A large cross-sectional, descriptive study of self-reports after biofield therapy in Japan: demography, symptomology, and circumstances of treatment administration.

BACKGROUND: Practitioners apply biofield therapy in diverse situations; however, most previously published reports investigated its efficacy in a clinical setting with a few expert practitioners administering it.

OBJECTIVE: The study intended to determine the factors associated with self-reported symptom change after a single session of Okada Purifying Therapy (OPT), a form of biofield therapy, in various settings and to analyze its optimal therapeutic environments.

DESIGN: This cross-sectional study used simple questionnaires. The research team trained 100 instructors of OPT to act as investigators for the study. The team recorded the initial lecture to those instructors on video, and the instructors used it to train other certified OPT practitioners in 222 locations. All investigators were volunteers.

SETTINGS: The OPT sessions took place in various environments, including at MOA International Corporation's affiliated institutes, with or without clinics; at investigators' homes; and at participants' homes.

PARTICIPANTS: The study involved 44 587 participants in total; all were Japanese, aged 16 or older, and suffering from physical pain, palpitation/dizziness, or anxiety/depression.

INTERVENTION: The intervention involved one session of OPT lasting 30 minutes or longer administered by the volunteer practitioners.

OUTCOME MEASURES: The research team evaluated the severity of symptoms before and after the intervention. The team examined (1) the self-reported change in each category of symptoms as measured after a session and (2) the adjusted odds ratio of the variables related to the outcomes.

RESULTS: Of the analyzed participants, 69.7%, 67.5%, and 71.2% reported an improvement in the severity of physical pain, palpitation/dizziness, and anxiety/depression, respectively. Those rates, however, varied based on the participant's gender, the duration or location of the intervention, and the reason for participation. The improvement rate was consistently highest among female participants whose reason for participation involved a hope that OPT would relieve their symptoms or promote their health and who had received the therapy for more than 30 minutes in settings other than their own homes. This finding occurred regardless of the recipient's knowledge of the therapy or past experience of the intervention. The participant's gender, the duration of the intervention, and its location were also significant factors for marked improvements (a decrease in symptoms of 2 or 3 levels) in self-reported symptoms. In evaluating safety, the research team found that the exacerbation rates of reported symptoms were 2.5%, 1.1%, and 0.7% for physical pain, palpitation/dizziness, and anxiety/depression, respectively. None of those who expressed exacerbation of symptoms needed emergency medical treatment. No factor was associated consistently with the exacerbation.

CONCLUSION: After a single session of biofield therapy, the participants' responses varied according to their gender, the duration and location of the intervention, and the reasons for participation.