Biofield and DBT Synergy: Rewiring Neuroplasticity Through Energy-Aware Emotion Regulation

Biofield Therapy: Definitions and Research

Biofield therapy encompasses a broad range of healing modalities, all of which are based on the idea of working with energy emitted by the client’s organs, skin, and other body parts. It includes qigong, Reiki, craniosacral therapy, biofield tuning, and Healing Touch, among many others. These therapies vary in how much touch they use. Reiki is generally administered just off of the body and biofield tuning primarily uses tuning forks within the client’s energy field. Craniosacral therapy and healing touch involve physical touch. Qigong is a movement practice similar to tai chi, a Chinese system of slow, meditative movements, which began initially as a martial art.

Research on biofield therapy is mixed, in part due to a lack of studies compared to other medical topics and the heterogeneity of therapies under the biofield umbrella. While some metaanalyses have failed to find solid evidence for the efficacy of biofield therapies, others showed measurable positive outcomes. For instance, double blind studies on breast cancer and cervical cancer survivors, produced positive outcomes over placebo treatments.

Other studies have shown biofield tuning to be effective in treating anxiety and a review of several biofield therapies found them promising in improving anxiety, mood, and overall mental health and wellness.

Integrating Biofield Therapy and DBT

For certain clients, biofield therapy and DBT can be a powerful combination that offers a holistic treatment, accompanied by skills that allow the client to maintain stability going forward. Biofield therapy can address the need for calm and healing at a deep, often non-verbal level, while DBT helps clients identify and consciously work on specific issues and triggers.

Many clients that benefit from DBT have challenges regulating emotions. Biofield therapy can help create a sense of safety and calm, from which DBT skills can more easily be employed.

Mindfulness is central to all DBT skills. When clients learn to observe their thoughts and feelings without reacting to them, they can start to recognize their patterns and triggers, and respond with specific skills. Biofield therapy can help clients find the mental calm to better access a mindful space. It can also create a refuge for clients who struggle to find a sense of security. A mindful state can also help clients identify how biofield therapy is affecting them and provide feedback to the therapist.

DBT Skills for Neuroplasticity

Check the Facts

This cognitive skill encourages clients to examine whether their emotional responses match the actual situation. By repeatedly evaluating the accuracy of their appraisals, clients put checks on automatic reactions and identify triggers, a process that strengthens pathways involved in rational thought, perspective-taking, and impulse control. Over time, the brain becomes better at pausing, analyzing, and responding thoughtfully.

Opposite Action

This skill builds on checking the facts. After clients identify an emotion or impulse and determine if it’s justified by the facts, they can choose to take the reverse action from what that emotion is pulling them to do. For instance, if one feels the desire to lash out, they may instead choose to listen openly, perhaps using another DBT skill, such as GIVE (Gentle, act Interested, Validate, Easy manner).
Repeated use of opposite action helps reshape habitual emotion-behavior links by training the brain to respond with intentionality rather than reflex. Over time, this rewiring reduces automatic reactivity and builds greater behavioral flexibility.

Accumulate Positive Experiences

This emotion regulation skill involves creating regular experiences that elicit joy, mastery, and connection. Engaging in pleasurable or meaningful activities not only counters depressive withdrawal but also reinforces reward circuits in the brain. The repetition of positive reinforcement helps recondition the nervous system toward approach behaviors and adaptive emotional states.

How DBT and Biofield Therapy Can Meet in the Middle

DBT’s structured skill-building cultivates top-down neuroplasticity — clients learn to observe and reframe their emotional responses and behaviors over time, reinforcing new neural pathways through repetition and intention. Biofield therapies such as Reiki, Healing Touch, or other subtle energy modalities can simultaneously support bottom-up healing by helping regulate autonomic nervous system activity and shift embodied emotional patterns. Therapists trained in both modalities, or who work collaboratively across disciplines, may observe that clients become more receptive to DBT skills when their physiological arousal is reduced and their energetic field is given attention.

Together, these approaches offer a holistic scaffolding for change: DBT trains the mind to work with emotions skillfully, while biofield work creates the conditions in the body and energy system that allow that transformation to take root. In clients with complex trauma or chronic emotional dysregulation, this integrative pathway may accelerate healing by engaging both the psychological and energetic dimensions of experience — enhancing resilience and anchoring new neural patterns.

Conclusion

DBT provides a powerful set of tools to help clients gain awareness of their mental and emotional state, and to adjust their patterns over time. Some clients will benefit from complementary therapies that address needs and trauma at the physical level. Biofield therapy can be a powerful addition to a DBT clinician’s repertoire. By understanding the strengths of both, therapists can meet clients where they are on multiple levels. The combination can bring clients to rewire neural patterns that no longer serve them, and develop new skills that allow them to live more balanced lives.