The term “Energy Medicine ” was coined in the 1980s by Dr. Elmer Green with the establishment of the International Society for the Study of Subtle Energy and Energy Medicine (ISSSEE). Dr. Green used the term to refer to alternative and traditional forms of healing that viewed the body as an energy system and believed that the body has subtle energies that shape health and disease but cannot yet be measured by current instruments. However, today, there are Western-trained physicians and scientists who embrace the term and include forms of electromagnetic healing used in mainstream medicine as well.

The foremost scientific writer on energy medicine today is Dr. James L. Oschman, Ph.D., a biologist and bio-physicist who studied under Nobel Prize winner Albert Szent-Gyorgi and was influenced by Szent-Gyorgi’s work on bioelectronics. His book, Energy Medicine: The Scientific Basis (Churchill Livingstone: 2000), is the best available synthesis of western experimental and clinical work that relates to understanding the body as an energy system or set of energy systems.

At Somadome, we define energy medicine as techniques or other modes of healing that share the common thread of viewing the body as a system of energies, rather than a mere summation of biochemical interaction. Among healers and doctors who view disease primarily in energetic terms, such as Traditional Chinese Medicine doctors and acupuncturists, disease is understood to result from blockages in or mismanagement of preferred energy flow in the body, or problems with the type of energy that communicates within human tissue. Developing a rigorous and scientifically plausible theory of the human energy system that is consistent with what we know of human biology and allows for testable hypotheses and measurable results is at the cutting edge of science and medicine today.