The data suggest that compared with a no-treatment control, brief training in mindfulness meditation or somatic relaxation reduces distress and improves positive mood states. However, mindfulness meditation may be specific in its ability to reduce distractive and ruminative thoughts and behaviors, and this ability may provide a unique mechanism by which mindfulness meditation reduces distress.

BackgroundBiofield therapies (such as Reiki, therapeutic touch, and healing touch) are complementary medicine modalities that remain controversial and are utilized by a significant number of patients, with little information regarding their efficacy.PurposeThis systematic review examines 66 clinical studies with a variety of biofield therapies in different patient populations.MethodWe conducted a quality assessment as well as a best evidence synthesis approach to examine evidence for biofield therapies in relevant outcomes for different clinical populations.ResultsStudies overall are of medium quality, and generally meet minimum standards for validity of inferences. Biofield therapies show strong evidence for reducing pain intensity in pain populations, and moderate evidence for reducing pain intensity hospitalized and cancer populations. There is moderate evidence for decreasing negative behavioral symptoms in dementia and moderate evidence for decreasing anxiety for hospitalized populations. There is equivocal evidence for biofield therapies' effects on fatigue and quality of life for cancer patients, as well as for comprehensive pain outcomes and affect in pain patients, and for decreasing anxiety in cardiovascular patients.ConclusionThere is a need for further high-quality studies in this area. Implications and future research directions are discussed.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s12529-009-9062-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Biofield science is an emerging field of study that aims to provide a scientific foundation for understanding the complex homeodynamic regulation of living systems. By furthering our scientific knowledge of the biofield, we arrive at a better understanding of the foundations of biology as well as the phenomena that have been described as “energy medicine.” Energy medicine, the application of extremely low-level signals to the body, including energy healer interventions and bio-electromagnetic device-based therapies, is incomprehensible from the dominant biomedical paradigm of “life as chemistry.” The biofield or biological field, a complex organizing energy field engaged in the generation, maintenance, and regulation of biological homeodynamics, is a useful concept that provides the rudiments of a scientific foundation for energy medicine and thereby advances the research and practice of it. An overview on the biofield is presented in this paper, with a focus on the history of the concept, related terminology, key scientific concepts, and the value of the biofield perspective for informing future research.

This study investigates the hemispheric organization of visual memories. In five experiments, we examine the processes associated with the recognition of line patterns that are flashed laterally during a study phase. The first three experiments demonstrate a recognition advantage for patterns presented at test in the same (rather than in the opposite) hemifield in which they were presented during a previous study phase. This difference was obtained even when stimuli were presented in different locations within the same hemifield. Experiment shows that patterns presented centrally during the recognition phase elicit ERPs that are systematically more negative over the hemisphere contralateral to the side at which they were presented during the study phase. In Experiment 5, however, we found that subjects were unable to indicate the side of initial presentation of the patterns. The results suggest that the memory traces left by laterally presented stimuli are more easily accessible in the contralateral hemisphere, which suggests a contralateral organization of visual memories.

Biofield therapies are noninvasive therapies in which the practitioner explicitly works with a client's biofield (interacting fields of energy and information that surround living systems) to stimulate healing responses in patients. While the practice of biofield therapies has existed in Eastern and Western cultures for thousands of years, empirical research on the effectiveness of biofield therapies is still relatively nascent. In this article, we provide a summary of the state of the evidence for biofield therapies for a number of different clinical conditions. We note specific methodological issues for research in biofield therapies that need to be addressed (including practitioner-based, outcomes-based, and research design considerations), as well as provide a list of suggested next steps for biofield researchers to consider.