Beverly Rubik: The Woman Who Named the Biofield

How a Biophysicist Gave Scientific Language to the Body’s Energy Field and Fought to Make It Legitimate

In 1992, Beverly Rubik sat at a conference table at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, and proposed a word. The word was biofield.

She was there as a member of the NIH Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM) ad hoc panel on bioelectromagnetic applications in medicine. The panel’s task was to evaluate the scientific evidence for electromagnetic and “energy” therapies — practices like acupuncture, therapeutic touch, Reiki, qigong, and homeopathy that claim to work through the body’s energy field but have no accepted mechanism in conventional biomedicine.

The panel needed a term. “Aura” was too mystical. “Life force” was too vitalist. “Subtle energy” was too vague. “Qi” and “prana” were culturally specific. They needed a word that was scientifically neutral, that did not presume a mechanism, and that could serve as a bridge between the experiential claims of practitioners and the measurement capabilities of physics.

Rubik proposed “biofield” — a contraction of “biological field” — to denote the complex, dynamic electromagnetic field associated with living organisms. The term was accepted by the panel and has since become the standard scientific designation for the body’s energy field, used in research papers, NIH grant applications, and scientific conferences worldwide.

It sounds like a small contribution — naming something. But in the politics of science, naming is power. By giving the body’s energy field a scientifically respectable name, Rubik created a linguistic bridge that allowed researchers to study it without immediately being dismissed as practitioners of pseudoscience. The biofield concept opened doors to funding, to peer review, and to the institutional legitimacy that consciousness and energy research had been denied.

The Biophysicist: From Conventional to Frontier

Beverly Rubik holds a doctorate in biophysics from the University of California, Berkeley — one of the world’s leading institutions for physical science. Her doctoral research involved conventional biophysics — the application of physics to biological systems. She studied under some of the most rigorous scientists in the field and absorbed their commitment to experimental precision and theoretical rigor.

After completing her doctorate, Rubik became increasingly interested in the phenomena that conventional biophysics could not explain: the efficacy of acupuncture, the effects of therapeutic touch on wound healing, the biological responses to extremely weak electromagnetic fields, and the evidence that consciousness can influence biological systems.

She founded the Institute for Frontier Science in Oakland, California, as an independent research center dedicated to investigating these phenomena with the tools and standards of conventional science. She has also held academic positions at San Francisco State University, the University of Arizona, and Saybrook University, where she has taught and mentored students in biofield science.

Rubik’s career trajectory is instructive. She did not abandon conventional science for fringe science. She extended conventional science into territory that her colleagues were unwilling to explore. Her methods remained conventional — controlled experiments, peer-reviewed publication, statistical analysis. Her questions became unconventional — and that distinction, between unconventional questions and unconventional methods, is the key to understanding her work and its reception.

The Biofield Hypothesis

Rubik’s biofield hypothesis, as articulated in her foundational paper “The Biofield Hypothesis: Its Biophysical Basis and Role in Medicine” (published in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine in 2002 and updated in subsequent publications), proposes the following:

The biofield is a complex, dynamic, extremely weak electromagnetic field associated with the living organism. It is generated by the collective electromagnetic activity of the organism’s cells, tissues, and organs, and it extends beyond the body’s surface.

The biofield is not a single field but a composite — a superposition of electromagnetic fields at multiple frequencies, from the extremely low frequency (ELF) range through the radio frequency range and potentially higher. It includes:

• DC electric fields (Burr’s L-fields, Becker’s perineural currents)
• Oscillating electric and magnetic fields from neural, cardiac, and muscular activity
• Biophoton emission (Popp’s coherent light from DNA)
• Possibly other field components not yet characterized

The biofield carries information that regulates biological processes. It is not merely a byproduct of metabolism but an active regulatory system — a communication network that coordinates the activity of the organism’s trillions of cells.

The biofield interacts with the environment — with the electromagnetic fields of other organisms, with the Earth’s geomagnetic field, and with artificial electromagnetic fields. These interactions can affect health and well-being.

The biofield is the target of energy medicine. Practices like acupuncture, Reiki, therapeutic touch, qigong, and homeopathy work by modifying the biofield — either by adding information (as in acupuncture needle stimulation), by restoring coherence (as in energy healing), or by removing disturbances (as in certain forms of bodywork).

Measurement Challenges: Why the Biofield Is Hard to Study

Rubik has been particularly valuable in articulating why the biofield is so difficult to study with conventional instruments — and why this difficulty does not mean it does not exist.

The fundamental challenge is one of signal-to-noise ratio. The electromagnetic fields generated by the body are extraordinarily weak — the cardiac magnetic field, for example, is approximately one millionth of the Earth’s magnetic field. The brain’s magnetic field is even weaker. Biophoton emission is a few photons per square centimeter per second. These signals are far below the electromagnetic noise floor of a typical laboratory environment, which is filled with electromagnetic radiation from power lines, computers, fluorescent lights, radio transmitters, and countless other sources.

Detecting the biofield requires:

• Extremely sensitive instruments: SQUID magnetometers (superconducting quantum interference devices) for detecting the brain’s and heart’s magnetic fields; photomultiplier tubes for detecting biophotons; high-impedance voltmeters for detecting DC potential gradients
• Shielded environments: Faraday cages and magnetically shielded rooms to reduce electromagnetic noise
• Sophisticated signal processing: Averaging, filtering, and statistical techniques to extract the biological signal from the environmental noise
• Long recording times: Because the signals are weak, many measurements must be averaged to achieve a reliable signal-to-noise ratio

These requirements place biofield research at the edge of measurement technology. The instruments exist, but they are expensive, specialized, and available only in a few laboratories worldwide. This is not a theoretical barrier but a practical one — and it explains why biofield research has progressed slowly despite the significance of the questions it addresses.

Rubik has also identified a more fundamental measurement challenge: the biofield may include components that are not electromagnetic at all. Several researchers (Tiller, Sheldrake, Grinberg-Zylberbaum) have proposed that the body generates fields that do not fit within the electromagnetic spectrum — fields that are informational rather than energetic, that operate through mechanisms not described by current physics, and that cannot be detected by electromagnetic instruments regardless of their sensitivity.

If this is the case, then the electromagnetic biofield detected by current instruments is only a partial measure of the body’s complete field — the visible tip of an invisible iceberg. The full biofield may require entirely new types of instruments for its detection and characterization.

Rubik’s Experimental Contributions

Rubik has conducted and reviewed experimental research across several areas of biofield science:

Biophoton Research

Rubik has investigated biophoton emission as a biomarker of health and vitality. Using photomultiplier tube systems, she has measured biophoton emission from human subjects under various conditions:

• Meditation: Some meditators show changes in biophoton emission patterns during meditation, consistent with Popp’s findings that coherent biological states produce different biophoton signatures
• Healing intention: Rubik has explored whether practitioners of energy healing (Reiki, therapeutic touch) show altered biophoton emission during healing sessions
• Food quality: Like Popp, Rubik has investigated whether biophoton emission can serve as a marker of food quality and freshness

Biofield Effects on Bacteria

In a series of experiments, Rubik investigated whether human biofield practitioners (energy healers) could affect the growth rate of bacteria in culture. The experimental design:

• Standardized bacterial cultures (E. coli or Staphylococcus) are prepared in identical petri dishes
• A biofield practitioner holds or places their hands near some dishes (treated group) while identical dishes are left untreated (control group)
• Bacterial growth is measured after a standard incubation period

Rubik’s results showed modest but statistically significant effects in some experiments — the treated bacteria showed different growth patterns from the controls. These effects were variable across practitioners and sessions, consistent with the general pattern in biofield research that the effects, while real, are sensitive to the practitioner’s state, the environmental conditions, and other factors that are difficult to standardize.

Human Biofield Imaging

Rubik has investigated technologies for imaging the human biofield, including:

• Gas discharge visualization (GDV): A technology developed by Konstantin Korotkov that captures the corona discharge (Kirlian photography-like images) from the fingertips and uses software to generate a representation of the body’s energy field. Rubik has evaluated GDV as a potential biofield measurement tool, finding that it produces reproducible images that change in response to physiological and emotional states, though the interpretation of these images remains debated.
• Electrophotonic imaging (EPI): An advanced version of GDV that claims to measure the biofield’s response to various interventions (acupuncture, meditation, energy healing). Rubik has conducted studies using EPI to assess the effects of various complementary therapies.

The Political Struggle: Legitimizing Biofield Research

Perhaps Rubik’s most significant contribution has been her persistent advocacy for the institutional legitimacy of biofield research. This is not a glamorous contribution — it involves committee work, panel participation, grant writing, journal editing, and the slow, grinding work of building institutional support for a marginalized field.

Key contributions in this area:

NIH Office of Alternative Medicine / NCCAM / NCCIH

Rubik has served on multiple NIH advisory panels and has been instrumental in establishing biofield science as a recognized category of research within the NIH’s Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH, formerly NCCAM). Her 1992 coinage of “biofield” gave the field a terminological foothold within the NIH system. Her subsequent participation in grant review panels, research conferences, and advisory committees has helped maintain that foothold.

The establishment of “biofield” as an NIH-recognized research category has enabled researchers to apply for federal funding for biofield-related studies — a practical achievement that has supported dozens of research projects and published papers.

Journal Editorship and Peer Review

Rubik has served on the editorial boards of several journals that publish biofield research, including the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine and Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing. She has reviewed hundreds of manuscripts, helping to maintain the scientific quality of published biofield research — a critical function in a field where the line between rigorous research and unfounded claims can be difficult to draw.

Conference Organization

Rubik has organized and participated in numerous scientific conferences on biofield science, including the annual conferences of the International Society for the Study of Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine (ISSSEEM, now the Consciousness and Healing Initiative, or CHI). These conferences provide a forum for biofield researchers to present findings, share methods, and build the collaborative networks that are essential for the development of any scientific field.

Defining the Research Agenda

In a series of review papers and white papers, Rubik has articulated the key research questions, measurement challenges, and theoretical frameworks of biofield science. These documents serve as roadmaps for the field — identifying what is known, what is not known, and what needs to be investigated. They have influenced the priorities of funding agencies and the research directions of individual investigators.

The Biofield in Clinical Practice

Rubik has been a strong advocate for incorporating biofield assessment into clinical practice, arguing that biofield measurements could provide:

• Early disease detection: Biofield disturbances may precede clinical symptoms (as Burr demonstrated with his L-field measurements). Early detection of biofield changes could enable preventive intervention before disease manifests physically.
• Treatment monitoring: Biofield measurements could track the effectiveness of treatments — both conventional and complementary — providing an objective measure of the patient’s energetic response.
• Practitioner validation: For energy healing practitioners, biofield measurements could provide objective evidence that their interventions produce measurable changes — addressing the criticism that energy healing is “just placebo.”
• Individualized treatment: Because the biofield reflects the unique electromagnetic signature of each individual, biofield assessment could support personalized medicine — matching treatments to individual biofield profiles.

These clinical applications remain largely aspirational. The measurement technology is not yet standardized, the interpretation of biofield data is not yet systematic, and the clinical validation required for widespread adoption has not been achieved. But the vision is clear, and the pathway from current research to clinical application is, in Rubik’s assessment, shorter than most researchers in the field realize.

Critics and Fair Assessment

Rubik’s work and the broader field of biofield science face several criticisms:

The measurement problem. The biofield is extremely weak and difficult to measure. Critics argue that if the biofield cannot be reliably measured, it cannot be reliably studied, and claims about its properties remain unverifiable.

Rubik’s response: the difficulty of measurement is a technological challenge, not a conceptual one. Many established phenomena (neutrinos, gravitational waves, cosmic microwave background radiation) were extremely difficult to detect but were eventually measured with sufficiently sensitive instruments. The biofield is in the same category — real but difficult to measure with current technology.

The mechanism problem. There is no accepted physical mechanism by which energy healing, therapeutic touch, or other biofield therapies could produce their claimed effects. Rubik acknowledges this but argues that the absence of a mechanism does not invalidate the evidence for effects. Aspirin was used effectively for decades before its mechanism of action was understood.

The reproducibility problem. Biofield research results are often difficult to reproduce. Effect sizes are small, results vary across practitioners and sessions, and controlled experiments frequently produce mixed results.

Rubik’s response: biological systems are inherently variable, and consciousness-mediated effects are influenced by factors (practitioner state, patient expectations, environmental conditions) that are difficult to standardize. The variability is a feature of the phenomenon, not a failure of the methodology.

The placebo critique. Critics argue that the effects of biofield therapies are adequately explained by the placebo effect — the patient’s belief in the treatment, the attention and care of the practitioner, and the ritual aspects of the therapy.

Rubik’s response: the placebo effect itself may be a biofield phenomenon. If belief can change physiology (as it demonstrably does in placebo responses), this is evidence that consciousness affects the body — which is precisely what biofield science proposes. The placebo effect is not an alternative explanation to the biofield; it may be a manifestation of it.

Rubik in the Digital Dharma Framework: The System Administrator

Beverly Rubik’s contribution to the Digital Dharma framework is primarily architectural — she has defined the system, named its components, and mapped the interfaces between the hardware (the body), the software (consciousness), and the operating environment (the electromagnetic ecology of the modern world).

If the body is wetware, Rubik’s biofield hypothesis describes the wetware’s electromagnetic interface — the field that extends beyond the body’s surface, carries information about the organism’s state, and mediates interactions with other organisms and with the environment. The biofield is the body’s networking interface — its antenna, its broadcast signal, and its receiver rolled into one.

If DNA is source code, the biofield is the code’s electromagnetic expression — the field generated by the coherent activity of DNA (biophotons), cells (piezoelectric signals), tissues (electromagnetic rhythms), and organs (cardiac and neural fields). The biofield is what the code produces when it runs — not just proteins and structures but fields and waves.

If consciousness is the operating system, Rubik’s work provides the institutional framework for studying the OS scientifically. By naming the biofield, by defining its properties, by establishing it as a recognized research category within the NIH, and by maintaining the scientific standards of biofield research, Rubik has created the conditions under which the consciousness operating system can be investigated with the tools of science — not just the practices of mysticism.

The Digital Dharma perspective on healing — that it operates at the energetic level before manifesting at the physical level — is precisely Rubik’s biofield hypothesis. The shaman who “sees” disturbances in the patient’s energy field is perceiving the biofield. The acupuncturist who restores the flow of “qi” is modifying the biofield. The Reiki practitioner who channels “universal energy” is interacting with the biofield. Rubik’s contribution is to give all of these practices a common scientific language and a common research framework.

Key Works

• “The Biofield Hypothesis: Its Biophysical Basis and Role in Medicine” (Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 2002)
• “Neurobiology of Energy Healing” (multiple conference presentations and publications)
• “Measurement of the Human Biofield and Other Energetic Instruments” (chapter in Energetics and Spirituality, 2015)
• “The Biofield: Bridge Between Mind and Body” (Cosmos and History, 2015)
• Numerous papers in Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, Explore, and other peer-reviewed journals
• Reports and white papers for the NIH Office of Alternative Medicine / NCCAM / NCCIH

The Bottom Line

Beverly Rubik did something deceptively simple: she gave the body’s energy field a name that science could use. “Biofield” — a contraction of “biological field” — is neutral enough to pass through the filters of peer review, specific enough to define a research program, and broad enough to encompass the full range of electromagnetic and potentially non-electromagnetic phenomena associated with living organisms.

But naming is only the beginning. Rubik has spent decades building the institutional infrastructure — the journals, the conferences, the grant categories, the review panels, the training programs — that are necessary for a new field of science to develop and mature. She has done this while conducting her own experimental research, while training students, while navigating the political minefields of a scientific establishment that is deeply skeptical of anything that challenges the materialist paradigm.

The biofield is still at the frontier. It is still under-measured, under-theorized, and under-funded. But it is no longer unnamed. And the name, carved into the institutional bedrock of the NIH by a Berkeley-trained biophysicist who refused to accept that conventional physics was the final word on the physics of life, has opened a door that cannot easily be closed.

Through that door lies a science of the body that includes not just its chemistry and its anatomy but its fields and its frequencies — a science that the ancients practiced under different names and that the moderns are, slowly and reluctantly, beginning to measure.