Healing the Body with Energy: What Modern Science Says
When ancient wisdom meets modern research, the language of healing begins to expand
Energy Healing: Beyond Belief
Every living thing moves. Not just externally, but internally, through rhythm, vibration, flow. For example, your heart pulses, your lungs expand and release, your nervous system hums with electrical signals, moment to moment, adjusting to the world around you. For thousands of years across cultures and traditions, this subtle movement was described as energy, which is when we can think of as something sensed rather than measured, experienced rather than explained. Energy healing, from Reiki and qi-based practices, to yoga, meditation, and Tibetan medicine, have understood that the body is more than physical matter. Yet in modern Western culture, energy healing is often dismissed as symbolic, placebo, or purely spiritual. But it was disregarded as unscientific simply because we didn’t yet have the tools to observe it. But is this belief slowly shifting in the West, now, that those tools are beginning to catch up?
Well, what science is now revealing is more nuanced: while the language may still differ, the mechanisms of energy healing overlap closely with what is termed nervous system regulation, bioelectrical signalling, and psychophysiological coherence. If we take each one in turn, we’re talking about the body’s natural process of balancing its Autonomic Nervous System; the body’s fundamental communication and signalling system, and coherence as optimised mind-body function working in synchronised harmony.
Healing the body with energy may not be as mysterious as it once seemed.
The Body as an Energetic System
Modern science is slowly shifting its focus from structure alone to communication. Biophysics is confirming that life is organised through energy and information, not just chemistry alone - essentially, that we are more than just matter.
At the most fundamental level, the human body is electrical, and biological processes depend on electrical signalling, electromagnetic fields, and the transmission of information across complex systems. Cells don’t just exist - they respond, send signals, they listen, they adapt. Cells communicate through electrical gradients, the nervous system operates via bioelectrical impulses, and the heart and brain generate measurable electromagnetic activity that influences the body as a whole. Information moves through the body constantly, not just through chemicals, but through electrical and electromagnetic pathways that organise how the system functions as a whole.
Rather than functioning as isolated chemical reactions, the body behaves as an interconnected, dynamic network, constantly exchanging information internally and responding to its environment. This perspective helps explain how subtle changes in rhythm, coherence, and regulation can produce wide-reaching effects across multiple systems simultaneously. From this viewpoint, healing is not only about altering chemical pathways, but also about restoring balance, communication, and organisation within the body’s energetic and informational systems. Life, it turns out, is not just built from substance, but from relationship. Energy-based practices work not by imposing change, but by influencing the conditions under which the body self-organises. Much like adjusting the tuning of an instrument, the body often finds its own way back into harmony when interference softens.
Not all change feels dramatic, but subtle work can create profound shifts. Sometimes healing shows up as deeper sleep, a steadier mood or a sense of being more “inside” yourself again. These shifts can seem small, but they ripple outward. When the nervous system settles, the immune system functions more effectively. When stress patterns unwind, the body redirects energy from protection to repair. Energy work doesn’t replace the body’s intelligence, it reminds it how to listen to itself again.
This doesn’t diminish the importance of physical medicine, it expands our understanding of how the body maintains balance, or homeostasis.
Bridging Ancient Wisdom and Modern Understanding
What ancient traditions sensed through experience, modern science is beginning to articulate through observation - essentially, speaking different languages, but arriving at the same truth.
Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) studies how the mind, nervous system, and immune system communicate. PNI research shows that emotional stress alters immune responses, that relaxation and safety improve immune regulation, and compassion-based practices influence inflammatory markers. So when we consider energy healing practices, they often create this very valuable sense of safety, promoting deep relaxation. Sometimes clients report experiencing significant emotional release due to the amount of comfort the body feels its in, and the resultant effect is that our interoceptive awareness is heightened.
Thus, one of the strongest scientific explanations for energy healing lies in its effect on the autonomic nervous system. Practices such as Reiki, gentle touch, breathwork, meditation, and restorative yoga consistently show that our heart rate reduces and we have improved heart rate variability (HRV). Also, that our cortisol levels decrease, and our parasympathetic “rest-and-digest” response is activated. When the nervous system shifts out of survival mode, and into its rest-and-digest mode, it has been shown that inflammation reduces in the body, and that our immune function is improved, that tissue repair is supported, and our hormonal balance is restored. This supports the idea that energy healing works through measurable biological pathways, and that healing is not something that is done to the body, it is something that happens through it, when the right conditions are present. Energy-based approaches don’t ask you to believe in anything, they invite you to notice and to feel what happens when attention, intention, and presence come together. What is often described as “energy flow” may be the body returning to regulated, coherent physiological rhythms.
Another key component of energy healing is focused attention. If you ever delve into the mechanics of modern neuroscience, you are shown that attention changes neural firing patterns in our brains - see Mindfulness and Meditation practices, and that presence, and moment-to-moment awareness, actually reduces fear-based processing in the brain. This makes sense, right? When we live in the present moment, our mind is not springing off to what we’ve got to do next, worried about the future, or drifting off to the past and ruminating over what came before. What is also shown, is that having or holding intention during a energy healing treatment can influence perception and impact the stress response. When a practitioner holds calm, regulated attention, and when a client feels seen and supported, the nervous system responds.
Many energy healing modalities involve light touch or hands-off presence. I use hands-off for more energy transmission. It’s a personal choice, and what works best for me will not be the same for all. I simply experience a better sense of feeling the energy myself during hands-off - I’ve tried both. Whatever your choice of presence, from a scientific perspective, both have shown to support co-regulation of the nervous system between the practitioner, and client. It supports activation of oxytocin (the bonding or love hormone), and reduces threat perception. As a first time mummy of a two-year-old in her forties, when I read this, my mind always jumps to the ever-increasing research regarding co-sleeping with a baby to support their nervous system - energy interacts. As humans, like all mammals, we are biologically wired for connection, so when we feel safe, and in attuned presence, this alone can shift physiology. So, energy healing can work through sending Universal energy transmission, and also through creating the conditions in which the body remembers how to heal itself.
For those of us living with chronic stress, pain, or illness, the nervous system is often stuck in prolonged survival mode. I feel you. By incorporating energy-based practices into your treatment plan, you are offered non-invasive support, with minimal cognitive effort, you experience deep rest without forcing change, and also a sense of being supported rather than fixed. This makes energy-based practices particularly suitable when the body is exhausted and overwhelmed.
Energy healing is not a replacement for medical care, it is a complementary approach that supports regulation, resilience, and recovery. When integrated with modern allopathic medicine thoughtfully, it can improve mainstream treatment tolerance, support your emotional wellbeing throughout your treatment journey, reduce any stress-related symptoms that you may be feeling, and overall enhance your quality of life. Healing becomes multidimensional, addressing not just the symptom, but the system.
Science does not yet have a single language for energy healing, but it increasingly recognises the role that regulation plays in healing, the power of attention and presence, the impact of emotional safety, and the body’s inherent capacity to self-repair. Presently, what ancient traditions described as energy, modern science often describes as information, rhythm, and coherence. Different words. Same wisdom.
Final Thoughts: Healing Is More Than Mechanical
Perhaps the most radical thing energy healing offers is not a technique, but a perspective. That you are not broken, that your body is not failing you, that healing is not about force, but alignment. And sometimes, the most powerful shifts happen quietly, when the system finally feels safe enough to reorganise itself from the inside out. Your body is not just a collection of parts, it is an intelligent, responsive system shaped by energy, experience, and connection.
When healing includes regulation, awareness, and compassion, the body responds, and returns to wholeness.
Energy healing reminds us that sometimes, the most powerful medicine is creating the space for the body to do what it already knows how