Subtle Energies and Uncharted Realms of the Mind
An Esalen Invitational Conference
July 2 - 7, 2000

Biology and Spirituality: The VAS Technique
John Ackerman

The VAS Technique

Dr. Paul Nogier was a French neurologist who, after spending several years in China learning traditional Chinese acupuncture, discovered the pulse technique now called the VAS. In general terms, the VAS is an instantaneous tonal change in the walls of the arterial system in response to a signal that current scientific instrumentation has been unable to detect thus far. Perhaps, it is an electromagnetic stimulus. More specifically, the VAS is a composite, according to Navach’s research of:

The cardiac pulse wave plus the arterial contraction plus the arterial elastic recoil. The radial artery pulse wave lags the cardiac plane wave by 200. The clinically palpated VAS of the radial artery is produced by seven independently contracting physiologic segments of the artery located at different intervals. The VAS ultrasound monitored wave is produced by one segment modified by the other six segments. Each contractile segment surrounds 80% of the arterial circumference. With waffles set in varying positions to produce helixes (five right and two left), the clinically palpated VAS is the sum of these seven. The detectable VAS is the net result of the amplification and cancellation of these seven helixes.

Put in different terms, what Nogier discovered and what several people around the world are now researching is that the arterial system displays a specific physical reaction when objects (such as food, herbs or medicine) present in the electromagnetic fields near to the periphery of the body without touching it.

To describe a variation of how the clinical VAS technique can be utilized, Ackerman explained how he could evaluate an infant with chronic diarrhea after a pediatrician failed to find an etiology. With the mother lying on her back and with the infant resting on her chest, Ackerman holds a potentially allergic food that the mother commonly eats, near to the infant’s head while he palpates the radial artery of the mother to detect the response of the vascular wall. If the tone of the arterial wall expands, called the positive VAS, then Ackerman knows that particular substance agrees with the body’s constitution. However, if the tone of the arterial wall contracts, called negative VAS, then he knows that the baby might be allergic to that substance. Ackerman’s mentor, Joseph H. Navach, taught that if the radial arterial wall expands only for a duration of time between 9 to 18 seconds when a substance is held near to a patient’s head this is an indication that the substance has a therapeutic potential for that person. Ackerman noted that the VAS is a non-invasive and harmless technique that can be used for a variety of medical purposes. In addition to detecting allergic reactions, Ackerman has also used it to evaluate dosage amount for nutritional, herbal, homeopathic and allopathic medical prescriptions. Experimentally, Navach made a video in the mid-80’s demonstrating that the area under the ultrasound recorded arterial pulse wave can be utilized to objectively made these clinical determinations. This work has not yet been duplicated.

Although it is challenging for those coming from the Western world view to believe that the arterial system could physically react to a substance when it enters the periphery of the human body without touching it, Ackerman indicated that similar non-local phenomena occur in nature quite frequently. Male moths, for example, use infrared signals to communicate with females. Ducks, termites, and ants all use biophotons to communicate with each other. In an attempt to understand these non-local communications by animals, in 1980 Joseph Navach did a study with flatworms utilizing acetylcholine. The identical movement response appeared whether the acetylcholine was placed on the surface of the worms, held at a distance, or bottled in a hermetically sealed glass container touching the worm’s surface or held at a distance. When Navach shielded the flatworm with aluminum, the movement response was enhanced by 20%. When shielded with a copper screen, without grounding, the effect was enhanced 50%. When shielded with 1 mm. lead, the response decreased by 30%. A 4 mm. lead shield completely eliminated the response. A grounded copper screen permitted photo emission but not radio frequency emission.

In 1982 Navach did work with lasers and flatworms. He described how different wave bands and on-off frequencies of the laser have effects on flatworms identical to adenergic or cholinergic direct or indirect stimulation. These results could also be obtained by different stimuli such as electric fields, magnetic fields, propogative electromagnetic fields and white light passed through Kodak wrattan filters 44A (adenergic frequency) and 25 (cholinergic frequency). He also did research regarding such effects on mice and rats.

International Research

Although he is not a trained researcher, since 1990 Ackerman has been conducting both formal and informal studies of the VAS technique. In Washington, D.C., while working with Steve Kantor, Ph.D., Ackerman did a pilot study that revealed positive results of the VAS. Ackerman then worked with Barry Sterman, Ph.D., a well-known researcher at the Los Angeles Veterans’ Hospital, where he did a double-blind study incorporating both QEEG measurements and the VAS. Other studies were conducted in New York with Ching-tsi Lee, Ph.D. but those were not as successful as the pilots in Los Angeles.

Internationally, Ackerman mentioned current research in Switzerland and Uzbekistan documenting that the width of the radial artery does not change in response to substances that are brought into the periphery of a person’s body. In addition, ongoing research on the VAS has continued at the Center that Paul Nogier started in Lyon, France called GLEM (Groupe Lyonnais d'Etudes Médicales). An international alliance is developing to study the VAS. Ackerman and the French believe that the important step right now is to build bridges and coordinate research internationally. For example, Roeland van Wijk, Ph.D. at the Institute of Biophoton Research in Germany is beginning to collaborate.

Navach’s Compounds

Ackerman’s presentation did not focus exclusively on the VAS technique. He also described a related but slightly different piece of research previously conducted by Joseph Navach. Navach claimed that he had discovered previously unknown compounds in the human body, in other mammals and even in other phyla that have aromatic nuclei with the capacity to oscillate when induced electromagnetically. Navach believed that the compounds were related to the acupuncture points described in Chinese medicine and served the function of facilitating movement of information between acupuncture points along meridians up to the thalamus in the brain by electromagnetic induction.

When researching these compounds, Navach discovered that at each more proximal acupuncture point, the intensity of the electrical signal is magnified by a factor of 4. He believed that is why, people who practice acupuncture, needle distant points to get a stronger healing effect. Navach further speculated that these compounds play a role in accelerating the transfer of information from DNA to messenger RNA and thereby accelerate the body’s healing process.

To clarify, Ackerman read from a Fetzer report describing Navach’s work on the compounds:

Navach called these compounds neurohormones. They have a bio-chemical configuration that resonates with an electromagnetic stimulation. He felt they were in the mid to high range of harmonics of the fundamental stimulating radio frequencies. Neurohormone clusters, which have receptor capacity, are electrically neutral. When the hormone clusters are induced to resonate, an electrical polarity is created in a manner that is similar to a Shiff salt. Once electrical polarity has been created, that neurohormone cluster functions as an information relay point. The chemical structure of the point must be allowed to relax in order to function again as a receptor. Relatively permanent polarization can also occur by a change in the ratio of neurohormones or by continued induced resonance with a more central neurohormone aggregate.

Navach speculated that moth antennae receive information in a similar way. The cluster acts as a retinyl Shiff salt that is effected by transient electrical fields developed in collagen during deformation. This piezo-electric property of connective tissue and bone has been demonstrated by many researchers since the 1950’s. Changes in native frequencies in a relay of neurohormone clusters are induced by an energy source having or inducing a frequency which is harmonic with the native compound. Information is picked up from outside the body or from within the body by changes in the composite resonance of neurohormone clusters. Is it only neurohormones that are involved in the transfer of information? Oscillating neurohormones may stimulate humoral and other physiologic responses elsewhere.

To further this research on Navach’s compounds, Ackerman has proposed a pilot study that would bring together researchers from the arenas of physics, molecular biology, traditional Chinese medicine, Western medicine and the field of parapsychology. The goal would be to isolate and define what is the receptor mechanism that links the energetic phenomenon of acupuncture and the physical response of the compounds. If the compounds do actually exist, Ackerman believes they may very well be related to the research being done at the Institutes of Biophoton Research in Germany and China.

Response

In response to Ackerman’s presentation, Russell Targ wanted to clarify if there was an enhancement of the VAS effect when an object was covered in a copper shield, because copper would seem to block the electromagnetic signals according to standard physics. Ackerman responded affirmatively noting that the copper did enhance the VAS effect, if the shielding was not grounded. In response to some comments by Dean Radin and Helmut Schmidt, Ackerman shared that he has noticed effects that seem to support the validity of retro-causality. Specifically, Ackerman has seen, several times, that there has been a positive reaction before a substance was introduced into the field surrounding a person’s body. Commenting on the best way to scientifically verify the VAS effect, Elizabeth Targ mentioned the importance of isolating the response to an introduced substance. Because the person on the table could be responding to many things, not just the object being moved into the body’s periphery, it is important to keep all factors as consistent as possible so that skeptical researchers do not rule out the VAS effect as coming from another source. Ackerman reviewed how he utilized pulley’s attached to the ceiling and that the person holding the strings as well as the subject were double-blinded. The actual research room minimized other types of stimulation. In New York, a Mu room was utilized. In response to a question from Garrett Yount about where the compounds are located, Ackerman indicated that Navach documented their presence not only in acupuncture points but also under basement membrane, surrounding melanocytes, under the deep surface of fascial membranes and surrounding periosteum. They are also present in the pia mater of the ventral surface of the medulla oblongata, the pigmented tissue of the choroid of the eye, in nivae, melanomas and lentigenes. They also occur on the external surfaces of all naturally electroconductive tissue especially in the interface of axon membranes and Schwann cells.

Lastly, Henry Dreyer compared Ackerman’s work with the VAS technique to the more common practice of kinesiology that is often used by chiropractors. Ackerman noted that the International Joseph H. Navach Project plans to do a study comparing the effectiveness of the VAS, kinesiology, the pendulum, the Vega, the Voll, etc.