I believe my unusually rapid recovery from a stroke in 2008 was connected to working with healing energy for 25 years.  My belief just received a boost. 

This week (April 24) 
the  New Scientist gave  a fascinating account of an experiment first reported in the Neurobiology of Disease. Seventy five rats initially had their spines damaged.  One third were then given acupuncture on two locations far from the spine –
near their mouths and in the upper hind leg.  One third received “simulated acupuncture” with a
toothpick.  Another third received
no treatment at all.  Within 35
days those rats who received acupuncture evidenced better balance, walked
better, and had less nerve cell death.

Acupuncture had already demonstrated its ability to help
human beings with spinal injuries.  But many doubters and “skeptics” remained. Someone irrationally committed to
their view of reason could and did suggest its impact was primarily
psychological.  It’s hard to make
that argument with rats.

Last Spring I was describing what had happened to a friend
studying acupuncture. I mentioned asking a TaiChi/XiGong master I knew to help me over the last
hurdle between being unable to write my name and driving alone to Maine a
little over two months later.

She told me that in China when people had a stroke many went
to acupuncturists if they could, in order to prevent worse nerve damage and
speed up their healing. Like Tai Chi and Xi Gong, and the work I have done for
so long, acupuncture works with chi, and chi in my experience impacts
nerves.  (Working with chi is also
deeply impacted by intention, but that’s another discussion.) I described my conversation on this blog last June.

When someone, usually a bright skeptic, but one not quite as
bright as he or she imagines, points out that modern science cannot find chi, I
remind them that until the late 19^th century it could not find
radiation.  Did that mean that
radiation did not exist until we discovered it?  Or perhaps it suggests many admirers of science confuse
present knowledge with possible knowledge.  Which is a very anti-scientific attitude, as the experiments
above indicate.

If you know anyone who has a stroke, or recently had one, I
urge you to have them see a competent acupuncturist or Tai-Chi/XiGong healer.