From Ibrahim El-Feki to Ahmed Emara... Why do people believe in "energy therapy nonsense"?

About 30,000 interactions, between likes, shares and comments, obtained by "Maha Al-Attar", a famous personality on social media, followed by more than 750,000 people, because of a post saying that the real reason for the killing of the Mansoura girl on June 20 was only A painting stood to take a picture next to it, because this picture carried a measure of negative energy that attracted the "crazy lover" to the girl to kill her, then warned against the "picture of wings", "the picture of the cake" and "the picture of the cartoon"!

It does not depend only on this case, another expert in energy sciences called “Suha Eid” who has approximately the same number of followers, says that there is a relationship between the letters we choose for the names of our children and their fate, because the letters are divided into types, some of which may be harmful, and even adds a claim The reason for the instability of some countries, such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Taiwan and Lebanon, is related to the letters of the country's name, precisely because they all end with the consonant nun (n), which is one of the "air letters that attract negative energy", according to her claim.

This is of course, and we have not yet talked about Dr. Ahmed Emara, the chief energy specialist in the Arab world, who is followed by 3.8 million people on Facebook only, with millions more on YouTube, Instagram and other platforms. Most importantly, he is a permanent guest on the most important television programs in the Arab world. Its courses are scattered all over the place, from the ocean to the Gulf, an architecture that does not stop at the barrier of energy therapy, but rather extends the lines on their straight lines to interpret the Qur’an through an energetic viewpoint.

But there is no doubt that the first person to spread the idea of ​​energy therapy in the Arab world was Ibrahim El-Feki. The man’s quotes and clips are still circulating everywhere on the Internet, and he claimed that he holds a doctorate from a university called “Metaphysics,” and that he specializes in the areas of NLP. And the man has more than 40 books that are still being sold, with multiple courses on success, the power of thinking, the power of the subconscious mind, the art of decision-making, and others.

stations in the body

Al-Faqi, along with all followers of this domain so far, is interested in the chakras (1), a word coming from the Sanskrit language and meaning "a spinning wheel".

This term simply indicates that the body contains stations that produce and store energy, and when these areas are closed, the flow of energy in the body stops, and therefore diseases and disorders of all kinds arise, whether they are mental or physical, and when they open, the energy flows in the body well, so these problems disappear, whether It was diseases or just a mood swing or bad luck.

Chakras are used in a variety of ancient religious practices, collectively called "tantra", the esoteric traditions of Indian religions.

Beliefs differ among Indian religions about the number of chakras, as many Buddhist texts constantly refer to five chakras, while Hindu sources refer to six or seven chakras, and ten chakras were said, but all of the above was only religious traditions until the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the century The Twenty When Chakras appeared in Europe and the United States with the appearance of Sir John Woodruff's book "The Serpent Power" in 1919, and Charles Ledbetter's book "The Chakras" in 1927, which presented the seven colors of the rainbow for the chakras, which developed and expanded Its spread and its number became fixed, and it is the version that is currently roaming the world.

The Chakras book by Charles Ledbetter.

After that, a set of psychological features were added to the chakras, and in the sixties and seventies it became an essential part of astrology and Kabbalah in the United States of America, and false religions such as the “New Age” and “New Thought” embraced it. The United States of America in particular travels to the Arab world easily, whether we are talking about energy therapy or mythical conspiracy theories.

Read also: To all the importers of authentic American bullshit in the Arab world!

energy without energy

Now you will think that we will spend some time debunking the chakras from a scientific point of view, and this is true, but we will not need time, as there is no (2) scientific evidence for the existence of such things, and there are no studies indicating that this chakra is here and this there, nor There are any diagnostic or anatomical observations that indicate the presence of any of these points in the body, despite the accuracy of current diagnostic examination and radiology tools. The chakras are originally a concept that does not fit with the modern scientific understanding of how the human body uses and stores energy.

Chakra systems are also naive, follow childish thinking, meaning for example that the red chakra will be better if you eat red food or wear red clothes!

You will even find a claim that says that the well-being of the fifth chakra, which is located near the throat, is related to a person's ability to tell the truth, because its place is in the throat!

The chakras represent the backbone of a broader idea called "energy" and "energy therapy", which says that there is "vital energy" (3) that runs in the body, which is the difference between inanimate and living, but this vital energy is just a term used without denoting something specific. For example, if I told you: Why is opium a drug?

You will say to me: “Because of its ability to sedate.” Here you do not understand why opium causes sedation, but you repeat the question to me in declarative form, and the same is true of vital energy.

In touch therapy (4), for example, which is a branch of the energy trick, practitioners use their hands to direct the flow of energy throughout your body in order to promote healing. Touch therapy can relieve anxiety and stress, help wounds heal quickly, improve immune system function, reduce pain, nausea, fatigue and other side effects of cancer chemotherapy, improve symptoms of chronic conditions such as fibromyalgia and lupus, get better sleep and feel calm and relaxed, and even And give more confidence and self-awareness, can you imagine that only one treatment is used for all these purposes?!

There are various images of touch therapy, the most popular of which is on Arabic YouTube channels Reiki, a spiritual practice developed by Japanese Buddhist Mikao Usui in 1922. There is a nice thing about refuting healing touch. The most famous experiment in this area was conducted by a 9-year-old girl named Emily. Rose, so far the youngest publisher in the research world.

The study (5) was published in the prestigious journal JAMA in 1998.

Emily Rose, Research World's Youngest Publisher.

21 practitioners of therapeutic touch participated in Rose's study, and because they say they are treated by detecting the aura of the body from afar, the experiment was to try to discover her aura.

Practitioners stood on one side of a wall made of cardboard, while Emily stood on the other side and changed position from time to time. Although all participants asserted that they would be able to do so, the actual results did not support their assertions, and after repeated trials practitioners succeeded in locating her hand at a rate not much different from chance.

One of the forms of energy that is also widespread in the Arab world is "Feng Shui", a Chinese tradition that attempts to control the health, wealth and future of the individual through mechanisms through the arrangement of living quarters, tombs, and external and internal physical structures in general (furniture, buildings, cities), targeted by During this tradition of organizing these things to be consistent with ancient beliefs about how energy works within humans and their environments, "Feng Shui" contains claims such as: If there is a flowing river, build your house on one side of it, because the flow of water is a flow of energy, your house should be designed So that the energy flows between its sides and is not obstructed by the walls, knowing that if your house is similar to someone else's house, there is an opportunity for the two houses to be connected!

Feng Shui is a Chinese tradition that attempts to control the health, wealth and future of the individual through mechanisms through the arrangement of living quarters, tombs, and external and internal physical structures in general.

"Feng Shui" consists of two separate ideas, the first is a scientific claim that there is an energy of the place that interacts with the energy of the human body, this energy helps in health and wealth, and this is simply an unscientific claim (6), and it has no value in any way, and there are no studies that support this Direction, "Feng Shui" is a practice with ancient religious origins haunted by Chinese myths and zodiacs.

The second is an artistic claim. Over time, “feng shui” has developed into a beautiful art, such as the art of arranging Japanese flowers, jazz music, or Renaissance drawings. Art here joins the world of architecture, and art is not a science, and there is no harm in practicing it as an art. .

cognitive biases

Energy believers claim that they experience a physical, mental, and emotional improvement after aligning their chakras.

But this has reasons, the first of which is a cognitive factor such as the "confirmation bias" (7), meaning that individuals who believe there are chakras associated with their well-being will be more likely to recall times when improvements in well-being occurred after they have taken steps to ensure an open or balanced These chakras.

Imagine, for example, that you want to buy a Hyundai, every day you go to the street and see a lot of cars of different types, but on the day you decide to buy a Hyundai, you start noticing it everywhere, as if there is A message for you saying that that car is really the chosen one, but all that actually happened is that you took the bias to notice it and focus on it at the expense of other cars.

In addition to cognitive factors, it is also possible that social influences play a role. If an artist, actor, or celebrity on the Internet says the chakras are useful, or if you join a chakra group, you will be affected.

On the other hand, a cancer patient, for example, who was persuaded after despair by chemotherapy to try energy therapy, may feel better after a treatment session with touch, auras or chakras, but that is only the placebo effect (8), a placebo is a substance that is given to the patient He thinks that it aims to treat him, and does not have a real effect in treating the disease in particular, but with it, the patient is deluded psychologically that this treatment he is taking carries a cure for his disease and that it is an effective treatment in getting rid of it.

This treatment is used in new drug tests and in medical research, without the therapist knowing whether this drug is effective or not, and the situation in which the recipient of the drug sees that he actually felt better because of his personal expectations is called the "placebo effect" or "delusional response", This is already observed in some medicines. For example, the participant in the experiment takes a placebo as a medicine for headaches. He gets a little better and thinks that he has received a real effective treatment with his condition. Here, all that our friend with cancer does is that he will be addicted to those sessions that give him some improvement.

trick medicine

Awakening means that a person focuses on the present moment without making judgments, and this includes exercises such as breathing and others.

If you spoke with a believer of energy claims and superstitions, he would say that you follow the "formal way" or "the regular", and that there are "things that science cannot understand", and then he tells you that science rejects these traditions for their own sake, and that this rejection has to do with "paradigm". The scientific method can only see with one eye, but even at that point medicine was able to understand the instrumental role of techniques drawn from ancient religious traditions.

Take, for example, “vigilance” or “mindfulness” (9). Indeed, some research has found that they are techniques that can be useful with some mental disorders, and they are currently used as a complementary treatment with medications, and good results have already appeared for this rich cooperation, and mindfulness is An ancient Buddhist tradition, which was used for worship and then turned into a non-religious medical form under the name Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy. Mindfulness means that a person focuses on the present moment without making judgments, and this includes exercises such as breathing and others, but Do you notice the difference between what is scientific and what is unscientific?

There is a clear identification in the case of the scientific use of a therapeutic technique, there are percentages and specific types of mental illness such as anxiety or depression, and there is also a clear and announced failure rate and the general opinion that this range is still subject to scientific examination, so there is not a great degree of confidence yet, and there An overlap between more than one method of treatment (medication and psychotherapy), but for the chakra coach or the healing touch, it treats everything from normal functional anxiety to colon cancer. Add that you will notice in the practitioners of these myths that they deal with the principle that every elder has a method, there is no way One has a specific methodology for treating a specific disease, but every teacher or spiritual father has his own way, just as every Sufi sheikh has his own way of getting closer to God, for example!

Tu Youyou, recipient of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology, because she discovered the great benefits of the herb Artemisia annua, and extracted artemisia, which achieved high efficacy with malaria.

In 2015, the Chinese "Tu Youyou" received the Nobel Prize (10) in medicine and physiology, because she discovered the great benefits of the herb "Artemisia annua", and extracted from it artemisia, which achieved high effectiveness with malaria, before this discovery the herb was already part of Traditional Chinese medicine, but it was not directed to a specific use, and was used for all purposes, but with scientific research we know the mechanism of action of this active substance and its kinetics in the body, and its appropriate concentrations and doses for each disease condition, we also know that it has side effects, and that these symptoms appear with Specific dose Have you ever heard of an energy coach talking about the side effects of the technique he's treating you with?

of course not.

Compare the foregoing with the most obvious notion of the types of energy to us, which is undoubtedly “aura” (Aura).

According to New Age beliefs, the aura is a colorful luminous effusion that envelops the human body or any living or inanimate being. For them, it is a hidden component of the body, and they claim that they can see the size, color and type of those auras.

In a clearer sense, the aura is a metaphysical anatomy, which is reflected in human health and is associated with the chakras.

Of course, these claims are pseudoscience, there is no scientific evidence to prove them, and the ability to see auras has not been shown when tested in specific comparative trials, but those energy healers will continue to tell you that what they practice "is not in the line of conventional medicine", and that is true. If you contemplate a little, they actually do not practice medicine or science, but rather they are monks in a colorful contemporary religion that manages to digest all other religions, so it is easy to find an energy healing coach wearing the mantle of a sheikh and interpreting the Qur’an and hadith, because these terms such as energy, chakras, aura and healing place energy By touch it can be passed under the guise of debt.

In the end, the question remains: Why do these myths, which constitute a huge market worth billions of dollars around the world, especially in the Arab world, continue to this day despite their failure in the sober test?

We do not know a clear reason, but perhaps the reason is that people’s despair and loss of confidence in major reference systems or concepts, such as social justice, science, politics and even religious concepts, is what gave the counterfeiters the opportunity to promise people a quick cure for all diseases, a comfortable life, and no communication Limited, and Superman's abilities in reading, work, wealth and sex, there was no need to give in to all this imported nonsense!

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