I'm wondering if anybody knows anything about this or where I can find a good source of information. I have a teacher, a little old chinese woman who learned traditional chinese medicine/herbology and qi gong growing up. She is incredibly knowledgeable and can often tell if i have a certain condition or ailment just by looking at me. One day in class i dropped a serrated knife and cut my hand. She had me sit down and take slow deep breaths while resting my hand on a table. Then she took out a little copper pipe attached to the end of a small chain and let it swing freely a couple inches above my hand. She told me this was to bring my energy back to my hand and start the healing process. She put a loose bandage on and told me to take it off after a few hours and not to put another one on. Two days later my cut was completely healed! Once i got really sick for a couple of days, i had no energy and kept coughing until i would vomit. So I called her to say i wouldn't make it to class and she told me to come in if I could and she wouldn't expect me to do any work. When I got to class she made me some hot tea and had me sit in the corner. After she lectured for a while and had the rest of the class get to work she brought over about five medicinal teas. She had me hold them, one at a time, in my palm while she swung her copper pipe over my hand. For most of teas the pipe was swinging in a counter clockwise circle, but when i held one of them the pipe would swing in a clockwise circle (im not 100% sure of the directions). She told me this was the one my body needed. I didn't really understand this but i trust her so i drank it anyway. By the end of the class (about 6 hours) i was full of energy, felt no more symptoms and was cured of my ailment. Later she explained to me that copper is very receptive to energy. When i hold the tea in my hand, if my energy and the teas energy are in harmony the copper swings in a clockwise circle. Ive heard about copper bracelets being used to help circulation and arthritis but i was never really interested, but now im starting to think that there might be something really interesting going on here. Does anyone know where I can find some good information on this subject? Ive searched the internet but my results are mostly crap and gimmicks!
There are various elements here, and it is tempting to stick them all together to make something that isn't there, because they come from the same source. QiGong, meditative techniques to increase energy. Actually, there is some science in this. QiGong states that Chi energy moves around the body, and is concentrated in certain organs at different times of the day. Our organs do vary in activity on a daily cycle. This is therefore nothing mystic, but just good observation. Therefore if you feel ill when you are in part of you natural cycle, exercise at that time may increase activity enough to make you feel well. Herbalism. Herbal remedies vary from mere placebo effect, to quite effective, to downright lethal. Many pharmaceutical remedies start off as herbal ones, like Aspirin (salycilic acid, salicylates are present in good quantity in Olives, Mushroom, Green Pepper and Tomatoes), and Digitalis (from the flower 'Foxglove'). Both of which can be beneficial under the right circumstances and doses, and fatal in others. Copper tubes. Well, this part is where we lose the science a little. There is strong evidence for mind over matter when it comes to the experience of pain. Studies have shown that people who have an emotional response to pain, as well as the physical response, feel more pain. (http://www.med.umich.edu/opm/newspage/2003/painbrain.htm) Having your attention diverted by a copper tube, by someone you trust, can help prevent your emotional response to pain, having some 'treatment' my increase your healing rate via the placebo effect. So it's not the copper tube, but your trust in your healer, rather. Often trust is gained by a QiGong practioner performing some seemingly impossible feat, and this validates the rest of their teachings. Most of the feats are 'vagabond moves', circus tricks, effectively. I won't denythat they take a certain degree of skill to perform correctly, but there is a trick to them.
There are no "good" sources of information on this topic. Where "good" means realible and trustworthy. I'm very sorry to tell you this but healing with copper falls into the exact same category as theraputic magnets. This type of thing has enjoyed many resurections - only to fade into oblivion once again. Why? Because the straight answer is that such things only seem to work for a very small number of people. And provide no benefits at all for the vast majority who try them. So once again the question is why? Why do they actually seem to work for only a tiny fraction of people? Phlogistician provided the correct answers. It can also be described in other terms - mind over matter, the very real placebo effect, and the most common of all: it really did nothing but people thought it did. In the latter case, the body's own healing systems were hard at work, fixed the problem, but the people gave the credit to their copper or magnetic devices. I have no doubt you teacher is honest in her beliefs and in what she's be taught. But I must point out that other practioners have also had good results from other things as well. Things like sacrificing chickens, sprinkling blood on someone's head, uttering magical chants, potions, and various other approaches. All of these actually DO seem to produce results in about the same percentage of people as copper treatments. Does that tell you anything?
Your teacher is hypnotising you with the dangly copper pipe on a chain and feeding you chemicals via cleverly disguised 'teas', that put you in a particulary suggestible state. I'd report her Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! peace c20
And you'll get nothing. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Change that to a coil of copper wire with many turns and you'll induce an electric current into it.
Ever use a triple beam balance scale? or, Look up what is called a magnetic damper. Copper is greatly effected by magnetic fields. "It is not what you know, or don't know, but what you know that isn't so that will hurt you. Will Rodgers, 1938"
It's fair to say that I've used tripple-beam balance scales no less than a few thousand times in the lab. And I already know what a magnetic damper is and eddy currents. However, your statement is incorrect - copper is NOT "greatly affected" by magnetic fields. And any magnetic damper consists of much more than the example of "passing a copper knife through a magnetic field."
FOCLMFAO The scale uses a coper blade at the end that passes through a set of magnets to stop it's motion quickly. Duh? I sprained my wrist trying to quickly swing a large copper sword through a magnetic field while at Ripplies Believe It or Not in Newport Oregon. Copper is VERY GREATLY affected. Now try to convince me. FOCLMFAO again. oh god, they let you near a lab? eeeeeeks!
Sure they did. One reason being that I was among the few in the department that knew how to set up and calibrate a HPLC. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
If Copper is a very good source of energy, then Gold and Silver should be far superior. Silver also when touched will kill microbes. The accupuncture points do receive and transmit energy, but the key is to increase the amplitude of energy which are basically coded signals that the cells use for internal communication. In other words, if you can increase the signal level at the specific damaged location, then the body can speed up its repair process. This is not the same thing as putting magnets, metals or voltage to it. It may be possible that the silver accupunture needles somehow increase the signal level which are in nanoampere range. I have tested laying a warm hand and consciously wishing the damaged area to heal - that process did work 100%, but for simple pain or minor damages. I believe, if we can amplify the pure signal through a low noise amplifier, that could produce good results. Only some heavy research could prove that. I am yet to find a sensitive recording device that I could use to record my laying hand signal and test that in a scietific way. A lot of research is needed in this area...someday...
Norv, amazing tangent you've managed to drag this thread into. The ONLY magnetic field relevant to the copper Oscar mentioned was the earth's magnetic field. And you know, when I was plumbing parts of my house, I never felt any unusual resistance moving copper pipe. So, rather than copper being 'very greatly affected', I think the affect you experienced at Ripley's was due to the humungous magnetic field, and copper was used because it would not become permanently magnetised over time, and spoil the effect of the exhibit, like a steel alloy would, and copper won't stick to the electromagnet. Aluminium being a good conductor and non-ferromagentic would work just as well. Again Norv, the conclusions you draw from the data are spurious, and ill thought out.
While your at it Norval, why don't you look into the use of Aluminium and magnetic coils in the use of one both shopping Mall elevators and a particular Fairground/themepark ride which involves people sitting around a column which they are then shot up into the air about 130ft or more, and then freefall back down. They use the Aluminium movement and the magnets to slow the ride down. (saw it on BBC once)
It looks like the debunkers in this thread are just about as half-assed as usual. Any sort of silliness you can come up with is good, you don't respect your competition. James Randi is one of the biggest jackasses in the history of the planet. He, above all others that I know of, is the one who got people to believing his idea that if he could duplicate a trick by sleight of hand, it proved that the trick was fake. This leads to poor logic like the logic that if a mystical experience can be induced by electrical stimulation of an area of the brain, this proves that all mystical experiences are caused by brain dysfunction. Randi wasn't the first to use inequitable systems of logic, but he made it acceptable and more popular. That said, all the mumbling about "ideomotor effect" and "vagabond moves" shows that the speaker thinks he can prove a practice wrong without having to know anything about the subject, and that he even wears his ignorance of the actual subject as a badge of pride. I really wish all people who were like that would live in a trailer, wear a mullet, eat pork rinds and wash them down with beer. Then we would know who they were and we wouldn't waste time paying attention to them. The trouble that we Westerners have with Eastern practices is that the body and mind are one. The presentation of a medicine is at least as important as the medicine is. We sort of know this, but we don't take the time to truly respect or to truly understand this truth. Even saying that the mental part "enhances" the response to the medicine masks a part of the truth. The truth is that harmony and balance are not just words they use to sell their wares.
"Copper is very receptive to energy" is a meaningless statement. Of course it is. You can conducted heat and electricity very easily through it and it becomes very mallible when excited with a hammer. Nothing special there. What's meaningless, however, is that there is some "energy" in your hand that the copper was "receptive" to in some special way that allowed/caused your hand to heal. Your hand healed no quicker than it would have if she'd placed a aluminium foil hat on your head and instructed you to wear it for the day. What you notice with people like her are the "hits" -the moments that she appears correct- and the "misses" are disregarded. Had you hand healed on its own from just application of Neosporen and a band aid, would you have praised the Neosporan or the band aid?
While it's true that the proper approach of medicine should include treating both the body and mind (and more doctors are begining to understand this), all the rest of your post seems nothing more than a rant in favor of "mystical" methods. Could you try a little harder to explain just what you're talking about?
Yes, Light, I could try a little harder, but I'd rather you went to the library and learned some of this stuff yourself.
Perhaps light tries to remain within the scholarly libraries and out of the pseudoscience libraries. Or, perhaps you could cite some relevant literature that isn't pseudoscientific that supports the mumbo jumbo you seem to believe in.
Ah, here we have it. The arrogance that is present in all pseudoscientists. Only _you_ see the full picture, and those that don't agree with you must somehow be lacking in knowledge or experience. Well, you're wrong. I have personal experience of martial arts, meditative techniques, and extreme pain. I started doing Judo when I was 7 years old. When I was about 9, I started getting migraine headaches. I was prescribed pain killers for these, but as I always vomited when I had a migraine, never kept them down long enough to take effect. So my only option for pain relief was to understand my pain, and control it through relaxation and breathing exercises. Some of these I was taught by my sensei. This has stood me in good stead. I shattered my leg on a mountain, and didn't get any pain relief for 12 hours, and have managed to control other painful episodes through understanding the physiological and emotional reactions to trauma. There is nothing mystic in this, you don't need to have an Eastern belief system for it to work, and separating mind and body doesn't detract from the efficacy. But your response was typical, in that it failed to focus on the content of the posts, but instead tried to build a straw man and state that 'the speaker' was trying to "prove a practice wrong". That was not what I was doing, far from it, I was giving a scientific explanantion for the phenomena. I certainly wasn't denying that there could have been an effect! Now, if you are to get into this debate, stick to the facts, and debate honestly.
SkinWalker is quite correct, MetaKron, I've no interest in digging through a lot of pseudoscience in an attempt to find something factual. That would take a tremendous amount of time, most of which would be completely wasted. My question is an honest one - if you have information to share, simply tell us where it is.
