Barbara Brennan is a former NASA scientist whose ground-breaking exploration of the human energy field is discussed in her books "Hands of Light" and "Light Emerging."

DiCarlo: In your work you have explored the human energy field and I am wondering if you could tell me exactly what the energy field is?

Brennan:From a scientific perspective, nobody has really proven what it is so I can only talk from the perspective of a healer who works with it. I have a scientific background, but in fact there aren't any adequate experiments to tell you what the field really is. So I am going to have to speak solely from my experience as a healer who is able to perceive the field. From this perspective, the human energy field is the matrix structure upon which the cells of the physical body grow. It is the template of the physical body.

It is also the vehicle for psychosomatic reactions, or the "mind-body" connection. The human energy field can be perceived by anyone with practice. It's of vital importance since it is a foundation for the physical body. It is directly connected with health and illness. Based upon my experience as a healer conducting private sessions with clients spanning a fifteen year period, and asa teacher for as many, I can tell you that anything that happens in the physical body will happen in the pattern of the energy fields first.

So the energy field precedes the physical body. It sets the foundation for the physical body, and anything that goes wrong in the energy field will eventually make its way into the physical body.

DiCarlo: Is the field fairly stable or does it tend to shift?

Brennan: Actually, your field changes with each thought. Once you open your high sense perception as I call it, and can see the field (the major two senses I use are seeing and feeling but any of the inner coorespondences to the outer five senses can be used) you will be amazed at how it changes from moment-to-moment. It moves very, very fast.

The field has several different components and can be broken up into at least seven different layers. These seven layers are commonly reported in the esoteric literature and by people from different cultures around the world who have the ability to directly perceive it.

From my perspective, every other level of the energy field is structured- organized lines of scintillating light with a specific pattern. The structured layers can be perceived as a frequency band, with each layer having its own frequency. Little sparks of light can be observed moving along these lines.

In between the structured layers of the field is a bioplasma-like energy that simply flows along the lines of the structured field pattern. It's the energy that flows along the lines of the structured field pattern that changes very fast with thoughts and emotions, not the structured pattern itself. For example, if you stop yourself from feeling something, it will stop the flow of energy in the field. And if you experience the feeling, the energy will be released. There is a direct correlation. There are even correlations between the energy field and the part of the brain you are thinking with. As you change your thought patterns, the patterning of the field changes.

DiCarlo: So if you switched from being very analytical and left brained, to being very intuitive and right brained, there would a change?

Brennan: Yes, there would be definite flow patterns that change. For example, we mostly are trained from very early in our childhood to be rational. And traditionally, we go to school and we learn to think logically and we memorize information. And that shows in a particular field pattern or a generalized flow. And intuitive thinking is very different than that. Different parts of the brain are used and the flow and pattern of the field is different.