DANISH SCIENTIST REPORTS ON OCTOBER 76 ALMA-ATA PARAPSYCHOLOGY CONFERENCE

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 DANISH SCIENTIST REPORTS ON OCTOBER 76 ALMA-ATA PARAPSYCHOLOGY CONFERENCE
 Freiburg ESOTERA in German Vol 28 No 5 May 1977 pp 397-400
 [Article by Scott Hill:  "Healing by Self-Regulation]
 [Text] Soviet scientists have long since stopped laughing at the
 capacities of Far-Eastern yogis.   Studies of the influence on
 metabolism and cardiac and respiratory activity are being car-
 ried out in the most modern laboratories.   ESOTERA contributor
 Scott Hill reports on this research in the framework of his
 observations during the Parapsychology Conference in Alma-Ata,
 in which he took part in October of last year by special per-
 mission as a western psi expert.
 Autogenous training has been known in Germany since 1920 through Johannes
 Schultz, who developed this technique that is still practiced today.  But
 in its origin it goes back centuries and essentially agrees with yoga, to
 the extent that psychic forces can be brought by suitable training to con-
 trol the functions of the physical body, even including functions that are
 regarded from the medical standpoint as not subject to conscious control.
 The Sanskrit words yoga and yuga mean union and yoke, and yoga actually
 means two different things:  a stage of union with absolute reality and the
 system of exercises that must be done to achieve that state.  Just as a
 yoke keeps two oxen in step, the yogi seeks to bring his psychic powers
 into harmony with a greater reality.  Thanks to space-age technology, this
 can be achieved up to a. certain point without very long training.  The en-
 counter of yogis and scientists has generated the new science of
 biofeedback.  The Soviet scientist prefers the term "psychic self-reguZa-
 tion. "
 Stories have been told of holy men in the orient who could control their
 own heart function -- could control their cerebral activity and the circu-
 lation of their blood or have themselves buried alive without breathing.
 Were these merely phantastic travel stories... or something more?
 Scientists in the Soviet Union have long since stopped laughing about such
 stories, because they are true and are no longer limited to the mysterious
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 East.  There is more and more scientific literature on the domination of
 the mind over the body, and Soviet researchers have not ignored this
 branch of science.  Studies of control of metabolism, which could be proved
 in the laboratory, reach back to 1881, when Prof Botkin reported in a clin-
 ical journal (ESHCHENEDEL'NAYA KLINICHESKAYA GAZETA) on a patient who was
 suffering from advanced muscular atrophy and possessed the rare ability to
 slow down his heartbeat voluntarily at any time and thus disturb his regu-
 lar biorhythm.  He needed only to think of his. sad condition of health in
 order to demonstrate this capacity.  Cheerful thoughts, on the other hand,
 did not produce the opposite effect.
 In 1885 J.R. Tarkhanov published an article in PFLUEGERS ARCIIIV
 intitled "Ueber die willkurliche Acceleration (Beschleunigung) der Herz-
 schlage beim Menschen" (Voluntary Acceleration of the Pulse in Man).  The
 subject was a student at the medico-surgical academy, E. Salome, who was
 described as "tall, rather thin, and somehow nervous and sensitive." In
 scientific laboratory experiments it was possible to show in him, even
 with the measuring instruments available at that time, definite proof that
 pulse, blood pressure, and cutaneous temperature could all be voluntarily
 influenced.  It was many years, however, before Tarkhanov's and Botkin's
 works were recognized by other scientists, but this was long before yoga
 was accepted as a scientific research field.
 Today experiments with the cardiac rhythm and other similar biofeedback
 experiments are being conducted everywhere in the West (see ESOTERA 4/76,
 page 352).
 Soviet Researcher as Fakir
 While I was in the USSR late in 1976 I had an opportunity, within the frame-
 work of the Conference on Psychic Self-Regulation in Alma Ata, to discuss
 advances in this field with Dr A.S. Romen, who practices yoga along with
 his academic work.  In 1965 Dr Romen went to India to study the mysterious
 phenomena of control of metabolism as they are practiced by fakirs and
 yogis.  After his return he exhibited a film with the title "Who Are the
 Indian Yogis?" in which he demonstrated the following phenomena (the film
 was shown during the conference):
 A human subject was placed between two chairs in such a way that only her
 head and feet were on the chairs.  She was thus lying -- under the influ-
 ence of suggestion (hypnosis) -- entirely straight in the air.   In another
 experiment a man stuck a long metal needle through his upper arm, pulled
 it back out, and although skin and muscular tissue had been pierced, did
 not bleed.  The next day the hole had completely disappeared.
 I was astonished when I heard that the man in the film was Dr Romen him-
 self.  According to Dr Romen, these potentialities are not limited to yogis
 in India, and in fact he offered to teach me this method within 10 days!
 A woman participant in the conference assured me that after 10 days of Dr
 Romen's training she had been capable of healing a bleeding wound immedi-
 ately.  The basis of this training is the creation of a state of inner
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 peace and intensive psychic and physical relaxation.  The course of
 autogenous training founded by Dr Schultz works in a similar way.
 Self-Regulation and Sports
 The effects are not only being studied in the laboratory, but also applied
 in practice by Soviet scientists.  It has been observed that Olympic Games
 contestants can obviously profit by this method, learning to influence
 their metabolism in addition to the usual muscle training, which, of course,
 is also necessary.  By suitable exercises it becomes possible to release
 additional energy reserves for peak performances.  Among the international
 sport elite, where the differences between gold, silver, and bronze are
 often measured in mere fractions of seconds, such fine points of heightened
 performance play a part that should not be underestimated.  In fact, Dr
 Romens's latest book appeared under the title "Psychic Self-Regulation and
 Sports."
 In my lecture on the occasion of the Alma-Ata conference I pointed out the
 close relationship between feedback control of events inside the body
 (INS = inside the skin) and the supposed non-motor manifestations outside
 the body, which are designated in parapsychological literature as psycho-
 kinesis (OUTS = outside the skin).  Certain subjects, such as Swami Rama,
 were obviously able to control processes inside and outside the body.  In
 the presence of astonished scientists he succeeded in stopping his heart-
 beat up to a minute without negative effects on his health.  According to
 Swami Rama, such siddhis or paranormal events are possible through inten-
 sive control over the internal physiological functions.
 This idea was received sympathetically by the scientists at Alma-Ata, who
 conducted their yoga research with modern technical instruments such as
 the EKG [electrocardiograph], plasmograph, EEG [electroencephalograph]
 (recording of the electrical currents of the brain), and similar apparatus.
 They have confirmed the most important findings of western research in the
 field of internal organ and body control at the three conferences on
 psychic self-control (Alma-Ata, 1973, 1974, 1976).  The Soviet scientists
 have worked out detailed data on clinically documented cases, including
 the treatment of alcoholism and acute organic diseases.
 Dr Romen is co-founder of the "International Society for Psychic Self-
 Regulation," which will isue a new journal in the near future.  The journal
 of the Biofeedback Research Society, newly issued in 1976 with the title
 "Biofeedback and Self-Regulation," will contribute to publicizing the latest
 research findings of this multistratified field.  Although most of the
 meetings of the Biofeedback Research Society take place in the United
 States, in November 1977 the first international symposium on biofeedback
 will be held at the University of Tubingen.
 Research on Hypnotism in Alma-Ata
 Germany will probably soon be visited with the "alpha wave," for more and
 more little feedback devices (priced from 200 to 1,000 marks) are coming
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 on the market.  Some enterprising people are offering courses in alpha
 training (often with dubious promises); they promise inner peace and the
 acquisition of control of consciousness and telepathy.  This is an inter-
 esting field of research, but producing alpha waves is nothing special,
 since most people only have to lie down and shut their eyes.  Recently the
 TM (transcendental meditation) movement has been criticized with the remark
 that the advantage for the meditator consists only in taking a nap.
 Another important field of research that was discussed in Alma-Ata is hyp-
 nosis.  After centuries of research the foundations  of hypnosis are still
 obscure.  From  the days of Anton Mesmer to the present we have realized
 more and more clearly that hypnosis actually functions, that the trance
 state can be induced in the majority of the population, that suggestion has
 a powerful psychosomatic effect, and that even animals can be hypnotized.
 Mesmer's original theory of "animal magnetism" may have something in its
 favor, now that the secret of the biological influence of magnetic fields
 is beginning to be clarified, but one thing is clear -- hypnosis is a spe-
 cial form of self-regulation.  That is to say, the person hypnotized con-
 trols his own functions himself, not the hypnotist!  In the classical case,
 where a hypnotized person is stuck with a needle but feels no pain, it has
 been proved scientifically that the nerves of the skin forward the pain
 via the normal neural channels to the brain, but the brain simply refuses
 to react to these signals.  That is self-control.
 In the Soviet Union research is going on in the field of hypnosis as well;
 it is regarded as a part of psychic self-regulation, although of course it
 makes a hypnotist necessary to induce the trance.
 The Medicine of the Future?
 As has been pointed out in earlier numbers of this series, the Soviet
 scientists are very much interested in utilizing their new knowledge clin-
 ically.  For that reason such researchers as, for example, B.A. Tokarev
 and Ye.A. Tarasov, as well as V.S. Slutskin, have found that the use of
 yoga exercises and autogenous training constitute parts of a complex
 treatment of osteochondritis (inflammation of the bones and cartilage)
 with accompanying neurotic symptoms.  R.M. Yakhyayev has found that
 autogenous training, combined with work therapy, is an effective method of
 curing alcoholism.  According to L.P. Yatskov, positive results can be ob-
 tained with autosuggestion in children with functional hyperkinesia (ex-
 cessive movement, abnormal convulsive muscular activity).  A.A. Koleshao,
 V.V. Savitskiy, and G.V. Sapchenko have used autogenous training in treat-
 ing patients in the acute stage of cancer and also in cases of cardiac
 infarction.  There are hundreds of pages of clinical reports on the use
 of psychic self-regulation in hospitals all over the USSR.
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 1. p 398  During the conference, author Scott Hill spoke on yoga experi-
 ments with Dr A.S. Romen, Soviet expert in the field of psychic
 self-regulation.  Romen has practiced yoga for years and demon-
 strated various phenomena on film on his own body.
 2. p 399  Electronic measurements like those made by author Scott Hill in
 his laboratory in Copenhagen with yogi A. Mayatiita are also be-
 ing undertaken by Soviet researchers.
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