On Friday a colleague asked me what direction was north. Unsure, I pointed vaguely toward what I thought might be north. I had no idea why I was being asked. It turned out that two colleagues – let’s call them A and B – were discussing a decision that A needed to make. B suggested a technique to make the decision. A should stand facing north in order to align herself with the world’s Reiki energy, and then clear her mind. She would begin to feel herself begin to fall either forward or backward. Forward would be interpreted as “Yes”, and backwards meant “No”.
And so A gave it a try, and found herself falling forward. “That’s amazing!” she said. “The ideomotor effect in action”, I opined. I was scowled at and dismissed, and returned to my work. How dare anyone suggest that it had nothing to do with mystical energies unknown to science!
Thinking about it I couldn’t help but feel it was not dissimilar to dowsing without the rods, and searching for an inner mental state rather than water or gold. I have no doubt that A sincerely felt an odd compulsion to fall forward. The ritual may even have helped her tap into her “subconscious” to figure out what she really wanted. Using the ideomotor effect to probe your inner mental state isn’t as obviously silly as dowsing and may even be effective at times.
By suggesting that A face north to align with Reiki energy, they seemed to be engaging in a ritualistic element that could halp accentuate the ideomotor effect. It lent a strange credibility to their minds (both are already convinced in reality of Reiki – indeed, the decision A was making was whether or not to do another course in the quack therapy).
I suspect it actually wouldn’t have mattered which direction was chosen – and indeed I think A was facing northwest, so wouldn’t she have felt herself falling 45 degrees to the right? I also have a sneaking suspicion that if alerted to the fact she was facing in the wrong direction, a memory of a tug to side would be claimed.
The ideomotor effect is a well documented psychological effect. Its power lies beneath nonsensical beliefs such as dowsing, ouija, and the incident I witnessed. I think that this trick would work even if you explained that it was a psychological technique to “tap the unconscious”. Just having some authoratative sounding explanation will increase the effect.
Oddly, it’s the new age mystical people who forever say science doesn’t appreciate the power of the mind that are the ones who don’t give the mind credit. Our brains have the capability to control our bodies without us being consciously aware of it.
