An interesting opportunity recently presented itself. An acquaintance announced that she was taking a class in something called “biofield tuning”. She gave a brief description and solicited volunteers for practice. She made a general request for volunteers and a specific appeal for skeptics.
I dutifully volunteered, identifying myself as a skeptic. We agreed to a time and place for the practice session. She emailed a brief explanation of what to expect. I asked for a resource to learn more about the principles of biofield tuning and she replied with a link to her instructor’s website. I read a little to get an understanding of the basics, but not too much. I didn’t want to spoil the experience of having my biofield tuned for the first time.
The experience
After a bit of confusion about the time of the appointment, I entered a clean, spacious living-room. There was a comfortable padded table with crisp linens and a pillow. I was invited to remove my shoes and lie on my back with a bolster under my knees. My friend began with a low frequency tuning fork. It was activated and applied to several points on my body: right and left feet, right and left hip bones, sternum, and the top of my head. The remainder of the session utilised higher frequency tuning forks (in the audible range). They were positioned without contact to my body starting near my feet. She activated the tuning fork (a hockey puck is the activator of choice) and repeated until, in her judgment, the fork took on the correct tone. She repeated the process over the top of my head.
She then produced a pendulum consisting of a transparent sphere on a string just a few inches long. She held the pendulum over several points on my body and observed the motion of the orb, taking notes along the way. She said this was giving her information about which areas needed further tuning. She explained that all the problematic areas were on the left side of my body, then moved several feet to my left side and activated tuning forks of various pitches at various locations in space. She moved the activated fork closer and further from my body, eventually choosing a spot and holding until the pitch was suitable.
She applied gentle traction on both ankles. I was then invited to sit up. The session ended as she placed her hands on my back just below my shoulders, regions she identified as “energy receptors.”
The session was a pleasant, relaxing, hour-long experience. Along the way she patiently explained the goal of each maneuver. The rest of the time we engaged in amiable conversation. I did not ask many questions during the session.
After the session, I commented that she repeatedly referred to “energy” but in a way that was not consistent with my understanding of energy from a physics point of view. Similarly, she had repeatedly referred to “biophotons,” but these photons were being manipulated in ways that were not consistent with the behavior of photons as I understood them. I questioned how the sound waves produced by the tuning forks could interact in any meaningful way with the body’s electromagnetic fields or biophotons. She answered my questions in context of the principles of biofield tuning. The explanations did not clarify any of my questions in a manner consistent with sound science. She admitted that she was still a trainee.
About biofield tuning
As I now understand it, biofield tuning is an alternative medicine discipline that would fall into the category of energy medicine.
The central hypothesis is the presence of a “biofield” surrounding the body. The shape of the biofield is described somewhat like the magnetic field surrounding a bar magnet, but much more complex. The biofield extends for several feet around the body, and reflects a life record timeline localised in concentric circles…
Another core principle of biofield tuning is that the biofield interacts with tones from a tuning fork. A trained practitioner can detect disruptions in the biofield through a combination of audible clues in the sound from the fork as well as tactile clues as the practitioner holds the fork and moves it through the biofield. Once the disruptions are identified, the interaction of the tones from the fork and the biofield can restore order in the field – a manoeuvre that ostensibly has healing properties. This is the “tuning” aspect of biofield tuning.
Following my session and my conversation with the student I sought answers from the source. The founder of biofield tuning is a woman named Eileen Day McKusick. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in wellness and alternative medicine and Master’s degree in integrative education. Her first book explaining the topic is Tuning the Human Biofield: Healing with Vibrational Sound Therapy, in which she describes her path toward the discovery of biofield tuning. In a section describing her education, she reveals:
I have had to bypass the math route simply because it boggles my mind and I can’t seem to get beyond it, despite trying very hard. Because of this I skipped physics and chemistry and every math class I could possibly avoid in high school and college. Given that math and science are very much in favor at the moment as the means of investigating these sorts of things, I have had to seek to understand and communicate my understanding of these things in words.
(p. 39). (Function). Kindle Edition
This self-confessed aversion to math and science is relevant as she fumbles through gauntlet of maths-centric scientific topics.
Strategic ambiguity
Much of the frustration in reading this book is the casual use and misuse of words. She pivots freely between scientific, colloquial, metaphorical, and repurposed definitions of words intended to validate the theory and practice of biofield tuning.
Remember the Mad Libs party game? In each Mad Libs book was a collection of short stories, with many key words left blank. The spaces for the missing words would have prompts like “a noun,” “a verb,” or “a body part.” One person would read the prompt, without context, to the rest of the group. The other participants would shout out responses to the prompts. The leader would fill in the blanks, then read the story with the supplied words. Hilarity ensued. The book Tuning the Human Biofield: Healing with Vibrational Sound Therapy was written Mad Libs style with two types of prompts: “alternative medicine word,” and “sciency word.”
I will quote extensively from the book.
The biofield: what is it?
From the Chapter: “Introduction”
Biofield tuning is based on the biofield anatomy hypothesis, the premise that our biofield, which extends approximately five feet on both sides of the body and three feet above the head and below the feet and is shaped like a torus, contains the record of all of our memories, embedded as energy and information in standing waves within this structure.
(p. 25). (Function). Kindle Edition.
and later in the same chapter:
I have come to believe that the memories of our life experience are recorded not in the brain, but rather in a sort of magnetic fashion in the bioplasmic bubble of our biofield (i.e., the human energy field, or aura), and that this field is compartmentalized and follows a timeline (as we generate information it moves away from our center toward our periphery, like rings on a tree)… Similar to tree rings, the record of our early years moves outward, away from our body as we age.
(p. 36). (Function). Kindle Edition.
To be clear, in trees, the earliest rings remain at the centre, the most recent are outermost.
So the biofield is a magnetic “bioplasmic bubble.” McKusick loves plasma and invokes the term extensively.
… I have uncovered an entirely different cosmology, the big picture about the nature of life. It includes the abandoned concept of aether and the surprisingly ignored concept of plasma, and needless to say it goes against our conventional model. Because this perspective is unusual and doesn’t fit into our current scientific and materialistic paradigm, we have to spend time looking at and redefining the paradigm so that it does fit.
(pp. 36-37). (Function). Kindle Edition.
Here she has admitted that her cosmology is incompatible with real science. Rather than reality-testing her cosmology, her solution is to torture the current scientific paradigm until it is unrecognisable to real scientists.
There is a common concept in energy medicine known as “subtle energy”. This is often conflated with life force, chi, and so on. McKusick tries mightily to fit subtle energy into her biofield tuning paradigm. The fact that subtle energy is not well defined and does not have agreed-upon properties is somehow spun as a positive, and is repeated again and again. The discussion results in peak Mad Libs exposition.
What exactly is subtle energy? This also a difficult subject, one that many people have tried to define, again leading to a whole lot of different words and no simple, clear definition. Here are some of the words that people use to define these subtle energies: chi, ki, prana, orgone, od, tachyon, aether, Akasha, longitudinal waves, Tesla waves, scalar waves, spirit, Holy Spirit, zero-point field, the implicate order, the Higgs field, the source field, the torsion field, the field, gravity waves, neutrinos.
(p. 43). (Function). Kindle Edition.
Scientific issues
From my earliest exposure to biofield tuning, it was apparent that there are two fundamental flaws. The biofield, as envisioned by Ms McKusick does not exist. Even if it did, sound and electromagnetic waves do not interact in the way she thinks they do. There is no known mechanism by which audible frequencies could directly tune electromagnetic fields, or even “bioplasma bubbles.”
In her definition for “energy” Ms McKusick begins with a familiar mantra of alternative medicine… *everything is energy.” She reasserts her obsession with plasma. And then drops this bombshell:
Pure energy is electromagnetic radiation, light. It is simply frequency, movement—or put another way, sound… Ultimately, everything comes from the stars, which are made of plasma… And ultimately, everything can return to its plasma state by being burned. So everything is really just some form of embodied light when you get right down to it.
(p. 42). (Function). Kindle Edition.
She conveniently dismisses the difference between light and sound. In her “cosmology” electromagnetic radiation is sound. This is flagrant nonsense. Even if a mysterious electro-magnetic biofield exists in the way she describes it (it doesn’t), sound from a tuning fork would not interact with it in any meaningful way. She gets around this thorny problem by simply declaring sound to be electromagnetic radiation (it isn’t).
Electromagnetic and sound waves are fundamentally different in ways that preclude meaningful interaction. Sound waves are mechanical vibrations that propagate through physical media like air or water. They do not exist in a vacuum. Electromagnetic fields are self-propagating oscillations of electric and magnetic fields that travel most efficiently in a vacuum. There is no known mechanism by which audible frequencies could directly ‘tune’ electromagnetic fields, or “bioplasma bubbles.” You can’t tune your radio by strumming a guitar, and you can’t tune an imaginary biofield by hitting a tuning fork with a hockey puck.
Loose ends
There were a couple of maneuvers used during my tuning for which I sought further explanation. One was the use of the pendulum used to identify areas in need of tuning. There was very little mention of this in the book, but I found a video explanation. Apparently the practitioner’s subconscious is in touch with the subject’s subconscious and guides the motion of the pendulum through the practitioner’s musculoskeletal system. This cues the practitioner to areas of the biofield most in need of tuning.
The other maneuver involved the student picking up “biophotons” from the outer portion of my biofield and returned them to my body. She used the tuning fork almost as if she was spooning something out of thin air, then pouring it into my body. Biophotons are mentioned in the book quite often:
…biophotons are quanta of coherent light that are thought to be emitted and absorbed by the DNA present in cells. Discovered by Popp in the 1970s, biophotons appear to create a holographic, coherent electromagnetic field throughout the body that uses EM frequencies for instantaneous communication throughout the systems.
(p. 162). (Function). Kindle Edition.
Enough said!
Biofield tuning… does it work?
Leaving aside the fundamental preposterousness of the theory of biofield tuning, there are practitioners and happy customers. McKusick’s website and books are bursting with anecdotes and testimonials. The expected responses are so diverse, that it would be hard NOT to experience one of the predicted outcomes.
… most people report feeling lighter, more relaxed, clearer, and calmer
(p. 260). (Function). Kindle Edition.
BUT, there may be a detox effect:
Pain may become more intense, symptoms may flare up, emotions may surface, several days of exhaustion may set in, and there may be a sense that the experience made everything worse.
(p. 260). (Function). Kindle Edition.
So, if you feel better or if you feel worse, you can be assured that your biofield tuning is working.
Research Evidence
On the Biofield Tuning Website, the founder, Eileen Day McKusick, is listed as: “…pioneering researcher, writer, inventor, practitioner, educator and speaker… founder of the Biofield Tuning Institute (which conducts grant funded, IRB approved and peer reviewed studies on the human biofield)”. Has she produced research demonstrating validating the “biofield anatomy hypothesis,” or tested the effectiveness of tuning?
I was able to locate three published studies authored by Ms McKusick. Two were “feasibility studies” for virtual biofield tuning. Apparently, the tuning forks held by a practitioner in one area code can interact with the biofield if a subject in another area code via Zoom. These two studies appear to be different reports on the same 15 patients. In one of the reports, subjects were given surveys to measure anxiety at multiple time points during three weeks of virtual treatment. The authors reported a decrease in anxiety over the course of treatment. There were no controls.
The third study was entitled “Inter-Rater Agreement of Biofield Tuning: Testing a Novel Health Assessment Procedure.” In biofield tuning, the practitioner uses a tuning fork to explore the biofield surrounding the subject. Through audible and tactile cues, the practitioner is said to identify disturbances in the biofield, then focus on these areas to bring the biofield back into tune. In this study, McKusick and coauthors set up an experiment to see if different practitioners consistently identified disturbances. This is a good idea for a study. If disturbances in biofields are real, and if practitioners possess the skills they are purported to possess, multiple practitioners should independently identify the same disturbances in the same subject.
In the study, three Biofield Tuning practitioners used tuning fork to evaluate four sites on each of the same ten volunteers. The practitioners identified perturbations along each site and located the distance from the body for each perturbation. The findings of the three practitioners were compared. The results did not validate the principles of biofield tuning. Inter-rater agreement was poor. In other words, using the preferred method of biofield tuning, the practitioners did not agree on the locations of the disturbances in the biofield,
Conclusion
My biofield tuning experience began after a longish commute into an unfamiliar neighbourhood. The session was delayed by some confusion over the appointment time. On a hot, busy day, I was happy to spend the next hour relaxing in a cool room, listening to pure tones from tuning forks, and engaging in friendly conversation. I finished the session more relaxed than I began. Given the cozy setting, the tuning ritual, and the rapport between the practitioner and the subject, I am not surprised that many other people have found the experience comforting.
Any calm achieved during my biofield tuning session was foiled by my effort to digest the principles and practices of the discipline, as explained by the founder Eileen Day McKusick. Her book Tuning the Human Biofield: Healing with Vibrational Sound Therapy is a Mad Libs exercise – terms wrestled from physics and biology interspersed with alternative medicine principles, resulting in a scientifically incoherent gibberish. The vocabulary of “energy,” “vibration,” “plasma,” etc imparts a veneer of scientific authority, however, the words are distorted, repurposed, and misused beyond meaningful communication.
