How "energy healing" works

This is how "energy healing" works, according to the PEAR lab. I put "energy healing" in quotes because what is being suggested here is clearly not based on energy, but information:

Taking consciousness as a form or manifestation of information, Jahn and Dunne suggest a metaphoric extension of quantum mechanical principles into the consciousness domain (3, 36). Consciousness is regarded as both particulate and wavelike, in analogy with quantum mechanical descriptions of matter and energy. In its nonlocalized, wavelike manifestation, it is unbounded and can penetrate barriers and resonate with other consciousnesses and the environment, thereby acquiring or inserting information that is unique to the interacting system. Based on this metaphor, Jahn and Dunne suggest possible mechanisms for anomalous influence. For example, they invoke the quantum mechanical principle of indistinguishability to help understand bonding. When molecules are formed from atoms, the constituent elements lose their identity and from this loss a classically anomalous "exchange force" results, producing a strong covalent bond. Analogously, through a sacrifice of conscious individuality, a unifying resonant bond may be established with another consciousness or a physical system, allowing the acquisition or insertion of information. Viewed as an influence of one system on another, this would be anomalous, but in a coherent, unified system, information is distributed throughout. The merging of subjective identities with each other, or with the environment, enables the transfer of objective information manifesting as coherence between previously separable constituents, yielding a total system within which entropy is reduced (37). While these suggestions may seem abstruse, the fundamental principles are parallel to those involved in common interactive experiences such as falling in love, or creating a work of art, or enjoying the beauty of a sunset.

...The research on anomalous interactions provides intriguing evidence that a nonlocal intervention such as intentional healing may contribute similarly to the continuing exchange of information that is essential to maintaining the integrity of living systems... Living bodies, with homeostatic, immune, and nervous systems that epitomize the realm of applied nonlinear dynamics are intrinsically susceptible to influence from small inputs and are able to identify and amplify the most subtle of inchoate patterns and information. Biological systems utilize random processes and uncertainty to maintain the highest level of sensitivity to subtle changes in the environment. They are reactive on the finest scale to information that reduces entropic disorder and provides an increment of structure and predictability, yielding a stable internal milieu and successful interaction with the environment. In this context, we see that healing a wound or recovering from an illness is dependent upon the generation or addition of appropriate information to help restore order and structure.

... An injury or disease manifests as a disturbance or disorder in a system that, when healthy, is magnificently structured and orderly. It is, on the other hand, so complex that its function at the fine scale is beyond our full scientific understanding, as in the extraordinarily precise homeostatic control of the body, or in the exact mechanisms of mending and regeneration when we are injured, or in the creation of ideas. When there is a disruption, and healing is required, the need is for additional order, the infusion of information. Of course consciousness is nothing if not a manifestation of information, and in its creative and structuring capacities, it is ideally suited as a reservoir for the processes that sustain and restore health and wellbeing.

This is just a small excerpt from an article entitled "The Physical Basis of Intentional Healing Systems" written by Roger D. Nelson for the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) lab and published in 1999. To read the full document, click here. The PEAR lab itself closed in 2007.

If I understand the excerpt correctly, it says that based on the principles of quantum physics one consciousness can affect another consciousness and help it return to healthy homeostasis. The effect observed at PEAR was not very strong, but anecdotal evidence suggests that it has been getting stronger, and that the ability can be developed.