Biofield Science and Healing: History, Terminology, and Concepts.

The short version

This foundational paper set out to define a single question: what exactly is the biofield? The authors — four researchers who helped establish the field — describe it as a complex organizing field of energy and information engaged in generating, maintaining, and regulating the body's self-balancing processes (homeodynamics). The term was coined in 1992 to give scientists and practitioners of energy medicine a common word for what traditions have long called qi (the vital functional energy of Chinese medicine) or prana (the life force in Indian traditions). Rather than running an experiment, the paper maps the concept's history and terminology. It shows how the idea grew out of vitalism (the historical view that living things carry a distinctive organizing force) into something researchers can study at many scales — from ultra-weak light emissions of cells (biophotons) to the electrical fields of the heart and brain that hospitals already measure every day with ECG and EEG machines. The authors' central move is connecting three worlds that rarely talk to each other: spiritual traditions describing energy pathways in the body, hands-on healing practices meant to support that flow, and laboratory biology showing that electromagnetic fields genuinely participate in development and tissue repair. They are careful about what this does and does not prove: the biofield is presented as a working concept and even a scientific metaphor — a hypothesis-generating tool — not an established mechanism. There are no statistics, patients, or outcomes here, and no health condition is addressed; the evidence level is expert synthesis. The paper's value is as the terminology cornerstone of biofield research: nearly every later study of Reiki, Therapeutic Touch, or energy healing devices builds on the definitions established in this supplement.

Key findings

• The biofield is defined as a complex organizing field of energy and information proposed to help generate, maintain, and regulate the body's self-balancing processes.
• The term was coined in 1992 to bridge traditional concepts like qi (Chinese medicine) and prana (Indian traditions) with measurable biology.
• Conventional medicine already measures the body's fields daily — ECG for the heart and EEG for the brain — which the authors use as common ground.
• The concept applies across scales, from biophotons (ultra-weak light emitted by cells) to whole organisms and beyond.
• The authors present the biofield as a hypothesis-generating framework and metaphor, not proven mechanism — a distinction they state plainly.

Common questions