H .S. Kumar, a senior manager at a Delhi-based software development firm, was facing a tough time in office when a recessive phase hit the software industry a few years ago. Projects were hard to come by and human resources had become scant, leaving the firm in a terrible fix. But instead of fretting through sleepless nights, Kumar, along with a few of his colleagues, did something that many cynics were tempted to call foolhardy — they regularly practised several exercises in pranic healing. “In a few months’ time, our company got more projects and began to recruit more engineers,” says Kumar. “Thanks to pranic healing, we got an opportunity to evolve as a business organisation”.

Unbelievable? That’s pranic healing for you. And healing business ventures is about as far as it can go. In between, of course, its followers claim it stands to heal everything you could virtually think of — the body, the mind, character, relations or even the house you live in. And while you’re at it, pranic healing, say experts, could also help you heal yourself.

This may seem to challenge the faculty of science, which has no room for paranormal or unfounded theories. And that, probably, is the reason why a large section of the medical fraternity tends to view practices such as pranic healing sceptically. “At most, alternative therapies offer instant relaxation, since they require patients to do deep breathing and de-stressing exercises. It has a placebo effect on patients who believe that these exercises are going to cure them,” says Delhi-based psychiatrist Sameer Parikh. “But to say that pranic healing could be a clinical cure for a disorder such as depression and could be as effective as medical intervention would be stretching it too far,” he stresses.

But several doctors also say otherwise. “In the past, processes such as Kirlian photography and aura imaging have proved the presence of an energy field around entities, and the fact that living beings exist within an energy field has been given the nod by science,” says R.K. Tuli, a qualified doctor, and currently head of the department of holistic medicine at Indraprastha Apollo Hospital, Delhi. “Modern medicine has its limitations, in that it can only heal the physique, but falls flat when it comes to emotional healing. It is only with alternative therapy that a complete cure can be arrived at,” adds Tuli, who’s been dabbling in alternative therapy for more than three decades.

It was to unite the conventional with the alternative and get the best out of both practices that the Apollo group of hospitals founded a holistic medicine department at its Chennai unit eight years ago. “Subsequently, we opened similar departments in Delhi and Hyderabad, to offer our patients a complete wellness package,” says Anjali Bissel, spokesperson for the group.

As a mode of alternative therapy, pranic healing came to India about a decade ago, says Yulia Pal, trainer at the MCKS Pranic Healing Centre in Greater Kailash, New Delhi.

The therapy was the brainchild of Choa Kok Sui, a chemical engineer and businessman of Chinese descent who grew up in the Philippines and researched extensively on oriental forms of therapy to come up with the concept of pranic healing. The Pranic Healing Foundation was registered in India in 1997-98, and currently has 16 foundations across several Indian cities, including Calcutta, Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai and Bangalore, each of which runs several chapters across the city. “In the beginning, we would give free demonstrations and free healing sessions to people to popularise the therapy,” recalls Pal. “In due course of time, things picked up.”

The therapy essentially involves the treatment of energy — called ‘chi’ or ‘ki’ — as the basis of all existence. “All bodies in the Universe possess an energy field around them and exude energy that is their own into a vast medium where it mingles with energy released by other bodies,” says Hina Goyal, healer and head of the GMCKS Pranic Healing Centre in Vasant Vihar, New Delhi. “Energy can be either good or bad. And the role of a healer, under such circumstances, is to scan the body’s energy field, cleanse bad energies and infuse a fresh lease of good energy which contributes to healing.”

Energy, say healers, can be scanned through nodal points called chakras. The human body, according to pranic healing, has 11 such chakras situated along the central axis of the body. All a healer needs to do is scan these points and then proceed to eliminate bad energies. And the scanning is non-intrusive in nature — unlike Reiki, no touch is involved.

And since there is no physical touch at work, pranic healing doesn’t treat the distance between the healer and the patient as a factor. “Many of my patients reside in Dubai and Singapore, and I can treat them sitting right here in Delhi,” says Goyal. “Having a photograph of the person in front of me certainly helps, since it assists in concentrating on him or her, but that’s just about all it takes.”

But if it is really that effective, how well is pranic healing catching on in India? Comparative figures are provided by Annu Gupta, trainer at Y.V. Pranic Healing Centre, Rohini, Delhi. “When I learnt pranic healing about 10 years ago, we had training sessions once in six months. These days, we conduct a session every weekend,” she says. Through its years of operation, the Pranic Healing Foundation has trained about a lakh people in the basics of the therapy, claims Goyal. About 1,500 learn pranic healing every year in Delhi alone.

Today the aim of the grand master [Choa Kok Sui] is to have a pranic healer in every household, emphasises Goyal. If the current trend is an indication, that day may not be too far away.