Part 9 - Why Energy Healing Remains a Marginal Practice
Despite growing interest, success stories, and advancements in energy medicine, it continues to exist on the fringes of mainstream healthcare. Even as more patients and practitioners acknowledge its benefits, energy healing has yet to gain widespread acceptance within the medical community or attract substantial media and research attention. Several obstacles, ranging from cultural biases to institutional resistance, stand in the way of its broader integration into conventional medicine.
Chapter 9.1 - Cultural Barriers and the Perception of Rationality
Despite a certain decline, faith in Western medicine is still the most popular amongst Western populations. For generations in the West, thanks to its undeniable results and success, conventional medicine has generated confidence and hope, although sometimes with the fallacy of being idealized.
Patients expect a lot, if not everything, from modern medicine as if it had solved or has promised to solve all human health problems. The explosion of metabolic diseases, including cancers, obesity, autoimmune, cardiovascular, psychological and neurological diseases, etc., unfortunately proves the opposite. When faced with illness, people may feel as if placing their trust in an energy specialist is like giving up on Western medicine.
The first obstacle is therefore cultural and psychological. Moreover, many people who use energy therapies, historically, haven’t spoken to their doctors about it. However, after decades of growth, thanks to the globalization of information and the evolution of practices in hospitals, the patient's voice is beginning to be heard.
Chapter 9.2 - Institutional Resistance and Distrust
Official medical and legislative authorities largely maintain that energy healing practices are pseudosciences, sometimes even associating them with fringe or sect-like movements. This entrenched conservatism reflects a long-standing Western paradigm that values scientific evidence-based medicine over other forms of care. The regulatory framework surrounding energy therapies is often restrictive, limiting access and professional recognition for energy healers.
Despite advances in evidence-based holistic approaches, alternative practices like energy healing face significant hurdles in gaining legitimacy. As a result, most Western populations remain locked into conventional, medication-driven healthcare systems. Insurance companies, for instance, rarely cover energy therapies, creating additional barriers for patients seeking alternative treatments.
This institutional distrust not only hinders research but also prevents broader adoption of integrative health solutions that could offer long-term benefits.
Chapter 9.3 - Overreliance on Medications
Prescription drug culture continues to dominate healthcare systems, despite mounting evidence of overprescription and its negative consequences. Recent health scandals, such as the opioid crisis, have shaken public confidence, yet the reliance on medication as a quick fix for complex health issues persists. Pharmaceutical companies have successfully marketed drugs as solutions for everything from depression to chronic pain, leading to widespread use of antidepressants and opiates, which address symptoms but not underlying health problems.
This reliance on medications often prevents patients from exploring alternative therapies that could provide more sustainable healing. In the face of rising healthcare costs and increasing numbers of chronic disease cases, it’s more urgent than ever to shift toward a preventive, holistic model that includes energy therapies. By doing so, we can address the root causes of disease and improve long-term health outcomes without relying on expensive, and sometimes harmful, pharmaceutical interventions.
Chapter 9.4 - The Placebo Debate and Limits to Research
Many Western scientists continue to dismiss energy healing as a mere placebo effect, an explanation that has stunted the growth of serious research into the practice. While the placebo effect is an important psychological phenomenon, reducing energy medicine to this explanation alone creates a confirmation bias that discourages further investigation. This limited perspective has caused the field to stagnate in many scientific circles, where skepticism outweighs curiosity.
At the same time, energy healing remains vastly under-researched compared to other alternative therapies. Despite growing patient demand and positive anecdotal evidence, funding for large-scale clinical studies remains scarce. This mirrors the early skepticism faced by therapies like psychotherapy, hypnosis, and osteopathy, which were once dismissed but are now widely accepted in hospitals and universities. By fostering a multidisciplinary approach and increasing research into the mechanisms behind energy healing, we can pave the way for its integration into mainstream healthcare, much like other once-controversial practices like Acupuncture, Hypnosis, Osteopathy or even Psychoterapy.
One of the main reasons energy healing faces skepticism is our resistance to accepting what we don’t fully understand. Psychologically, we gravitate toward explanations we can see or measure, and we tend to dismiss things that fall outside these boundaries. Energy healing, though its benefits can often be noticed, lacks a clear scientific explanation, leading many to doubt its validity.
This bias of skepticism is similar to the issue with climate change, but in reverse. Climate change is scientifically explained, yet because its effects are often subtle or hard to notice in daily life, people resist believing in its urgency. In both cases, whether it's something we can’t explain or something we can’t easily see, our resistance to the unknown, to accepting an "unconvenient truth" blocks acceptance. Overcoming this bias is key to opening our minds to new possibilities, whether in healthcare or environmental issues.