The inner life
Biofield
Direct answer
Biofield is a term coined in 1992 for a field of energy and information said to surround living bodies; only the weak electric and magnetic fields of tissues such as heart and brain have been measured.
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At a glance
- Also called
- human energy field
- Found in
- Consciousness & Spiritual Psychology
- Related
- Aura, Vibration, Frequency, Observer Effect
Biofield is a term coined in 1992 for a field of energy and information said to surround living bodies; only the weak electric and magnetic fields of tissues such as heart and brain have been measured.
A plain educational schematic; it does not diagnose a condition or replace professional care.
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What is the biofield?
The word biofield joins two different things. One is established: living tissue produces electric currents, and those currents produce magnetic fields. The heart's are the strongest, the brain's far weaker, and both are recorded routinely with electrodes or magnetic sensors. They fade within a short distance of the skin.
The other is a proposal: that a subtler field organises the body, carries emotion and can be sensed or adjusted by a healer's hands. Reiki, therapeutic touch and similar practices are grouped as biofield therapies. No instrument has detected such a field, and trials of the therapies have not established effects beyond those of rest, attention and expectation.
On the tree of the hidden arts: Physics and the mystics.
What sets Biofield apart
The term was built by committee to be neutral, and that origin explains its double life. It lets researchers study practices such as Reiki without adopting their doctrines, and it lets practitioners borrow the sound of physics. The measured part is small and exact: the heart's magnetic field at the chest is of the order of a millionth of the field that swings a compass needle, and the brain's a hundred times less again. Everything larger that the word is asked to carry remains a hypothesis.
- Coined: 1992, by a panel of the Office of Alternative Medicine, US National Institutes of Health
- Heart, electrical: about a thousandth of a volt at the skin; the electrocardiogram
- Heart, magnetic: first detected in 1963 by Baule and McFee
- Brain, magnetic: first detected in 1968 by David Cohen; far weaker than the heart
- Blind test: Rosa and others, 1998: touch healers sensed a hidden hand in 44 percent of trials
Often mistaken for something else: An aura is something a person reports seeing; a biofield is something proposed to exist whether seen or not. Only the body's ordinary electric and magnetic fields have been recorded by instruments.
The story behind Biofield
A panel convened by the Office of Alternative Medicine of the National Institutes of Health in the United States proposed the term in 1992, to give older ideas such as vital force, prana and qi a neutral name for research. The measured fields have a longer record: the electrocardiogram dates from the early 1900s, the electroencephalogram from the 1920s, and magnetic recordings of heart and brain from the 1960s.
Why Biofield matters
The word sounds like physics, so knowing what has been measured and what has not keeps a reader from mistaking one for the other.
How to read Biofield
Readers meet it in energy healing; the careful sense keeps it to the measured fields and names the rest as tradition or belief.
Biofield in practice: an example
A reader told that their biofield is blocked can ask which instrument showed it, and take the answer as the measure of the claim.
Where readings of Biofield go wrong
A biofield reading or session is not a medical test, and nothing shows it can find or mend an illness.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Consciousness & Spiritual Psychology
- Aliases
- biofield meaning, human energy field, biofield therapy, human biofield
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
What is the biofield?
It is a name proposed in 1992 for an energy field said to surround living things. The body's measured electric and magnetic fields are real; a wider field that carries feeling or healing has not been detected.
Can the human energy field be measured?
The electric and magnetic fields of the heart and brain can, with electrodes and magnetic sensors, and they are very weak. No instrument has measured the subtler field that healing traditions describe.
Is the biofield the same as an aura?
They overlap. Aura is the older word for a light or atmosphere some people report seeing around a person. Biofield is a modern research label meant to cover that and similar ideas.
