BIOENERGY: A HEALING ART. [FILM]

Walsh, P.F.(Producer & Director)
& Boyd, D.(Associate producer).
New York, N.Y.: New World Media Alliance, 1992.

Watching this film is a deeply satisfying experience for all with an interest in human energy system, and their function in healing and restoration. This is an important film, a first in looking in depth at bioenergy in healing, from a treatment perspective, from the perspective of students and clients, and also from the scientific perspectives of brain mapping and measurement of electrostatic and electromagnetic fields generated by the healing process.

Bioenergy healing is recognized and practiced in many countries, from the physician-healer network in Great Britain to practitioners in every continent of the world. The healer featured in this film, Mietek Wirkus, worked professionally in hospitals hand in with physicians in his native Poland before coming to this country (U.S.A.). New scientific understanding is giving this work greater acceptance, which will not only expand medical practice, but also give a greater understanding of our human capacities and ourselves.

Walsh has done a masterful job of weaving together the examples of healing with the laboratory studies and scientific commentary. Clients include both children and adults, representing a range of problems: a child with a seizure disorder, an infant with a congenital vision disorder who was expected never to see, an infant treated while undergoing multiple heart surgeries; and a women with complications of pregnancy. In addition, two laboratory studies were conducted. Elmer Green measured the energy field on Mietek Wirkus while he was working with a young woman with post-traumatic dizziness, and Steven Fahrion measured brain rhythm synchrony between the practitioner and a client with post-surgical abdominal pain. Interviews are conducted with Mietek’s students who are learning and applying the bioenergy techniques, and with Robert Becker and Elmer Green who provide medical and psychophysical rationales, and philosophical and conceptual background for understanding the phenomena.

The production is thoughtful, beautifully filmed, gentle and loving, and at the same time is high impact, dramatic, exciting, expansive, mind-stretching. Perhaps quoting Mietek Wirkus from the film can make the best synopsis. Describing his use of bioenergy in healing, he says: “It is like jump-starting a battery,,.” The film is like a jump-start for the viewer — a jump- start to integrating existential experience with scientific understanding.

Patricia A. Norris, PhD.
Director
Biofeedback and Psychophysiology Center
The Menninger Clinic