Healers wishing to participate in research should realize that research is a slow and methodical process of gathering observations. Research requires detailed formats for investigation, meticulously designed to limit extraneous influences on the subject(s) under investigation.

The investigators determine the variables they will study and will require of healers that they adhere to standardized protocols for giving healing. In some cases they will allow healers to give healing in the manner in which they are accustomed to treat people in their practices. In other studies they may limit the healing treatments in various ways, such as allowing only a certain number of minutes for the healing intervention, asking that only healing be given and that no conversation should be offered beyond the civilities of social introductions. While these restrictions may alter the normal healing interaction, they are intended to limit (to the extent possible) the extraneous factors of healer expectations and suggestions. Many skeptics believe that healing is no more than a placebo - i.e.that the healees' expectations of getting better induce improvements rather than any spiritual healing effects. By limiting factors other than spiritual healing in the research interventions, researchers hope to limit the placebo factors of suggestion. However, this approach may make it awkward or difficult for healers to demonstrate the full spectrum of their abilities.

Other investigators will encourage healers to use their usual approaches, but will require detailed descriptions of what the healers do, how they do it, and what they believe they are doing. This approach encourages healers to give their maximal effort and treatment, but leaves the study open to questions about placebo effects. Careful research design can accommodate for much of this.

Healers are encouraged to discuss the research protocol with researchers. Some researchers are not fully familiar with spiritual healing and may not appreciate the importance of factors that healers consider essential to treatment.

My recommendation is that healing research should be a collaborative endeavor, taking into account the views and needs of all participants. To maximize possibility of confirming spiritual healing effects, researchers would design the study to accommodate to the usual practices of the healers. Otherwise, there is a likelihood of limiting the treatment and missing possibly helpful healing effects. To tease out what components of interventions are due to spiritual healing vs suggestion, expectations, and other variables, studies will limit the format of the spiritual healing intervention.

Healers have a major contriution to make in sorting out how healing works.

Few healers have taken the trouble to record collected results of their treatments systematically, and fewer yet have published these. When a series of treatments produce similar effects we can begin to appreciate how healing may work.

For instance, Gordon Turner collected reports of healees' sensations during healing. He found that intense heat, cold, and electrical sensations were more likely to be associated with subjective reports of cures than other sensations. (This was published in Britain in Two Worlds, 1969 and is summarized in Healing Reserch, Volume I.)

There are many such ways in which healing could be studied by healers.

Theories to explain healing abound. Broad categories include:

Activation of healee self-healing capacities

Manipulations of biological energy fields

Channeling or facilitating interventions of external agencies