R

radical healing An integrated approach to healing
and healing traditions set forth by Rudolph M. Bal-
lentine, M.D., author of several books, including
Radical Healing: Integrating the World’s Great Therapeu-
tic Traditions to Create a New Transformative Medicine
(New York: Harmony Books, 1996). The approach
combines theories, techniques, and remedies from
Ayurveda, homeopathy, traditional Chinese medi-
cine, European and Native American herbology,
nutrition, and psychotherapeutic bodywork.
“Besides its relation to the Latin radix(which
means root), the term radical has a less well-
known and more technical botanical significance,”
Ballentine wrote. “It denotes the tiniest, hairlike
terminals of a plant’s root, which extend its action
into the depths of the soil, and, by finding and
entering cracks and crevices in the bedrock, slowly
fracture it and split it open. Some of the beliefs and
assumptions about our reality that sustain and pro-
mote our suffering are the deepest and most resis-
tant to change. It is those assumptions that can
make diseases seem untreatable or ‘incurable.’ The
modus operandiof radical healing is to penetrate the
strongholds of human limitation and rend them
asunder, opening the possibility of a transformation
and evolution that conventional medicine has not
ventured to approach. Without that probing thor-
oughness, that radical intensity, we will not be able
to heal the profound disorders that are now plagu-
ing us, individually and collectively.”

radionics An alternative health care system and
type of vibrational medicine that involves the use of
special devices and a substance from a patient (a
lock of hair, nail clipping, or a drop of blood, for
example) to analyze and diagnose an illness. The
American neurologist Albert Abrams in the 1920s
experimented with cancer patients. As he tapped

each one’s abdomen just above the navel, he found

that there was a dull sound instead of the typical

hollow sound of a healthy patient’s abdomen. He

found the same phenomenon in patients with other

diseases as well. After further investigations,

Abrams came to believe that disease was actually a

form of radiating energy and manifestation of an

imbalance of electrons throughout the body, and on

this premise he devised a variable resistance meter,

or biodynamometer, to measure a patient’s energy.

He placed a patient’s blood sample or lock of hair

(referred to as “witnesses”) in a container he called

a dynamizer, which was then attached to the bio-

dynamometer. He would then palpate the abdomen

of a healthy individual and make a diagnosis.

According to Richard Gerber, M.D., in A Practical

Guide to Vibrational Medicine (New York: Harper-

Collins Publishers, 2000): “Radionics is one of the

few areas in vibrational medicine capable of provid-

ing tools that allow a trained radionics operator to

measure and quantify the energy characteristics of

the physical body, its organs, the chakras, the

etheric body, and the higher spiritual bodies. So

bizarre and irrational to the left-brain, analytical,

scientific mind are some of the phenomena

observed in radionics that its detractors have

claimed that radionics is not truly science but some-

thing more akin to magic. To the uninformed, it

actually appears as if something magical is taking

place during radionics therapy. But to those who

are better informed about the nature of radionics

and what it is capable of, this developing science

provides a whole new understanding of the far-

reaching potentials of human consciousness and the

hidden healing capabilities of the multidimensional

human being.... Only in the age of quantum

physics and laser holography have scientific models

begun to evolve that may help explain radionics.”

135