Physicians use medicines and drugs to act directly upon the ailing body. Chiropractors and osteopaths try to effect the internal system through the stimulation of muscles and nervous system. Psychic healers take a whole different approach of using the power of the mind and minimal if any physical contact to manifest healing. Sometimes the healing is purely mental and other times a healer has to merely touch the effected parts with the fingertips, make passes over the afflicted part or even hold their hands a short distance away. Cures have also been brought on through other such means as psychically "willing" or influencing the subject's subconscious mind. Meditation or prayer by an individual or groups and another kind of healing that takes place in a religious setting through a faith healer or at a shrine when self-healing and spontaneous cures are also prevalent.

There are many natural healers who concentrate their "powers" in their hand. The pain and other symptoms often disappear when these healers place their hands on the afflicted parts of a patient's body, this is referred to as "lay on of hands". This method goes back to ancient times. The symptoms often return but there are a few cases of a permanent cure. The stroking technique in psychic healing was commonly used in earlier centuries. Insted of touching the afflicted parts, the healer tried to brush the pain away by stroking it out toward the nearest extremity. One of the most famous strokers was a 17th century englishman, Valentine Greatrakes, who cured many.

During the healing process, many patients report heat or a mild electric shock when the healers hands touch them. Those who are cured by faith healer Kathryn Kuhlman speak of a drastic change in their bodies, a mysterious tingeling sensations and great electrical shocks. Those who do the laying on of hands say they feel the same kind of heat sensation reported by their subjects. This happens not only with direct touch but also in just passing the hands a few inches abouve the body but making no skin contact. Sometimes there are other physical symptoms during contact or when a healer feels his "power" coming on. Ambrose Worrall writes in The Gift of Healing that once when he was in the same room with his sister who has a paralytic neck, he felt a "mass emerging" out of his solar plexus area. He felt this force pull him over to his sister's chair and his hands were involuntarily drawn to his sisters neck. The paralysis was gone after he touched her for several seconds.

Since pain can be communicated telepathically, it is natural that a highly sensitive person such as a psychic healer to sometimes "absorb" the pain or even take on the patients symptoms. A 19th century healer named Dr. Mack would often experience all the symptoms of the person he touched, and would make passes over his own body to relieve the symptoms he absorbed from the patient. Psychologist Lawrence LeShan believes that these symptoms are only temporary and will not stay with the healer. There is yet another method of healing called "the human chain". This is where a healer is assisted by several psychics while he is in contact with a patient. Dr. Mack used this technique and would often call in other psychics and healers who would form a chain while he touched or manipulated the patient's body.

Practically every kind of disease known to man has been cured by psychic healing. In laying on of hands and other healer-to-patient situations, minor illnesses and psychosomatic illnesses seem to get quick relief. The more serious ailments have allegedly been relieved or stimulated with miracle cures that took place in religious halls and at shrines and tombs. Sometimes the cure is instantaneous and the patient never suffers again. In the laying on of hands, it often takes several treatments to effect a cure. Its also been reported that in some cases the disease returns, possibly because the patient subconsciously clings to his symptoms for neurotic reasons.

Group healing by religious organizations or private circles are preformed through prayer and meditations and believed to bring relief and cures to persons who are ill at home or in hospitals. In these and other cases, it is theorized that there need be no direct contact and that the healing works just as well at a distance. Sometimes the patient, when physically able is brought into the presence of the group and the healing process is strengthened by the participation of both the group and the patient. Miracle healings are usually associated with the religious shrines, demonstrations by faith healers, etc., and are called this because of the instantaneous remission of incurable diseases. This has happened often in the presence of Kathryn Kuhlman. During one of her services, a man felt an electric shock in his blind eye and in the next moment, he was able to see again out of the blind eye. While not all people that go to a faith healer receieve miracle cures, it seems that those that attend without expecting help or instantaneous cures often receive it over those with high expectations. Others have reported that the cures have taken place later and are not instantaneous.

The reputation for miracle cures at the Catholic shrine in Lourdes, France began when a peasant girl, Bernadette Soubirous, claimed to receive a visit from the Virgin Mary who asked that a shrine be set up at that spot. Today still, thousands of people still come to Lourdes to bathe in the springs with the hope for a cure. There have been many claims of cures from cancer, blindness, spinal injuries and other diseases thought to be irreversable. The Catholic church has strict guidelines for proclaiming a miracle cure and will only do so for documented cases where medical records and careful medical scrutiny and investigation show diseases that have been considered incurable and that the cure was instantaneous when the person bathed in the waters. While there may be many cures, only a very minute few miracles are actually declaired. Faith seems to be a necessary part of the cure but its not always easy to know whether one has it. Many have come away from Lourdes openly expressing their faith but have gone away disappointed. Others, that come scoffing or are skeptical have departed cured. Miracle cures are also reported with religious relics as in the case of people crouding into a church yard at the tomb of Abbe in 1731. Mlle Coirin reported seeing her left breast grow back after it was lost 12 years previous to cancer. At Treves, in Germany, other reported miracle cures in 1891 by merely touching a sacred relic known as "The Holy Coat".

There are individuals from the Phillippine Islands, Brazil, England and a few other countries who never having medical training, perform operations without a scalpel or other instruments. Many of them claim that they work on the "astral" or "duplicate" body of the patient and that the physical cure follows the astral cure. Some psychic surgeons say that the astral body rises just above the physical, allowing them to make their psychic incisions. Other psychic surgeons such as Pachita, the peasant from Mexico, work directly on the psychical body with crude instruments or just their bare hands. Arigo was another psychic surgeon from Brazil who, without any medical or other education, using a penknife on thousands of peasants that filed into his office each day. He prescribed medicines for some of his patients and operated on others even though he had no conscious knowledge of medical terms. He used no anesthetics and his patients reported feeling no pain. Arigo used his penknife quickly and efficiently, often without even watching his own work and talking to others as he worked. Almost no blood was shed and that patient would walk away immediately following the surgery with only a slight tired feeling.

Another psychic healer, George Chapman, was an englishman that specialized in eye disorders. Chapman would go into a deep trance and work on the astral body of the patient. Many Psychic surgeons claim that their bodies are used by deceased doctors as in Chapman's case whose collaborator was a Dr. William Lang, who was an eye specialist when he was alive. People who had known Lang in his lifetime were convinced from Chapman's conversations and mannerisms that Lang was indeed occupying his body. Arigo claimed he was assisted by several spirit doctors, a german, a japaneese and a frenchman. Along with the spirit surgeons who occupy his body, a psychic surgeon may have other spiritual assistants, doctors and nurses alike. An English psychic surgeon, J. D. Thomas, had an invisible nurse to whom he spoke to in German, the language of the spirit doctor. The deceased Dr. Lang, manifesting through psychic George Chapman, had a corps of spiritual doctors and nurses who help assist during eye operations. Spirits also perform healings without ever taking possession of a living person's body. Stainton Moses, one of England's famous psychics, said that his bronchitis was relieved when spirit hands had materialized, made passes over his head, throat, chest and back. Another different spiritual assistance was given to J. D. Dixon, a 19th century homeopathist who got his prescriptions by interpreting knocks on the wall that purportedly came from spirit doctors, however the knocks could have been PK produced from Dixon's subconscious knowledge.

According to the Greek Hippocrates, medical clairvoyance is "the affliction suffered by the body the soul see with shut eyes." It is the ability to "see" clairvoyantly the internal organs and make diagnoses. There are records of servant girls who have assisted doctors by "seeing" and diagnosing diseases of patients. In America, psychic healing would not be complete without mentioning one of the most outstanding examples of medical clairvoyance on record, Edgar Cayce. Cayce would fall into deep trance where his secretary would give him the name and address of a patient, often several hundred miles away. Then he would travel in consciousness to where the patient was and make a diagnosis and often commented on other things such as the patients interior room or the weather which would later be confirmed with hundreds of cases still on file today at their A.R.E. headquarters in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Between men and women, there is no conclusive evidence to point to which gender is the better healer though some psychic investigators as A. Campbell puts a vote in for males. There are not only child psychic healers, but also diagnosticians. In the 19th century, a 9 year old boy named Daniel Offord wrote prescriptions in Latin, a language he was unfamiliar with. He also forsaw a cholera epidemic in 1853 and prescribed a daily dose of half a teaspoon of carbon as an antidote. Pet owners as well report many cases of animals responding to the healing thoughts and prayers of their masters or of psychic healers. Bernard Grad, a Montreal biologist performed some especially interesting tests on this topic. He took mice with ulcers and divided them into 2 groups. One, the control group, would receive no healing. The mice were then put into boxes, which a psychic healer held in his hands each day for 30 minutes. Amazingly, the psychically treated group recovered more quickly then the control group.

Dr. Grad essentially used the same test on plants except that 3 healers were involved, 1 being the psychic healer Estebany and the other remaining 2 were psychiatric patients. The object of the test was to see what effect the personalities and attitudes of the healers would have on the growth of barley beans. For 30 minutes, each healer held bottles of saline later used to water the barley seeds buried in soil in peat pots. The plants that grew the fastest were watered with the saline held by Estebany. The least successful was the psychiatric patient that was very depressed and saw no purpose to the experiment. There is a theory that any disease or illness can be traced to the malfunctioning of an enzyme in the cell. This was tested by Sister Justa Smith, a biochemist at Rosary Hill College in Buffalo who damaged enzymes with ultraviolet light, the placed them in a bottle that was held for 1 hour periods by a psychic healer. The recovery of the damaged enzymes was comparable to the therapeutic action of a strong magnetic field.

All organisms seem to thrive when they are loved, and there are many examples reported by those who take care of animals and plants. Althought the negative attitude of the depressed psychiatric patient seemed to inhibit healing in the tests of Dr. Grad, psychic healer Estebany felt no particular emotion when he held the bottle. Psychic Malcolm Bessent spent the first 5 minutes concentrating his healing energy in his hands and then turned his attention to other things while he continued to hold the container in the tests with Sister Smith. It may be that love as a conscious emotion is not necessary but that healers, even those with a sense of detachment, are dedicated to the healing principle and this is reflected in their success. Lawrence LeShan believes that the most effective kind of healing takes place when the healer feels "at one" with the patient. This in itself suggests that an altered state is taking place to "merge" with the patient and this is when the biological improvement takes place. He refers to this as Type I healing, that requiring the use of hands. He believes that Type II healing, that using hands is a physical method involving a flow of current from the hands of the healer to the body of the patient. LeShan's opinion is that Type I healing is far more effective and offers more permanent healing then Type II.

The aura has been described as a halo of different colors surrounding living objects. Many psychics claim they can see the aura around human beings, animals, and plants and that its color is a key to the health of the organism. The Russians have developed a process called Kirlian photography that can not only photograph the aura but also determine when a disease is about the strike from its appearance. The theory behind this is that a kind of energy they call bioplasma circulates through the body and may also be seen as the aura through the Kirlian process. This energy, when the body is diseased, shows a different pattern from when its healthy, and leaves the body completely when the body dies. The bioplasma responds to the energy coming from the hands of psychic healers. High frequency photographs of healers hands have shown interesting changes in energy patterns during the healing processes.

The conclusion of all the studies is that humans cure themselves, either consciously or through deep levels of the mind. This is demonstraited in hypnosis and doctors that discuss the "will" of their patients to either recover or not in some cases. Laying on of hands, passes over the body and other unorthadox methods of healing may actually plant a suggestion in the mind of the patient, and he then, consciously or subconsciously, decides to use mind over matter to cure himself. there are, however, cases of healing at a distance where the patient was unaware of others healing them unless PK or unconscious telepathy was at work. The self-suggestion theory is also ruled out in the case of plants and animals being healed. Perhaps the real answer is that healing takes place on a more subtle or suprapersonal level.