AFT derives its name from Chaos Theory and the mathematics of nonlinear dynamics, in which "attractor" is the name given to an identifiable pattern that emerges from a seemingly meaningless mass of chaotic data.  AFT treatments focus on stored memory attractors in the brain's neural networks and the continuously generated attractor fields of habitual thought patterns.  Using unique singularity points AFT utilizes the "critical point phenomena" wherein the least influence has the greatest impact on the system as a whole.  AFT both recruits CNS (Central Nervous System) capabilities via manipulation of the Meridian System and uses the direct action of the Meridians themselves to accomplish its therapeutic results.  The Fields which AFT influences are the energetic fields associated with the functioning of the Meridians, and the energy fields generated by the brain's neural networks. 

  Initial trials of AFT on humans and animals have been highly promising.  In animal studies, marked increases in disease resistance have been noted along with changes in basic physiological and psychological processes.  Among humans, case studies of diverse physical disorders such as osteoarthritis, Parkinson's disease, tinnitus, back pain, sore throat pain, sinusitus, etc., are highly promising with patients demonstrating marked symptom relief and remission.  Funding for formal research studies and access to appropriate treatment populations are required in order to advance the developing AFT technology and verify its utility for clinical practice through quantification. 

Theoretical Background

  Illness and health do not just happen to us.  Each of us lives within a myriad of contexts - social, geographic, ethnic, educational, emotional, etc. All of which have different impacts on the quality of our lives at all levels.  No one can doubt that growing up on the streets of Calcutta is more inimical to one's health than growing up in the Royal House of England; that poverty or the lack of education affect our lives differently than affluence or having a graduate degree from Harvard.  Medical science has devoted countless man hours to examining potential contributing factors in illness, and most recently in unraveling the human genome, in an attempt to isolate the causes for illness.  Despite this enormous effort, millions continue to suffer from heart disease, cancer, arthritis, or the seemingly limitless maladies that plague humanity.  Among the wealthy and poor, the educated and uneducated, illness exists.  On the surface at least, it appears that illness is an inherent part of the human condition.  Or is it? Clearly not everyone becomes ill; some never succumb to any illness of any sort.  Are these individuals simply lucky?  Do they have a genetic constitution that somehow protects them?  Are they blessed by God?  In the worst epidemics the world has witnessed, not every person exposed to the offending pathogen has become ill; not every person who smokes develops cancer; only a small percentage of the world's general population contracts influenza even though the influenza virus is impersonal and the vast majority of the population is undoubtedly exposed to it.  While it would be foolish to argue that external influences have no impact on the body, the question of why various illnesses afflict different individuals remains unanswered.  The "Why me?" and "Why now" of illness remain unknown. 

  Recent advances in psychoneuroimmunology point to emotional stresses as significant determinants of our immunity to diseases of all sorts.  Stress itself is little understood, being a highly personal experience arising from one's own attitudes, values, and beliefs.  What is stressful to one is of absolutely no consequence to another.  Emotional connections to such various phenomena as accidents, allergies and asthma, angina and heart disease, back pain, cancer, diabetes, stomach ulcers, hypertension, insomnia, and irritable bowel syndrome have all been well documented.  A clearer understanding of how the workings of our mind impact our bodies has awaited critical advancements in knowledge in several areas.

  The seminal work of David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D., co-author of Orthomolecular Psychiatry (1973) with Nobelist Linus Pauling, and that of Noble laureate Eric Kandel, M.D., while approaching the problem differently, have both concluded that the mind, through our thoughts and memories, influences our physical beings at the most elementary levels.  Their findings are in accord with those of quantum physics which view physical phenomena referred to as "the explicate order" as emanating from "the invisible implicate order" of thought (Bohm, 1980).  It is important to note that this scientific insight corresponds with the view of reality described throughout history by enlightened sages in all religions.

  Hawkins' work, presented in Power vs. Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior (1995) is largely theoretical in nature, and postulates that attitudes, thoughts, and beliefs are connected with various energetic pathways to all of the body's organs.  These are the same pathways that are described in Classical Chinese Medicine as "The Meridians of Qi".  In Hawkins' conception, the repetition of minute energetic changes in the Meridian flows, induced by the energy of thought, gradually affect our overall physiology, as mediated by well-known physiological processes such as electron transfer, hormonal balance, etc..  Eventually these infinitesimal changes become encoded in the energy flowing through the Meridians as a turbulence or perturbation within the energy flow.  The persistence and repetition of various patterns of one's habitual responses to stressors ultimately manifests as a disease process, or influences the immune system rendering an individual more susceptible to disease or infection.  Hawkins notes that there have been spontaneous cures of virtually every known illness that affects man; in each case reported, there has been a profound change in the personality of the person undergoing symptom remission.  In effect, according to Hawkins, the invisible universe of thought and attitude becomes visible as a consequence of our habitual thought-emotional response patterns.  This notion is reminiscent of a thousands-of-year-old quote from the Su Wen, an ancient text on Acupuncture:

  Kandel's Nobel Prize winning research (1983,1998,1999) conclusively demonstrated that the establishment of a single memory initiates a process in which genes are turned on and off, and chemicals and hormones are released, creating neural growth or plasticity within the central nervous system itself.  His work demonstrated that the interaction of genetics and environmental experience is a two-way street.  The nature of the process initiated remains unknown and is posited by Kandel to be an inherent property of nervous tissue.  Kandel has concluded that psychotherapy is effective in removing anxiety neuroses and depression because it affects which genes are switched on or off, which then alters our brain chemistry without drugs.  Changing gene expression takes time which is why psychotherapy does not work as quickly as do drugs.  Kandel's work has helped revolutionize our understanding of the brain, showing how thoughts, or thought-like activities translate into changes in the actual structure of the organism.  The implications of "neuroplasticity" are immense.  It provides optimism in many areas ranging from helping children overcome learning disabilities to helping stroke victims overcome their previously believed fixed deficits.  In light of Hawkins' work, its implications may be even far greater.

  The nature of the process at work as thought influences the body has been clarified further by the work of Charles Shang, M.D.  Shang (1996), who has studied the Meridian system using SQUID (Superconducting QUantum Interference Device) instrumentation, indicates that the Meridian system is a distinct signal transduction system that overlaps and interacts with the nervous and circulatory systems, but is not part of these systems.  His work indicates that acupuncture points are singularity points (electromagnetic sinks or sources), and Meridians are separatices that divide the body into domains of different electromagnetic energy flow and intensity.  Noting the established role of electrical fields in growth control and regulation, and his own observations of embryonic development, Shang has developed the morphogenetic singularity theory which explains the development of the Meridian system as an evolutionary outgrowth of organizing centers which are high electrical conductance points on the body surface of amphibians through higher vertebrates.  He provides convincing evidence that the change of electrical activity at organizing centers correlates with signal transduction and can precede morphologic change; that as an intracellular transduction system the Meridian system is likely to have preceded all the other physiological systems.  Fitting within the classical Western conceptions of evolution, Shang's morphogenetic singularity theory relies on an underlying genetic "blueprint" as being responsible for the development of the organizing centers themselves, and thus fails to take into account the fact the even with the unraveling of the human genome there has been no evidence of a genetic blueprint within the genes.  To this point genes have been found to contain the building blocks of the body, not the architectural plans.  The general acceptance of genes as the source of mophology is a matter of supposition, rather than fact.

  Rupert Sheldrake, in The Presence of the Past: Morphic Resonance and the Habits of Nature and other works (1981,1988) undertakes an extensive reexamination of classical notions of evolution and Sheldrake proposes a radical reinterpretation of the evolutionary forces at work in the unfolding of ontogeny and phylogeny.  Sheldrake notes that genes, providing the same information to each cell of the body, cannot be at the source of cellular differentiation which is fundamental to morphological changes.  If every cell has the same set of "blueprints", how do they become different?  What process contained within the cell could possibly decide the fate of various aspects of the eventual whole, i.e., which cells become organizing centers, or nerves, or eyes and ears?  How is it that each species develops attributes characteristic of that species which differentiate it from all other species?  According to Sheldrake's hypothesis of formative causation, these questions remain unanswered largely because conventional science is limited by reductionistic thinking: assuming that finding the answers to the questions of nature is largely a matter of figuring out the clockwork machinery of an ultimately Newtonian universe.  But, Sheldrake suggests that nature is not a machine and that each kind organism is shaped not by universal laws, but rather by unique "morphic fields" containing collective or pooled information specific to the organism.  Organisms not only share genetic material with others of their species, but are also shaped by a "field" specific to that species.  Sheldrake presents evidence indicating that rather than genes, energetic forces external to the cell itself, are the source of morphological differentiation; that perhaps both Lamark and Mendel were correct, rather that one or the other.  If Sheldrake's intriguing conclusions are as valid as his questions, then the Meridian system may well be the predecessor of the physiological organizing centers noted above in Shang's work.  This view would place morphological development in alignment with the Su Wen's assertion that "Qi ... becomes visible as form...". 

  Further work by Z. H. Cho, et.al. (1998), developer of fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging), convincingly demonstrates that the stimulation of acupuncture points is correlated to the activation of specific brain regions.  His study of the impact of acupuncture point activation indicates that in addition to causing localized energetic changes within the body, acupuncture additionally stimulates or activates specific areas of the brain, thereby inducing chemical or hormonal release (via the CNS) to diseased or disordered organs/body parts during treatment.  Cho has proposed a generalized Acupoint-Brain-Organ Model to account for the therapeutic action of Acupuncture on the body.  His studies are most important for documenting that specific areas of the brain, and hence the brain's neuronal network, is influenced by the energy of the Meridian flows themselves.  Cho's work opens the door for the possibility that not only do the energetic flows of the Meridians activate the brain, but equally importantly, the energetic activity of the brain may influence the action of the Meridians.

  It may well be that, as Hawkins has alluded, the Mind-Body connection is the Meridian System, and our thoughts, beliefs, and emotions generate a subtle energy that can influence the immune system and our entire physical being. 

  The knowledge advancements provided by the above authors set the stage for examining the treatment of illness from a different perspective.  What we think, our emotions, values, and beliefs can no longer be doubted to play a central role in our physical well-being.  The subtle energy of our thoughts influences the energy of the Meridians, the "life force" as described in Classical Chinese Medicine.  Psychotherapy can influence our thoughts, and ultimately a change in what one thinks appears necessary to change the energy of thought.  According to Hawkins, thoughts produce energy at different frequencies; tune into a different frequency and you will impact the body differently.  The research in Cognitive Therapy (Beck, 1995) would appear to support this contention.  But psychotherapy is expensive, time consuming, works slowly and, is not accessible or acceptable to all people. 

  The work of Cho, et. al., raises an intriguing possibility: if activation of specific brain points accompanies the stimulation of specific Acupoints, then it could be possible to alter or alleviate the impact of illness-related thoughts by "driving the system backward".  That is to say, stimulate Acupoints to induce brain neural net activity which induces physiological shifts in the organism, resulting in symptom relief or remission.  This would, in effect, move treatment interventions a step closer to the actual cause of disease states or morphological distortions.  If this is the case, profound shifts in both human and animal physiology would be achievable as is done with Acupuncture, however more easily, conveniently, and thoroughly.  It would open the door to an entirely new treatment methodology.  If neural network activity influences gene expression, then the possibility exists that even genetic disorders are susceptible to alteration of expression. 

  Utilizing these advances in the understanding of the Mind-Body connection and its relationship to the disease process, a proprietary method of stimulating the Meridian system has been developed and has undergone preliminary investigation.  This method involves the sequential activation of specific acupuncture points, and through this stimulation, the activation of the brain's neural networks.  A method has been developed for determining the specific pattern of energetic changes needed to counter the hypothesized underlying catabolic energy patterns responsible for the genesis of physical ailments.  Acupoint activation is accomplished either manually through percussion, or via at-a-distance stimulation using proprietary structured quantum potential interference fields, as suggested by the quantum mechanics "Aharonov- Bohm Effect", (Y. Aharonov & D. Bohm, 1959).  Treatment involves the sequential application of different structured potential fields, or the percussion of different Acupoints manually in specific sequences for different disorders.

  The technology of AFT has been extended not only to humans, but to animals as well.  Kandel's work centered on invertebrates, Aplysia which are a kind of "sea slug" were used, because they have an uncomplicated nervous system, and their nerve cells do not vary greatly from human nerve cells.  Shang has studied the embryological development of Acupoints in non-human vertebrates, and Acupuncture has been used successfully with animals, from elephants to house pets, for centuries demonstrating that as with Aplysia, lower animals have great similarities to humans.  AFT technology has now been extended to non-human life forms through the development of the appropriate structured quantum potential interference fields to activate non-human Acupoints.   Extensive independent Accutone^© field trials of both Avian and Porcine populations numbering in the thousands have now demonstrated remarkable results in health, well being, and rate of growth.

Summary

  Attractor Field Technique represents a new paradigm in the basic western conception of the disease process and healing.  By blending Eastern and Western ideas, disease is conceived of as a distortion of the energy patterns which underlie and maintain our physical being.  This distortion is encoded energetically in the Meridians of Chinese Traditional Medicine by the energetic influence of habitual thought patterns.  These thought patterns arise as the result of learned and accepted belief systems, attitudes, and values: the very context of each individual's life.  Evidence has been offered that human and animal morphology is intimately related to the energetic action of the Meridians and there is reason to believe that the organizing centers represented by Acupoints maintain their morphogenic potential across time.  Western quantum physics now asserts that all of physical reality is patterned energy: energy organized and maintained by other energetic forces.  In effect, science has come to realize that for centuries the mystics have been correct: the universe is One, it only appears different due to the action of locally varying unifying energy patterns.  In David Bohm's terms, the invisible energetic universe runs parallel to the visible world we experience as physical reality; the unfolded physical world is the manifestation of the enfolded energetic universe.  In this context, AFT healing ultimately involves altering the underlying energy generated by habitual thought patterns.  The treatment of illness involves disrupting the energetic disease state patterns engendered and maintained by these habitual thought patterns.  By operating at the level of structured energetic patterns AFT treatments, like Acupuncture treatments, avoid the harmful side effects of forcing physical processes to change that are inherent in pharmacological treatments.  Unlike Acupuncture, AFT treatments are easily applied, requiring no extensive training to perform, and cannot cause localized disruptions of the energetic patterns related to physical morphology and well-being.  Applying an "incorrect" AFT treatment has no effect on the treated organism.  AFT treatments merely disrupt the energy patterns of disease states: simply put, what is not there cannot be disrupted, thus AFT treatments are absolutely and totally safe in actual practice. 
 
 1. Structured energetic fields, Accutones^©, are a field.  As explicated by physicist Dr. T.E. Bearden, this field in space is not a force field, but is merely spatiotemporal energy structuring and patterning.  It can be considered as a curvature of spacetime (general relativity view), or as a change in the virtual particle flux of the vacuum (particle physics view).  It is a pure energy field. Spacetime is identically energy; virtual particle flux of vacuum is identically energy.  A region of change, the Accutone^© field, is an energy field.  Such fields currently cannot be directly measured as there is no force, or power, present as is created in a conventional transverse wave electromagnetic field.  i.e.: radio, TV, cell phone, etc. 

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