preMEDitated

Pranic healing works!
Or so the doctor who introduced us to a basic pranic healing course told us. He, of course, said that he was not forcing us to believe — the usual disclaimer for all things that reek of alternative medicine. He only asked us to have an open mind. The following is what I understood from him.

So-called aura around so-called healer

Pranic healing “works” on the basis of manipulating prana or life energy, produced from chakras. The human body is said to emanate another body aside from the visible body. This is called the ethereal body.
The ethereal body is composed of the inner aura, and the outer aura. Whatever happens to the body is reflected by the condition of the inner aura. So-called pranic healers claim to be able to assess the condition of the inner aura, and consequently diagnose bodily conditions. They also claim to be able to cleanse and energize this aura, which would consequently heal the body.

We were also shown a video showing people who claimed to have benefited from pranic healing. A “master” merely flicked his hands around people which supposedly cured them. Yet aside from testimonials coming from unheard of Russian doctors from the Cold War, the whole pranic healing affair is scientifically unsubstantiated.
To me, the whole show reeked of the placebo effect. It also reeked of the less familiar Hawthorne effect, wherein the mere presence of a medical practitioner is enough to make a person feel better. It could also mean that those people were lying to their teeth.
In short, I am unconvinced about the so-called benefits of so-called pranic “healing”.
I maintain open mind, but I naturally close it to such far-fetched concepts as pranic healing. There is no such thing as prana. Hence, there could never be a thing such as pranic healing.
Prana and chakra should be left to the fantasy world of Naruto and his friends.