Dr. Emoto’s Research on Effects of Frequencies on Water
The Power of Frequencies to Heal Water
In my last post, I referenced the power of frequencies to “heal” water. I wanted to follow up on that concept with some more information on the studies that were done to make those claims. First of all, I want to say that I try to be careful about what I post and the sources that they come from. There are a lot of questionable claims out there and sometimes it is difficult to discern fact from fiction. That being said however, there is another area that deserves consideration, and that is where I believe this information comes from. Even though Dr. Emoto’s scientific method has been called into question, I believe that some of his conclusions are worth considering. I will be referencing an article published by Kristopher Setchfield, BA, Health Science, Natural Science Department; Castleton State College, Vermont – published in December 20, 2005 titled: Review and analysis of Dr. Masaru Emoto’s published work on the effects of external stimuli on the structural formation of ice crystals.
“Dr. Emoto became a Doctor of Alternative Medicine at the Open International University for Alternative Medicine in India in 1992, and he has become famous throughout the world in the alternative medicine realm for his 1999 self-published book, ‘The Messages of Water’. Since that time, his narrative and collection of photos of ice crystals has been picked up by independent publishing companies and has grown into subsequent works, such as The hidden messages in water (HMW). Recently his work was featured in a highly controversial movie titled “What the Bleep do We Know!?”and published in an essay in The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine (JACM). These thrust his work into the international spotlight and portrayed his work as proven scientific research. It was because of the notoriety gained by his books and the Bleep movie that I first learned of Emoto’s fantastic claim that he has found evidence that human thought affects ice crystal formation and that the structure and level of detail of an ice crystal is an indicator of water quality.”
Setchfield’s analysis primarily looked at the scientific methodology of Emoto and endeavored to assess whether or not the results could be duplicated with what he considered “scientific reliability”. Without going into a lot of quoting, I will give you the cliff note version of his findings. He believes that Emoto’s methods are questionable and not duplicable to reach the conclusions that Emoto has published. He further suggests that it would be wonderful if the funding could be obtained to conduct a rigorous scientific methodology and actually determine if some of these conclusions could be established scientifically. In short, he is very skeptical of the conclusions that Emoto reached and published.
Of particular interest to me was Dr. Emoto’s report that he found “stunning correlations between the types of music played and the quality and beauty of the ice crystals that would form upon freezing. For instance, the crystal below on the left was observed in a sample of distilled water that had been played Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, and the crystal on the right was observed in a sample of distilled water that had been played so-called “heavy metal” music (Emoto, Messages 17). It is interesting to note that this claim closely mirrors the well-known pseudoscientific and so-far unsubstantiated claim that classical music has a beneficial effect on plant growth, and rock music hinders plant growth.”
“Following his study of the effects of music on ice crystal formation in distilled water, Dr. Emoto wondered if water crystal structure might be affected by other seemingly illogical external things, such as words written on paper. In the HMW prologue, Dr. Emoto states, “It didn’t seem logical for water to ‘read’ the writing, understand the meaning, and change form accordingly. But I knew from the experiments with music that strange things could happen.”
“He began by writing phrases like “thank you” and “you fool” in various languages on paper and placing the paper under the distilled water samples, and his published photos below (Emoto, Messages 7) show a surprising result. Samples that had been exposed to the words “thank you” exhibited beautiful crystals, while samples that had been exposed to the words “you fool” would not form crystals at all.”
“Encouraged by his findings, Emoto began studying the effects of prayer, blessings, and spoken words. Not surprisingly, his results indicated that water crystal formation was also sensitive to these things–yielding his current hypothesis; “Molecules of water are affected by our thoughts, words, and feelings.” (Emoto, Messages cover)”
Setchfield goes on to delineate the methodology used by Emoto and then point out that his methodology was too open to observer bias and not rigorous enough or duplicable in follow up testing. He believes that the double blind method would produce much better, verifiable results, but bemoans the fact that it is difficult to get the funding to conduct the necessary experimentation under what he believes to be ”scientifically reliable” conditions. He goes on to say,
“While Emoto has published his claim in one peer reviewed journal, it has neither been substantiated nor disproved by research scientists. It is worth noting that Emoto’s Journal article is not a scientific report, but a three page long “photo essay.” Dr. Emoto, himself, stated “Even though my book, Message from Water, was first published in 1999 and has been translated in over 20 languages, I have not heard of anybody else conducting similar research” (Woodhouse). His claims resonate with “Alternative therapists, religious leaders, spiritual researchers, artists, and musicians” (Emoto, Healing 3), but it appears that his work has widely been disregarded by traditional scientists as pseudoscience that does not merit further inspection.”
The claims of Dr. Emoto are very interesting. I am scientifically trained myself and can appreciate Setchfield’s assessment. On a purely scientific level, I have to agree with him that the work of Dr. Emoto does call questions to mind. At the same time, I also have to step back and take a look at other things that “science” tells me are not possible. It tells me that the earth could not possibly have been created in 6 days by a Divine Architect. Yet my faith in His word brings me to the conclusion that I would rather believe Him than the scientists.
In my experience in the medical profession, I have seen many things that could not be explained scientifically. One of the phenomenon called “placebo effect” has been well documented to produce positive effects simply because the brain “believed” that it would work. The power of the brain to heal the body, what is called psycho-sematic, is not necessarily understood, but accepted as true none the less.
I take studies like Dr. Emoto’s with a “grain of salt” but at the same time believe there is something there that we need to understand. Besides that, what can it hurt if I believe that frequencies actually can “heal” water and by extension my body? I may not be able to “scientifically prove it” but I certainly have seen many instances of healing of body, mind and soul under the effects of the frequencies coming from my harp as I have played at the bedside. Let’s not be too quick to dismiss something just because we can’t get the scientific backing we think we should have. After all, it’s hard to get scientist to agree on anything!
Be Blessed in Your Day
