Toward an Integral Energy Medicine Model

For Understanding

The Vascular Autonomic Signal

ENERGY MEDICINE IN THE

HISTORY OF SCIENCE

820

Personal Research Presentation

Holos University - PhD Program

Muriel Agnes

September 2001.

 History of Science 820

Toward an Integral Energy Medicine Model

For Understanding the Vascular Autonomic Signal

Introduction to the VAS and Auricular Medicine

The Vascular Autonomic Signal (VAS) is a physiological response of the whole body to information being brought into its energy field that can be read through a pulse felt at the radial artery.  Dr. Paul Nogier, a neurosurgeon in Lyon, France, discovered this signal in 1966 by noticing a pulse change when he touched the skin of a patient.[i]  Dr. Nogier had earlier discovered that the ear holds all of the acupuncture points of the body as a microsystem, and systematically mapped these points, opening up the field of auricular acupuncture, also called auriculotherapy.  His further discovery of the VAS, a signal change when stimuli is brought into the energy field of ear acupuncture points, 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 adopted to refer to this phenomenon, current practitioners prefer the term “response”, seen as being more accurate.  “Response is the consequence of a question”;[ii] says Dr. Yves Rouxeville, the body’s specific reaction to the introduction of a stimulation, serving as an answer to the question posed as to the degree of health or disorder of the system. 

When a body system is stressed, the electromagnetic field extends further out than when healthy.  It is theorized that this is due to an increase in disorderliness and quantity of photons, or electromagnetic emissions, projected by the body when under stress.  Any organ or other physical disturbance of the body can result in a stressed electromagnetic field being projected from one or several acupuncture points on the microsystem of the ear. When a filter (a substance or colour) that represents or resonates with the disturbance is brought close to a stressed acupuncture point, the minute irritation caused by this stimulus changes the felt quality of the pulse.[iii] 

Highly developed protocols of auricular medicine have since developed through the experimentation and clinical experience of Dr. Nogier and currently, his students.  These protocols involve the use of various filters of information brought into the energy field of the patient while the doctor reads 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,[iv] 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.[v]

As Dr. Nolan Cordon, one of America’s first students of Dr. Nogier, said in a recent workshop, “All you need to begin is an educated thumb!”  An educated thumb is trained to pick up the subtle pulse changes, and is attached to a practitioner whose understanding of health brings clarity and meaning to those changes.  Auricular medicine “is essentially a diagnostic vocation”,[vi] an art of listening to the body.  The chosen treatment following the diagnosis may involve auricular acupuncture, or any other tools available to the practitioner.

Developing a Model of Understanding

In approaching the task of a dissertation in my area of focus, auricular medicine, in this Energy Medicine graduate program, I first thought I would study one particular protocol that intrigued me, that of Dr. Tony vanGelder of Rotterdam, another student of Dr. Nogier.  In spending time with Dr. vanGelder at his clinic, we discussed areas of his work for which he would appreciate more research.  Dr. vanGelder’s protocol allows for the assessment of organ systems and chakras, seen as causal levels for health in the subtle energy field.  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.

The more I delved into the subject, however, the more I realized that there was a question behind any of the protocols used in auricular medicine that seemed to be unanswered.  The current understanding of how the VAS works seems to be inconsistent and preliminary. 

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 person’s symptomatic as well as deep causal pathology?

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 these communication pathways will generate greater belief in and reliance upon the information being carried to the “educated thumb”.  

Our way of thinking about something, 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.  In this paper I hope to open up a discussion amongst those in the field, to move toward a model of understanding that will enable a more expansive view of just how potent and effective is this energy medicine tool called the VAS.

The potential of auricular medicine is infinite.  It is a medicine that is noninvasive, holistic, inexpensive, deeply respectful of the individual, and able to uncover the unique and most beneficial response required by each person to help them regain health.  One German practitioner, Rita Klowersa, said what I think many practitioners feel, “The revolutionary side of this discovery still is not recognized.”[vii]

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 a courageous soul 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 current metaphor accepted by science is the thing that guides thinking, that frames the questions that will be entertained, and that sets the pace of the development.[viii]  Whether an image of a mechanical clock, or a multi-tasking computer, for instance, is held in the mind of the scientist will affect the range of possibilities for the results.  It is useful to examine the existing metaphor, to ensure satisfaction with the room it offers for exploration, to be cognizant of its limitations, and to be open to its revision.  As Bill Tiller cautions, science tends to be self-congratulatory, believing that the accepted model is the final answer.[ix]  And in Ken Wilber’s words, “We are all tomorrow’s food!”[x]

 An example of metaphor 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 determining molecular change, an animating force to our systems that has the intelligence to try to maintain homeostasis.  Within this mode, 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 and 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.  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 its expression of the creative, dynamic nature of life.[xi] This approach of forming a model that includes more than the study of the physical level of matter is what I am referring to as an Integral Energy Medicine approach, which can open us to a fuller, more holistic understanding of this incredible discovery of Dr. Paul Nogier.

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.  With this insight, I was able to see how this very divergence is occurring in the field of auricular medicine.  From different countries and different cultures, the VAS is considered differently, creating complexity as well as perhaps limitations for the further development of the field.  Below, I will 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.

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 gathering.  In “The Expressiveness of the Body”,[xii] Shigehisa Kuriyama offers a fascinating history of the pulse as both a key 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”.[xiii]  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”.[xiv]  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 doctor take the pulse looks the same…they hold the wrist and feel intently.  But what they are reading 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 6.  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”.[xv]  They did not need exactness in their diagnosis, and were indifferent to the Western need for greater clarity.  With careful observation of over 4000 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 largely been replaced by technology.

The history of the pulse in Greek medicine is a different story, one of yearning and searching for clarity and precision.  This difference in approach – 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 medicines.  While the Chinese confidently paid attention to the circulation of blood and breath and qi, the Western doctors sought to precisely measure the rhythm and beat of the heart.  Between the two worlds, “Unfamiliar words named mutually unfamiliar perceptions”,[xvi] 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 wave of blood through 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 of course led to imprecision due to the “idiosyncrasy of perceptions:  people don’t all feel things in the same way”.[xvii]

This approach led to chronic concern and doubt in Western medicine.  As Kuriyama states, “pulse knowledge was exquisitely vulnerable to doubt”.[xviii]  The inability to agree on how to qualitatively describe the pulse in a consistent manner led Western medicine, largely in the hands of sober and rational Europeans in the late 1700’s, 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 have continued to describe how the pulse feels to the fingers, the response to an inquiring touch.  As a manifestation of the quality of the qi, blood and breath, the “mo” indicates a person’s spirit, their life energy.  With an alternative way of touching and seeing, Western doctors calculate 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 place the VAS, a pulse reading not known until the late 1960’s.  This third pulse is perhaps a blending of the two described above, being both subtle and precise, expressing both immediate and deeper 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 subjective reading by a practitioner. 

Perhaps the continued centrality of the pulse is because of its unique capacity to indicate, to express, the overall health or pathology of a person.  It is a way for the body to express the totality of its current state. The phrase, “To keep one’s 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 that is required between practitioner and patient.  To be allowed to touch a person’s pulse is to be allowed in to their very energy, their essence.  As one practitioner pointed out to me recently, auricular medicine is one of the few medicines 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 that could be compared to intuitively reading a person’s energy field. 

In 1945, Dr. Rene Leriche of the College of France was dressing an arterial aneurism after surgery when he observed that touching the skin of the scar resulted in strong pulsations in the artery.  He later observed that “light stimulations of the skin, and even emotions, could trigger this response”.[xix] The discovery of this new reflex “could neither be studied nor fathomed at the time”[xx] – it was outside of any model currently held. 

Twenty-one years later, Dr. Nogier discovered this signal at the radial artery, where the pulse is normally 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 one day was able to notice “a change in the strength of the pulse by touching the ear at the same time”.[xxi]  The 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 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 fingers.  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”.[xxii]  The point of striking creates what is called a “standing wave”, a composite of the movement going in both directions.  A consistent positioning of the practitioner’s thumb is necessary to detect the changes in this waveform.

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 light vasoconstriction or vasodilatation results in a change, which recent study has found to be the displacement of the rising gradient of the slope of the curve of the standing wave.  According to Dr. Anthony deSousa of Switzerland, what one feels when the thumb is kept at the same position on the wrist during a stimulation seems to be not the change in amplitude of the pulse, which does also change, but the change in the rising slope of the wave.[xxiii] 

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 pulse change.

As a traditional Western medical doctor who had studied Chinese medicine, Dr. Nogier was a perfect medium to bring this third pulse to the world.  He combines the best of both worlds, gifting us with a diagnostic tool that is both precise and subtle in its ability to read the biology of a patient.  With precision, the VAS can guide a practitioner to the exact 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.  On a more subtle level, the VAS connects the physician to the energy system of the patient and to the most beneficial interventions for returning to homeostasis. 

While the “signal” felt as the VAS response represents a whole system response and can respond to filters being brought into the energy field of any part of the body, the ear is particularly useful 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”.[xxiv]

As Dr. Nogier says, perception of the VAS in auricular medicine permits a broad examination of a subject’s 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”.[xxv]

The Current Field of Auricular Medicine

While there is currently a lot of research on the efficacy of auricular acupuncture,[xxvi] 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 a 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 Dr. Nogier as the father of auricular acupuncture, and who recognize this field as an update to their traditional acupuncture, have widely adopted it into clinical practice and research.  For the most part, however, the VAS and auricular medicine have not been introduced into their practices.[xxvii]  Their focus is on the diagnostic tools of auricular therapy, including observation, tenderness and clinically researched maps of ear points.[xxviii]  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.  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.[xxix]

The reason for this omission may be reflected in Meeker’s caution in his textbook that the clinical problem with the VAS is that no instrument has been designed to adequately read it, so “the sensitivity of the practitioner is paramount and is the weak link”.[xxx]  Perhaps the hesitancy to fully embrace the VAS mirrors a preference 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 consistently use the VAS in their practices and their research 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 (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. 

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, Dr. Anthony DeSousa, an auricular medicine practitioner and researcher in Switzerland, reflects the latter attitude by saying that the VAS is simple to register manually, and so is an effective and clinically accurate diagnostic tool.  My own experience confirms for me the accuracy and efficiency of the VAS in clinical use.  As an example, even when used as a simple “pointfinder”, the VAS has directed this practitioner’s needle to active auricular points that when treated provided direct pain relief.  As well, the accuracy of the findings of the VAS in response to filters used to seek the most beneficial type and order of healing interventions has also repeatedly proven its clinical reliability, to myself and to other practitioners.

Instrumentation for taking the VAS may be possible in the future.  My question would be what might be lost in such a measurement?  As with the history of the Western medical pulse taking, the pursuit of precision resulted in their only measuring 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. 

Dr. 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.

Dr. Nogier pointed out that, “What we feel (with the VAS) corresponds to something extremely subtle … extremely small reactions to the least stimulation”.[xxxi]  These reactions to stimulation are now understood to be an increased gradient in the rising slope of the pulse relative to the resting pulse.  If amplitude, or rate or rhythm, were to be measured, perhaps it would be easier to mechanically “prove” the existence of the VAS.  The nature of the VAS, however, renders it most perceptible by touch, and largely imperceptible to currently known instruments. 

This deficiency in measurability is seen to be a deterrent to the wider acceptance of auricular medicine.[xxxii]  There is a perceived need within the field to “scientifically” prove the existence of the VAS through instrumentation.  Dr. DeSousa, while not seeing the need for instrumentation for clinical practice, did address the importance of quantitative measurement for the purpose of scientific acceptance.  Another practitioner, one of the presenters at the Las Vegas conference from Israel, Dr. Efim Frinerman, 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)”.[xxxiii] 

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.  There is the rub.  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.

Physiological Understandings

What are the physiological processes involved that enable the VAS to be so discerning?  The VAS has the remarkable capacity of providing to the trained touch a focused physical response that represents an instantaneous reading of the system’s current 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 paper, 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 some of those theories.

A natural physiological sensitivity to stimuli is utilized for diagnosis with the VAS.  Dr. Nogier was very clear about this sensitivity, and taught his students how to work with it.  In his (translated) words, “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”.[xxxiv] 

External stimuli is any stress which strikes 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”.[xxxv]

Nogier warns against unconsciously taking the VAS, only regarding what seems to be the concrete reality of the pulse signal.  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”.[xxxvi]  In this way, Nogier clearly names - and provides a method for working with - the high level of responsiveness of this diagnostic tool. 

Dr. Pierre Magnin, a biochemist, and a colleague and student of Dr. 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.[xxxvii]  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.  Dr. Magnin says the VAS is a phenomenon that signals physical pathology as the result of a system on alert.

According to Dr. 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 Dr. Norman Shealy’s assertion that what matters in the breakdown of a system’s ability to cope with its environment is the degree of accumulation of stress.  The accumulation is what results in a pathological pattern of response.[xxxviii] 

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, an adaptation response of the autonomic nervous system.  The brain’s reticular formation reacts to the cellular change.  For instance, if asleep on the train, one does not hear the sounds, but if the train stops, one wakes up.  Similarly, a stimulus being taken away can produce the VAS as well as bringing in a stimulus.  If a remedy, for instance, is helpful to the body, and a filter is used to remove the information about this remedy from the body, the VAS will indicate a stressful change.

Dr. 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 various filters (stimuli) is a way of plugging into a feedback loop, a conversation going on in the body.  The VAS and the use of filters of information that resonate with the active acupuncture point can identify the tissue that is under stress, the location and intensity of the lesion, and even what would rectify the problem. 

The mechanism of “resonance” of acupuncture points that results in the cellular response described by Dr. Magnin is understood by some to relate the research of Dr. Fritz-Albert Popp.[xxxix]  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.  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 a pathology.  The particular biophoton emission pattern may be what creates the unique signature of the cellular state, information that will resonate, or match, the photon information of a filter.   

While Dr. Rita Klowersa suggests that biophoton cellular communication may be the body’s “overall synchronizing system based on electromagnetic information”[xl] Dr. Frinerman of Israel presents another model to explain the organized response that is read with the VAS.[xli]  He points out that 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 by the cells of the walls of the CVS acting as sensors, translating information from the blood into 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 stress, 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 Dr. Nogier, Dr. Joseph Navach.  His extensive research on the VAS led him to the discovery of what he called neurohormones, compounds that exist under the skin.  He believed these neurohormones to be the electromagnetic receptors that resonate specifically to stimuli, such as when an object (filter) is brought into the person’s field. 

All organic and inorganic substances have an electromagnetic resonance, or signature, and 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 signature like a radio receiver, and then facilitate the transmission of this information to the hypothalamus. 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.[xlii] 

This model is better understood in light of the role and function of the hypothalamus.  According to Dr. Paul MacLean,[xliii] the limbic brain, which includes the hypothalamus, is the part of the brain that turns up or down the intensity of feelings, providing emotional colouring to all other brain processes.  Without the comprehension or language of the neocortex, the limbic system receives information from all sensory systems without distinguishing between somatic information or information perceived by other senses.  This lack of discrimination “allows outside experiences to be experienced as though they were inside…the visceral brain is not at all unconscious, but rather eludes the grasp of the intellect”.[xliv] 

Without the involvement of the intellect to label the information, the body simply responds to any noticed stress.  Not only are somatic or emotional information translated as the same, for instance, but each have a direct influence on the other through the limbic system.  A stress from any source is “read” and responded to by the limbic system, provoking coordinated physiological changes through the autonomic nervous system (which innervates the internal organs, the glands, the blood vessels and the sweat glands) intended to assist in the regaining of homeostasis, to optimize survival and self-preservation.  In this way, the VAS can be seen as a result of the survival response of the peripheral arteries to an information change received by the limbic brain.

Dr. Nogier himself hypothesized that the human system, as a “sensitive reactor”, responded to any stress, including information, which touched or even came into its energy field.  This stress, he said, could involve luminous, magnetic or reticular energy – the source of stress could be external or internal (e.g. emotional) stimuli.[xlv]

While it seemed clear to Navach that homeostasis is governed by a harmonized effort of the autonomic nervous system along with the other systems of the body, there were questions left unanswered.  The body systems differentiate embryologically, yet they all respond to each other by some unknown mechanism.  Also, “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?”[xlvi]

While these models of the physiological response of the VAS are illuminating, they present different models with variations in emphases, resulting in different ways of seeing and knowing the mechanism of the VAS.  They also raise questions that are left unanswered, such as:

·        What is the central organizing pathway of response that leads to the VAS? 

·        How is the speed of response of the VAS explainable?

·        How can the body respond to information that is not touching it?

·        What is the mechanism behind the ability of the VAS to respond to a silent question or emotion of the practitioner? 

We have yet to fully understand the miracle of the VAS. Obviously, the cardiovascular system, the nervous system, the brain and cellular biochemistry are all involved.  But are they the initiator, and if so, which system is causal?  Or are these physical systems responders to something more subtle than matter?  We are a sensitive, receptive system, with amazingly coordinated systems of response.  But to what are we responding?

As with Chinese medicine, there is recognition in auricular medicine of the circulation, the flow, of energy.  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”.[xlvii]  Dr. Marc Lebel, a doctor of Chinese medicine and auricular medicine who trained extensively with Dr. Nogier, recently put it this way; “The planet’s most powerful instrument (the doctor) is reading the planet’s most powerful instrument (the patient)”.[xlviii]

Energy Medicine Perspectives

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 person’s symptomatic as well as deep causal pathology?

What if we apply leading-edge science and the model of Energy Medicine to the VAS?  There is an invitation in “Energy Medicine” that inspires a deeper look into the mechanisms of the VAS.  The invitation lies within the theory of Energy Medicine that all of life is energy operating at different frequency patterns with varying degrees of density, the lowest of which manifests as matter.[xlix]  Subtle energy is considered to be the prior and causal level for form, with every physical atom being intimately connected to the higher frequency level of subtle energy.  In this model, matter is displaced by energy as the vital focus and 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.[l]

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 Dr. 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”.[li]  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 the “mystery” simply because it is not understood.[lii] 

To paraphrase Kuriyama, the pulse, and the VAS in particular, seems to be “exquisitely ideal” for study from an Energy Medicine perspective.  The VAS is holistic, as a 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 a subjective, cultural, historical perspective; no matter how “concrete” we feel the evidence to be.

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 pathway known.  Healing, then, 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.[liii] 

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.[liv]  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 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 Maxwell’s Demon, and was described as “a doorkeeper very intelligent and exceedingly quick”.[lv]  Although this model fell into disrepute due to the failure of Maxwell’s theorized mechanisms, there lies within his attempt the root of a model of organisms as intelligent systems, increasing in the refinement of consciousness rather than simply deteriorating. 

Erwin Schroedinger, the physicist seen as the father of quantum mechanics, wrestled with the same question of how living organisms resist entropy during the 1940’s.  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.”[lvi]  The organism has the “astonishing gift of concentrating a stream of order on itself … of drinking orderliness from (its) environment”.[lvii]  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…”[lviii] 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 “negative entropy” of increased consciousness. Ramachandran, for one, echoes Maxwell’s 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".[lix]

Dr. Nogier noted forty years after Schroedinger’s time, that the nature of living organisms is that we are highly sensitive and powerful instruments, responsive to subtle energy changes.[lx]  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, responsive biological consciousness that holds the subtle level intention that becomes physical manifestation.   

In this view, every living organism 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.

It is interesting to view the VAS as an indicator of the coordinated efforts of an Intelligence.  The VAS provides a summarized, physiological response to our system’s capacity to reliably detect and discriminate both physiological and subtle energetic changes, a capacity only possible with “a detector as sensitive as the human body”.[lxi]  If read by a practitioner with understanding and timeliness, the VAS provides a noninvasive way to measure and prevent effects of medications, chemical and even electro-magnetic pollution on the system. 

My hypothesis is that the VAS is a reliable tool for dynamic communication with a coordinating Intelligence as it manifests within the human system.

Dr. William Tiller, a Materials Science professor at Stanford University for many years, calls the VAS one of the body’s biomechanical transducers, a “subtle energy detector”, meaning that it facilitates the transformation of subtle level energies, or information, into a physically observable signal.[lxii] 

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 by the autonomic nervous system, an involuntary signal carrier system connected to the hypothalamus.  As described earlier in this paper, the hypothalamus is relatively isolated from the “noise” (thoughts) of the cerebral cortex, so can be utilized to identify subtle energy without alteration.  In Tiller’s view, the hypothalamus receives its biochemical message in response to information, or subtle energy, that has been received by the body “antenna”.  This interface of how subtle level energy becomes physically received energy is, he says, the point of least understanding.

Dr. 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.[lxiii]  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 seems to also act like a filter and initiate 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 that then, at a distance to the imprinting, significantly affected the specific outcome relative to a control group of devices.  In one experiment, the IIEDs were able to inhibit the conversion of cells to the infective stage of a human parasite in an infected cell culture compared to the control group.[lxiv]  In these experiments, thought, a subtle energy, has been proven to have a measurable physical effect.  How might this phenomenon occur?

Most of us have not fully developed the conscious capacity to reliably 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 Nogier’s 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. 

Dr. Tiller presents a scientific model for how subtle energy might translate into physical energy in his book, Science and Human Transformation.[lxv]  He has projected his knowledge of physical science into the unseen and unknown – conjecturing that it 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.[lxvi] 

In Dr. Tiller’s 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 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”.[lxvii]  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”.[lxviii]

Dr. 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 symmetry to electromagnetism”,[lxix] rather than the currently accepted idea that magnetism is created by the motion of electric charges. 

Tiller’s model also springs naturally from the inversion relationship between waves and particles.  “Anything with a spatial pattern has a correlate which is a frequency pattern … the wave/particle duality of quantum mechanics may be just the natural expression of correlated patterns in the two conjugate (domains)”.[lxx]

This negative space 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”.[lxxi]  This “vacuum with its negative energy state and the unobservable particles is exactly the territory wherein the subtle energies might exist”,[lxxii] Tiller suggests. 

In the 1930’s, Dirac, a researcher of quantum mechanics, discovered that by stimulating the negative energy state with a photon, a particle (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”[lxxiii] – a mirror relationship.  The “Dirac sea” became known as this sea of virtual unobservable particles. 

Unlike the chaotic Dirac sea, Tiller sees negative space as 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 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”.[lxxiv]  Minute differences in orientation produce signals of varying strengths, creating a diffraction pattern with “a tremendous amount of information”.[lxxv]

In Tiller’s model, all of nature consists of layers of sublattices, each more subtle.  An inverse frequency domain, called the etheric structure, mirrors the more dense physical dimension.  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”.[lxxvi]  “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”.[lxxvii]

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 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”.[lxxviii]

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.

Dr. 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.”[lxxix]

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",[lxxx] 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”,[lxxxi] 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 energy may be directly imprinting those patterns into one’s 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”.[lxxxii] This view seems to correlate with Popp’s findings that the more unhealthy a system, or cell, the more disorderly the pattern of biophoton emission, and perhaps the less able the system is to coherently receive and integrate subtle level energy.

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”.[lxxxiii]

Dr. Tiller’s model speaks strongly for being focused and clear as a practitioner working within a patient’s energy field.  It reinforces Dr. Nogier’s caution about “guarding one’s 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.  Without inner self-management, there would exist more interference, limiting clear information transfer to occur between the subtle and physical domains involved.

Tiller’s 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.  Dr. V.S. Ramachandran, a neuroscientist and author of Phantoms in the Brain,[lxxxiv] confirms from his own research the findings of Canadian neuroscientist Wilder Penfield of the 1940’s 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 Tiller’s 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”.[lxxxv]

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”.[lxxxvi]  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 for they acknowledge that biological behavior can be controlled by invisible energy forces, which include thought”.[lxxxvii]

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.  Tiller agrees when he says, “The skin is the link which ties the organism and the universe together”.[lxxxviii]

Lipton calls the receptor-effector protein complex pair of the membrane of the cell  “a unit of perception”.  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.  Like the brain of Ramachandran’s 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”.[lxxxix]

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 organism’s 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 (-)”.[xc]

This polarized cellular action in response to stimulus reflects Tiller’s model of subtle energy being magnetic in nature, producing an electrical physical response.  Perhaps it also helps to explain the nature of the VAS.  The VAS provides a response indicating to the practitioner whether a filter (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 system’s perception of the incoming stimulus – is it good or bad?  Is it love or fear?  This polarized 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 my own felt and seen experience of a physic surgeon’s 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.

Negative entropy, the ability to overcome deterioration and create new order and new energy may indeed be related to Tiller’s description of the interface and interaction between electrical and magnetic energy.  As physical energy decreases (entropy), subtle energy increases – manifesting as higher level consciousness that can overcome slower, denser physical laws.  Indeed, what we might name as “miracles” may simply be phenomena that are operating in negative space, so not explainable within physical laws. 

Dr. Charles Shang, a medical acupuncturist, reflects Tiller’s 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”.[xci]  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 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 system’s capacity to return to balance.[xcii]

According to Shang, meridians are the “intercellular signal transduction system”.[xciii]  This communication system formed in the embryo, he says, preceding and determining the development of the nervous system.  That a magnetic, negative space, faster than the speed of light signal system as described by Tiller, and by Shang in describing meridians, is involved in intercellular communication may provide some answers to the unanswered questions noted in the last section.

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 central organizing pathway of response of the Intelligence 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, also provides 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.  Even a question in my mind, if given the energy of focused intent, can transmit an energy pattern into the etheric domain of the patient with whom I am working, and becomes a factor in the communication system, and the response, of the physical realm. 

Although space and time are not restrictions in the negative space model, being in the proximity of a patient, as in the case of an auricular medicine session, and more specifically in physical contact with that person’s pulse with my thumb, probably helps tremendously with one’s ability to focus intent enough to be able to use questions as filters of information to which the Intelligence of the system will respond with the VAS.

Perhaps the magnetic energy of our etheric body is what Schroedinger thought living systems were “sucking” from their environment in order to counteract the physical pull of entropy.  Perhaps the magnetic attraction of need and response, and the mutually exclusive polarity forces of attraction (love) and repulsion (fear) to which our cells respond, is the organizing principle behind the Intelligence that stimulates, initiates and 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 an organized physiological response that represents the urge for homeostasis and health.  This process represents the capacity of our systems to communicate with a high level of consciousness and intelligence.  The VAS is the remarkable tool provided for us to open this door of communication.   

My hope is that we move toward such a model for understanding the VAS.  It is much more than a mechanical response of the physical body – the VAS is a tool for dynamic communication between a practitioner and the Intelligence of a body-mind system.  There is much new evidence and experimentation to explore in this vein that could build confidence in and excitement for the use of the VAS.  And perhaps as Dr. Tiller suggests, conceptualizing a model of energetic communication through the VAS will provide a foundation for the advancement of auricular medicine”.[xciv]

NOTES