An
Overview of Body
Electronics: Effectiveness and
Controversies
A
raw foods diet which includes some raw animal
foods (as well as some supplements) is one of four principal pillars of
a natural healing system called Body Electronics (BE). This
system has been labeled by several natural health
writers (including Roy
Kupsinel, MD)
as one of the most powerful natural healing
systems in the world. BE was founded by the late John W. Ray,
ND
in the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s in Oregon (his native state),
California and Utah. He eventually moved to northern
Wisconsin in
1980, and much of the growth in the popularity of his Body Electronics
system happened in and around Wisconsin in the 1980s, eventually
spreading well beyond those states. John was a genius and a powerful
intuitive, and managed to re-discover several highly important and
powerful principles of healing. John Ray and his senior
instructors taught the system in traveling workshops around the USA and
in Canada until John moved to Raratonga, Cook Islands in the late
1980's,
and eventually to New Zealand.
A few
instructors in North
America
continued to teach this system during the 1990's, and in 2001, master
instructor Douglas W. Morrison ("Doug") returned to the USA after a
long stint in New Zealand, and resumed teaching seminars and workshops
on BE in the USA. It
seems worth noting that during the 1970s and 1980s, John was a rather
controversial figure in the world of natural healing and alternative
healing methods, and he was also known to often exaggerate when
speaking, both in reporting healings effected by the BE
system,
and in other realms as well. John had, among other things, studied
under one or more controversial fundamentalist polygamist Mormon
teachers and "leaders" in Utah in the 1960s and 1970s (and possibly in
the 1980s as well), including Rulon Alred, the polygamist
fundamentalist Mormon who was a physician and leader of a large (and
somewhat outlaw) Mormon fundamentalist group; Alred was killed by
members of a rival Mormon fundamentalist sect in 1977. During the
1960s, 1970s and early 1980s, John was known to make some rather strong
statements in favor of polygamy, as well as other ideas from the
fundamentalist Mormon movement, during his lectures on Body
Electronics. He also reportedly had numerous wives, girlfriends and
children during much of this period, although his behaviors with women
seemed to differ somewhat from those advocated by fundamentalist
polygamist Mormon sects. John also associated during the 1980s with
some ultra-right wing radicals and conspiracy theorists; I remember
receiving several postal mailings during that period from John
Ray
in which he forwarded conspiracy-theory rants from some of these
organizations alleging that Vitamin C was a poison and that Nobel Prize
winner Linus Pauling was a "communist stooge"; I personally found these
mailings and some of John's statements at this time to be very
irritating and of course, rather paranoid. John moved to
Raratonga in the Cook Islands in the late 1980s and thereafter
his
teaching and practice work was largely confined to the areas
of
the Cook Islands, Australia and New Zealand, and it
appears that
some of his more controversial behaviors and public statements had
largely ceased by this time. Those who knew
him during the
years prior to his death that he spent in the Cook Islands, Australia
and New Zealand have reported that he did not seem to exhibit many of
the more controversial behaviors during that period; some have
speculated that he had finally "settled down". In summary, my
own
perception is that John Ray appears to have been in many ways a
powerful healer, a powerful teacher of self-healing methods, and a
powerful intuitive, and he definitely made a positive impact upon many
people who were in physical and/or emotional pain, but he also made
many exaggerated and controversial statements, and his life during the
1960s, 1970s and early to mid 1980s seems to have been rather
controversial. The
four pillars of BE are:
- raw diet -- now a raw vegetation and animal food
diet (RVAF diet); usually raw vegan prior to 1989. John Ray
claimed that while the diet comprised only 10% of the total bulk of his
system, it comprised an essential and foundational part, without which
the
method simply could not work. He further claimed that it was impossible
to
ignore the raw foods diet, and that if one did ignore the raw foods
diet, then, with extremely rare exceptions, the system could not be
effective no
matter how much time and effort one put into the other three pillars of
the system.
- heavy
supplementation with various vitamin and mineral supplements, including
copious quantities of food enzymes, and even more massive quantities of
"chelated" colloidal prehistoric minerals from an ancient vegetation
deposit in Utah. Luckily, John had been
advocating use of these minerals since the 1960's, and had found an
inexpensive
supply of these minerals -- available in both liquid and capsule form
--
well before these colloidal prehistoric minerals became an
(usually-overpriced)
MLM fad in the mid-1990's. The chelated colloidal prehistoric
minerals
which John so strongly recommended remain available to this day at an
extremely affordable price, from Enzymes International in Wisconsin;
this humic shale extract also likely contains significant
amounts
of humic acids and fulvic acids (ingestion of the latter especially has
been reported by several authors to have show correlations with
increased energy and vitality levels, particularly for people suffering
from chronic low energy levels. The minerals are called
"Coenzyme
Minerals", and Enzymes
International may be contacted at: Enzymes
International: Hwy 51, PO Box 157, Manitowish Waters, WI 54545; phone
(715) 543-8401. The Coenzyme Minerals brand of minerals are
by no means the only one which will work, so long as one finds a good
broad-spectrum source of the major minerals and all trace minerals.
Folks in Australia have been using various kinds of rock dust
(such as the Minplus brand) decanted in water, and other folks have
successfully used other brands of prehistoric colloidal minerals from
ancient seabed or lake bed vegetation deposits. Many people supplement
the minerals with some raw dried or tableted sea vegetables such as
kelp or dulse as well, for even stronger responses.
- an
inner emotional and spiritual attitude of a
lovingness and acceptance toward all which occurs in life and toward
all emotions and symptoms which arise during healing brought on by
diet, supplements and pointholding (below)
- pointholding
-- holding of specific
points on the body, non-stop, for a period of from 1/2 hour to 14
hours,
where the pointholder presses on a specific point on the pointholdee's
body
(on the arm, hand, leg, belly, back, neck, etc.), and keeps their
finger
(or thumb, or elbow) absolutely still, and where the pointholdee lies
on
a massage table, and remains perfectly still for the duration of the
pointholding. During pointholding, the pointholder may feel
tremendous heat or burning in her or his finger pressing the point
("the
heat of healing love"), while the pointholdee may experience heat,
burning or pain at locations within their
body which are remote from that point being pressed, or may re-live
previously
repressed memories or emotions. BE teaches that if heat on
the pointholder's
finger subsides for more than 5 minutes, this means that either all
suppressed
material linked to this point has been exhausted, or that critical
nutrients
(usually minerals) have been exhausted.
In the early days of BE (the 1950s,
1960's,
1970's) John Ray and some folks close to him claimed to have witnessed
some massive and miraculous healings due to BE, well beyond the more
common
healings such as amelioration or remission of cancer or chronic illness
(diabetes, arthritis, heart disease, arrhythmia) which are commonly
associated
with switching to raw diets. Some of these more extreme
healings were
claimed to include multiple instances of the following, and many
allegedly
occurred in the span of just a few 2 to 5 hour sessions. The
following
healings and others were claimed by John Ray in his audiotape
instructional
sets on BE, and also in his books, articles, lectures, and videotapes
on
BE; many were claimed to have happened a number of times:
- repair and regeneration of all signs and symptoms
of severe scoliosis, resulting in perfect spinal conformance, anatomy,
alignment and posture
- repair
and regeneration in one 7-hour session of
massive spinal deterioration which had resulted in surgical removal of
numerous vertebra and insertion of steel rods in and along the spine;
the healings reportedly involved complete "dematerialization of the
steel rods" (which had been emplaced in the back surgically) and
complete return to normal spinal anatomy and function
- repair and total regeneration of massive tissue
damage due to massive prior heart attacks
- repair of massive tissue and functional damage
done by severe prior electric shock
- complete restoration to normal appearance,
functioning, and intellectual ability of autistic and Down's Syndrome
children
- repair
and total regeneration of freshly broken
bones in limbs (arms and legs) within a few hours
- repair and total regeneration of quadriplegia due
to spinal damage
- repair
and total regeneration of paraplegia due to
spinal damage
- complete
regeneration in one or two sessions of
massive neurological damage from stroke
- massive and complete eye color (iris color) change
(often seen in the alternative health world as a marker of healing and
cleansing of tissue toxins) from dark brown to totally clear blue eyes
in one or two weeks or less; sometimes overnight
- change
or restoration of hair color
(the entire hair length, from the roots to the tips) from gray to
original natural color in one session, or at times, one to four weeks
of BE work
- growth
of limbs to restore proper limb length in
persons who had a leg or arm which had been shorter than the other, in
one session
- a
lightening not only of iris color (referenced above), but also of skin
color and natural hair color, wherein it was reported that dark hair
and skin became lighter as the person healed old traumas and physical
damage, including sun damage to skin. It seems worthwhile to offer one
cautionary note about the claims of hair color turning lighter or to
blond color: while I recall that John made this claim in one or more of
his instructional audiotape sets and while I have also heard
similar
stories third-hand from folks whom I met in BE seminars in the
1980s and 1990s, some later teachers of BE have reported to
me that they have personally never witnessed such lightening of hair
color, and that they are not sure that this has ever happened to people
who trained in the BE system. In any case, if it did occur, it was
extremely rare. And, it is very true -- as I have mentioned elsewhere
on this page -- that John Ray was rather prone to exaggeration in many
of his statements. This claim of hair color turning to blond may well
be
one example of that exaggeration.
as well as the following, which John did mention
parenthetically (in later years) as happening only rarely in BE:
total regeneration of all teeth, with complete
repair of all filled (artificially restored) and empty caries
(cavities) lesions, where all prior filings simply "popped out", often
overnight total
regeneration or replacement of missing
teeth, often overnight
It is worthwhile to point out here that present-day BE practitioners and instructors, while they do claim to have seen
drastic healings and drastic restorations of function due to practice
of BE, have told this author and others that they simply do not see the
above-cited phenomena which John had claimed were quite common, and
also, for the most part, have not seen such healings since the late
1970s. Rather, what they have witnessed instead have been
rather dramatic healings of emotional and mental problems, massive
healings from CFS and other chronic illness, and amelioration or
remission of cancer or chronic illness (diabetes, arthritis, heart
disease, arrhythmia) which are commonly associated with switching
to raw diets. However, especially in the area of gradual
return of
natural hair color to gray hair, and restoration of lost neurological
function,
and the restoration of nerve supply and function to damaged limbs, the
results commonly seen with BE seem to often far surpass the results
often seen with a raw diet alone (even one which includes animal
foods.) For a further discussion of Body Electronics in
relation to dental regeneration and self-repair of teeth, please see my
on-site page entitled
My Observations and Opinion on Dental Regeneration With Natural
Healing
Modalities. Why
the lessening of drastic healings and
regeneration of tissue since the late 1970's? The theories
which
have been aired have included the following:
that John Ray may have strongly exaggerated or
even fabricated stories of miraculous healing; the current author,
while acknowledging John Ray's many personal shortcomings and excesses
(see notes below), does not believe this to be the case, based upon
interviews with
numerous persons who were students of John's in the 1960's and 1970's,
and
who claimed to have been present in seminars where such events
allegedly
took place that
John Ray may have had some particular
personal "charge" or healing energy, perhaps due to his massive
enlightenment experience (he claimed to have had two such in
the 1950's
and 1960's), which either caused or facilitated massive and
rapid healing in BE participants who were in the same room, and that
this energy, effect or talent may have decreased over time, with the
passage of years; this is the theory favored by the current author
that the composition of the "chelated colloidal
minerals" from the "special" mine in Utah has changed over the years as
less-experienced miners have mined less-powerful sections of the
"healing
mineral" deposit, or have perhaps to process the minerals properly
before
sale; this is the theory most commonly aired by BE instructors and
practitioners
E-Mail
List Groups About Body Electronics, and for BE Practitioners There
have been, in the past, several e-mail list groups devoted to BE, and
most have had a following of 5 or fewer members, and have never
garnered many posts. Most notably, most such list groups
never seemed to garner any posts about significant "gains" or
improvements, such as testimonials about dramatic healings, from
practitioners. It appears that many BE adherents are rather
Internet-shy, and even more reticent about sharing their
experiences via e-mail. However, Chris Bellanger, a long-term
Australian practitioner of BE, has recently (2002) started a new e-mail
list group for BE adherents at Yahoo Groups which may finally offer a
clear forum which may attract
a number of members and contributors.
Chris's
group at Yahoo Groups is called "HowWeHeal". To learn more
about the HowWeHeal group, please visit:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HowWeHeal
To join
Chris's e-mail list group, send an e-mail
to:
HowWeHeal-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
once you have
joined the list group, to start sending messages to members of this
group, simply send email to:
HowWeHeal@yahoogroups.com
Some
Notes About John Ray
Aside from massive disbelief on the part
of
skeptics about some of the more drastic healings claimed by John Ray
for Body Electronics, there seem to be perhaps only two
criticisms which have been consistently levied against Body Electronics
(BE), and
they will be discussed at least briefly in this tract.
First
Criticism: Hypocrisy, Exaggeration and Inconsistency The
first criticism, and that which has gotten more "air time", is
based upon the fact that John Ray himself did not eat a raw diet during
most of the period between 1970 and his death, even while advocating it
for others, and also that his personal life was often conducted in a
manner in marked contrast to his lofty (and affected) authoritarian
preachings
on morality and ethics which were part of his system and comprised the
bulk
of his books. John was also at times somewhat of an alarmist
and
popularizer of extreme or paranoid ideas, perhaps for the attention
factor,
and became a bit infamous in the 1980s for his dramatic and overblown
doomsday
stances on the then-nascent AIDS epidemic, on the hazards of
firewalking
(this got him into a war of words with devotees of
motivational
guru Tony Robbins;
the current author believes, after having firewalked, that there may
indeed
be some emotional and energetic damage to humans from doing so, as John
Ray
claimed), and on the dangers of straying from a raw foods diet (while
he
himself was not even eating such a diet), as well as relating strange
conspiracy-theory-related claims
publicly about the harmfulness of (synthetic) vitamin C and about Nobel
Laureate
Linus Pauling.
Despite John's occasional
latter-day excesses and strays
(almost all of these examples appear to have occurred prior to his move
to the Cook Islands in the late 1980s) from common sense,
the fact remains that he was a genius in the field of healing, and a
powerful
intuitive who re-discovered and popularized an extremely powerful
method
of healing and self-healing (pointholding), and also popularized
raw-foods
diets in an era (1960s and 1970s) when few had heard of them or of
their
benefits. Although
some feel that some of John's claims of
miraculous healings and drastic eye (iris) color change in the
early days of BE may have been inflated, this author has tracked down a
number
of people who were involved in BE in the early days, and they have
confirmed all or at least most of the rather incredible stories and
claims related
on John's audiotape series regarding drastic healings. For
personal
reasons, the author was especially interested in the tales of
occasional
and complete regeneration of dental cavities and missing teeth, and has
been
able to independently confirm three of these instances via three
individuals
who were present, and has since learned of 7 additional such dental
healings which also appear to rather well-verified. For
reasons not clearly
defined, while the system is still a very powerful mode of healing,
such
magically intense and massive healings as those which John Ray claimed
occurred in
the 1960's (listed earlier) are apparently no longer seen, although the
system
still regularly accomplishes dramatic healings of chronic disease and
injuries.
However, as has been noted elsewhere on this page, John Ray
spent the
last years of his life, including all of the 1990's, living in the Cook
Islands
and teaching in Australia and New Zealand. In 2001 and 2002,
there
have been a number of stories emerging from BE practitioners in
Australia
and New Zealand, that they have witnessed dramatic healings in BE
seminars
during the late 1990s and the year 2000 which equaled those listed
earlier.
Second
Criticism: Covert Racist or
"Aryan" Beliefs in Some of John's Claims As related
briefly above, one of the more dramatic and drastic claims made by John
Ray repeatedly in his lectures and audiotape instructional sets
in the 1980's and 1990's comprised the following cluster of
"symptoms" which he claimed accompanied healing:
1) that many people with dark eyes experienced iris color
change from brown to green or blue as a result of practicing BE, often
after having practiced for only a very short time
2) that many people with any kind of dark pigmentation to
their skin (tan, dark skin, etc.) experienced a drastic lightening of
skin color as a result of practicing BE, or, as John Ray put it "as
they healed and got
rid of toxins and sun damage"
3) that some people with dark hair color experienced a
lightening
of their hair color toward blond as a result of healing due to
practice of BE (this is a more marked change than the more-common
effect which he claimed
of loss of gray or white hair and return to original natural hair
color); see my further notes on this claim elsewhere in this article as
well. Interestingly, the above three effects
(particularly the latter two)
are also among those which most recent (and current!) BE instructors
have
claimed not to have witnessed since late 1970. Nonetheless,
as John's
claims became known in the 1980's, a number of folks (including this
author)
reacted strongly and negatively, fearing that John's claims belied a
racist
philosophy, as his claims mirrored the claims of some white
supremacists
and German Aryan racist ideologies. Of course, if you have
been following
the alternative health field for any length of time, you are likely
aware
that many systems of iridology claim that the iris color lightens as
one
heals their body of "toxic deposits", and indeed, many adherents of raw
diets have observed such changes. Strangely, for the
conspiracy theorists
among us, much of iridology in the Western world has originated in
Germany,
and more than one person has suggested that the racist Aryan ideologues
picked
up some of their half-baked notions about blond hair and blue eyes
from
the old early 20th Century German iridologists, or vice-versa.
John claimed repeatedly in his lectures and his audio tapes
on BE that
when he had run numerous BE seminars in the inner cities of Detroit and
other cities in the late 1960s and early 1970s, they were well attended
by
black-skinned folks with black hair and dark eyes. Now, here is where
his story gets weird: he claimed, on his audio tapes, that a large
number
of the black attendees experienced, in only one weekend of Body
Electronics
(raw foods diet, hyper-mineralization with strange prehistoric
minerals,
lots of supplements, and pointholding), an eye color change from dark
brown
to blue, that their hair (well, that of some of them...) turned
blond,
and that their skin lightened by several shades, and a few even
experienced
a change to white skin. Now, I heard these tales, both live and via
John's
tapes, repeatedly in the 1980's and early 1990's while studying BE, and
I must confess that at the time, I was so alienated by the Aryan-race
overtones and racist possibilities of the story, and so judgmental
about
the fact that John may have therefore been a racist and/or a fascist,
that
I never paused to consider whether his stories might be true -- I just
assumed that they were blatant lies... Indeed, a number of persons
in the 80's in the alternative health world attacked John as a racist
on
the basis of his strange tales of skin, iris and hair color change....
In the interim, I have met numerous BE practitioners who
studied with John and attended his workshops in that time period.
Most could not recall that John had ever even held the
seminars he claimed to have held in Detroit's inner
city, and those same people could not remember ever seeing the iris
color
of any black attendees turn blue, nor witnessed their hair or skin turn
lighter. I
have, however, also met two people who traveled with him in those days
who
have reported to me that they attended some of those inner city
seminars
with John, and that they do recall that the eyes of "...a few, only a
few.."
black attendees turned lighter, if not fully blue, within one weekend,
but
they could not recall any hair color change or skin color change.
John
was not always the most truthful person, and he was also rather
paranoid
at times and, as iterated above, subscribed at times to some
strange
conspiracy theories about the "dern Commies" who were apparently trying
to
poison our blood or our Vitamin C or something (shades of Dr.
Strangelove!)
He also got really hung up on AIDS as a scourge marking "the end of
civilization." Very strange,
and sad, for so brilliant and gifted a man.
For some reason, John (as well as some other iridologists of his time)
was apparently rather obsessive about claiming that not only do our
irises get lighter, but that our skin gets lighter, as we become
healthier. In that
same vein, for some odd reason, several current senior BE instructors
whom
I have met love to drop the claim causally in seminars that their skin
is
significantly paler than when they started BE, even though I would
personally take that as a sign of ill-health and/or lack of sunlight
(or a lousy diet)! I will tell you this much: I see, in general, far
greater iris color change with all-raw or largely-raw RVAF
practitioners than I do in most adherents of BE (most BE students I
have met do NOT stick to the prescribed RVAF diet, at least not for
more than 3 days, and most eat junk...) While I have seen an
iris color change toward blue or green in many folks who
have eaten RVAF diets for a while, and I have seen some cases of gray
hair
return marginally toward the original color in some RVAF eaters, I have
never seen any sign or indication of a lightening of natural hair color
or skin color due to eating a RVAF diet or practicing BE.
Rather,
and I am quite insistent upon this, I have instead witnessed that the
natural
hair color of RVAF eaters becomes more vibrant, and often a bit darker
and
fuller. Likewise, I have often witnessed folks with rather
pale skin
gain incredible color tones (greens, reds, pinks, tans, dark
coloration)
in their skin coloration as they switched to a healthy largely-raw diet
which
included raw animal food. On a similar note, many women who
eat RVAF
diets have commented that they no longer need to wear facial makeup or
lipstick,
due to the vivid coloration of their facial skin and lips concomitant
to
eating a RVAF diet. In closing, I can offer no
resolution of the claims of racism made about John's claims.
Not only have I never witnessed such claims of skin
or hair color lightening as iterated in items #2 or #3 above, I
personally
feel that I have witnessed the opposite shift due to eating a RVAF
diet
(one of the components of BE). Further, I have been largely
unable
to find any strong corroboration for John's stories of such skin or
hair
color
lightening. I can say that I have never heard any other
charges of
racism made against John or his senior instructors -- in other words,
to
my knowledge, no one has ever claimed that any of them were guilty of
racism
in their personal lives or other teachings. Bottom line: this
whole
set of claims by John Ray and some older, earlier BE instructors
remains
a mystery, with no firm closure.
Certified Instructors
Offering
Body Electronics in North America
Currently, the most senior instructor in BE in the US and Canada is Doug Morrison (click
here for his site & schedule), who until 2006
traveled the USA
teaching seminars. This author has studied extensively in the
past with Doug Morrison, and feels that Doug is an excellent and
skilled BE instructor. This author does NOT agree
wholeheartedly with all the tenets and postulates of BE as taught in
its books and classes (e.g. use of ozone, use of colloidal silver, use
of certain supplements), and yet strongly recommends BE as a strong
system of natural healing which goes well beyond the benefits of a
RVAF diet alone. However, BE
is not for the faint-hearted, for those who lack massive inner
discipline,
or for New Age dilettantes: it demands tremendous tolerance of pain,
discomfort, and adherence to a raw diet. While I strongly
recommend BE for its virtues, I also feel that eating a RVAF diet
alone will accomplish, in
time, some of the drastic benefits seen with BE, and I have since
discovered
some inner systems
of heart-centered healing (elucidated on one of my websites)
which appear to be much less painful and yet highly effective for
healing many so-called drastic illnesses.
Offshoots of Body
Electronics
An additional wrinkle, offering additional possibilities for
exploration: Marcus Daniels, an early and accomplished instructor of
BE, has also deeply studied Rolfing, connective tissue work and Tibetan
energetic and spiritual traditions, and has formulated his own system
of healing called Cellular Memory Regeneration, which he
teaches. He also recommends a RVAF diet for optimal healing.
Click here
for a link to a page on this site which describes Cellular
Memory Healing and also provides contact information for Marcus.
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