BY ELAINE S. SILVER

Dennis Owens was sick of being sick. Asthma was ruining his life. The condition had come on suddenly eight years earlier at age 53. It was so bad that walking up just a few steps robbed him of breath. It sent him to the emergency room several times, and he even ended up in the ICU. He was on two asthma medications. One was supposed to be used only when breathing became particularly difficult, but “I found myself using it several times a day,” Owens says. On New Year’s Day 2013, Owens resolved to get rid of the asthma. At the time, he had no idea how that could happen. Western medicine has no cure for asthma. A few weeks later a friend mentioned an alternative treatment that she had just started. “She said that she was not sure what kind of effect it was having on her,” Owens remembers, “but she had the sense that it might be the answer I was looking for.”

The treatment that Owens’ friend was undergoing was unusual. This healing modality is called Biophoton Light Therapy. She was having the light in her cells recalibrated using a revolutionary approach to balancing the systems in the physical body.

Owens started going for weekly hour-long sessions. The practitioner used a device called a Chiren machine to measure the galvanic skin resistance on his fingers and toes on acupuncture meridian points. This form of measurement of the acupuncture meridians was first mapped out by the German scientist Reinhold Voll in 1953 and is used today in a variety of disciplines. The practitioner found where his cells were emitting light signals that were unhealthy—or in the language of the modality, chaotic. She saw which systems and organs were not functioning properly. She saw where viruses and bacteria were hiding in his tissues. She then ran therapeutic vibrational programs that harmonized the cells so their signals changed to their natural state of coherence. Once the signals stabilized in a coherent state, Owens’ body could start to heal.

Within a few months and 12 sessions, Owens saw his New Year’s resolution fulfilled—his asthma was gone. Climbing steps no longer caused him to gasp for air. “The first time I hiked to the top of Mount Burdell,” he says, “I felt like Rocky!” Owen decided to change careers to become a Biophoton Light practitioner himself.

Biophoton Light Therapy has its theoretical origins in scientific research beginning back in the early part of the last century. In the 1930s Russian scientist Alexander Gurvich realized scientifically what shamans and sages have been saying since the dawn of time: we are light beings. He found light emitting from biological entities—weak electromagnetic light waves—“mitogenetic rays,” or biological photon emissions.

Then, in the 1970s, a German experimental physicist named Fritz-Albert Popp was able to demonstrate a way to observe these biophotons. Although it is not known where exactly in the cells the light originates, Popp speculated that it comes directly from the DNA itself since DNA is present in each cell. But it seems clear from the decades of research into this phenomenon that the light emanating from animals and plants is acting as a communication system both within each cell and even between them. Biophotons probably also account for our instinctual understanding of each other. We know when we meet people that seem particularly vibrant and healthy that they seem to be full of light as well as life. Although the light is not within the spectrum that is perceived by our physical eyes, there may be an as yet undiscovered way we perceive the light emissions coming from others.

The International Institute of Biophysics in Germany now serves as the headquarters and network hub for research into biophotonics. Scientists have conducted many experiments on the subject since Popp founded the institute in 1996 in an effort to understand how cells function and communicate.

But it was a chance reading in the early 1980s of a scientific paper on Popp’s work that led Dutch scholar and researcher Johan Boswinkel to start thinking about a very practical application of measuring biophotons. Asked by a colleague to translate a scientific paper of Popp’s from German to English, a light went on in Boswinkel’s head. He went on to create an overall system for identifying the kind of light a person was emitting. And Biophoton Light Therapy was born.

Boswinkel was able to show how certain kinds of light indicated illness or disharmony in the person’s system or field and in which organs or systems the disruption existed. And most importantly, he developed a biofeedback system that asks the body what it needed to recalibrate the light from an unhealthy—or chaotic—state in order to make it harmonious, or in the language of biophotonics, coherent.

Owens’s client Gabriella (not her real name), sits in a chair facing Owens. In her right hand she holds a gold rod. Owens is checking the Voll acupuncture meridian points on her left hand. Excited and moaning noises come from the Chiren machine on the desk. The sounds indicate if the organs and systems associated with each meridian point are in coherence or if they need help. Owens checks and rechecks Gabriella’s fingers and toes while he determines what systems need to be dealt with first. She’s here on what some might consider a fool’s errand. “I came to Dennis because I wanted my thyroid to function fully again,” the 59-year-old administrator says. “My doctor was going to increase my thyroid medication. He told me that I was going to be on it for the rest of my life. I made a decision to get off of it, and I came here.”

Owens follows the protocol outlined by Boswinkel’s training. Owens patiently accesses Gabriella’s energetic state. There is a clear order that practitioners follow, but Owens still has many judgments and decisions to make depending on what Gabriella’s body has to say. As a rule, however, the hormonal system is tackled first, as it gives the other systems the master instructions.

“We don’t diagnose,” he explains. “We access, we measure the energetic body. The physical manifests from the energetic. Before anything exists in the physical state, it has to exist as an energy first. When you get the organs and glands balanced, the body can heal itself. We don’t do any healing. We allow the body to heal itself.”

Then he runs a series of vibrational homeopathic remedies called emeopathy remedies, so called because they are electromagnetic. It’s a more efficient system than traditional homeopathy, Owens says. “A homeopathic practitioner will spend a long time figuring out the appropriate remedy and the precise titration (or dilution). And even then, it is the practitioner who is making the decision. With our treatment, we let the body decide. The Chiren machine tests the energetic remedies so the body will only take what it needs. The biofeedback loop is the safety mechanism. It is reading the body and feeding it the remedies at the same time.”

Gabriella receives a variety of remedies via fiber optic rods she holds in her hands. Then Owens checks the meridian points on her hands and feet again before running another set of remedies that integrates the changes that have taken place. These are received through the bottom of the feet using foot plates. The whole process takes about an hour.

Boswinkel and his practitioners have accessed and balanced well over 25,000 people over the last 20 years. They have had many dramatic successes. In their own research study, 92.7% of 133 chronic complaints disappeared after two weeks of Biophoton Light Therapy. It is also an accepted form of alternative medicine in several hospitals in Germany.

Over the years Boswinkel has noted patterns in the roots of disease. Many illnesses, including asthma, he says, are caused by whiplash, which may occur from many different causes, not just car accidents. Whiplash can happen even at birth. And many seemingly incurable diseases, like Crohn’s disease and other digestive issues, Boswinkel says, are caused by appendicitis, which is often expressed in a form that is not recognized in Western medicine. Both of these root causes are easily dealt with and harmonized with the Chiren machine and a skilled practitioner. The client then experiences not just alleviation of symptoms, but a real health change for the better.

There are conditions that preclude using Biophoton Light Therapy. Having organ or foreign tissue transplants, artificial blood vessels or tubes and a number of other specific medical interventions make a person ineligible for this treatment. But Biophoton Light Therapy does successfully treat the results of trauma, food sensitivities, Lyme disease, and even scoliosis. “There is even a dyslexia program,” Owens says. “It integrates the two hemispheres of the brain.”

Owens treated Gabriella in a series of 14 hour-long sessions. It is not unusual for significant change to happen over just or 6 sessions. It’s now been three months since she has taken any thyroid medication. She looks healthy and vibrant. “I feel better than I have felt in years,” she says. “I am thrilled.”

Owens is also pleased. “I love helping people,” he says. “I love the idea that I am contributing to bringing light into the world.”

Elaine Silver is a journalist, writer, editor, and storyteller. Her articles have appeared in many publications including the New York Times and Bloomberg Businessweek. She lives in the North Bay.

Death of a Star

In Boswinkel’s 2011 book, How the Body Really Works, he postulates that we are much more like stars than just the stardust that make up our physical bodies. He writes: “Death of a cell is also remarkably similar to the death of a star. When a cell dies it changes into a supernova, whereby the light emission increases a thousand fold and then goes back to zero in about 72 hours. Probably these are the moments when very seriously ill people suddenly get better only to die after a few days. These couple of days are the days of the supernova. During these days, the body balances itself out, and one will find all the points on the body with the same value.”

It’s Not the Germs, It’s the Terrain

Chemist and microbiologist Louis Pasteur is the father of modern germ theory. Pasteur theorized in the early 19th century that infectious viruses and bacteria are the cause of illness. This paradigm is the philosophical basis on which most Western medicine is based—kill the germ, get better. However, Pasteur had a rival and friend, physiologist Claude Bernard. Bernard had another theory: “le milieu interieur,” which argues that the body was only susceptible to illness if its internal balances were off.

This past winter, scientists at Weill Cornell College in New York published a study on their findings of DNA found in the New York City subway system. They found that this mass transit system, which ferries over five million riders each weekday, was filled with hundreds of types of bacteria. Some are harmless. But some are definitely not—like the bubonic plague. And the DNA from almost half of the organisms actually did not match any known entities on record.

And yet, the population of New York seems free of any strange outbreaks, indicating that perhaps, as Johan Boswinkel says, if the body is balanced, it will heal itself. In fact, it is said that at the end of his life, even Pasteur changed his mind. On his deathbed he is quoted as saying, “Bernard is right—the microbe is nothing, the environment is everything.”