In my nearly twenty year exploration of alternative medicine and healing I have often wondered about the concept of healing "energy." Healing energy is a mysterious thing indeed. Many people can definitely feel it but it escapes scientific measurement. When scientists try to measure this energy in the form of the four forces of nature (electromagnetic, gravity, strong and weak nuclear) they usually come up empty handed.

My hypothesis about healing: that all healing is in essence exchanges of information provides an answer to the mystery of healing energy. A number of leading scientists including James Gardner, John Barrow, Paul Davies and Nobel laureate Christian de Duve have put forth ideas that support the concept that life can be understood in terms of exchanges of information. In complexity theorist James Gardner's new book "The Intelligent Universe" he posits what he calls the selfish biocosm hypothesis in which the universe is much like an intelligent being. The universe evolves on a path to preserve information. It does so by producing life that also evolves to higher states of complexity in order to preserve the information in the universe.

If we live in the midst of what could be called a cosmic computer perhaps what we experience as healing energy may in fact be healing information. Researchers at Princeton University have measured changes in information in the form of changes in the outputs of random number generators in healing practices. Random number generators should produce a series of ones and zeros that cancel each other out. When these devices are placed in healing practices or have intention directed at them they deviate from randomness by producing more ones or zeroes.

These measurements of decreases in randomness are measurements nonetheless as compared to the lack of success in measuring healing energy. Perhaps these fluctuations picked up by the devices represent a change in some kind of informational field surrounding a living being. The healer does not send healing energy to the patient but somehow changes the informational field surrounding the patient. The healer acts as an information source much like in a communications channel. The patient receives the information and integrates it with the result of moving toward a state of greater complexity or healing.

If this is true then healing energy will be understood in a whole new light. The search for an elusive kind of energy will transform into a search for information.