As part of my course, I recently went about studying the theory behind pneumapathy and it dawned on me that it is almost impossible to describe what we do in scientific terms as it simply goes far beyond science. I’ve grown to reconcile myself to the fact that I will not be understood by general public. Some of my friends where rolling their eyes when I announced them what my plans here in Cambodia are. That I am going to learn how to work with energy. That I am going to learn how to heal people. That I am going to study about natural medicine, much of which actually dwells inside of us. A completely supernatural concept. Because pneumatherapy is supernatural. It is neither physics, nor science. Is not psychology either. It belongs to the realm of metaphysics.
But to speak of metaphysics we need to go back to the root and understand the etymology behind it. The origin of the word “science” goes back to the Latin word “scientia” which stands for “knowledge”. So science aims at knowing things, understanding them in logical terms. Knowledge, however, is only an accumulation of facts and information that do not give us a full insight into the matter. One only can deepen their undertanding of facts and information if they turn it into wisdom by combining them in the process of synthesis and drawing conclusions based on this wisdom. To get a bigger picture, this may (and probably should) include things that are not easily explicable, like supernatural things. This, naturally, brings us to physics.
Physics comes from the Greek word “phusika” which stands for “natural things”. Therefore, physics studies all things natural, it is the knowledge of nature. A subfield of physics that deals with the fundamental theory of nature at small scales (the science of the very small) is quantum physics (quantum being the minimum unit of any physical entity involved in an interaction).
Both physics and quantum physics, again, like to describe things in quantifying terms whereas there are elements of nature that cannot be quantified, nor undertood in scienifical terms. This is where metaphysics comes into play.
“Meta”, the prefix of the word “metaphysics” means “after” and literally refers to everything that came after physics or cannot be measured and explained by it. Metaphysics is a study of the most general aspects of reality, such as substance, identity, that nature of the mind, free will. Metaphysicians explore the metaphysical (supernatural) qualities of things that cannot be easily quanitfied, weighed and measured as a science. They are concerned with matters that cannot be understood through objective studies and material reality.
Pneumatology is the study of spiritual things (“pneuma” translates from Greek into spirit and the English suffix “ology” stands for a study) which deal with supernatural matters. It cannot be explained in quanitying terms and therefore falls into the field of metaphysics.
Pneumatherapists work with universal energy called prana which fills up the patient’s deficient energy centers, provided the mind does not get in the way. Prana, with its healing qualities, reprograms our tissues, getting rid of negative energy and repairing all that has been damaged or blocked. Neither physics, nor science finds ways to explain what we do, so maybe it’s OK to not know how to describe what we do. On the condition and as long as we are successful at helping people…