Reduction in Surface Tension of Water Due to Pranic Healing

Objective : To study the eﬀects of Pranic Healing (PH) on surface tension of water. Methods : This study involved the application of the PH on water and observing the changes in the surface tension (ST) values. ST was measured in the Pranic and Control using the Capillary rise method and the data were analyzed using Mann- Whitney U test. Findings : The results showed that the ST of water reduced signiﬁcantly, after 20 minutes in the PH-treated samples, when compared to control. Additionally, contact angle also reduced due to PH, showing an increase in wettability. It has given indications that the Pranic healing could be used in modulating the physical property of water. Novelty : Pranic Healing, reduces the ST of water, which would be beneﬁcial since it directly aﬀects the absorption of nutrients by living beings from the ﬂuid medium.


Introduction
Over 70% of earth surface is covered by water. The reduction of water surface tension (ST) is beneficial for soil water retention. Certain plants, roots release rhizodeposits which act as surfactants in soil, which help water retention of soil (1,2) . It has been stated as early as in 1912 that, if water's ST reduces, it would be more permeable through cell membrane. The lower ST also increases the CO 2 vapour concentration in water in plants (3) . The fact that lower ST improves the absorption of nutrients by plants has led to the use of surfactants from the middle of the 20th century (4) . The water's surface tension may also be reduced by mechanical methods like misting, used in fog-ponics to improve the irrigation efficiency (5) . Non-chemical methods like magnetically treating the water (6) , application of microwaves to reduce the ST of water (7) have advantages over chemical methods. Still, the transport to location of use, the setting up, cost of installation, and maintenance aspects can pose limitations in people using them.
The change in Water's surface tension value by Energy healing was first observed in the 1970s, from the observations of experiments conducted separately by Worrall, Kathryn Hill, and Miller (8) . The phenomenon of ' Altering the Water's property https://www.indjst.org/ by human intentions alone, was verified by Emoto M. and the team (9) . Pranic Healing (PH) is a complementary therapy where healer projects Prana or vital energy or the bio-plasmic energy onto the subject, without physical contact (10,11) . In Pranic Healing, the vital energy level is sensed and changed to improve the health condition of the subject. Therefore, PH also may be classified as a biofield healing (12) . The PH as an energy-healing modality has been studied on plants, and better results have been observed in terms of the growth rate of seedlings (13) , vegetative growth characteristics (14) ; nutritional content and yield per plant (15) . This led to investigate whether Pranic healing influences properties of water.

Materials and Methods
De-mineralized (DM) water (Spectrum Reagents) was used in this study, since it has minimal contaminations. Traveling microscope (KAYCO, India) with Least Count: 0.01mm and Capillary tubes (Inner radius 1.045mm) was used for this study.

Method
This is a controlled study with 2 groups. One group is untreated (control) and the other group is treated (it undergoes Pranic Healing and called Pranic group). To determine the ST, Capillary rise was measured. Two beakers with 25 ml DM water were placed on a common surface. One Capillary tube each is immersed into each beaker from the capillary tube holder. The capillary height of water in both the beakers is observed using a traveling microscope. The levels of water surface in the beakers were noted at the beginning and also at the end of the experiment; Pranic healing is applied to the Pranic group as suggested by Sui (10) , while for the control group it was left untreated. Surface tension was calculated by measuring the capillary height of water as described below (16,17) .
Knowing 'r'-the radius of the capillary tube and observing 'h' -the Surface tension 'T' is calculated according to the expression Where: g is the acceleration due to gravity, 9.8m/s 2 . ρ is the density of water, considered the nominal value 1kg per litre. θ is the angle of contact. The angle θ being tiny, considered zero, making cos θ =1.

Statistical Analysis
The data collected have been analysed and tabulated as a mean value ± standard error (SE) of five replicates for each treatment. The analysis was performed using SPSS version 21, and the data was analysed using Mann-Whitney U test.

Results & Discussion
Results show that there was no significant difference in surface tension values of water in pranic and control group before healing (z=.000, U= 12.500, p=1n.s.). During 10 minutes, the ST values of control and pranic were found to be 72.49 and 67.69 and the results were insignificant (z=0.000, U= 3.000, p= 0.056n.s.) (Table 1). After, 10 minutes, a significant difference in surface tension of water in pranic group were found, when compared to control and the results were significant (z=-2.62, U= 0.000, p= 0.008) (Figure 1). Beyond 20 min, the ST of Pranic sample reduced further and the same trend is noticed till 90 min, while for the control the values were consistent from 10 to 90 min and the results were significant.

Contact Angle (θ )
While continuously observing the top meniscus of water in the capillary tube, it came to notice that the contact angle (θ ) also is changing -towards reducing from the initial value. The images in Figure 2 depict the reduction in contact angle post -Pranic Healing. The hydrogen bonds at the air-water interface greatly contribute to the surface tension. (18) . The studies suggest that the hydrogen bonds in water break by adding surfactants and magnetization (19) , causing a reduction in surface tension. With that background information, it may be thought that the hydrogen bonds get ruptured due to Pranic Healing causing reduction in ST. Only by further studies it would be possible to analyse the Root cause behind this phenomenon. The literature suggests that reduced surface tension of water is beneficial to the biological activities of living beings; and also in medicinal and surgical fields. The decrease in surface tension makes the liquid less sticky, easy to flow; the blood and bio-fluids in animals and plants.
The lower surface tension of water also makes it difficult for insects and their eggs, larvae to float on the surface; restricting their propagation (20) . Majority of water content in plant cells is used up in transpiration. To improve the transpiration, the hydrogen bonds in water need to be broken or the surface tension needs to be reduced (21) . Reduction of surface tension by surfactants would help to avoid the lung collapse, when anesthesia is administered to the body for surgeries (22) .
A reduction in contact angle means lower the Surface Tension of water. The reduction in surface tension increases water's wetting ability to wet the surfaces (23) . The reduction in contact angle of water with a surface implies increased wettability.
https://www.indjst.org/ Increasing the wettability has agricultural (24) , industrial (25) and medical applications for reducing granule size and improve absorbance by the body (26) . Lower surface tension of medicines such as nasal drops, ophthalmic medicines help them spread on the target surface, crossing mucous -layer that normally exists over these surfaces (27) . Using the surfactants along with fertilizers is in practice to reduce the ST of water (4) .

Conclusion
It has been observed that the surface tension of water can be decreased. Its wettability may also increase due to Pranic Healing. The application of Pranic Healing (PH) to alter the physical properties of liquids can have a wide range of applications in Agriculture, Medicine, and Industry. The improvement in wettability of water by Pranic Healing would have multiple implications when correlated to the aspects like altered capabilities of blood and body fluids in supply efficiency of nutrients to cells. Further work using tap water and how PH reduced the ST of water and the mechanism behind it needs to be investigated.