply because it is
not understood.
18
14
The VAS in particular, seems to be exquisitely ideal for research purposes from
an Energy Medicine perspective. The VAS is holistic, as an indicator of the response of
the whole system, and it is energetic, as a response to information influencing the body.
Yes, this approach means journeying even further into conjecture but, as we know, our
scientific understanding is always based in a subjective, cultural, historical perspective; no
matter how concrete we feel the evidence to be.
The next chapter explores this context within which the VAS is currently
understood, along with some current theories about the science of the VAS. Following this
contextual chapter, an Energy Medicine perspective will be further explored, reviewing
some leading edge scientific thinking that might help explain the VAS. A clinical
demonstration of the effectiveness of the VAS was carried out by this author, and is
presented in chapter four, followed by a summary chapter in which a framework for
understanding the VAS with an Energy Medicine approach is presented. The authors hope
is that as a whole, the discussion and findings of this dissertation will move the field of
auricular medicine toward an integral energy medicine model of the VAS, and will help
auricular medicine gain wider recognition.
15
Chapter Two
THE CONTEXT OF THE VAS
Historical and Cultural Context of the VAS
How historically, geographically and culturally sensitive is our understanding of
science! We develop metaphors and models based on our best understanding within those
contexts. The field of auricular medicine is no exception. Being utilized within different
countries and different cultures, there is a divergence of understanding and emphasis in
how the VAS is considered, creating complexity as well as perhaps limitations for the
further development of the field. Below, I first place the VAS in the context of historical
understandings of the pulse, followed by a look at the divergence of views within the
current field of auricular medicine.
An historical context is helpful to gain perspective on how thinking and naming are
framed by time and culture. We are a product of our own particular time and place, which
determines our tribal frame of reference that, then, determines how we think.
Occasionally someone breaks through that box, or puts a crack in the foundation, and
then, eventually a new box is formed within which a new reality is viewed and accepted.
The very human history of the development of science, in particular, is a study of those
limitations and those breakthroughs into new views of our world.
The VAS is a pulse response, but it is completely unlike either the Chinese pulse, or
the Western allopathic pulse in its history, its way of listening to the body, and in what
information it is reflecting. The pulse itself has a fascinating history, which sheds light on
the centrality of this form of diagnosis within medicine over centuries of time. In The
Expressiveness of the Body,
19
Shigehisa Kuriyama highlights the pulse as both a key
16
signal of the expressiveness of the body, and as a key point of distinction between Greek
and Chinese medicine.
Kuriyama says that the mastery of the pulse was the most valuable device of both
Eastern and Western medicine, and that in both cases it resulted in uncanny accuracy of
diagnosis.
20
Even though both schools of medicine relied heavily upon the pulse, by the
end of the second century A.D., there was a clear divergence in how the pulse was taken
and what it meant! The author says that this development was the result of the geography
of medical imagination.
21
His phrasing speaks to how the reaches, and the limits, of our
culturally based imagination create our accepted reality.
At first glance, to see a Chinese or Western doctor take the pulse looks the
samethey hold the wrist and feel intently. But what they are palpating and what
inferences they are making from the reading are completely different. For the Eastern
doctor, the 12 energy pathways of the body are being read and diagnosed for their level of
balance, providing a picture of the health of all of the body organs, individually and
collectively. There is not one location for taking the pulse, but six. They are feeling the
mo, the flow of movement of the vital streams of energy in the body the whole body.
With their more poetic nature, Kuriyama says the Chinese accepted the subtle and
mysterious nature of the pulse, and that sublime truths defy articulation.
22
They did not
need exactness in their diagnosis, and were indifferent to the Western need for greater
clarity. With careful observation of over 4,000 years behind them, accumulated knowledge
and practical success, the Chinese are confident of their use of this diagnostic tool. Today,
the ancient texts of Chinese medicine are still consulted for clinical guidance, whereas
Western pulse taking has in large part been replaced by technology.
17
The history of the pulse in Greek medicine is a different story, one of yearning for
clarity and precision. This difference in purpose behind their progress the Chinese with
intuitive and cultural confidence, the Greek/Western with the search for precision, is what
makes the pulse such a good indicator of the divergence between these two medical
approaches. While the Chinese confidently paid attention to the circulation of blood and
breath and qi, the Western doctors sought to measure precisely the rhythm and beat of the
heart. Between the two worlds, Unfamiliar words named mutually unfamiliar
perceptions,
23
and the words trained the touch. Divergence only grew.
In Western medicine, the heart is considered the central organ and focus. The
evidence the pulse provided of the successive dilation and contraction of the wall of the
arteries, propelled by the systole of the heart, was central to diagnosis. From Galen, 200
B.C., on through the next century, the need for clarity of the Western mind drove an
obsessive categorizing of the forms and rhythms of the pulse, which only led to imprecision
due to the idiosyncrasy of perceptions: people dont all feel things in the same way.
24
This approach led to significant concern and doubt within the world of Western
medicine. As Kuriyama states, pulse knowledge was exquisitely vulnerable to doubt.
25
The inability to agree on how to describe qualitatively the pulse in a consistent manner led
Western medicine, largely in the hands of sober and rational Europeans in the late 1700s,
to distill pulse taking to beat counting. The rate could be counted and communicated in a
consistent manner. With the clarity of numbers, the pulse became a secure diagnostic tool.
The Chinese, on the other hand, continued to describe how the pulse feels to the
fingers, its response to an inquiring touch. As a manifestation of the quality of the qi, blood
and breath, the mo indicates peoples spirits, their life energy. Alternatively, Western
18
doctors calculate the rhythm of a pulsing artery, telling them about the health of what they
consider to be the central organ. The model of thinking of the practitioner defines how the
pulse is felt and the information that it expresses.
Within this history and context it is fascinating to consider the VAS, a way of
evaluating the pulse not known until the late 1960s. This third pulse is perhaps a blending
of the two described above, being both subtle and precise, expressing both immediate and
deeper, less obvious health concerns.
It is interesting to note the central importance of the pulse over the centuries as a
diagnostic tool, even though it was (and is) considered to be exquisitely vulnerable to
doubt, relying upon a relatively subjective reading by a practitioner. Perhaps the
continued centrality of the pulse is because of its unique capacity to indicate, to express, the
overall level of health or pathology of a person. As noted in the title of Kuriyamas book,
The Expressiveness of the Body, the pulse is a way for the body to express the totality of
its current state. The phrase, To keep ones finger on the pulse, symbolically expresses
this capacity of the pulse to read deeply and fully into a situation.
And perhaps the significance of the pulse is also due to the relationship required
between practitioner and patient. To be allowed to touch a persons pulse is to be allowed
in to their very energy, their essence. As Marc Lebel, a doctor of Chinese medicine and
auricular medicine who trained extensively with Nogier pointed out to me recently,
auricular medicine is one of the few medical approaches in which touch continues to be so
central. The contact made between the highly sensitive thumb of a practitioner and the
pulse of a patient is a most intimate connection, a gesture of trust wherein the patient offers
an open palm to the physician, and the physician enters a noninvasive stance of listening.
19
The history of the VAS actually began in 1945 when Rene Leriche of the College
of France was dressing an arterial aneurism after surgery. Leriche observed that when he
touched the skin of the scar there resulted strong pulsations in the artery. He later observed
that light stimulations of the skin, and even emotions, could trigger this response.
26
The
discovery of this new reflex could neither be studied nor fathomed at the time
27
it was
outside any model of thinking currently held.
Twenty-one years later, Nogier discovered this signal at the radial artery, where the
pulse is typically taken. Nogier reports that due to his own training in Chinese
acupuncture, which involved training in perception of the pulse his tactile sensitivity had
been refined to the point where he was able to notice a change in the strength of the pulse
by touching the ear at the same time.
28
This pulse change is one of amplitude and
waveform, not rate or rhythm.
With further study, Nogier hypothesized a mechanism for this signal response. He
postulated that the felt change of waveform represents a displacement of the position within
the artery of where a retrograde wave that has been reflected back from the digital arteries
strikes a direct wave flowing toward the fingertips. One can see this mechanism in water,
when waves moving outward meet waves returning back in from the edge of a pool,
creating at the junction of these two opposing movements, a struggle for place.
29
The
point of striking creates what is called a standing wave, a composite of the movement
going in both directions. Any change in the waves moving out will change the position and
amplitude of the standing wave that results. A consistent positioning of the practitioners
thumb is necessary to detect this change in this waveform.
20
The position and quality of this standing wave will remain the same given the same
conditions, because the parameters are unchanged. By decreasing or increasing the
diameter of the vessel, in this case the arterial wall, the position of the standing wave will
be displaced. Even a micro vasoconstriction or vasodilatation results in a change. Recent
physiologic study has charted this change as resulting in a displacement of the rising
gradient of the standing wave. According to Anthony deSousa of Switzerland, what one
clinically feels when the thumb is kept at the same position on the wrist during a
stimulation seems to be not so much the overall change in amplitude of the pulse, which
does also change, but the change in the rising slope of the wave.
30
While the above mechanism is important to understand, Nogier goes on to note that
changes in the quality of the pulse are as important to notice as this more quantitative
description of pulse change. There are subtleties being expressed that may be felt using
words of Chinese pulse diagnosis, like peaked, sharp, vibrating, full. The
experience of the flow is as important as the measurement of the change.
It is postulated that the VAS is a change in the arterial wall as the result of a
resonance between a dysfunction in the body and the electromagnetic signature of a filter or
substance brought into the body's energy field. Just how the subtle energetic
communication of resonance actually translates into the physiological signal of the VAS is
not completely understood.
31
As a traditional Western medical doctor who had studied Chinese medicine, Nogier
was a good strategic person to bring this third pulse to the world. He combined the best of
both worlds, gifting us with a diagnostic tool that is both precise and subtle as it reflects the
biology of the patient. With precision, the VAS can guide a practitioner to the exact
21
location of an active (i.e. indicating stress, or a lack of balance) acupuncture point, and was
used by Nogier and others to verify and improve the accuracy of the auricular map of
acupuncture points. The VAS can also connect the physician to the whole energy system
of the patient and direct the most beneficial interventions for returning to homeostasis.
While the signal felt as the VAS response represents a whole system response to
filters or other interventions entering the energy field of any part of the body, the ear is
particularly useful for locating and measuring change since the ear has the highest density
of acupuncture points of the whole body. The ear has been recognized as an easily
accessible and highly descriptive microsystem. Its morphology is one of the most
sensitive signs of malformation in the body in a standard textbook of pediatrics it is
recommended that any auricular anomaly should initiate a search for malformation in other
parts of the body.
32
The profound value of the VAS as a physiological reading of the needs of a patient
is yet to be fully recognized. Paul Nogier once said, perception of the VAS in auricular
medicine permits a broad examination of a subjects physiology and pathology, and even
the mechanisms of the illness and recovery. The VAS becomes the conductor wire which
permits analysis, identification and evaluation of biological parameters.
33
The Current Field of Auricular Medicine
While there is currently research on the efficacy of auricular acupuncture,
34
there is
little about the action of the VAS, which is the cornerstone of auricular medicine. In
reviewing the available literature, it seems that there is much divergence of emphases in
current understandings and between practitioners within the field. This situation is perhaps
22
due to auricular medicine being a relatively new field with insufficient cross-referencing
and communication amongst colleagues. Lack of funding and international language
barriers remain as significant restrictions for advancement.
The Chinese, who recognize Nogier as the Father of Auricular Acupuncture, and
who recognize this field as an update to their traditional acupuncture, have widely adopted
auricular acupuncture into clinical practice and research. For the most part, however, the
VAS and auricular medicine have not been introduced into their practices.
35
Their focus is
on the diagnostic tools of auricular therapy, including observation, tenderness and clinically
researched maps of ear points.
36
When a Chinese doctor includes the pulse in their
assessment, it would probably be the Chinese pulse that has been perfected in traditional
Chinese Medicine.
Similarly, most North American practitioners and researchers are auricular
acupuncture therapists, with few moving into the field of auricular medicine. Auricular
medicine is not well organized on this continent, in terms of teaching, networking or
research. And much of the reference material is only available in French, German or
Dutch, making it relatively inaccessible to those relying on the English language.
Most research in North America and China is on the clinical application and
success of auriculotherapy, particularly for substance abuse. Oleson, one of the leaders in
the promotion of auricular acupuncture in North America, mentions the VAS in his
textbook, but as an aspect of auricular medicine as practiced in Europe. His list of
diagnostic procedures lists the tools of auriculotherapy, not including the VAS.
37
Another reason for the lack of development of auricular medicine in North America
may be reflected in Meekers caution in his textbook that the clinical problem with the
23
VAS is that no instrument has been designed to record the VAS adequately, so the
sensitivity of the practitioner is paramount and is the weak link.
38
Perhaps the hesitancy to
embrace the VAS fully mirrors a preference in our culture for something electronically
measurable. The VAS is considered by some to provide information that is too subjective.
Most of the forty presenters at the 99 International Consensus Conference on
Acupuncture, Auriculotherapy and Auricular Medicine in Las Vegas who are
practitioners of auricular medicine were from Europe, Russia and Israel. In Holland,
France and Germany in particular, advanced protocols have been developed and refined
that use the VAS as a sophisticated energetic assessment tool. Europeans have embraced
the use of the VAS more than anywhere else in the world.
This reality may be due to the fact that Europe is the birthplace of auricular
medicine. When one recognizes that Europe is also the birthplace of other health
approaches that recognize the subtle energies, such as homeopathy and transpersonal
psychology (Hanneman, Jung, Assagioli), one might speculate the existence of cultural
factors that promote the kind of outside of the box thinking that has led to these
discoveries. Even in Europe, however, the national boundaries and diversity of language
limits the networking and growth of auricular medicine. While within Holland, Germany
and France there exist relatively strong networks that support practice and research, with
busy practices and little outside funding sources, these doctors are still restricted in their
capacity to expand and connect the field geographically.
39
While for many practitioners the problem with auricular medicine is the inability
to measure the VAS with instruments, others are satisfied with its clinical applicability.
At a recent meeting of auricular medicine practitioners in Lyon, Anthony DeSousa, an
24
auricular medicine practitioner and researcher in Switzerland, reflects the latter attitude in
his presentation by saying that the VAS is simple to register manually, and so is an
effective and clinically accurate diagnostic tool.
Instrumentation for taking the VAS may be possible in the future. An important
question is, what might be lost in such a measurement? With the history of the Western
medical pulse taking, the pursuit of precision resulted in the reduction of the information
being sought to be only a measure of rate and rhythm. Felt qualities of the pulse that
contribute to the resulting diagnosis of a Chinese doctor are not available without touch.
Of note is the relative lack of pursuit of instrumentation to measure the Chinese pulse.
Nogier himself encouraged practitioners to pay attention to qualitative changes in
the pulse, not just quantitative. As well, perhaps something else that is crucial to the
healing process would be lost without human touch; the effects of the nature of the
relationship between doctor and patient.
Attempts are being made to quantitatively measure and prove the existence of the
VAS, including the work of Michel Marignan of France and Etsutaro Ikezona of Tokyo,
who are exploring computerized measurements. If amplitude, rate or rhythm were to be
measured, perhaps the task would be easier. DeSousas research is now indicating that
what is detected when palpating the VAS is the increase in the gradient of the rising slope
of the pulse relative to the resting pulse.
Nogier pointed out that, What we feel (with the VAS) corresponds to something
extremely subtle extremely small reactions to the least stimulation.
40
The VAS as a
window into the health of a patient continues to be most perceptible by touch, and not
easily detected by currently known instruments.
25
This deficiency in measurability is seen to be a deterrent to the wider acceptance of
auricular medicine.
41
There is a perceived need within the field to prove scientifically
the existence of the VAS through instrumentation. DeSousa, while not seeing the need
for instrumentation for clinical practice, did address the importance of quantitative
measurement for the purpose of scientific acceptance. Efim Frinerman, an Israeli
practitioner who presented at the Las Vegas conference, stated that the VAS is a very
complicated phenomenon that in the past was explained in a too simplified way.
Today, for future development and integration of VAS-phenomenon into normal
science, it is necessary to refine its concepts and construct equipment (for
measurement).
42
The high degree of sensitivity of the VAS as a diagnostic tool demands, at this
point in time at least, trained attention on the part of the practitioner. To practice auricular
medicine requires focused intent during the entire assessment in order to render an accurate
and clean signal. It is a diagnostic calling, Nogier says, that is appealing to those who
have the capacity and interest for the kind of sustained attention necessary for such a subtle
relationship with the patient.
While this reality may currently be a deterrent for the growth of this field of
medicine, this very nature of auricular medicine may become the stimulus for future
recognition and progress as interest grows in the capacity to access energetic information
for medical assessment.
Physiological Understandings of the VAS
What are the physiological processes involved that enable the VAS to be so
discerning? The VAS has the remarkable capacity of providing, for the clinician with a
26
trained touch, a focused physical response that represents a reading of the systems total
and immediate reaction to a stimulus. Like a computer analysis, the VAS provides a
readout that has synthesized information from the whole human system, including the
entire range of physiological and subtle level (emotional/mental) energies. What is the
current understanding of how this reading is possible?
My research, including a review of literature and attendance at research
presentations in North America and Europe, which is summarized in this chapter, has
uncovered a number of excellent theories of the physiological processes resulting in the
VAS. My observation is that each researcher brings an important understanding to the
topic, but there is little integration of the ideas, each of which provide a piece of the puzzle.
The mechanism of the standing wave described above tells us how the actual VAS
response of the pulse is created. But how does the creation and transmission of information
occur that results in that response? Different researchers present various explanations, all
of which are helpful in understanding the action of the VAS. Following is a review of
those theories that this author considers to be most significant.
A natural physiological sensitivity to stimuli of the human system is utilized for
diagnosis with the VAS. Nogier was very clear about this sensitivity, and taught his
students how to work with it. In the English translation of his book, Auriculotherapy to
Auriculomedicine, Nogier says, The fact that very little energy is needed to mobilize this
reflex should not be ignored, because we have there a cause of error that should not be
disregarded. Even the external and internal stimuli of the examinee can intervene and
modify our findings.
43
27
External stimuli is any stress which impacts the organism, caused by luminous or
magnetic actions, or by the influence of any kind of change encountered in the course of an
examination: heat, cold, slight pain provoked by movement Internal stimuli depend on
neural centers. They act on the neurovegetative system (autonomic nervous system), in
particular the diencephalons region and even to a degree on the cerebral cortex, capable of
launching an emotional storm, disturbing the VAS.
44
Whether an external or internal
source of stimuli, structural, physiologic, and chemical changes result, putting the
autonomic nervous system on alert (the storm) as the bodys way of attempting to return
the organism to homeostasis. One reflection of this storm is the VAS.
John Ackerman raises an interesting distinction between a return to health, or
simply to homeostasis. Most clinicians of auricular medicine, he says, see the VAS as an
indicator of how to return to homeostasis. As an indicator of the living systems response
to change, the VAS will indicate how to regain the former level of balance, even if it was
not optimum. In this way, the VAS can be used to direct the return of the system to
homeostasis.
45
This distinction relates to the difference noted by Rudolph Ballentine in his book,
Radical Healing, in which he reviews and integrates many therapeutic traditions, between
recovery, which would be a return to homeostasis or the previous level of balance, and
healing, which from the root of the word means, to make whole.
46
Patients often only
wish to return to their immediately previous level of functioning, so may just want the most
recently presenting symptom to go away. Many are living at a rather low level of
functioning with few or no complaints. Their fine instrument of a body has adjusted, and
28
found a certain balance to living with their condition. The VAS has the capacity to indicate
the best path to recovery if this balance is upset.
The protocols of auricular medicine, however, are designed to access deeper levels
of healing and change. The VAS can indicate interventions that will lead to a previous
homeostasis, or continue on to uncover and balance more causal layers of dysfunction.
47
As each layer recovers, and finds an earlier homeostasis, a deeper (older, perhaps) layer
is revealed. Following this process can return a person to ever-higher levels of functioning,
and wholeness. As deeper levels are allowed to reorganize, one comes increasingly into
alignment and health. Ballentine summarizes any holistic healing process in the
following way; Ultimately you will see that your body represents a weaving
togetherreminding you of what needs to be addressed next, and providing the ultimate
map to guide your healing and growth.
48
The VAS is a compass that indicates this map.
Nogier is clear that practitioners must always be mindful of the high level of
responsiveness of this diagnostic tool and of the human system. He warns against
regarding the VAS as providing a concrete reality. One must remain alert to other
possible disturbances. The noise, the light, the emotions, even the words of the physician
can intervene. The physician is in close electrical contact with his patient through the
continuous taking of the pulse(and) ought to guard his calm so as not to modify the state
of balance and so modify the VAS. His neutrality will favor the accuracy of the
finding.
49
Practitioners have emphasized to this author the need to keep ones own
thoughts and preconceived solutions to what the patient is presenting out of an auricular
medicine assessment process.
29
Pierre Magnin, a biochemist, and a colleague and student of Nogier, expands upon
this regulatory response of the body to stimuli. He reported at a recent meeting that at the
time of the Nogier discovery of the VAS, physiology was a static science aimed at defining
normalcy.
50
With the VAS phenomenon a dynamic physiology was presented that
expresses the sensitivity of the body to stimuli, and its ability to respond to changes at the
cellular level.
According to Magnin, the VAS is the result of the sensitivity of the nervous system,
and its ability to regulate cellular response. Cells have a narrow band within which they
function with consistency, normalcy. A stressor deregulates the balance, reducing the
normal oxidization of the cell, impacting on the oxygenation of the hemoglobin of the
whole system and limiting the normal defense mechanisms of the cells.
A healthy system will easily regain balance until the stress is too great and
outweighs the organisms ability to return to homeostasis. This concept reflects Norman
Shealys assertion that what matters in the breakdown of a systems ability to cope with its
environment is the degree of accumulation of stress. The accumulation, more than the type
of stressor, is what results in a pathological pattern of response.
51
Magnin further stated that unless the cell is able to regain balance, the low oxygen
that results causes lesion of the cells, leading to cellular chaos. This chaos information
travels through the nervous system to the limbic brain, leading to an alarm of the whole
sympathetic system. The VAS is a reaction to a change of information, a reflection of an
adaptation response of the autonomic nervous system.
Magnin asserts that pathology, the result of system stress, is a powerful amplifier of
cellular activity that then becomes visible through the VAS. Reading the VAS response to
30
various filters (stimuli) is a way of plugging into a feedback loop, a conversation going on
in the body. By bringing a filter of information, or a remedy, into the energy field of a
patient, an acupuncture point that is active because of the cellular pathology will resonate
with this introduction of information, and the VAS can be used to identify the tissue that is
under stress, identify the location and intensity of the lesion, and even suggest what might
rectify the problem.
Whether a stimulus is taken away or brought into the field can produce the VAS. If
a remedy, for instance, is helpful to the body, and a filter of the remedy is used to remove
the information about this remedy from the body, the VAS will indicate a stressful change.
This phenomenon is similar to that of sleep on a train. If one is asleep on the train, the
sounds are not heard, but if the train stops, one wakes up.
The mechanism of resonance of acupuncture points that results in the cellular
response described by Magnin is understood by some to relate to the research of Fritz-
Albert Popp.
52
His work has shown that all living systems spontaneously emit photons of
light, called biophotons, which seem to originate from a coherent photon field within the
organism. Popp theorizes that the function of these biophotons is intra and intercellular
regulation and communication. A healthy cellular population has been found to emit few
photons, while unhealthy cells emit large numbers of photons in disorderly patterns,
signaling pathology. The particular biophoton emission pattern may be what creates the
unique electromagnetic signature of the cellular state, information that will resonate with
the photon information of a filter. Rita Klowersa suggests that this biophoton cellular
communication may be the bodys overall synchronizing system based on electromagnetic
information
53
31
Frinerman of Israel presents another approach.
54
He believes that the synchronized
biological rhythms of the body are ubiquitous, being demonstrable at any level of
organization of the system. The VAS, he says, summarizes information concerning these
overall biological rhythms, which reflect the functional state of the body. Frinerman
proposes that the cardiovascular system (CVS) may be the central harmonizing system that
enables the body to present such a summarized response.
He proposes that by striving for an optimal flow wave pattern that is most
beneficial for the human system, the CVS harmonizes these rhythms into a single,
dominant frequency. This action occurs at the cellular walls of the CVS where they act as
sensors, translating information from the blood flow to biochemical signals that are
intended to maintain the integrity of the system. When Nitrous Oxide, the main hormone
of vascular regulation, is released due to changes in blood flow, it interacts with these
sensory cells and alters vascular tone. The VAS is the felt change in the peripheral
vascular tone.
Another layer and another potential pathway is added with the model of another
student of Nogier, Joseph Navach. His extensive research on the VAS led him to the
discovery of what he called neurohormones, compounds that exist inside the body. He
believed that these neurohormones are the electromagnetic receptors that resonate
specifically to a stimulus. He agreed with the theory that all organic and inorganic
substances have an electromagnetic resonance, or signature, and believed that the
neurohormones respond to this unique signature or signal. When an energy (in the form of
a filter, for instance, or a light) is brought into the field of a patient, and that energy is in
resonance with an acupuncture point, Navach says that the neurohormones receive this
32
signature like a radio receiver, and then facilitate the transmission of this information to the
hypothalamus of the limbic system. The neurohormones then facilitate the relay of
information from the brain through the autonomic nervous system to the smooth muscles of
the peripheral arteries, manifesting as the pulse response of the VAS.
55
An understanding of the central role of the limbic system is helpful in grasping the
bodys autonomic response to stimuli. According to Paul MacLean,
56
the limbic brain,
which includes the hypothalamus and the reticular formation, is the part of the brain that
turns up or down the intensity of feelings, and provides emotional colouring to all other
brain processes. The limbic system receives information from all sensory systems without
distinction of its source and then activates a feeling response that reverberates through the
whole system the fight or flight syndrome. Coordinated physiological changes occur
through the autonomic nervous system, which innervates the internal organs, the glands,
the blood vessels and the sweat glands. This response is intended to regain homeostasis, to
optimize survival and self-preservation. The VAS is one result of this survival response to
the information change received by the limbic brain. Tiller points out that what makes the
VAS such an accurate diagnostic tool is that the limbic system alone, without the aid of the
neocortex, is involved in the signal, leaving it clean of interpretation.
57
Without the involvement of the intellect to label the information with a language
and time context, the body automatically responds to any micro stress. This lack of
discrimination of source allows outside experiences to be experienced as though they were
insidethe visceral brain is not at all unconscious, but rather eludes the grasp of the
intellect because its structure makes it impossible to communicate in verbal terms.
58
The
autonomic nervous system, activated by a limbic system alert, will respond the same
33
whether the stimulus was a hypnotic suggestion, a dream, an emotional reunion or a
physical threat.
Not only are somatic and emotional information translated as the same, but each
have a direct influence on the other through the limbic system. Ideas, beliefs and feelings,
registered by the limbic system, affect our physical cells automatically, without our
awareness. Brain research has shown that without a co-functioning limbic system, the
neocortex lacks not only the neural substrate for a sense of self, of reality, and the memory
of ongoing experience, but also a feeling of conviction as to what is true or false.
59
The
sense of truth of what is perceived depends upon this nonverbal system, which then sends
out the messages that program cellular change or maintenance.
All of the above research and theories provide a physiological picture of the
remarkable and synchronized responsiveness of the body to stimuli of a physical or more
subtle nature. Nogier described the human system as a sensitive reactor which responds
to any stress, whether the stimuli involves luminous, magnetic or nervous system energy,
and whether the source be external or internal.
60
Each model describing the physiological response of the VAS is illuminating.
Evidently, the cardiovascular system, the nervous system, the brain and cellular
biochemistry and emotions are all involved in the VAS response. But which system, if
any, is causal? The following chapter builds upon these physiologic models and takes us
further into theories based in an Energy Medicine perspective. The aim is to build a more
inclusive model of understanding. We are looking for a good theory, which mathematician
Stephen Hawking would call an elegant model, which describes a wide class of
observations, and predicts the results of new observations.
61
34
Chapter Three
ENERGY MEDICINE PERSPECTIVES
An Integral Energy Medicine Approach
Physiological investigations alone cannot fully explain the sensitivity and
responsiveness of the human system. As with Chinese medicine, there is recognition in
auricular medicine that a flow of energy is involved. Nogier explains it like this; The ear
is not only a surface on which are programmed, as on a bulletin board, orders to execute,
but a place which permits the study of forces and their orientation Circulation of
energy (and) the recording of variations of energies may be discovered, studied, and
precisioned by the sign of the pulse. The patient is an extremely sensitive reactor.
62
Lebel
recently put it this way: In auricular medicine, the planets most powerful instrument (the
clinician) is reading the planets most powerful instrument (the patient).
63
VanGelder says
that to work with the VAS is an experience of communicating with the patient in a very
subtle way(involving) only the flow of energy and information.
64
If we view the body as a set of separate physical, emotional and biochemical
processes, then we have the problem of discovering the causal chain that would explain the
mechanism of the VAS. If we view the VAS as a messenger of a unitive energy as it is
manifesting within a coherent human system, then perhaps a model for understanding this
phenomenon that is inclusive enough to contain the entire communication process involved
can emerge.
Joseph Navach, and others, notes that homeostasis seems to be governed by a
harmonized effort of the autonomic nervous system along with the other systems of the
body. Yet many questions remain. While these body systems are known to differentiate
35
embryologically, they all respond to each other in a synchronized manner by some
unknown mechanism, and at a speed beyond what is understood. As Navach questioned,
How is it that the speed of the homeostasis mechanism is faster than any electrical
conductivity of the nervous system or faster than any humoral changes in the blood that can
yet be recorded by present technology?
65
These questions and others are currently being studied within the International
Joseph H. Navach Project, initiated in memory of Navach, and under the direction of Linda
Russek and Gary Schwartz of the Human Energy Systems Laboratory at the University of
Arizona, and John Ackerman as project director.
66
Beyond the study of the VAS, others are trying to answer similar questions, that is,
what part of the body is the energetic center, the leading point or process? And how does
the communication system that maintains and evolves life function? Paul Pearsall argues
in The Hearts Code for the centrality of the heart as holding the template for our
physiological development and responses.
67
For Jeremy Narby, in The Cosmic Serpent,
it is the DNA.
68
In these and other investigations, there is a presupposition that the seat of
our consciousness and our living processes is held within a physical part. What if the
source of our intricate, sophisticated living system is not located anywhere but is an
orderliness that is all pervasive?
Energy Medicine takes a vitalism approach, which holds that there is a life force
animating the mechanisms of all living systems. There is order to this force, which
dynamically responds to stimuli to regain and maintain homeostasis, as well as to inspire
evolution to ever-higher levels of functioning.
69
The foundation of life is seen as energy,
which while it operates at a range of frequency levels, has an inherent unity, connecting all
36
vibrations. Subtle energy, which exists beyond the rules of time and space, is considered to
be the prior and causal level that determines physical form. It is deemed to be the driving
force for our biochemistry and physiology, with every physical atom being intimately
connected to its higher frequency level.
In this review of the theories of some leading edge scientists, a case is presented for
such an approach, an Integral Energy Medicine approach for understanding the VAS. This
perspective is based in a metaphor as described by Jenny Wade, of a single, seamless
whole in perpetual flux, of which the manifest world is merely one aspect.
70
As Frinerman suggests, the rhythms of the body, and to take it one step further, of
the whole human system, physical and nonphysical, seem to be synchronized and
ubiquitous, existing everywhere at the same time. Without a physical beginning or end to
the process, without a time and space reference, there is ultimately no causal chain of
events in how we function.
Taking the view of physicist David Bohm, each cell of the body is a hologram,
enfolded within and containing the whole and there is no division between cells, between
physiological systems, between mind and matter. There is instead a thoroughgoing
wholeness, in which mental and physical sides participate very closely in each other
71
It
is this view I wish to explore further.
The Brain, The Mind and The Body
Candace Pert, the neuroscientist who discovered the opiate receptor and whose
work describes the human system as a dynamic information network, has concluded
from her research we can no longer make clear distinctions between the brain, our mind,
and our body.
72
As we know from Paul MacLean, the limbic system responds to a stress
37
from any source, and converts emotional reaction through the limbic brain into cellular
response through coordinated physiologic changes. Mind and energy becomes matter.
Pert, based on her research in brain biochemistry, states that the effectiveness of the body's
"cellular defense mechanism is determined by emotions Emotions are the key element
that effects the conversion of mind to matter in the body."
73
Indeed, the immune system
has been found to be more powerfully influenced by attitude and belief than virtually all
other normal factors combined.
74
Targ and Katra, in Miracles of Mind
75
, develop a case based in a review of
healing research data from the past 200 years, that mind is nonlocal, meaning it cannot be
confined to specific points in space or time. It is infinite, everywhere at the same time.
Their model of understanding suggests that information travels through all space-time
simultaneously, including the various physiological systems of the body.
One of Targ and Katras examples of the lack of division between mind and matter
is hypnosis. Franz Mesmer was, in 1779, the first person to systematically and
scientifically investigate the healing of one person through the healing intention of
another. Mesmer had a theory that an invisible magnetic fluid flowed through the human
body, animating it and promoting its health and vitality. He believed that sickness resulted
from any blockage of the flow of this fluid, and that his therapeutic technique, known as
Mesmerism, was able to restore the harmonious flow.
76
It is interesting to note the
similarity between Mesmers theory and the concept of prana, and qi of Eastern
medicine, or the life force as it is named more recently in Energy Medicine.
Hypnosis is defined as a psychological state of functioning at a level of awareness
other than ordinary in which the person gives as much significance to inner perceptions as
38
they generally would to external reality.
77
This state seems to open access to the limbic
system where there are no inner/outer, or physical/emotional distinctions. As in the much
later biofeedback experiments, a directed state of awareness in hypnosis experiments has
proven its capacity to alter physiological and psychological systems, such as body
temperature, heart rate, enzyme secretion, memory, learning ability, symptoms of illness
and even athletic performance.
Experiments even more specifically related to the VAS response of the body
include the work of Douglas Dean, at the Newark College of Engineering, in 1965. Dean
showed conclusively that the autonomic nervous systems of subjects in his laboratory
responded to the thoughts of a distant person.
78
Interestingly, what Dean measured was a
change in blood volume in the fingers with a plethysmograph, as a measure of a change in
autonomic nervous activity in response to directed thoughts from someone in another room.
Navach also used plethysmography in his research of the VAS 15 years later.
79
Without
knowing it, Dean was measuring the bodys autonomic response that we now know as the
VAS at the same time that Nogier was discovering this system response and auricular
medicine. Further experiments of William Braud and others have also repeatedly
demonstrated the effect of the mental processes of a distant person on the autonomic
nervous system of another.
80
Candace Pert sees the connectedness of all aspects of our system from a
biochemical perspective, concluding brain and body make and receive the same
messenger molecules in order to communicate effectively. They speak the same
language, she says, the language of neuropeptides.
81
Neuropeptides are chemical
messenger molecules that are received by receptor molecules on the surface of the walls of
39
cells, which regulate both physiological functions and brain communication in the body.
These messengers may be how the limbic system communicates its identification of a stress
or change through the rest of the body.
One would assume a relationship between what Pert describes as neuropeptides,
these biochemical messenger molecules, and Navachs neurohormones, both identified as
transmitters of electromagnetic information through the body. Navach hypothesized
neurohormones to be biochemical radio receivers, picking up the electromagnetic signature
of new information and transmitting this information to the limbic system.
Pert believes that emotions are the key element that effects the conversion of mind
to matter in the body.
82
She has found that emotions and stress levels determine the
effectiveness of the bodys capacity for cellular defense. Another researcher, Lydia
Temoshok, defines neuropeptides as a universal language by which cells from different
biological systems interact and alter each others behaviour. They are a medium of
exchange, and what they share is information.
83
The source of the orderliness and the synchronicity of our dynamic information
network is still a mystery. Perhaps it is the nonlocal mind described by Targ and Katra.
Another way of naming this concept is the morphogenetic field as described by biologist
Rupert Sheldrake. Sheldrake proposed that this ubiquitous communication between cells,
brain, emotions and other stimuli within the environment is all occurring within an
organizing field that transcends time and space but that determines the physical form and
behavior of living systems. Sheldrake called this the hypothesis of formative causation.
84
In this theory, it is believed that the quality and content of consciousness of the
morphogenetic field determines and organizes the whole system response. The
40
electromagnetic communication occurring within the body may be tied to and reflecting a
more subtle communication occurring simultaneously on the subtle level.
Which brings the discussion back to the central question: What are the
mechanisms that allow the VAS to be such a refined tool for discrimination, enabling
it to read the subtle information of a stimulus and present to an educated thumb a
physiologic response that indicates symptomatic as well as deep causal pathology?
The living system seems to know and remember homeostasis, and wills itself to
return to that state of balance for its survival. If not blocked, the system will recognize and
return to the most beneficial condition known. Healing, in this view, is a natural result of
the unblocking of energy pathways, allowing the body to rebalance and realign with the
natural and optimum flow of energy. With increased health and inner harmony, or
coherence, as an energy system the organism is enabled to reach an ever higher-level
refinement of its functioning a more and more ordered and vital energy.
85
There seems to
be an inherent and omnipresent consciousness, an order, to this process.
This model is in contrast with a mechanistic model that holds that we are only
matter and chemical processes, and that our ability to live is limited by the second law of
thermodynamics that is, all of life is moving toward maximum entropy, or disorder.
86
This law points to the eventual decay of everything, including the universe. Even in the
mid-1800s, Darwin and other scientists of his time found this scientific fact intolerable,
to consider that the universe was deteriorating toward eventual annihilation. If that was the
case, then what was the purpose of evolution, Darwin wondered?
Physicist James Maxwell imagined a new metaphor in 1867 to respond to this
distressing threat of progressive dissolution. He hypothesized that within every living
41
system lies the intelligence of a very observant and neat-fingered being that is
capable of monitoring and reversing the natural tendency toward entropy. This being
became known as Maxwells Demon, and was described as a doorkeeper very intelligent
and exceedingly quick.
87
Although this model fell into disrepute due to the failure of
Maxwells theorized mechanisms, there lies within his attempt the root of a model of
organisms as intelligent systems, which rather than simply deteriorating with entropy,
have increased in the refinement of survival behaviour over millennia to develop what we
now call consciousness.
Erwin Schroedinger, the physicist seen as the father of quantum mechanics,
wrestled with the same question of how living organisms resist entropy during the 1940s.
He marveled at the ability to stay alive, and pointed out a precious something upon
which living organisms feed, which he called negative entropy. He stated that how a
system maintains itself is by sucking orderliness from its environment.
88
The organism
has the astonishing gift of concentrating a stream of order on itself of drinking
orderliness from (its) environment.
89
This stream of order that an organism sucks from
the environment is a form of energy, which it then uses to coordinate the work of
maintaining and ordering life. As physical matter decays, order and information increases.
But who is the I that is controlling this process, Schroedinger asked. There is an
experiential I, consciousness, that is controlling the motion of the atoms according to
the Laws of Nature
90
- an intelligence that connects our molecular structure to the order
of the Cosmos. The mystery of the science of this precious something is far from being
solved, but some creative scientists who cannot resolve a universe without intention and
intelligence are generating models that reflect the nature of the negative entropy of
42
increased consciousness. Ramachandran, for one, echoes Maxwells description when he
refers to this high-level coordinating phenomenon as "another being inside you that goes
about her business without your knowledge or awareness".
91
Nogier noted forty years after Schroedingers time, that the nature of living
organisms is that we are highly sensitive and powerful instruments, responsive to subtle
energy changes.
92
The VAS seems to be a physiological readout of this sensitivity.
Rather than the demon, this capacity for whole system response could be called an
Intelligence; a coordinating, dynamic, information network that holds the subtle level
information (or intention) that becomes biological manifestation.
In this holographic view, every living organism and in fact every cell is a perfect
microsystem rooted in and reflecting the Intelligence of the Cosmos. There is energetic
order in the Universe, on every level of the seen and unseen, and that order is expressed on
the level of the regulatory systems of the body as a physical level expression of this
omnipresent order. Being wholly connected, this order, on every level, has an intelligence,
a consciousness that strives to maintain and optimize order.
Consciousness, or intelligence, or mind, in this model, is the unifying structure
within which our biological system exists, responds and evolves the morphogenetic field.
Jenny Wade develops this model in her book, Changes of Mind: A Holonomic Theory of
the Evolution of Consciousness.
93
She suggests, based in studies of consciousness, that
this physically transcendent source, what she calls mind, predates and survives the physical
body. During a lifetime, it orients itself to the physical level as a sheathing of energy that
interpenetrates the body. Brain and mind enfold each other, she says, with the physical
brain being a transducer of a holographic universe.
94
Reflecting Bohms theory, Wade
43
believes that physical manifestation flows out of physically transcendent energy that is
perceived by the central nervous system. This information is not recorded in a particular
cell or structure, but is enfolded over the whole. Information is everywhere and no
particular place. Transformations between the physical and the transcendent energy are
occurring continuously and rapidly.
It is interesting to view the VAS as one indicator of the coordinated efforts of this
subtle/physical system. The VAS provides a summarized, physiological record of our
systems capacity to detect and discriminate reliably both physiologic and subtle energetic
changes, a capacity only possible with a detector as sensitive as the human body.
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If
read by a practitioner with understanding and timeliness, the VAS provides a noninvasive
way to tap into the overall Intelligence of the human system, and to gain information that
can be used to regain homeostasis and to prevent negative effects of medications, chemical
and even electro-magnetic pollution.
My hypothesis is that the VAS is a reliable Energy Medicine assessment tool
for dynamic communication with a coordinating Intelligence as it manifests within the
human system.
Subtle Energy Detector
William Tiller calls the VAS one of the bodys biomechanical transducers, a subtle
energy detector, meaning that it facilitates the transformation of subtle level energies,
from Wades unifying structure of Mind into a physically observable signal.
96
According to Tiller, the VAS is well set up to provide a fairly clean signal of the
messages of the subtle level. Involved are the smooth muscles of the arteries, innervated
44
by the autonomic nervous system, which he calls an involuntary signal carrier system
connected to the hypothalamus of the limbic system. As described earlier in this paper, the
limbic brain is relatively isolated from the noise (thoughts) of the cerebral cortex, so it
can be utilized to identify subtle energy without alteration. In Tillers view, which supports
the work of Pert and Navach, the hypothalamus receives biochemical messages in response
to information, or subtle energy, that has been received by the body antenna. This
interface where the information held within subtle level energy is transformed into
physiological signals is, he says, the point of least understanding.
Tiller points out that a physical level description of the information transfer
involved with the VAS (i.e. through time and space), which itself is still not completely
solved, is actually only a small part of the answer. The even larger question remains as to
how subtle, unseen energy transduces into a neurobiochemical response? Tiller asks,
How can specific information from a filter transfer to the ear patient practitioner
system? This is remote transfer, he says, similar to distant healing.
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Further, when a
practitioner asks a silent question, like, Is it best to treat with homeopathic remedies or
needles? the subtle energy of this thought also seems to act like a filter and initiates a VAS
response.
Tiller himself has conducted experiments wherein intention imprinted electronic
devices (IIEDs) were imprinted with a focused message, an intent, by practiced
meditators. The IIEDs then, at a distance to the imprinting, significantly affected the
specific functioning of biological systems. In one experiment, the IIEDs were able to
inhibit the cells from being infected by a human parasite.
98
In these experiments, thought
was proven to have a measurable physical effect. How might this phenomenon occur?
45
Research into the impact of the IIEDs continues, with current efforts in the labs of Robert
Nunley and Norm Shealy attempting to raise the pH of water one unit of measurement
above the 5.67 normal reading.
99
Most of us have not fully developed the conscious capacity to detect and
discriminate subtle energies. We still need a transducer capable of transforming non-
observable subtle energy to physically observable energy. Tiller agrees with Nogier in
saying that the human system is such a transducer, or in Nogiers words a sensitive
receptor. The human body is a highly refined, powerful instrument through which
energies of all frequencies seem to be received and transmitted in a coordinated manner.
Also in agreement with Nogier, Tiller asserts that the presence of a practitioner, as another
intelligent system in contact with a patient, must be recognized as an element in this
communication system.
Tiller presents a scientific model for how subtle energy might translate into physical
energy in his book, Science and Human Transformation.
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He has projected his
knowledge of physical science into the unseen and unknown conjecturing that subtle
energy is organized in a way that is reflective of what is known about energy bands. Tiller
hypothesizes that we might better understand the subtle-physical energy interface with the
concept of a mirror relationship existing between the physical realm and the next more
subtle realm (etheric level), both of which function in our bodies.
101
In Tillers model, every physical pattern in our known time-space dimension,
positive space, has a correlate in negative space that is a frequency pattern. While the
positive space is the home of positive mass traveling at velocities slower than the speed of
light and is the home of electrical particles, its inverse in negative space is a frequency
46
pattern beyond the speed of light, so undetectable, and the home of magnetic particles. The
space-time physical domain is well known in allopathic medicine. The inverse structure, as
a frequency domain, is less understood, the nature of which is only beginning to be
explored.
In making the case for the nature of this negative space being magnetic, Tiller
points out that although the physical substance making up our bodies is not magnetic
we find odd magnetic-type phenomena occurring around some of us.
102
For instance,
dowsers seem to respond to subtle magnetic energy shifts; enzyme activity has been shown
to be enhanced in a strong magnetic field; magnets can reduce water surface tension by
about 20%; a magnetic current has been recorded at the point of but prior to any cellular
change; and a magnet placed on an acupuncture point can produce local analgesia. These
examples demonstrate that a magnetic effect can be transferred to the physiological
response level.
103
Mesmers theory of a magnetic fluid flowing through and around our
bodies may indeed be this magnetic subtle flow of energy that mirrors the electromagnetic
flow of our bodies.
Tiller proposes that this model of positive space and its inverse, invisible negative
space could explain why magnetic monopoles have not been discovered. Unlike electrical
energy, in which positive and negative electricity springs from an electric charge, called a
monopole, the similar magnetic monopole has not been found. Perhaps this miss is due to
the magnetic monopole existing in the undetectable negative space, with only its effects
being felt physically in electromagnetism. This concept of magnetic particles existing in a
domain with a mirror-type relationship with the physical domain restores a sense of
47
symmetry to electromagnetism,
104
rather than the currently accepted idea that magnetism
is created by the motion of electric charges.
Tillers model also springs naturally from the understanding of the inversion
relationship between waves and particles. Anything with a spatial pattern (particle) has a
correlate which is a frequency pattern (wave) the wave/particle duality of quantum
mechanics may be just the natural expression of correlated patterns in the two conjugate
(domains).
105
This negative space domain is also called the vacuum state, thought by
conventional physics to be a chaotic sea of imaginary particles. Tiller hypothesizes,
however, that this vacuum space is a highly ordered network of structures with negative
mass, inaccessible to physical senses or present-day instrumentation, by virtue of the
requirement that passage through the inversion mirror at the light barrier is a prerequisite
for observation.
106
This vacuum with its negative energy state and the unobservable
particles is exactly the territory wherein the subtle energies might exist,
107
Tiller suggests.
In the 1930s, Dirac, a researcher of quantum mechanics, discovered that by
stimulating the negative energy state with a light (a photon), a particle (an electron) could
be promoted into one of the positive energy states and become physically real. The hole
left behind in the vacuum creates an electrical charge. The absence of a negative energy
electron is equivalent to the presence of a positive energy positron
108
a mirror
relationship. The Dirac Sea became known as this sea of virtual unobservable particles.
Unlike the chaotic Dirac sea, however, Tiller projects that the waves and particles
of negative space are ordered in a perfect lattice framework, like the lattice of a crystal,
filling in all of the space that is free from the limitations of time-space. In place of physical
48
atoms at the junctures of the crystal lattice, nodal points are at those intersections of the
negative space grid. One of the most significant characteristics of a nodal network or a
physical crystal is that they diffract waves of appropriate types and wavelengths.
109
Minute differences in orientation produce signals of varying strengths, creating a
diffraction pattern with a tremendous amount of information.
110
In Tillers model, all of nature consists of layers of sublattices, each more subtle.
The subtle layer that is closest to the more dense physical dimension is its inverse
frequency domain, called the etheric structure. Both of these interpenetrating spaces, the
physical and the etheric, are seen by Tiller to be imbedded within the more subtle and more
causal levels of the emotional domain, which lies within the mental domain, which is
rooted in spirit.
Information waves, the stuff of consciousness, propagate along the nodal networks
placing potential maps on the vast array of nodal points These nodal points translate the
information waves (consciousness) into transmitted energy patterns of particles for
interacting with the particles of substance.
111
Since they are configured to be reciprocal
lattices of each other, when waves that are traveling in the inverse (negative) lattice are
diffracted from its nodal network, they are directed to pass through the nodal points of the
physical space-time network at a greatly increased intensity (and coarseness). Thus, there
is a connectivity and integration of information between these levels via the important
mechanism of wave diffraction.
112
The high velocity of the magnetic domain of negative space is seen as the
precursor, seeding the electric space-time dimension of the physical world. Although one
tends to adopt the physical reference frame as the origin of events about which substance in
49
all the other domains adjust, this is exactly backwards. Action occurs first in the subtle
domains and propagates sequentially into the physical domain which adjusts toward an
equilibrium force balance.
113
To move from the etheric domain to the physical involves conversion from
magnetic charge at velocities faster than the speed of light to electrical charges in the space-
time domain. Only when the waves exceed a critical intensity do they trigger the negative
space nodal points to radiate waves into physical substance. Passing this critical intensity is
what materializes energy from its etheric structure.
Tiller hypothesizes that subtle energy in the etheric domain creates a magnetic
potential by coupling with its physical correlate. This magnetic potential generates a pulse
of electrical charge in positive space. The magnetic vector potential occup(ies) the key
position on the bridge between the subtle and the physical.
114
Perturbing the system at any one level affects all domains, as the energy waves
travel through these interconnected lattices. Tiller believes, based in his experimentation
with intention, that "increasing the focus of human intention increases the coupling
between physical and etheric substances",
115
thus transferring an imprint from the magnetic
frequency domain to the electric space-time frequency domain, resulting in materialization
of the intention.
Whatever healing or major change is going on at the etheric level of the body, it is
coming from the higher mental level by directed intention,
116
Tiller states. The etheric
pattern will eventually manifest in its physical correlate as a physical change. This directed
intention is often subconscious, existing as healthy or unhealthy, focused or conflicting
patterns in our emotional / mental domains. An understanding of how the physics of
50
energy may be directly imprinting those patterns into ones biology may increase
motivation to clear thought patterns. For most individuals their internal nodal networks
are fragmented by the chaotic signals generated by the body substance thus their lattice
size is smaller and less life energy is constructively radiated into the body from the nodal
points.
117
This view seems to correlate with Popps findings that the more unhealthy a
system, or cell, the more disorderly the pattern of biophoton emission, and the less able the
system is to discern the appropriate response to incoming energy patterns.
If a high state of inner self-management has been achieved, however, Tiller says the
body substance will receive, reflect and radiate more etheric substance. Energy will flow
more freely, increasing the capacity of the networks of sublattices to transfer energy. This
increased flow results in an abundance of energy, greater harmony and ability to manifest
life-giving force. If our intention is focused and clear, some correlation should be
observed between our act of intention and events in our sensory world.
118
Ken Cohen speaks of these effects of inner self-management in his book, The Way
of Qigong. He says the practice of qigong focuses the qi and balances the brain
hemispheres. The degree of brain wave coherence increases significantly for qigong
practitioners, indicating greater communication within the system, and that conflicting
aspects of the self are being harmonized.
119
Tillers model speaks strongly for being focused and clear as a practitioner of
auricular medicine, while working within a patients energy field. It reinforces Nogiers
caution about guarding ones calm. The intention, or lack of intention, of the practitioner
is surely an influence in the subtle energy being read by the intelligence of the system with
which one is working. Without inner self-management, there could exist more
51
interference, limiting clear information transfer to occur between the subtle and physical
domains involved.
Tillers model seems to be consistent with current neuroscience discoveries that
demonstrate that the internal points of our brain, a pattern-forming system, are engaged in
interactive communication with something more subtle. V. S. Ramachandran, a
neuroscientist and author of Phantoms in the Brain,
120
confirms from his research the
findings of Canadian neuroscientist Wilder Penfield of the 1940s that maps of the body
exist on the surface of the brain, known as the homunculus. In contrast to the accepted
dogma of neurology, however, Ramachandran found that these maps are not fixed. While
largely stable to ensure reliability, these maps, which determine our perception and
functioning, are constantly being updated and refined in response to new input. Like
Tillers maps that form on the more subtle nodal networks, these maps at the physical brain
level are information-wave-sensitive. A neurologist might conclude that God is a
cartographer, says Ramachandran. He must have an inordinate fondness for maps, for
everywhere you look in the brain maps abound.
121
Similarly, leading edge cellular biology research is now soundly based upon a
universe created out of energy as defined by quantum physics Consequently, we now
recognize that receptors (in the cells) respond to energy signals as well as molecular
signals.
122
One of these biologists, Bruce Lipton, notes that even in mainstream medical
research it is being revealed that electromagnetic fields have a regulatory influence on cell
physiology. Pulsed electromagnetic fields have been shown to regulate virtually every
cell function, Lipton says, including DNA synthesis, protein synthesis, cell division and
differentiation, morphogenesis and neuroendocrine regulation. These findings are relevant
52
for they acknowledge that biological behavior can be controlled by invisible energy forces,
which include thought.
123
Liptons work seems to corroborate both Navachs and Perts
pieces of the puzzle, that biochemical and electromagnetic receptor cells are fundamental to
this process of information transduction and transference.
Through original cellular biology research, Lipton has concluded that the
membrane of the cell operates as the brain of the cell not the nucleus as was previously
thought. Both brain and skin (membrane) are derived from ectodermic tissue, and both
read the signals of the environment, assess the information, and then select appropriate
programs in response. In this view, our brain is indeed everywhere in the body, existing in
the skin of every cell. Tiller suggests, The skin is the link which ties the organism and the
universe together.
124
Lipton calls the receptor-effector protein complex pair that exists on the membrane
of the cell a unit of perception.
125
Cellular behavior is regulated by two sets of signals;
perception and actual physical stimulation, with perception being able to override physical
stimulus, as is demonstrated through hypnotherapy, and through Perts biochemical
research that shows that emotions are the key to physiological function.
126
Like the brain
of Ramachandrans research, cells will adapt, Lipton notes, to new signals, even if the
new signal is a perceived stress, a belief. If a person believes that the environment is
hostile, their body will live in a stressful environment even though the real environment
may not be hostile.
127
Cellular response can be divided into two functional categories; organisms are
attracted toward elements that are perceived to support their life or repulsed from
threatening stimuli. This basic cellular response is perhaps at the root of the physical
53
response we read as the VAS that is a reflection of the bodys effort to maintain
homeostasis. The more relevant a stimulus is to the organisms survival, the more
polarized (either + or -) the resulting response. In humans, the extremes of the two
polarities might appropriately be described as love (+) and fear (-).
128
The nature of the VAS is that it provides data indicating to the practitioner whether
new information represents something beneficial or hostile to the system. The physical
level antenna, or receptors, and the receptor-effector pathways, including the cellular,
nervous, hormonal, vascular systems, produce a coordinated, summarized response to the
systems perception of the incoming stimulus is it good or bad? Is it love or fear? This
polarized cellular response of the physical positive/electric structure to the information held
in the mirror of the negative/magnetic space could be the basis of the immediacy and the
superior discriminating capacity of the VAS.
Gravity is associated with dense physical mass. In contrast, negative mass will
produce a levitational force. If enough etheric substance (with its negative mass and its
magnetic action) is injected into a physical substance through intention, Tiller says the
object can overcome its normal gravitational force and the object will be attracted to the
negative mass. This, Tiller says, is how unexplainable but observed phenomena occur:
like walking on water; like the authors own felt and seen experience of a psychic
surgeons hands moving through my skin into my belly without utilizing a physical
opening; and like firewalkers being able to walk over hot coals without physical effect.
Enough intention has been focused to overcome the laws of positive time-space domain
and to inject etheric substance and laws into the physical. In this way, magnetic attraction
seems to reorganize and overcome physical laws. The magnetic, subtle realm of energy
54
will override and alter the physical manifestation. Indeed, what we might name as
miracles may simply be phenomena that are operating in negative space, so not
explainable within physical laws.
Charles Shang, a medical acupuncturist, reflects Tillers model of the two conjugate
structures when he presents the case for the existence of meridians. Shang says there is a
surface magnetic field flowing around the body, and acupuncture points are singular
points of the surface magnetic field where the surface magnetic flux trajectories converge
and enter the inside of the body.
129
At these points, subtle energy wave flow yields a
physical magnetic vector potential and generates an electrical field. The acupuncture
points become points of great influence with a high level of electrical conductivity.
These points are responsive to even the smallest stimulation.
Tiller provides an explanation as to how the mirror relationship of the two
conjugate spaces, physical and subtle, would both be affected in the case of physical
stimulation of acupuncture points. Electrical ion flow is restored by the stimulation,
generating an increase in magnetic energy and unclogging the etheric level meridian
channel for the flow of qi. Point stimulation of the skin would also generate a physical
impulse in the autonomic nervous system (skin and the autonomic nervous system are
embryologically connected, as they are both ectodermic tissue), initiating the systems
capacity to return to balance.
130
According to Shang, meridians are the intercellular signal transduction system.
131
This communication system formed in the embryo, he says, preceding and determining the
development of the nervous system. That a magnetic, negative space signal system,
operating at speeds faster than the speed of light, as described by Tiller, and by Shang in
55
describing meridians, is involved in intercellular communication fits with the Energy
Medicine model suggested earlier of a single, seamless whole in perpetual flux, of which
the manifest world is merely one aspect.
132
In this model, subtle energy is like an
interpenetrating sheath, the driving force for our biochemistry and physiology, with every
physical atom being intimately connected to the higher frequency level of subtle energy.
Perhaps the interaction of the two mirrored domains of magnetic etheric energy and
electrical physical energy, as manifested in the mirrored flow of etheric meridians and the
physical autonomic nervous system, represent the communication system of the dynamic
information network of our human system, and around which the other physical systems
organize. Would this model explain the speed of response of the VAS, which Navach
noted to be faster than electromagnetic energy?
We are extremely sensitive receptors, with amazingly coordinated systems of
response. The nature of magnetic energy as described by Tiller, and the model of
interpenetrating layers of sublattices throughout all of negative and positive space that
allows information waves to be so interconnected, and to travel and transform into energy
patterns at any energy level, provide a plausible model to understand how the body can
respond to information that is not touching it. In negative space, there are no time-space
limitations, so those laws do not apply. If mind is nonlocal, it has no space or time
restriction. Practitioners using the VAS as a diagnostic tool must remember that a question
in their mind can transmit an energy pattern into the etheric domain of the patient who is
within such close electrical contact. The energy field of the practitioner becomes
interconnected with and a factor in the communication system being assessed.
56
Magnetic energy of the etheric body may be what Schroedinger thought living
systems were sucking from their environment in order to counteract the physical pull of
entropy. The mutually exclusive forces of attraction (love) and repulsion (fear) to which
our cells respond may be the basic organizing principle behind the Intelligence that
coordinates all neurobiochemical and cellular change in the body. Magnetic energy, as an
etheric structure reflecting higher-level consciousness, could be the communication
medium that governs this Intelligence and its capacity to coordinate and energize life.
Our human system seems to be a transducer of a most sophisticated nature that is
capable of transforming subtle energies into organized physiological responses that
represent the urge for homeostasis. This process represents the capacity of our systems to
communicate and respond to stimuli with a high level of consciousness and intelligence.
The VAS is one remarkable tool provided for us to open this door of communication.
The next chapter describes the clinical research of this dissertation, completed for
the purpose of demonstrating the discriminating capacity of the VAS as a clinical
assessment tool. As a tangible signal representing physical, energetic and/or consciousness
changes, the VAS provides a response with great immediacy. More research is needed to
demonstrate its clinical applicability. In the following chapter is this authors contribution.
57
Chapter Four
A CLINICAL DEMONSTRATION OF THE VASCULAR
AUTONOMIC SIGNAL (VAS)
Related Research
Research that is specific to the VAS is not prevalent, nor well published, perhaps
due to its being a relatively new field with limited resources and language barriers.
Having been discovered and developed in France, much of the research and development
has come out of the Institute started by the founder Paul Nogier, the Groupe Lyonais
Etudes Medicales (G.L.E.M.) in Lyon where Nogiers students and colleagues continue
his work. In Germany, Frank Bahr, who was one of Nogiers first students, has
developed an association of medical doctors who study and practice protocols developed
by Bahr, and similarly in Holland, Tony vanGelder and others have developed and teach
auricular medicine protocols. The international community comes together rarely, the
journals are under funded, and any research that occurs is a result of the initiative of these
doctors who primarily are practicing physicians.
Three important opportunities came my way that brought me into contact with
people in the field of auricular medicine, the first being the international gathering in Las
Vegas in August 1999 called the International Consensus Conference on Acupuncture,
Auriculotherapy and Auricular Medicine. While the majority of presentations and
practitioners represented auricular acupuncture, some of the main players in auricular
medicine from around the world presented their work and research at this conference. It
was here that I gained an understanding of the field, and that I met the doctors who
58
became my mentors over the next two years Michel Marignan, Bill Tiller, Beate
Strittmatter, Tony vanGelder, John Ackerman, Nolan Cordon, Terry Oleson, and Steve
Meeker - who helped me put in my first needle.
In the fall of 2000 I traveled to Rotterdam for a first hand experience of
vanGelders practice. He generously allowed me to observe as he worked with his
patients, teaching me his protocol along the way. This experience was a thrill, and
greatly moved me along in my understanding of auricular medicine.
The third opportunity came with a phone call from Ackerman in June 2001
inviting me to attend a meeting in Lyon at GLEM that was specifically to review VAS
research! What a timely opportunity! Previous to this I was feeling frustration due to the
lack of published research and the lack of accessibility to the little that was done. This
meeting gave me personal interaction with key researchers of the VAS, helping me to
cross language and cultural barriers and to gain a sense of the direction and interest of
those in the field. Here I met Roland vanWijk, Marc Lebel, Paul Nogiers son Raphael,
Anthony deSousa and Yves Rouxeville, and reconnected with John Ackerman and
Michel Marignan. My notes from this meeting, from the Las Vegas conference and from
following conversations have provided an important foundation for this dissertation.
The research interests regarding the VAS are predominantly related to proving its
existence, and concurrently to developing technology to measure the VAS. This focus is
seen as necessary for auricular medicine to become a more widely accepted medicine in
the mainstream of medicine. At the GLEM meeting, deSousa presented research on the
physiology of the VAS, applying measurements of the pulse wave to determine the actual
definition of a VAS response in efforts to improve accuracy in how the VAS is palpated.
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Marignan presented his experiments with a system that includes a pressure-sensitive
electrical probe that can record the standing wave at the radial artery and a computer
program (Stuttgart Neural Network Simulator - SNNS) that learns the natural wave
pattern of the pulse and then detects any change in that pattern. As it takes two to three
days to complete one trial, this research had only been completed on three people. What
it produced, however, was an accurate graph of the difference between the predicted, or
normal curve of the standing wave, and the standing wave during the time that a VAS
was palpated. Like the physician, Marignan said, the SNNS must begin a session by
learning the normal pattern of the pulse of the patient prior to testing with the VAS.
Professor Magnin presented his research in cellular biology, which was included
in Chapter Two. His approach greatly contributes to an understanding of what is
occurring on the physiological level to produce a VAS response. As a response of the
body to tissue pathology, Magnin sees the VAS as a direct indicator for the identification
of the location of cellular lesion and what would rectify the imbalance.
VanWijk of Holland described his research that is asking the question, What is
the true vehicle of information transfer that results in the VAS reading? In his
experiments, when the doctor knew whether he was holding a placebo or an ampoule that
should have tested positive with the patient, he had 93% accuracy in getting the expected
response. When he did not know the contents, there was no consensus. VanWijk
suggests that the transmission of information is other than through the filters. In another
experiment, one physician got consistent results, but a second physician got different yet
internally consistent results. VanWijk suggests that the choice of remedies, for example,
may be the result of the interconnection of the patient and the physician. He believes that
60
regardless of the particular remedy chosen, beneficial results will occur due to the intent
of both parties to stimulate healing. He sees the VAS as an indicator of the
interconnection that is specific to this pair of patient physician. Further research was
suggested that would separate interconnectedness from a lack of interconnectedness to
provide an objective evaluation of the VAS. In practice, however, the connection with
the practitioner is always present, and is a condition to be considered. It was observed
that this research problem is similar to the fact that colour frequency wavelengths can be
measured, but colour itself cannot be perceived without the eye. The perception and
intent of both human bodies involved in the interaction of the VAS seems to be an
integral component of the results.
John Ackerman raised the work of Fritz-Albert Popp, a German biophysicist who
has researched the biophoton emission of living systems.
133
This research indicates that
every living system both emits a unique electromagnetic signature, and has a radar
capacity for picking up signals from other systems. The example was given of the moth,
which can detect and find a mate that is up to a mile away.
Ackerman suggested that when doctors palpate the radial artery of a patient, they
are opening a channel, or circuit, that connects them into the feedback loop of the body as
it is picking up and responding to stimulations of any new electromagnetic information.
At the end of the meeting, Raphael Nogier, son of Paul Nogier, commented that
he felt the proceedings had well represented current research on the VAS, and that they
should be published as the best available research. This option is being considered by
G.L.E.M.
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Strittmatter reports on other research on the VAS carried out by Professor Moser
of the University Graz, Austria. An attempt was made to measure the VAS using a
sensory jacket that had been developed in Austrian-Russian space research, and used to
examine the Chinese pulse. Various types of stimulation were used in Mosers
experiment, with heart rate, speed and amplitude of the pulse wave being measured as the
body responded. Computerized graphs of the results demonstrated significant
physiological changes in response to a stimulation, particularly in response to hand
clapping, light and the German 3-volt hammer. The test also showed that patients with a
medium pulse strength (compared to just noticeable and very noticeable) showed the
most significant physiological response to stimulation. The conclusion of this research is
that measurement of the VAS by technical equipment is far less sensitive than the
subjective detection of a trained therapist.
134
This sensitivity is said to be due to the
refined two-point discrimination of our skin and in particular of our thumb.
Another major project involved in VAS research is the Joseph Navach Project of
the Human Energy Systems Laboratory at the University of Arizona. John Ackerman is
the Project Director.
135
Co-organizers of the Lyon meeting with GLEM, this project is
attempting to connect people internationally who are involved or interested in VAS
research, and intends to assist in a coordinated effort to validate the VAS and to develop
its automation. Picking up on the research done by Navach prior to his death, the project
continues to address unanswered questions raised by Navach and others. Such questions
include: verification of the role and dynamics of physiology, biochemistry, biophysics
and subtle communication of this phenomenon; comparison of the discriminating
62
capacity of the VAS with other subtle energy diagnostic tools; and proving the clinical
effectiveness of the VAS.
In the context of all of the research above, and based in discussions with some of
these physicians, I developed the following protocol for my clinical research with an aim
to demonstrate the reliability and efficacy of the VAS as a diagnostic tool. Behind every
protocol of auricular medicine is the VAS, along with an inherent trust in its refined
discriminating capacity on the part of the clinician. Those who practice auricular
medicine tell me they rely on the VAS 100%, and trust it fully because it has proven itself
in their clinical experience over many years of practice.
This investigator personally became fascinated with the discriminating capacity of
the VAS as a physiological indicator that potentially can tell a practitioner much about
the health of the whole human system emotionally, mentally and physiologically. It
seemed to this investigator that one reason for the low level of attention garnered by
auricular medicine could be the lack of current understanding of what is happening when
one is using the VAS, and the lack of published proof that the VAS can by relied upon
clinically. It is in this context that the following clinical trial was performed.
Methodology
The purpose of this clinical research is to demonstrate the reliability and
validity of the VAS as a guide for clinical assessment, in this case for locating auricular
acupuncture points for the effective treatment of chronic pain.
136
The focus is on
accurately locating effective points, not longterm healing of the pain. Whereas an
immediate change in pain will be used as a research indicator, longterm relief of pain is
not an expected outcome from the one acupuncture treatment given. The pain rating of
63
one week post treatment was also recorded, however, as another indicator of the
effectiveness of this method for pain relief.
Thirty-five participants responded to the invitation to participate in this research,
which offered one free acupuncture treatment for chronic pain. Chronic pain for this
study was defined as pain having been experienced over at least a three month period. In
some cases, the pain was intermittent and changed in degree of severity. In one case, a
person was not included in the study because there was no pain to record on the visual
analogue scale at the time of her appointment.
The majority of participants responded to an ad in the local paper, while others
heard about the research through a doctor or from friends. Respondents came at an
appointed time to my research clinic, which was held over a 6-day period in a medical
doctors office.
The research design was a pre-test post-test study to determine the effect of VAS-
directed interventions for chronic pain patients. Only one treatment was offered, as the
focus was on the diagnostic effectiveness of the VAS rather than on healing. The two
main indicators in this study of the effectiveness of the VAS as a diagnostic tool were:
1. The level of concurrence between point locations found on the ear by the
VAS as located and mapped in an initial session compared with a second
session half an hour later, and
2. The change in pre- and post-test pain ratings as marked by the participant
on the visual analogue scales.
The informed consent form and the data record sheet used by the investigator are
in appendix A. After signing a consent form, participants filled out a pain history
64
assessment form and the visual analogue scale for pain rating from 0 (no pain) to 10
(extreme pain) to determine pre-test levels of pain for one or two identified body areas
where they were currently experiencing pain.
Participants then moved to an adjoining room where they were seen by the
principle investigator, a certified auricular acupuncturist also trained in auricular
medicine. Assessment included a review of their history, location and duration of pain
and range of movement if applicable.
Prior to using the VAS as a diagnostic tool, a reading of the strength of the pulse
was determined and recorded. The VAS was then used to measure the extension of the
electromagnetic field (EMF) as an overall reading of the state of imbalance of the
participant. In response to appropriate filters, the participant was tested for the presence
of blockages commonly accepted in auricular medicine as possible interferences for clear
energetic information: Scar, Oscillations, and First Rib. For Scar and First Rib, any
blockages found were treated with a temporary needle, using the VAS to direct the needle
placement. Oscillation was cleared with a homeopathic ampoule placed on the body to
remove the information of this interference, a method used by vanGelder. Blockages
were noted as successfully cleared when the VAS measurement of the extension of the
EMF signified a positive change.
With the morphine filter on the participants arm (which intensifies reactions as it
connects to the sympathetic nervous system), the VAS was used to determine tissue type
of the pain area. This determination was done by putting each of the three tissue types
endoderm, ectoderm, or mesoderm - on the neck (parasympathetic, removing
information). If it brought the field in when on the neck, it was determined to be the
65
tissue type of the pathology. This filter was then put on the arm with the morphine filter,
putting the field back out. Which phase 1, 2 and/or 3 was determined next. The phase
indicates the depth of the particular pathology being addressed, phase 1 being most acute,
phase 3 indicating excess energy and phase 2 indicating deficiency, the latter generally
regarded as the most chronic stage. Not all phases need treatment in all cases. If phase 2
was indicated as the place to begin, then phase 2, 3 and 1 were treated in that order. If
phase 3 was indicated as the first point phase, then only phase 3 and 1 were treated.
After the VAS indicates which tissue type and with which phase to begin, the
most dominant pain points were searched for with the VAS in each area of the ear. For
the purposes of this study, the ear was considered to consist of three main areas, the lobe,
the concha (the lower floor of the ear) and the upper region above the concha. The
indicated tissue type and phase directed the investigation to one of these thirds as the
place to begin, based in accepted locations of auricular therapy.
The most dominantly active pain point was considered to be the one that initiated
the strongest VAS when a point finder, the black and white hammer, was in the stream of
energy emanating from that point. Scanning the ear with the hammer at a distance of
approximately 10 - 15 cm. was used to detect this strongest energy point. Points were
then tested for response to both the black and white side of the hammer for priority
(vanGelder). These points were not treated, just mapped on the first ear map.
Participants then moved to the waiting room for a half hour wait while the
investigator saw the next participant. Having the participant return after a lapse of time
for a second assessment of the location of dominantly active ear points was designed to
66
demonstrate the stability reliability of the VAS in its capacity to draw the practitioner
to the same points as found on the first visit.
As the only investigator, I placed the first map and intake information in an
envelope with the client number on it when this first session was completed. This
information was not referred to when the participant returned for the second time. Data
recorded at that time was added to that participants envelope for later analysis.
The second session began with placing morphine on the arm, then using the VAS
in the same method as the first session to indicate key pain points in phases 1, 2 and/or 3.
These points were marked on the ear with a pen, and mapped on a second ear map
without referencing the first map.
Both times, points found were checked with the tip of the hammer for tenderness,
another test of activity. An imbalance in the body is reflected by tenderness of the
acupuncture point. It was also intended to check the located points for correlation with
the NETII, an electrical point finder. For the first few participants, correlation was
recorded. The investigator was noticing that for phase 2 points, the NETII often did not
respond, while for phases 3 and 1 it did. The NETII malfunctioned, however, during the
testing; not turning on and off consistently, so this part of the design was abandoned.
Once mapped on ear map 2, the VAS-located points marked on the ear were
treated with temporary acupuncture needles. The same points were treated on the other
ear, each time the exact needle placement being guided by the VAS. Then Master Points,
which were active as indicated by the VAS, were treated to complete the pain treatment
protocol (e.g. Master Sensorial, Thalamus, Point Zero, Shen Men), also with temporary
needles. The same Master Points were tested for activity with the VAS with all patients,
67
and treated only if active. A scan of the ear was then done with the hammer and any
remaining active points treated. Finally, the EMF measurement was taken and recorded.
Range of movement was assessed when the participant got up from the table if
applicable. They were asked to return to the waiting room, wait 10 minutes, and then fill
out a second visual analogue scale for a post-test measure of pain rating for the one or
two body areas they had identified. They could then either wait for me to take out the
needles, or go to a washroom to remove their own needles prior to leaving. At this point,
the needles would have been in about 20 to 30 minutes.
Identification and Interpretation of Findings
The thirty-five respondents to this research trial represented a cross-section of
people similar to those who might enter any practitioners office, including 10 men and
25 women, ranging in age from approximately 34 to 80 years. Income and education
levels, although not requested information, also seemed to cover a wide range.
The conditions at onset of pain varied as well, with more than 25% indicating
illness as the trigger, and more than 35% relating the onset to an accident or surgery.
Four participants felt their pain began with an emotional trauma, and another 30% said
they did not know of any particular conditions that may have initiated the problem. The
length of time participants had been experiencing the pain ranged from a few months to
40 years, with an average of eleven years, and a mean of six years.
Each person was asked to identify one or two body areas experiencing pain, and
Table 1 shows the range of areas identified by participants.
68
Table 1: Areas of the Body Identified
* In 23 of 35 cases, individual had two areas of the body treated.
Area of Body Identified # Times Identified
Lower Back 10
Shoulder 9
Neck/ Back of Head 7
Knees 6
Hip 5
Leg 3
Fingers/Hands/Thumb 3
Side 2
Abdomen 2
Buttock 2
Upper Body 3
Head/Sinus 2
Bladder/Anus 2
Whole Spine 1
Ankle 1
Total 58*
69
Another characteristic of the respondents was the strength of their pulse, seen by
some to be an indicator of the strength of their system to respond to treatment. Twenty-
one of the thirty-five participants were deemed by the investigator to have a medium-
strength pulse (60%). A weak pulse, which was noted for ten of the participants, can be
seen as an indicator of system deficiency. Four people had a strong pulse, perhaps
indicating hypertension, or excess. Strittmatter reports that in research conducted at the
University of Graz, Austria, those with a medium pulse had the best VAS in response to
various interventions.
137
A medium pulse, then, seems to indicate a patient with whom it
will be easier to communicate through the VAS - in this case, 60% of participants.
The presence of blockages to assessment also demonstrated a variation amongst
participants. Prior to searching for dominant pain points, each person was tested for the
presence of scar, oscillations and first rib blockage. Scar presented with twelve
participants, first rib with five people, both scar and first rib with one, oscillations with
one person, and no evidence of any of these blockages for sixteen participants. In all
cases of blockages, they were cleared prior to assessment, at least temporarily.
Stability reliability, one of the important measures of the effectiveness of the
VAS as a diagnostic tool used in this study, is defined as reliability across time: a
measure that yields consistent results over different time points, assuming what one is
measuring does not itself change.
138
The Stability Reliability of the VAS was tested by
the level of concurrence between VAS-located points as mapped in an initial session
compared with the ear map of a second session completed half an hour later without
referencing the first map. There was no treatment of the points in the first session and the
participant simply waited in another room. While changes would occur in the participant,
70
in the activity of acupuncture points as well as in the investigator between sessions, these
changes were assumed to be minimal.
A total of 93 points were located by the VAS as dominant pain points on the 35
patients (an average of 2.7 points per person). Of these points, 78 were identical on the
second map. In other words, 84% of the time, the dominant active points found by the
VAS were the same on the second map as on the first, demonstrating a high level of
stability reliability within one practitioner.
The 16% lack of complete concurrence between points found in the two sessions
is assumed to be less a reflection of the accuracy of the VAS, but more a reflection of
loss of activity due to the half-life of active points, changes in the participant and the
investigator over time, as well as the lack of full proficiency of the investigator. These
variables, changes over time and inaccuracies of the practitioner, would presumably be in
effect in every clinical situation to some degree. This reality may be what leads some to
conclude that the VAS is too subjective and not a reliable diagnostic tool. Gaining
confidence and proficiency in the use of the VAS takes time, support and practice. As a
practitioner of the VAS for only two years, however, this investigator was able to acquire
a stability reliability measure within one practitioner of 84%, indicating favourably the
strength of this tool.
In 65% of the cases, all points marked matched completely between the two maps
of the participant. For 26% of cases, one of the points for a person did not match, and 8%
of the time two points were incorrectly matched. Table 2 illustrates this information in
another format, relating the data to the number of points found in each case.
71
Table 2: Degree to Which Points on Ear Maps Match
Points Matched
% Of Times Matched
1 of 1 points matched 8 % (3)
1 of 2 points matched 3 % (1)
2 of 2 points matched 14 % (5)
1 of 3 points matched 8 % (3)
2 of 3 points matched 23 % (8)
3 of 3 points matched 43 % (15)
Total
99 % (35)
72
In the three cases when there was only one point used, it always matched in the
second test. Six times the VAS indicated only two dominant points, and only one of
those six did not match in the second test. The remaining twenty-six cases involved three
points each. A full match of all three points occurred in fifteen of those cases.
The second important measure of this clinical trial was the Predictive Validity of
the VAS as a clinical assessment tool that can locate acupuncture points that will, if
treated, relieve chronic pain. Predictive validity is defined as the ability to predict the
occurrence of a future event or behaviour that has a logical connection to an intervention.
While a measure of reliability, as above, indicates dependability or consistency,
validity means truthful, indicating a true connection between a cause and effect.
139
Predictive validity indicates a true and predictable connection, as in the ability of the use
of the VAS to locate important points for the treatment of pain. Both reliability and
validity are important for building confidence in the use of a tool or a construct.
In this study, predictive validity was demonstrated through the occurrence of pain
relief as a result of treating points found by the VAS. The change in pre- and post-test
pain ratings as marked by the participant on the visual analogue scales provided the most
important data. As illustrated in Figure 1, of the 58 body areas identified by participants,
on a scale of 0 (no discomfort) to 10 (extreme discomfort), the average pre-test pain
rating was 5.5. Ten minutes after treatment, the average pain rating had decreased to 2.8.
One week later, participants were asked for a pain rating for the same body areas
identified in the session, and these responses averaged to 3.3 on the visual analogue scale,
a full two points below the initial pain levels.
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Overall, of the 58 body areas identified, 85% had a decrease in pain immediately
after the treatment. Three people had an increase in pain from the beginning to end of the
session, and no person had no pain change at all.
One person experienced an increase in pain in both body areas identified, while
two others experienced a pain increase in one area of the body. For two of the three cases
of increased pain, it was reportedly due to an aggravation related to lying on the table, or
sitting in the waiting room.
The average pain reduction of all participants was 2.7 points on the visual
analogue scale. Nineteen participants had their pain reduce to 1 or less on the pain scale
after treatment for at least one of the body areas they identified. Seventeen of those
people still had a pain rating of 1 or less in one or both body areas one week later.
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
Pre-Test Post-Test Week Later
Figure 1:
Change in Average Pain Ratings
74
One week later, 68% of the identified body areas were still in less pain than when
the participant came for this research trial. For only eight of the 35 participants was there
no change in pain in any area from pre-test to one week after the treatment - Table 3.A
and 3.B below. Figure 2 provides another look at the data, illustrating the shift along the
pain scale of 0 10.
Most participants experienced the greatest effect in pain relief immediately
following the treatment. While the percentage of those experiencing moderate or high
pain levels was climbing back up a week after treatment, extreme pain continued to drop.
As we can see, almost 50% of the participants were in the low category on the pain scale
one week later.
Predictive validity of the VAS as a diagnostic tool for locating important points
for the treatment of pain is implied by these results. This experiment is a first step in
determining that using the VAS to assess the best location for needle placement for the
treatment of chronic pain can predict a favourable outcome of pain relief. To verify
predictive validity, this experiment should be repeated with a control group with whom
there is no treatment.
75
Table 3.A: Degree of Change in Pain Rating
Pain Rating
Changed by:
Pretest to Posttest
# Body Areas
Pretest to One Week
Later -- # Body Areas
Increase in Pain:
+ 3 1 1
+ 1 2 0
+. 5 1 0
No Change: 5 17
Decrease in Pain:
-.5 0 2
-1 7 5
-1.5 2 1
-2 7 7
-2.5 1 0
-3 12 8
-4 12 8
-5 3 4
-6 2 1
-7 1 1
-8 2 1
Total Number: 58 56**
** N = 58 as one person who had two areas treated could not provide a reading.
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Table 3.B: Summary of Shifts in Pain Rating
Pain Rating Pretest to Posttest Pretest to Week Later
Pain Level Increased 7 % (4) 2 % (1)
No Change 8 % (5) 30 % (17)
Decrease in Pain 85 % (49) 68 % (38)
Total 100 % (n = 58) 100 % (n = 56)
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
Percentage of
Participants
Low (0-3) Moderate (4-6) High (7-8) Extreme (9-10)
Pain Scale
Figure 2:
Shift in Experience of
Pain Ratings
Pre-Test
Post-Test
Week Later
77
Another measure of predictive validity was a change in range of motion from pre-
test to post-test. This variable is not applicable to all cases, as the area of pain may or
may not limit movement. For eight of the participants of this study, range of motion was
not applicable. One reading was taken per person, except in the case of two people who
had two readings each, resulting in N = 37. Table 4 and Figure 3 show the results. Most
experienced a one level improvement. Two people improved by two levels. Three
people regained full range of motion.
Table 4: Change in Range of Motion
Type of Change # People With Change
No Change 15
Mild to Full Range 2
Medium to Full 1
Medium to Mild 7
Severe to Full 0
Severe to Mild 1
Severe to Med 3
N/A 8
Total 37
78
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
% of R.O.M.
Readings
Full Range Mild
Limitation
Medium Severe
Figure 3:
Change in Range of Motion
Pre-Test
Post-Test
The third and last measure of health status improvement for the participants was
the change in the VAS reading of their electromagnetic field (EMF) at the ear. A wide
field is seen by some practitioners to be an indicator of imbalance in the body system,
with a field of 6 cm or less considered to be generally balanced. The goal in any
auricular medicine session is to bring the body system into greater homeostasis, or
balance. One measure of this improvement is the width of the field. When a three-phase
filter hits the edge of this electromagnetic energy emanating from the acupuncture points
of the ear, the VAS responds, indicating an exchange of new information is occurring
with the bodys system.
Table 5 below summarizes the changes in the EMF as measured at the beginning
of the first session, and again at the end of the treatment in the second session. The table
indicates a marked improvement in the EMF of those treated, with only one person
having an EMF of more than 6 cm. (in the category of 6-10). The full raw data for this
study is found in Appendix B.
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Table 5: Change in Electromagnetic Field Readings
Change in
EMF (cm.)
Pretest % of
Participants
Posttest % of
Participants
0 to 5 0 77 % (27)
6 to 10 3 % (1) 20 % (7)
11 to 15 17 % (6) 3 % (1)
16 to 20 20 % (7) 0
21 to 25 29 % (10) 0
26 to 30 29 % (10) 0
Above 31 3 % (1) 0
Total 101 %
140
(35) 100 % (35)
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Finally, some experiential observations based in the clinical experience of this
study provide data of a more qualitative nature about the application of the VAS as a
diagnostic tool:
Six people remarked that they could feel the effects of my hammer being in the
stream of electromagnetic energy of their ear prior to touching the ear, when I was
as much as 10 cm. from the surface of the ear. These remarks were unsolicited,
and came as a surprise to the participant, and to me. They either thought I was
touching them, or noted feeling pressure, warmth or tickling sensations on their
ear. If felt to them, as to me, like we were connected through an electrical
current. One person could clearly tell me the area of her body in which she was
feeling a warmth or tingling as I moved the hammer around in the area beyond
her ear (That is my sinus. Thats my left arm.). These sensations are not
unusual when a needle is placed in an acupuncture point, but it is more unusual
for someone to notice the change prior to touching the point. This experience
confirmed for me that the VAS had directed me to an important stream of energy
for that person, and illustrated the subtleness of the direction provided by the VAS
by its ability to lead me into a strong energetic connection with the participant.
Over time, when I had worked with a number of people in one day, I began to feel
a sensation like an electrical current in my thumb that was resting on their pulse.
I make no conclusions about this sensation, but noted its consistency.
When asked by someone where I felt the EMF, I noticed that it was not just with
my thumb on the pulse, but also an intuitive sense of when my right hand was
meeting the edge of the field. When I paid attention to this experience, I realized
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that when I made the connection with the EMF, the feeling that resulted affected
my whole body system, both physical and subtle.
Summary of Results
The aim of this research was to determine and demonstrate the efficacy of the
VAS as a diagnostic tool. One reason for the low level of attention garnered by auricular
medicine could be a lack of faith in the clinical use of this tool, which an increased
number of research trials can hopefully overcome.
Stability reliability, indicating one can rely on the tool to lead to the same results
over time and/or with different practitioners, and predictive validity which indicates a
predictable outcome, as in the ability of the VAS to locate important points for the
treatment of pain, were the two main measures of this study. Both reliability and validity
are important for building confidence in the use of a tool or a construct.
A high level of stability reliability was demonstrated by this research trial, with
the dominant active points found by the VAS being consistent 84% of the time between
two assessments done half an hour apart.
Predictive validity was demonstrated through the immediate occurrence of pain
relief as a result of treating points found by the VAS. The change in pre- and post-test
pain ratings as marked by the participant on the visual analogue scales provided the most
important data. Of the 58 body areas identified by the 35 participants, on a scale of 0 (no
discomfort) to 10 (extreme discomfort), the average pre-test pain rating was 5.5. Ten
minutes after treatment, the average pain rating had decreased to 2.8. One week later,
responses averaged 3.3 on the scale, a full two points below the initial pain levels.
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Overall, of the 58 body areas identified, 85% had a decrease in pain immediately
after the treatment. Three people had an increase in pain from the beginning to end of the
session, and no person had no pain change at all. One week later, 68% of the identified
body areas were still in less pain than when the participant came for this research trial.
For only 8 of the 35 participants was there no improvement in pain in any area from pre-
test to one week after the treatment. Therefore, one can conclude that by using the VAS
to assess the best location for needle placement for the treatment of chronic pain, one can
predict a favourable outcome of pain relief.
Recommendations for Further Study
Limitations of this study include being unable to use the NET II for another test of
reliability. One comment from some of the study participants was that this demonstrated
a lack of reliability of the technology! To repeat a similar study with NET II
comparisons, however, would be very worthwhile, with a backup NET II recommended.
Another primary limitation was being a single practitioner in the study. Testing
stability reliability over time was achievable under these circumstances, but it would also
be most interesting to test the stability reliability between two practitioners following the
same protocol. Similarly, to repeat this study with a control group would further test
predictive validity.
In designing the protocol for this study, a pain protocol was created and tested
that had very good results. To have this protocol tested by other practitioners would be
an exciting follow-up.
While this study focused on the VAS itself as a diagnostic tool, there is also a
need for more research on the healing effects of various auricular medicine protocols.
83
Practitioners report obtaining excellent results with patients who have often come with
serious and chronic conditions. To be able to provide more evidence is important for the
advancement of the field.
Research measuring changes in the electrical conductance, as well as other
measures of energetic change, occurring for both patient and clinician during an auricular
medicine session would be fascinating.
Another limitation of the study was my own relative level of experience. To
develop my skills further and then perform similar research is something I hope will
occur in the future.
I also encourage attention be given the research recommended by the Joseph
Navach Project of the Human Energy Systems Laboratory at the University of Arizona.
It would further the field of auricular medicine to pursue these suggested research
projects, such as: the predictive validity of VAS-directed choices of treatment; the
reliability of using intent instead of a physical filter to stimulate a VAS response; a
comparison of the results of a VAS and filter assessment with the measured response of
the autonomic system to stimuli placed near but not touching a body; an integration of
biophoton research with VAS research; and to prove the clinical effectiveness of VAS-
directed applications in specialties such as preventative medicine, public health,
environmental medicine and plant culture.
141
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Chapter Five
CONCLUSION
In this final chapter, we return to the central question of this dissertation: What are
the mechanisms that allow the VAS to be such a refined tool for discrimination? The
answer to this question includes, and moves us beyond, physical level descriptions of the
information transfer involved. Indeed, pursuing an understanding of the VAS leads us into
considering the dynamic communication network of our whole human system.
The VAS seems to be a summarized response of the whole human system to any
change of information, whether the stimulus has originated externally or internally to the
system, and whether touching the body or not. A model for understanding this
phenomenon that is inclusive enough to contain all aspects of the change process has yet to
be defined. That the VAS is an autonomic response of the physical body to a stimulus is
actually only a small part of the answer. Larger questions remain about the complex and
subtle information transfer processes that result in this neurobiochemical response. The
VAS allows us to listen to the communication occurring within the body, but our
understanding of to what we are really listening is still limited. The willingness to explore
these questions could move us toward a more inclusive model of understanding.
In summarizing the research of this dissertation, this author has chosen to use
Tillers framework as presented in Science and Human Transformation. Tiller suggests
that life is an ongoing information transfer between frequencies of Consciousness, Energy
and Matter. To include all factors of this dynamic equation of nature is to form an
Integral Energy Medicine model, taking into account the effects of all aspects of our nature:
85
physiology, electromagnetic energy, subtle energy and consciousness. Not to include all
factors is to ignore data and limit understanding.
Since they are not yet physically measurable, subtle energy and consciousness are
not validated within the accepted scientific-medical model. Yet the effects of energy, and
of focused consciousness, on the human system have been well documented
measurements of the effects of electromagnetic pollution, photography of variations in light
around a body, hypnosis effects on physiology, distant healing and the ability of
biofeedback to control autonomic responses. To study the phenomenon of the VAS fully
necessitates exploring the domains of information transfer occurring between all levels:
subtle, electromagnetic, biochemical and cellular. By including consciousness, energy and
matter in the conceptualizing of a model of the communication that occurs through the
VAS there is more opportunity to develop a model inclusive enough to satisfy and reflect
the whole wonder of the VAS and the human system it represents.
Figure 4, An Energy Medicine model for understanding the VAS, offers an
overview of the relationship of consciousness to energy to matter in the human system that
will be summarized in this chapter. The VAS provides a physically observable signal that
indicates the bodys summarized response to changes occurring in consciousness, energy
and/or matter. Figure 5, An Energy Medicine Model of information transference in the
human system provides a more detailed summary of the findings of the research of this
dissertation, also discussed in this chapter. It shows the possible interconnections
responsible for the transformation of energy into matter, and the role the VAS can play in
regaining and improving the state of homeostasis.
86
Figure 4: An Energy Medicine Model for
Understanding the VAS
Personal Consciousness
Transpersonal
Consciousness
Energy
Matter
VAS
Consciousness: Intention, Information,
Mind.
Energy: Electromagnetic and Subtle
Forces.
Matter: Structure, Function and
Chemistry.
VAS: One physiologic indicator of the
autonomic response of the body
to change.
87
Figure 5: An Energy Medicine Model of Information
Transference In the Human System
Energy Pattern
Changes
GREATER
COHERENCE
AND HEALTH
NEW LEVEL OF
HOMEOSTASIS
BRAIN AND CELLULAR
COMPARISON OF NEW
INFORMATION WITH
CURRENT MAPS AND
PROGRAMS.
AUTONOMIC
NERVOUS SYSTEM
ALERT
Electrical
Oxygen BioPhotons Conductance Of
Acupoints
Innervations of organs, glands, vessels
VAS
CLINICAL USE OF
VAS FOR
INTERVENTION
SYSTEM
STRESS AND
BREAKDOWN
NEW LEVEL OF
HOMEOSTASIS
CARDIOVASCULAR
HARMONIZATION
ADAPTATION
RECEIVORS
AND
TRANSMITTERS
Information, Intent
and Emotion
88
Matter Physiologic Sensitivity and Response
Homeostasis is a state of balance of the internal processes of the body, maintained
by various feedback and control mechanisms. The living system seems to know and
remember homeostasis, and wills itself to return to that state of balance for its survival.
Figure 4 illustrates the actions involved in maintenance of homeostasis. If not blocked, the
system will recognize and return to the most beneficial condition known. If a block (an
accumulation of stress) is preventing this natural rebalancing, the VAS, as an indicator of
the systems response to change, can assist by indicating to a practitioner which
interventions would enable regaining a former level of balance. Auricular medicine
protocols are designed to lead the assessment into ever-deeper layers of remembered
homeostasis and into ever-greater levels of coherence of the system, and health.
Homeostasis seems to be governed by a harmonized effort of the autonomic
nervous system along with the other systems of the body. Even though these body systems
differentiate in the embryo, they all respond to each other in a synchronized and perhaps
instantaneous manner. The speed and coordination of physiologic response, and which, if
any, mechanism is the leading process, are factors not yet understood. It is clear, however,
that the VAS is a result of this sensitivity of the human system.
Whether the source of stimuli is external or internal, and whether touching the body
or not, the introduction of a change or a stress results in structural, physiologic, and
chemical changes which either initiates or results from the autonomic nervous system
going on alert. This response is the bodys way of attempting to return the organism to
homeostasis. One reflection of the storm that results from this alert is the VAS.
89
The autonomic nervous system regulates cellular response, working to maintain
cells within the narrow band of functioning that is normal. One level of what occurs
within a system alert is that if a stressor overcomes the cellular ability to regain balance,
oxidization of the cell is reduced, leading to cellular chaos. This chaos information goes
to the limbic brain, resulting in an alarm of the whole sympathetic system.
The limbic system, which seems to be at the root of this autonomic response,
responds to a change, activating a response that reverberates through the whole system
the fight or flight syndrome. Whether the stress is physiologic or emotional, the
information is registered by the limbic system and affects coordinated changes
automatically, without our awareness, via the autonomic nervous system. This response is
intended to assist in regaining homeostasis, to optimize survival and self-preservation. The
VAS is one result of this survival response to the information change received by the
limbic brain. Bill Tiller points out that what makes the VAS such an accurate diagnostic
tool is that the limbic system alone is involved in the signal, without the aid of the
neocortex, which would add language and interpretation. The response read through the
VAS is clean in this way, and automatic.
Brain research has found that the maps held by the limbic system against which
new information is being measured, are what determine our perception and functioning.
These maps are constantly being updated and refined in response to new input. The body
does adapt, and what was a stress can become part of the new homeostatic balance. In this
way, our systems can be in a state of relative stress and unhealthiness, yet a state of
homeostasis at the same time. For instance, some of us are more, and some of us less
capable of living within the level of pollution of our environments.
90
Another view of the synchronized nature of our physiology is that the
cardiovascular system is a central harmonizing system that enables the body to maintain its
integrity and present the summarized response of the VAS. As with the functioning of the
autonomic nervous system, it is theorized that this system strives to maintain an optimal
pattern of functioning through a feedback loop involving biochemical signals. The
cardiovascular system is seen by some to be the system responsible for maintaining a
harmonized rhythm of all the physiologic systems of the body.
The biochemical messengers responsible for physiologic information transfer have
been called neuropeptides; protein links that act as chemical messenger molecules that are
received by receptor molecules on the surface of the walls of cells, thereby regulating both
physiologic functions and brain communication in the body. While cellular biology has
generally acknowledged this process as occurring only on the chemical-molecular level,
there is now recognition that, as with the limbic system, cell receptors respond to signals
from many sources.
Cellular response can be divided into two functional categories; organisms are
attracted toward elements that are perceived to support their life or repulsed from
threatening stimuli. The more relevant a stimulus is to the organisms survival, the more
polarized (either + or -) the resulting response. The nature of the VAS is that it indicates
the bodys response to a stimulus, providing a window with great immediacy into whether
something is beneficial or hostile to the system.
91
Energy Forces and Frequencies
Paul Nogier recognized the ear as much more than a static map, but as a dynamic
site which permits the study of energy forces, their orientation and circulation, reflecting
the responsiveness of the whole body. He was clear that the human body is an extremely
sensitive reactor to energy. VanGelder reports on his experience with the VAS as being an
experience of communicating with the patient in a very subtle way(involving) only the
flow of energy and information. Tiller calls the VAS one of the bodys biomechanical
transducers, a subtle energy detector, meaning that it provides a physically observable
signal of transformed subtle level energies.
The trigger for response that can be felt as the VAS is a change of information. The
information comes within an energy force, the nature of which Nogier said could be
luminous, magnetic or a response of the nervous system to any impact on the system. This
nervous system impact could result from an influence encountered during an examination;
such as heat, or cold or pain, or an emotional disturbance of either the patient or the
clinician. In respect for the highly sensitive nature of the human system, clinicians using
the VAS repeat testing to ensure the finding is not a transient response. Nogier cautioned
his students to guard their calm during a session. The close electrical contact with the
patient through the continuous taking of the pulse means the practitioner can modify the
system balance and hence the VAS.
Most of us have not fully developed the conscious capacity to detect and
discriminate the energetic forces at play. We still need a transducer capable of
transforming non-observable energy into physically observable energy. The human body is
92
a highly refined, powerful instrument through which energies of all frequencies are
received, transmitted and transduced into matter in a synchronized process.
The human system has antennae, receptors and transmitters that manage the
communication pathways, the nature of which is not fully understood. Navach is one
researcher who isolated what he called neurohormones, compounds that exist inside the
body. He believed that these neurohormones are the electromagnetic receptors that
resonate specifically to a stimulus. Assuming that all substances have an electromagnetic
resonance, or signature, resulting from their emission of biophotons (signals of light),
neurohormones would be the compounds that receive this signature like a radio receiver.
Navach proposed that the neurohormones then facilitate the relay of information to the
hypothalamus of the limbic system, and from the brain through the autonomic nervous
system to the smooth muscles of the peripheral arteries, manifesting as, among other
responses, the VAS.
These biochemical receptors and transmitters of electromagnetic energy, whether
they are neurohormones as Navach believed or neuropeptides as Pert named them, seem to
be fundamental factors in the synchronized process of information transduction and
transference. According to Bruce Lipton, it is now recognized in mainstream medical
research that cells are influenced by electromagnetic energy as well as by physiologic
change. In fact, pulsed electromagnetic energy has been shown to be able to regulate
virtually every cell function. These findings acknowledge that invisible energy forces can
control biological behavior.
Through original cellular biology research, Lipton has concluded that the
membrane of the cell operates as the brain of the cell not the nucleus as was previously
93
thought. Both brain and skin (membrane) are derived from ectodermic tissue of the
embryo, and both function by reading the signals of the environment, assessing the
information in relation to what was already programmed in the cells, and then selecting, or
creating, appropriate programs in response. In this view, our brain is indeed everywhere in
the body, existing in the membrane of every cell, and our capacity to receive and translate
incoming information is ubiquitous. Perhaps the limbic system includes this cellular
function and is much more than the brain and autonomic nervous system.
Lipton calls the receptor-effector protein pair he found to exist on the membrane of
the cell a unit of perception. As with the limbic brain, these molecules are regulated by
two sets of signals perception and actual physical stimulation, with perception able to
override physical stimulation, as is demonstrated by hypnotherapy.
Brain research verifies that our sense of self and our reality is dominated by
perception. According to Pert, emotional reaction to stimulation is the key to the
conversion of energy into cellular defense mechanisms. Cells will adapt, Lipton notes, to
new signals, even if the new signal is a perceived stress, a belief. Whether a body lives
in a stressful environment has more to do with perception than with physical reality.
Shealy reports that the immune system has been found to be more powerfully influenced by
attitude and belief than all other normal factors combined.
Our brain, perhaps along with every cell, is a pattern-forming system, which
neuroscience is now demonstrating to be engaged in interactive communication with
something more subtle than biochemistry, and that is the information carried in energetic
forces. The physical brain is information-wave-sensitive, according to Tiller.
94
Tiller proposes a model for understanding how energy can become matter. He
suggests that every physical pattern in our known time-space dimension, positive space,
has a correlate in negative space that is a frequency pattern. The space-time physical
domain is well known in allopathic medicine, and is what we normally identify with as
human beings. The inverse structure, as a frequency domain, is less understood because of
its unobservable particles traveling faster than the speed of light, rendering them
inaccessible to physical senses or present-day instrumentation. Tiller suggests that this
negative space is the domain of subtle energy.
Hypothesized to be a space containing waves and particles in a highly ordered
network of structures called sublattices, the nodal points (being where layers of lattices
connect to each other) diffract waves of energy. Minute differences in orientation produce
signals of varying strengths, creating diffraction patterns that carry complex information.
In Tillers model, all of physical nature is connected to the subtle energy of these
interpenetrating layers of sublattices.
Acupuncturist Charles Shang presents another view, which is that meridians are the
intercellular signal transduction system. This communication system formed in the
embryo, he says, preceding and determining the development of the nervous system.
Shangs description of meridians seems consistent with Tillers model of a magnetic,
negative space information system operating at speeds faster than the speed of light, and
may explain the instantaneous, ubiquitous nature of the human response system.
Jenny Wade pictures our system as a seamless whole in perpetual flux. As in
Figure 4, the information transfer system of Figure 5 is held within an interpenetrating
sheath of Energy: electromagnetic, magnetic and other subtle forces. In this model, energy
95
patterns create biochemistry and physiology, with every physical atom being intimately
connected to higher frequencies. The VAS is one physiologic indicator of this intricate
process, a way to listen in on the information transfer occurring. Through the VAS, a
practitioner can listen to this interplay for guidance for how to clear blocks that inhibit
energy flow, and how to increase overall coherence of the system.
Consciousness The Intelligence
The source of the orderliness and synchronicity of this dynamic information
network, and of the wisdom of our information transfer system is a mystery that continues
to intrigue researchers. To hold an Integral Energy Medicine approach, however, is to view
our system as dynamically responding to the information held within energy, which is held
within a higher level information source called consciousness, or mind. Consciousness is
deemed to be the intelligence, the animating life force that operates beyond the limits of
time and space, and that holds and directs our capacity for order with its intent. The
difference between energy and consciousness is one of degree of influence; just as energy
manifests as matter, consciousness begets energy, according to Tiller.
Biologist Rupert Sheldrake called this force the morphogenetic field. Sheldrake
proposed that communication between cells, brain, emotions and other stimuli within the
environment is all occurring within an organizing field that transcends time and space but
that determines the physical form and behavior of living systems. Sheldrake called this the
hypothesis of formative causation. In this theory, the content of consciousness of the
morphogenetic field determines and organizes the whole system response. Targ and Katra
named it nonlocal mind, meaning that consciousness cannot be confined to specific
96
points in space or time. Its information is infinite, everywhere at the same time, including
the various physiologic systems of the physical body.
In the model of Figure 4, consciousness is presented in two forms Personal and
Transpersonal. Personal consciousness is the mind of our own making, our beliefs and our
past experiences that are programmed into our cells and our brain. This level of
consciousness programs us to react in a certain way to incoming information, based in and
determining our perceptions and emotions. We all hold a personal consciousness, known
as ego in A Course in Miracles. It is predominantly fear based, and protective in nature.
Physiology and health are greatly affected by what is held in this consciousness. When a
clinician is palpating the VAS of another person, the most accurate results will be gained
when this level of consciousness of both humans is clear and calm.
Fortunately, there is more Transpersonal Consciousness is beyond the realm of
our own limitations and fears. This is the Higher Intelligence, the unifying structure that
connects all that is. This consciousness connects, sustains and inspires us to grow into
greater consciousness. As more of this transpersonal energy is allowed to flow through our
more matter-oriented aspects, we become less attached to and restricted by physical laws.
The quality and content of the morphogenetic field is advanced, and we evolve in
consciousness.
Tiller suggests that through intention, the information held within subtle energy
(with its negative mass and magnetic action) can be injected into a physical substance,
overcoming its normal physical nature. A levitational force overrides the gravitational
force and an attraction to negative space results. This, Tiller says, is how unexplainable but
observed phenomena occur: like walking on water; like my own felt and seen experience
97
of a psychic surgeons hands moving through my skin into my belly without utilizing a
physical opening; and like firewalkers being able to walk over hot coals without physical
effect. Enough intention has been focused to inject etheric substance and laws into the
physical and overcome the laws of the time-space domain. In this way, subtle energy,
including emotional energy, can override and alter the physical manifestation. Indeed,
what we might name as miracles may simply be phenomena that are operating in
negative space, so not explainable within physical laws.
This model of a determining force of consciousness has roots in the theories of
physicists since the mid-1800s. Models were proposed of organisms as intelligent systems
that through evolution increased in the refinement of survival behaviour, which over
millennia became what we now call consciousness. Schroedinger, the physicist seen as the
father of quantum mechanics, pointed out during the 1940s a precious something upon
which living organisms feed, which he called negative entropy. The organism has, he said,
the astonishing gift of concentrating a stream of order on itself of drinking orderliness
from (its) environment. This orderliness maintained, directed and evolved, the human
system. Schroedinger hypothesized an experiential I, consciousness, to be what is
controlling the motion of the atoms according to the Laws of Nature. This life force is
known as qi in Eastern medicine, a force that animates all living things.
Jenny Wade, based in studies of consciousness, suggests that consciousness (mind)
predates and survives the physical body, but during a lifetime it orients itself to the physical
level as a sheathing of energy that interpenetrates the body. Brain and mind enfold each
other, she says, with the physical brain being a transducer of the order of the Cosmos.
Physical manifestation flows out of transcendent energy that is not recorded in any one
98
particular cell or structure, but is enfolded over the whole. Information is everywhere and
no particular place. Transformations between the physical and the transcendent energy are
occurring continuously and rapidly.
If every living organism and in fact every cell is a perfect microsystem rooted in
and reflecting the Intelligence of the Cosmos, then the potential capacity of those systems is
to reflect the energetic order of the Universe. Including the regulatory mechanisms of the
physical body, the nature of this Intelligence is to strive to maintain and optimize order on
every level.
It is interesting to view the VAS as one indicator of the coordinated efforts of this
unified system. The VAS provides summarized, physiologic data of the state of our system
as matter, energy and consciousness. If interpreted by a practitioner with understanding
and timeliness, the VAS provides a noninvasive way to tap into the overall Intelligence of
the human system and lead the body into higher levels of coherence and health.
To move toward an Integral Energy Medicine model for understanding the VAS as
is proposed in this dissertation would move the discussion beyond the level of the accepted
mechanical responses of the physical body and into the larger potential of the VAS as a
reliable Energy Medicine assessment tool. To see the VAS as a physiologic tool that
provides a gateway into dynamic communication with the coordinating Intelligence of the
human system could provide a foundation for the advancement of auricular medicine.
99
ENDNOTES
1
Paul Nogier, Auriculotherapy to Auriculomedicine. Sainte Ruffine, France:: Maissonneurve, 1983.
2
Yves Rouxeville, Acupuncture Auriculaire Personnalisee. Montpellier, France: Sauramps Medical, 2000, p.34.
3
Rita Klowersa, Auriculomedicine as Developed by Nogier and Bahr. Hartheim, Germany: Mediman gmbh, 2000; Fritz-
Albert Popp, About the Coherence of BioPhotons. In Coherence, 1/00; Nader Soliman, Auricular Medicine and Suicide.
In Medical Acupuncture, Volume 11, No.2.
4
Beatte Strittmatter, Mastering the Nogier VAS Reflex in Auricular Medicine. Unpublished paper, 2000.
5
V.S. Ramachandran, Phantoms in the Brain. New York: Quill, 1998, p.26.
6
Nogier, 1983, p. 67.
7
Marc Lebel, Mishelle Lemas, Tony vanGelder, John Ackerman, Mikhael Adams, personal communications.
8
Kenneth Cohen, The Way of Qigong. New York: Ballantine Books, 1997.
9
John Ackerman, personal conversation.
10
Klowersa, 2000, p. 2.
11
Evelyn Fox Keller, Refiguring Life. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995; William Tiller, Science and Human
Transformation. California: Pavior Publications, 1997; Ken Wilber, Integral Psychology. Boston: Shambhala
Publications, 2000.
12
Tiller, 1997.
13
Wilber, 2000.
14
Keller, 1995; Tiller, 1997; Wilber, 2000.
15
Rudolph Ballantine, Radical Healing. New York: Three Rivers Press, 1999; Norman Shealy, Sacred Healing. Boston:
Element Books, 1999; Tiller, 1997; Wilber, 2000.
16
Bruce Lipton, The Biology of Consciousness: Perception Shapes Genetics. Home page on-line: www.brucelipton.com,
2001.
17
Tiller, 1997, p.41.
18
Jeremy Narby, The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge. New York: Jeremy Tarcher Publications,
1998.
19
Shigehisa Kuriyama, The Expressiveness of the Body. New York: Zone Books, 1999.
20
Ibid, p. 21.
21
Ibid, p. 9.
22
Ibid, p. 73.
23
Ibid, p. 64.
24
Ibid, p. 66.
25
Ibid, p. 67.
26
Nogier, 1983, p.69.
27
Ibid, p. 68.
28
Ibid, p. 69.
29
Ibid, p. 71.
30
Anthony deSousa, research presentation, VAS Research Meeting, Groupe Lyonnais dEtudes Medicales (G.L.E.M.),
Lyon, France, June 2001.
100
31
VAS Research Meeting, G.L.E.M., Lyon, France, June 2001, personal attendance.
32
Charles Shang, 1999. Mechanism of Acupuncture Beyond Neurohumoral Theory. Medical Acupuncture, Vol.11,
No.2. Available from http://www.medicalacupuncture.org/aama_marf/journal/.
33
Nogier, 1983, p.68.
34
Terry Oleson, Health Care Alternatives. Home page on-line: www.auriculotherapy.com, 2001.
35
International Consensus Conference on Acupuncture, Auriculotherapy and Auricular Medicine (ICCAAAM), personal
attendance, Las Vegas, August 12 16, 1999.
36
Li-Chun Huang, Auricular Diagnosis. Texas: Longevity Press, 1999.
37
Terry Oleson, Auriculotherapy Manual: Chinese and Western Systems of Ear Acupuncture. Los Angeles: Health Care
Alternatives, 1998.
38
Steve Meeker, Essential Auricular Reflexes: Simplified Clinical Auriculotherapy and Auriculomedicine. Portland,
Oregon: Hollywood Clinic, 2001, p. 4-2.
39
Personal conversations with practitioners.
40
Nogier, 1983, p.87.
41
Personal attendance, VAS Research Meeting, G.L.E.M., Lyon, France, June 2001.
42
Efim Frinerman, Ways to Document the VAS Using Novel FDA-Approved Technology. In ICCAAAM Conference
Manual, 1999, p.58.
43
Nogier, 1983, p.88.
44
Ibid, p. 88.
45
John Ackerman, personal conversation.
46
Ballentine, 1999.
47
Personal training in various protocols.
48
Ballentine, 1999, p.11.
49
Nogier, 1983, p. 88.
50
Pierre Magnin, research presentation, G.L.E.M., Lyon, France, June 2001.
51
Shealy, 1999.
52
Popp, 2000.
53
Klowersa, 2000, p. 13.
54
Efim Frinerman, New Ways to Document VAS using Novel FDA-Approved Technology: Historical View and
Perspectives. Coherence-International Journal of Integrated Medicine, 2/99, p.26 32.
55
John Ackerman, The Biophysics of the VAS. In Energy Fields in Medicine, Kalamazoo, MI: The John Feltzer
Foundation, 2001.
56
Paul MacLean, The Triune Brain in Evolution. New York: Plenum Press, 1990.
57
Tiller, 1997.
58
MacLean, 1990, p. 266.
59
Ibid, p.578.
60
Nogier, 1983, p.88.
61
Stephen Hawking, Black Holes and Baby Universes. New York: Bantam Books, 1993, p.44.
62
Ibid, p. 89.
63
Marc Lebel, personal conversation, June 2001.
101
64
Tony vanGelder, personal communication, February 2002.
65
Ackerman, 2001, p. 10.
66
John Ackerman, The International Joseph H. Navach Project Mission Statement, unpublished.
67
Paul Pearsall, The Hearts Code. New York: Broadway Books, 1999.
68
Narby, 1999.
69
Ballantine, 1999; Wilber, 2000; Jenny Wade, Changes of Mind. New York: State U.of N.Y. Press, 1996.
70
Jenny Wade, 1996, p.7.
71
David Bohm, as quoted in Targ and Katra, Miracles of Mind, 1998.
72
Targ and Katra, 1998, p.252.
73
Pert, as quoted in Targ and Katra, 1998, p.252.
74
Shealy, 1999, p. 105.
75
Targ and Katra, 1998.
76
Ibid, p.200.
77
Ibid, p.202.
78
Ibid, p.208.
79
John Ackerman, Navachs Physiologic Exploration of the Vascular Autonomic Signal. Presented to the Society for
Acupuncture Research, Annual Meeting, 2000.
80
William Braud and Marilyn Schlitz. Consciousness Interactions with Remote Biological Systems: Anomalous
Intentionality Effects. Subtle Energies 2, no.1 (1991): 1-46; Tiller, 1997.
81
Pert, as quoted in Targ and Katra, 1998, p.252.
82
Ibid, p. 252.
83
Ibid, p.252.
84
Rupert Sheldrake, as quoted in Targ and Katra, 1998, p.280.
85
Tiller, 1997; Wilber, 2000.
86
Keller, 1995; Lipton, 2001; Tiller, 1997.
87
Keller, 1995, p 53 55.
88
Ibid, p. 67 68.
89
Ibid, p. 73.
90
Ibid, p.77.
91
Ramachandran, 1998, p.84.
92
Nogier, 1983.
93
Wade, 1996.
94
Ibid, p.14.
95
Nogier, p. 90.
96
Tiller, 1997.
97
ICCAAAM Conference Manual, 1999, p.34.
98
Tiller, 1997, p.267.
99
Robert Nunley, personal communication, February 2002.
102
100
Tiller, 1997.
101
Ibid, p. 27.
102
Ibid, p. 32 33.
103
Ibid, p. 34.
104
Ibid, p. 68.
105
Ibid, p. 75.
106
Ibid, p. 66.
107
Ibid, p. 47.
108
Ibid, p. 46.
109
Ibid, p. 69.
110
Ibid, p.70.
111
Ibid, p. 67.
112
Ibid, p. 72 73.
113
Ibid, p. 91.
114
Ibid, p.36.
115
Ibid, p. 63.
116
Ibid, p. 167.
117
Ibid, p. 89.
118
Ibid, p. 89.
119
Ken Cohen, The Way of Qigong. New York: Ballantine Publishing, 1997, p.66.
120
Ramanchandran, 1998.
121
Ibid, p. 39.
122
Lipton, 2001, p. 3.
123
Ibid., 3
124
Tiller, 1997, p.142.
125
Lipton, personal communication.
126
Candace Pert, Molecules of Emotion. New York: Scribner, 1997.
127
Lipton, Adaptive Mutation. Home page on-line. www.brucelipton.com, 2001.
128
Lipton, Nature, Nurture and the Power of Love. Homepage on-line. www.brucelipton.com, 2001.
129
Shang, 1999.
130
Tiller, 1997, p.142.
131
Shang, 1999.
132
Jenny Wade, 1996, p.7.
133
Fritz-Albert Popp, About the Coherence of Biophotons. Coherence: 1/00, p. 3 12.
134
Beate Strittmatter, VAS Scientific Research. Unpublished paper.
135
John Ackerman, The International Joseph Navach Project Mission Statement, unpublished.
103
136
The contribution of this research study is intended to be a corroboration of the VAS as a reliable clinical
assessment tool. In no way does this study address the refined healing protocols of auricular medicine,
and appropriate healing approaches. For the purposes of this research, the VAS is being used as a point
finder. This study should not be seen as encouragement for the use of the VAS without a context of
understanding of the field of auricular medicine.
137
Strittmatter, unpublished.
138
Lawrence Neuman, Social Research Methods. Fourth Edition. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2000, p. 519.
139
Ibid.
140
Total is 101 % due to rounding figures.
141
Ackerman, Navach Mission Statement.
104
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APPENDIX A:
Data Record Sheet and
Informed Consent Form
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Vascular Autonomic Signal
As an Energetic Assessment Tool
Data Record Sheet
Individuals Initials: I.D. Number:
Date: Time: ___________________
Year Pain Began: ___________
Conditions at Onset: Accident _____
Surgery _____ Emotional Trauma ___
Illness _____ None Known _____
Pre-Test:
1. Pain Location: ___________________ 2. Pain Rating: (0-10)
3. Range of Motion __________________ 4. Frequency (%time)
_________
5. Pulse: weak ____ medium ____ strong ____
6. Electromagnetic Field (distance from ear): _______________
Treatment One:
7. Blockages:
Scar: a) Present ____ b) Tissue Type and Phase __________
c) Cleared: Yes No
Oscillations: a) Present ______ b) Cleared: Yes _____ No _____
First Rib: a) Present ______ b) Phase __________
c) Cleared: Yes ______ No _________
8. With Morphine on Arm
VAS determined locations: Tenderness NetII Active
a. ______ (Meso, Endo, Ecto) b. c.
i. Phase Two ________ __________
ii. Phase Three ________ __________
iii. Phase One ________ __________
9. VAS points marked on ear map #1.
Treatment Two:
10. With Morphine on Arm
VAS determined locations: Tenderness NetII Active
a. ______ (Meso, Endo, Ecto) b. c.
i. Phase Two ________ __________
ii. Phase Three ________ __________
iii. Phase One ________ __________
11. VAS points marked on ear map #2.
Location Correlation
Phase Two: Yes No
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Phase Three: Yes No
Phase One: Yes No
12. Points treated (with combination of temporary needles, semi permanent needles
and seeds). Bilateral points treated.
13. Master Points treated (temporary needles):
a. Point Zero ____ b. Shen Men ____ c. Thalamus ____
d. Occiput ____ e. Autonomic ____ f. Tranquilizer ____
g. Master Cerebral ____ h. Master Sensorial ____
Post Test:
14. Pain Rating: (0-10) 15. Range of Motion _________
16. Electromagnetic Field: _____________
17. Change in Pre and Post Pain Rating: Increase: _____ Decrease _

Data Analysis:
Stability Reliability of the VAS:
Number 10 above: ear map One point locations match ear map Two
Equivalence Reliability of VAS:
Number 6c and 8c: VAS points verified by NET II.
Number 6b and 8b: VAS points verified by Tenderness.
Predictive Validity of VAS:
Number 16 above: Change in Pain Rating
Informed Consent Form
Auricular acupuncture is a therapeutic intervention that involves stimulating active
acupuncture points on the ear for the purpose of alleviating health conditions of the whole
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body. While based in ancient Chinese acupuncture practices, a medical doctor in modern
France developed the field of auricular acupuncture and auricular medicine.
Auricular medicine goes one step further than auricular acupuncture by using the
electromagnetic energy field of the body for assessment of imbalances in the body
system. Any disturbed structure or physiological function of the body can result in a
stressed electromagnetic field, which is reflected by one, or several acupuncture points on
the ear. A pulse reading, called the Vascular Autonomic Signal (VAS), indicates the
location and typed of disturbance by the bodys response to stimuli being brought into the
body energy field. The VAS can be used: to assess the location of a particular stress in
the body; to find the best treatment, including dosages and priority; and to determine
causal level issues underneath symptoms.
The VAS is essentially a way to listen to the body. The purpose of this PhD research
trial is to determine the reliability and accuracy of the VAS as a guide for the clinical
assessment of the location of acupuncture points on the ear that can be effectively used
for treatment of chronic pain.
Pain is a symptom, telling us that something is out of balance, or under stress in our body.
Chronic pain is the result of an accumulation of distress, perhaps from a series of
accidents, nutritional deficiencies and mental-emotional stress along with the body not
having opportunities to drain toxins from its system. Acupuncture is one way to open
pathways to drain and rebalance the body system. If the pain is the result of many layers
of distress, however, it is likely to take several treatments to address those layers and to
re-educate the body to return to homeostasis.
This research trial is offering one free auricular assessment and treatment for chronic
pain. Chronic pain is defined as having been experienced for more than a three month
period, either intermittently or steadily. Longterm relief from this one treatment is not
expected in most cases. The contribution of the study is intended to be a demonstration
of the VAS as a reliable clinical assessment tool. This inquiry does not address the
extensive healing methods of auricular medicine.
By signing this consent form, I affirm that I have read this consent form and agree to
participate voluntarily. I understand that this auricular medicine session may not have
direct or longterm benefit for me, and I understand that there are no known risks involved
in my participation.
I also understand that my identity will not be disclosed in the reporting of findings of this
research study.
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______________________________________ _______________
Participants Signature Date
______________________________________________
Participants Name (Print)
If you would like additional information concerning this study, or auricular medicine,
please contact Muriel Agnes by phone at 902-351-1010.
Thank-you for your participation.
Muriel Agnes, MAEd,
Certified Auricular Acupuncturist,
Th.D. Candidate.
More information also available through: www.upml.fr/glem,
www.auriculotherapy.org, or www.auriculotherapy.com.
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APPENDIX B:
Collected Data
Data Collected
Id
Number
Pre-Test
Pain
Rating
Post-test
Pain
Rating
One
Week
Later
Affected
Area
ROM
Pre-Test
ROM
Post-Test
EMF
Pre-Test
EMF
Post-Test
# Of
Points
Matched
# Of
Points
Marked
301 3 0 0 Low Back 2 1 15 1 2 2
3001 3 1 1 R Hip 3 2 24 4 3 3
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2902 6 2 2 Low Back 2 2 20 2 3 3
2902 3 0 0 L Side 88 88 88 88 0 0
2103 3 1 1 L Should 4 2 24 3 2 3
2103 6 4 4 Low Back 88 88 88 88 0 0
2804 7.5 0.5 0.5 Spine 2 2 26 2 1 1
2801 4 0 0 Headache 88 88 30 6 2 2
2201 5 5 0 R Leg 88 88 18 3 3 3
2201 5 0 2 Neck 3 2 88 88 0 0
2102 7 6 10.1 L Should 2 2 18 6 2 3
2102 6 4 10.1 Neck 88 88 88 88 0 0
2105 5 2 2 Shoulder 4 3 88 88 1 2
2105 7 3 2 Hips 88 88 14 3 0 0
2301 6 5 5 Neck 3 3 24 6 2 2
2301 9 7 5 Bladder 88 88 88 88 0 0
2302 5 2 5 Hips 3 3 16 4 3 3
2302 10 2 10 Legs 88 88 88 88 0 0
2205 3 2 5 Low Back 1 1 30 2 1 3
2101 6 6 6 Low Back 3 3 12 4 0 0
2101 4 1 4 Head 3 1 88 88 3 3
3002 6.5 5 6.5 U. Back 88 88 20 3 0 0
3002 8.5 9.5 8.5 L. Back 88 88 88 88 1 1
2303 8 2 0 Knees 3 2 30 12 1 3
2303 10 2 6 Neck 3 2 88 88 0 0
2202 6 2 2 Fingers 88 88 30 6 3 3
2202 3 0 0 Neck 88 88 88 88 0 0
2903 6 2 1 Neck 88 88 15 2 3 3
2903 5 1 5 R Should 2 2 88 88 0 0
2905 7 3 6 Knees 2 2 35 2 1 1
2907 2 1 1 R L. Back 2 1 15 2 2 3
2901 7 1 1 R. Side 88 88 20 2 3 3
2901 6 5 5 Anal Area 88 88 88 88 0 0
2803 8 4 8 Knees 3 2 24 4 3 3
2803 6 6 6 Sinus 99 99 88 88 0 0
2805 6 1 4 Hands 88 88 24 6 2 2
2805 6 3 4 R Leg 3 2 88 88 0 0
2802 7.5 4.5 7 Abdomen 88 88 20 6 2 2
2203 2 0.5 0.5 L. Back 88 88 24 3 3 3
2203 1 1.5 0.5 Shoulder 2 2 88 88 0 0
2304 4 0 4 Shoulder 3 3 30 1 3 3
2305 4 0 4 Low Back 4 3 30 5 3 3
2305 4 0 4 Knees 88 88 88 88 0 0
2904 5 3 0 R Hip 88 88 30 4 2 3
2904 10 10 10 Upper Body 2 2 88 88 0 0
2104 8 3 4 Low Back 4 3 30 6 1 3
2104 6 4 6 Knees 88 88 88 88 0 0
3003 8 9 5 Buttock 88 88 30 4 2 3
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3003 6 9 4 R Ankle 88 88 88 88 0 0
3004 2 1 0 Shoulder 2 2 20 4 3 3
3004 1 0 0 L Thumb 99 99 88 88 0 0
2206 3 0 3 R Hip 3 3 24 3 2 3
2206 5 5 5 Chest 88 88 88 88 0 0
2906 3 0.5 0 Abdomen 88 88 10 2 2 3
2106 4 1 0 R Should 3 3 24 4 0 0
2106 4 1 0 Buttock 88 88 88 88 2 3
2701 10 6 6 R Should 3 2 18 4 3 3
302 5 2 3 Knees 3 3 12 4 3 3