Spiritual Healing: Scientific Validation of a Healing Revolution

Daniel J. Benor

Wholistic Healing Publications, 2006 - 597 pages

Healers describe their work, research in parapsychology as a context for understanding healing, brief summaries of 191 randomized controlled studies, pilot studies.

What people are saying

User Review -

I am the author of Light-Touch Manipulative Technique (LTMT) described in Dr. Benor's book, Spiritual Healing: Scientific Validation of a Healing Revolution, p. 226.
I never authorized Dr. Benor to refer to my work or my words in his book. Originally, I authorized him to make reference to my work and published experiment entitled "Light-Touch Manipulative Technique" that appeared in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine" (April, 1990) in his online newsletter some years ago.
When I saw the context of his newsletter, the subject matter and his misleading comments about my work, I asked him to remove all reference to my work from his newsletter. He refused. We argued. I said he had "spiritualized" or misconstrued the nature of my work, completely distorted it, and I accused him of being intellectually dishonest to that extent. He "psychoanalyzed" me by email and decided I was reacting inappropriately. He continued to appropriate my work to support his spiritual perspective. On the contrary, the "aura" or light, as it were, which his newsletter--and certainly his book--shine on my work is totally inappropriate.
It is worth noting that in his book, Dr. Benor has deleted my medically and scientifically oriented qualifications. I am a Registered Massage Therapist (RMT) licensed in Canada. At the time of my writing, I was also a Licensed Massage Therapist (LMT) in the State of Hawaii. I have additional training in osteopathy and counselling psychology. I am now communications person for a world-famous traumatology clinic working in the field of the neurosciences. Dr. Benor leaves the impression that I must be a spiritual or energy healer of some kind. I am not and this experiment was demonstrably not about that.
LTMT was a very simple experiment to see if a touch so light it barely dented the skin could move a specific target bone in the spine. It had nothing to do with proving this reduced any symptoms. It was a blind study, seemingly the only one of its kind ever performed, and still appears to be, on an original soft-tissue joint manipulative or mobilization technique. It was, in other words, a first attempt at a scientific experiment on a physical technique. Not on a spiritual technique. That is the first obvious distortion.
The article in JACM cites both the blind experiment and subsequent clinical findings.
What I object to more than Dr. Benor's mis-reading of my article and his misunderstanding of the hypothesis of the experiment and his consequently irrelevant criticisms, is the way he has appropriated my work to give scientific credibility to healers who have not verified what they do with scientific studies, and then has the audacity to suggest that I am a "healer!" Removing my academic qualifications from after my name strengthens his false and misleading claim that comes perilously close to defamation.
Dr. Benor was disrespectful to my work in not removing it from his original publication and in continuing, against my expressed objection, in categorizing it as some kind of "spriritual" technique.
It would be interesting to know if his distortional thinking pervades the remainder of his book. 

About the author

Daniel J. Benor, M.D. is a wholistic psychiatric psychotherapist who includes bodymind approaches, spiritual awareness and healing in his practice. He is the author of Healing Research, Volumes I-IV and appears internationally on radio and TV. He is a Founding Diplomate of the American Board of Holistic Medicine, Coordinator for the Council for Healing, a non-profit organization that promotes awareness of spiritual healing, and editor of the International Journal of Healing and Caring On Line www.ijhc.org . See more by and about Dr. Benor at: www.WholisticHealingResearch.com

Bibliographic information

• Title: Spiritual Healing: Scientific Validation of a Healing Revolution; Volume 1 of Healing Research Series
• Author: Daniel J. Benor
• Edition: 2, illustrated
• Publisher: Wholistic Healing Publications, 2006
• ISBN: 0975424858, 9780975424858
• Length: 597 pages