Chicken Run: some radical research (and fun)

Dear friends

Thank you for the amazing response to last week’s article about Divine Intervention. It was great to get so many comments. Your comments have really helped me to synthesize and clarify a number of my views, which I’ll be publishing over the next few weeks.

Today I want to take a break from the serious work of “contemplating god” and ask for your help in a fun experiment. We are going to do our own vaguely pseudo-scientific test of distant healings.

This should be great fun and also an interesting lead-in to the articles I was going to write next week about distant healing generally and the power of prayer (or why it doesn’t seem to work the way it should).

We have some chickens that have gone off laying. I thought you could help me with “distant healing” of the chickens. We can measure the number of eggs each day to determine if it’s helping.

Before anyone writes in to say “that’s not very scientific Simon,” I know. This is about fun. Plus it’s not that often I get to ask you for help, and this seems a great moment. And before anyone else writes “that’s a rooster Simon, they are not meant to lay eggs… I know that too. The hens are in the background, and if you need a photo to send distant healing the one below (at night in their cage) shows all of them.

Today’s experiment is dedicated to one of our readers, Kim, who was asking whether my thoughts against divine intervention meant that I did not believe in distant healings. As a matter of fact I’m quite open to the idea. The scientist in me doesn’t necessarily know how or why they work, but I’ve seen some interesting results. I’ve been dealing with a little chicken crisis lately and Kim gave me an idea for resolving it in a fun way.

Chicken dramas

OK here’s the problem: something is spooking our chickens. We have about 21 chickens (they are hard to count when running wild) and we used to get about 20 eggs per day. Then it dropped to 18. Then it dropped to about 6. Within a very short period we were hardly getting eggs. The chickens look fine, they are happy to see me, eat voraciously and love running around scratching through the grass for works etc. But they aren’t laying. It could be the change in weather (we are at the end of the wet season), it could be they are spooked. Something could be eating eggs but I’ve only seen one broken eggshell so I doubt it. It could be diet – though I thought giving them fruit and vegetable scraps was a good thing (they are back on laying pellets).

My neighbor Mark (who owns the chickens – we bought his house and the chickens have stayed on) has been experimenting with their diet, trying different things. So far not much luck – well we are back to 13 but not where we should be.

The experiment

I would like everyone who can spare 3 minutes to send any form of distant healing to the chickens. There are no rules or guidelines. Any modality or prayer is fine. The intention is maximize the chicken’s egg laying in a safe and healthy way, by resolving any underlying issues, stress or trauma.

How you do that is up to you. You can send unconditional love, channel energy, resolve trauma, do proxy EFT tapping or even pray to the Flying Spaghetti Monster (my Deity of choice this month). I’d like at least a few RPT practitioners to use the Level 1 pretending technique to resolve trauma, or the Level 2 conception/fertilization methods for re-patterning.

Incidentally I have not done any healings on the chickens. That would totally invalidate the results of a test on distant healing.

Monitoring progress

There are lots of scientific tests of distant healing. This one is quite different – we actually have something to measure our progress by. I count the eggs every day. This is unique – all the scientific tests of distant healing were indirect – measuring things like days spent in hospital – because it’s hard to directly measure someone’s health objectively.

But counting eggs – that’s simple and meaningful. I would almost call it scientific except that we’d need a control group and a lot more hens! But the basic idea is valid, and it’s going to be fun.

Every day I will report the number of eggs laid here.

Date (Vanuatu)	Number of eggs	Comment
19 March	7	Improved diet – laying pellets
20 March	8
21 March	10
22 March	11
23 March	12
24 March	11
25 March	7
26 March	8
27 March	14	1 broken and/or eaten by hen
28 March	13	Start experiment
29 March	13
30 March	12
31 March	16	1 broken/eaten (13 day + 3 night)
1 April	14
2 April	18
3 April	19	Fantastic news!
4 April	19
5 April	17
6 April	16
7 April	18
8 April	15
9 April	16
10 April	13	Heavy rainfall has restricted bird and reduced egg
11 April	14
12 April	15
13 April	15

Thanks for joining me in this fun experiment. I look forward to sharing some interesting results with you. (Whether it works or not, it will be interesting.)

Please leave your comments here – what do you think of the experiment? What happened when you tried to help? Did you pick up any specific issues I should look at?

blessings,

Simon

Edit (30 March): Not looking too good so far guys, numbers are dropping since start of experiment. Even if the distant healing doesn’t help, it shouldn’t hurt!?! Two theories: 1) chickens don’t like hundreds of people “working on them”, 2) it takes more than a few days for the benefit to kick in – what’s the “lead time” on an egg? Or maybe the distant chicken healings just don’t work? We’ll keep this going at least another week before I change any other variables (supplements etc).

Edit (31 March): Progress at last? At first I thought that we were down to 13 today but then I saw that the gardener had put 3 eggs aside last night (I check them at 11am usually). So 16 eggs! We’ve broken though that barrier, here’s hoping it keeps going up. To be consistent I’m counting the number of eggs based on the day they were laid, not just my 11am run.

Edit (3 April): Fantastic news, 19 eggs means pretty much every chicken is laying 1 per day. We are very happy with this result. We will keep posting results at least a week to make sure it’s permanent. Thanks everyone for your help.

Edit (13 April): Well, we’ve finished the experiment, or at least filled the initial table. I may keep it going a little longer. Basically the initial results were good – it peaked quickly. But then it settled back down at a lower level than I’d like. There are so many factors we can’t control – rain, temperature, humidity, pesky pigs, etc, that this seems to be as good as we can do for now.

What do you think the experiment proved? (if anything)

28 Comments

March 28, 2011 by Simon Rose in Distant healing research

28 Responses

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Sue Healy
March 28, 2011 at 6:05 pm

A great idea. Practising on non-humans may build confidence and help when we work remotely with and for people, especially when the results are going to be so concrete . That’s particularly pertinent for me right now so I’m happy to play.
I teach RPT and I always stress to students that a person does not have to be sitting next to you for RPT and other healing techniques to work. Neither does a person even have to know (see a much earlier discussion on permission). BUT, it’s far more empowering if you work WITH rather than ON a person. Also, secondary gain can be trickier to pick up without the person’s involvement and we know that that’s usually why a difficulty is held in place.
Chickens, though. There’s not likely to be much SG there though you never know.
Now I’m going to spend a minute or two scratching around with those chickens and see what pops up, or hopefully pops out.
Cluck cluck x

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Simon Rose Reply:
March 28th, 2011 at 6:45 pm
I agree with your comments except perhaps the funny one – that there wouldn’t be secondary gain for chickens. If we are taking this seriously (which is a bit hard!), surely laying an egg is the chicken’s equivalent of work, so the secondary gain is the same as you and I get when we get out of work!

SR

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Sue Healy Reply:
March 29th, 2011 at 6:21 pm
Point taken. A whole new meaning to the phrase “Go to work on an egg”. (advertising slogan in the UK in the 60s) x

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Liz Barnard
March 28, 2011 at 9:38 pm

All done, embraced the chickens and imagined them happily laying eggs…..worked in my imagination anyway!!! Fun too.

Love
Liz

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Ben Ralston
March 28, 2011 at 10:01 pm

Apart from the fact that i nearly laid an egg myself from laughing so much…
I’m a bit confused. What is a skype session if not a distant healing?

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Simon Rose Reply:
March 28th, 2011 at 11:29 pm
I’m glad you share my sense of humor. But seriously I disagree about the phone/ Skype comment.

There are modalities (like say massage) that require physical contact. There are modalities (like say NLP) that require verbal contact on phone or Skype. Which means a “distant healing” if it has any meaning at all is a healing where there is neither physical nor verbal contact.

Obviously, when the fun and games are over and the eggs have been laid, I’m building up to a discussion about how the *#)(@ an apparently conversational modality like Reference Point Therapy can work remotely.

cheers
Simon

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Ben Ralston Reply:
March 29th, 2011 at 6:08 am
I see. Then I think that the term Distant Healing is a little misleading. Remote healing would make more sense to me.

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Ben Ralston Reply:
March 29th, 2011 at 6:15 am
I felt into your chicken issue (!). To me it feels like a problem of stress towards change. I feel a weight in my head, and a lightness, or lack of grounded-ness in my body. Anxiety in the heart. Also, weirdly, a sense of loss. Did a rooster, (or one of the hens) by any chance die? Or could be connected to change of location / living space…? Used the level one technique, felt a shift. Can’t believe I’m remotely healing your egg-laying issues in Vanuatu (If someone had said to me before I studied RPT with you that this would be happening 18 months later I’d have run a mile hehehe…

Simon Rose Reply:
March 29th, 2011 at 9:37 am
well if nothing else Ben you have developed a sense of humor!
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Shane Marsh
March 28, 2011 at 11:57 pm

Al this talk of eggs, chickens and flying spaghetti monsters is making me hungry! May the sauce be with you

Believe it or not I only just watched the videos for the updated version of RPT (3.0) in the last coupe of days so thought I’d give that a go. I pretended I was the chooks – can’t say I got much from the head and heart parts but when I tuned into the gut I got a sense of stress from some sort of perceived danger (maybe a spaghetti monster flew by) that had been around a while ago. A few of the chooks stopped laying eggs (I picked up on an association between not laying eggs and survival but wasn’t sure if it was survival of the chicken or survival of the chick that would have been in the egg if fertilized – maybe both) and the others picked up on that. It only took a couple of minutes. Interesting to see how it goes.

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Lisa Chandler
March 29, 2011 at 4:11 am

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and propose that perhaps there is nothing that needs to be healed. Maybe the girls are in a natural resting and revitalizing state. Popping out eggs day in and day out might require that every once in a while the girls just need some time to feed and scratch and just BE without DOING anything at all. Maybe it’s the feminist in me but I do think that messing with a females rhythms will just get you cranky females

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Simon Rose Reply:
March 29th, 2011 at 9:40 am
Lisa I respect your feminist thought. In the article you’ll see my suggestion about holding the intention of what’s best for the chickens. My personal belief is that they got spooked by something, and if so, that is a trauma that could be cleared. If your theory is correct about natural resting then all the healings in the world wont change that. The key point with healing, I’m sure you’ll agree, is to be supportive, never manipulative.

I’ve done some research about chicken rest seasons, and in the northern hemisphere it is normal for chickens to stop laying over winter. But this is late summer (tropical seasons are a bit different, we are at the end of the wet season it is still hot and very humid). This isn’t the natural rest cycle for chickens as far as I can tell, it does get cold mid-year.

SR

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Lisa Chandler Reply:
March 30th, 2011 at 2:45 am
Thanks Simon. In rereading my post I realize that the humor I intended towards the subject kinda got lost. (we really do need a “tongue-in-cheek” font) I do hope I didn’t come across as snarky. As I own no chickens of my own I have noooo idea of their habits and needs. I simply partake of the fruit of the chicken.
That said, I think this is a fun experiment and look forward to watching it’s progress

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Valeria Moore
March 29, 2011 at 5:35 am

Are your chickens all the same age? If they are they may be out of eggs. Brood estrogen mentality…aka Chicken menopause.

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Simon Rose Reply:
March 29th, 2011 at 9:42 am
I think they are about the same age (will have to check with Mark). However what Mark told me was that it’s really weird for them all to stop suddenly. It’s not like it went 24 egs, 23 eggs, 22 eggs…. it just overnight crashed. That is not consistent with menopause as far as I can see. I think it’s stress related.

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Dmitry Yeschenko
April 2, 2011 at 5:02 pm

O!!! I found this post only today.
It’s really fun.
So I did my own process on your chickens (a few minutes ago). It was quite interesting one.
My last cognition was connected with authorities. So it really could be a conflict between cocks if you have more than one. Or it could be someone who spooks your chickens.
Ok at this place I’ve made second process on fear. It also was interesting.
So let’s look for results. At the end I’ve got a good feeling
Thank you for fun.

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Peter Taylor
April 3, 2011 at 3:12 pm

Simon,

Umm, it is possible these chicken might have separation issues with their former eggs gone missing??

Just a thought.

Cheers,
Peter.

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Simon Rose Reply:
April 3rd, 2011 at 5:29 pm
hi Peter,
I think the answer is no for 2 reasons.

First, they laid eggs great for a year and suddenly stopped (I think it was the cyclone).

Second these are egg-laying eggs, they have no instinct for brooding. Without human intervention they would quickly go extinct because they do not sit on eggs. They lay an egg and then get cluck for joy (it’s very cute) and then forget about it…

cheers
Simon

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Dmitry Yeschenko
April 6, 2011 at 11:40 pm

May be it simply coincidence, but I’ve done my process a few days later than others and it seems that nobody do any one after me, but exactly after my process results rise up

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Simon Rose Reply:
April 7th, 2011 at 9:12 am
hmm, the last few days it’s been headed back down. Can I credit you for that too?

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Jude Hubbard
April 12, 2011 at 4:35 am

Hi Simon

I tuned in to send distant healing to the chickens and got that they, and especially, the Rooster had picked up on a negative emotion that you had which had stressed them!
It might be relevant what was going on with you at the time they stopped laying.

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Simon Rose Reply:
April 12th, 2011 at 10:47 am
could be could be… actually I just saved the rooster’s life recently. He would have been eaten by pigs. But unless the rooster’s emotions affect the chicken’s egg laying, I’m not too sure that it matters!
My emotions at the time they stopped laying? “Holy smokes batman, my first cyclone!”

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Jude Hubbard
April 12, 2011 at 5:02 pm

A Hero eh! Did the hens see that happen? Could they have been traumatised by the ‘pig incident’ or even the cyclone!
Hope they get completely back to normal soon.

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Carla
April 23, 2011 at 12:10 pm

Hi Simon
I am very new to your blog and can’t wait to do my RPT training – I feel it is the ‘missing link’ I have been searching for in my practice. But enough about me. One of the modalities I use in my practice is The Body Code System. The Body Code is a form of Energy Psychology and works on identifying physical, emotional and mental imbalances that may be contributing to someones problems. It can also be used for animals so I just gave it a go. The suggestions were that there is an energetic imbalance, called a ‘Saboteur’, which is an ‘Energy Weapon’ placed by somebody into their field. It causes pain and irritation of tissue. I identified the weapon and the location and cleared that. Then I figured that to be all nice and well, but it doesn’t take away the cause… the person who obviously has a problem with chickens. So I checked what imbalance was causing that and it came up with a Trapped Emotion of ‘Panic’. Cleared that as well – who knows, hopefully it will make a difference.
Happy Easter!

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Simon Rose Reply:
April 23rd, 2011 at 4:22 pm
hi Carla and welcome to the blog.
I think you may have picked up on something that no one had mentioned – that of other people in the chickens’ environment. As it happens, the main person responsible for mixing the chickens’ food for a gardener who just didn’t want to be doing that sort of work. He finally resigned last week. I think that covers “sabateur.” I haven’t been writing the egg count down every day any more but I’ll certainly post if there’s any jump now.

I hope you do get a chance to do the RPT training some day. I understand that one of our teachers, Lian Thompson, is currently in discussions with a promoter in NZ, so perhaps it will be closer than you think.

Blessings
Simon

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Carla Reply:
April 23rd, 2011 at 4:37 pm
Hi Simon
That is interesting. I’m quite new to this industry and it still amazes me what suggestions come up. I was reluctant to post it, it sounded quite weird to me, but am learning to trust and ‘run with it’.

I have been the one in touch with Lian… am looking to travel to Melbourne as soon as I can find somebody else to do Level 1 & 2 with me. If there is anybody else interested in doing the course in May in Melbourne I would be grateful to hear!
Take care for now & enjoy Paradise with your dad!

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Kryon
May 11, 2011 at 3:04 pm

mm, so What does the experiment proof so far?
With all of the amazing people doing a distant healing on the chickens, and they still doing the same…
mmm…btw, i am curious to know when (approx. date) the chicken start laying less eggs?

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Simon Rose Reply:
May 11th, 2011 at 9:00 pm
hi Kryon
I don’t think the expiriment proved much either way – well it wasn’t very scientific, just fun.

I think the problem started about the time of the cyclone, and got better when the weather changed to become more dry. The main factor seems to be weather.

There was clearly a very quick jump when the healings started, but then it went back to average (it stayed much better than where was first started).

The reason it’s not very scientific is because there are so many variables you can’t control, for example a chicken died (dog attack) – how do you control for that trauma? Unless you are measuring rain, humidity, wind (cyclone) and everything else, you will never know whether it was the healings that made a difference.

But it was FUN!

Blessings
Simon

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