Healing Codes

Loyd and the account of a 2001 discovery

The Healing Codes is associated with Alexander Loyd, described by a Science-Based Medicine critique as a naturopath. The critique gives 2001 as the year Loyd says he discovered it, after a 12-year search for help for his wife's depression. A 2008 article by a Healing Codes coach says Loyd prayed for a way to help her and believes he received, as a gift from God, information about several healing centers on the head and neck and the hand positions that activate them.

These are the originator's and his coach's accounts. The sources reviewed do not include an independent biography or a dated primary record of the method's development, so the 2001 date and the circumstances rest on Loyd's own telling. The coach's article cites a Healing Codes Manual published in 2004 by Light of Man Ministries in Nashville, which shows the system was in written circulation by then.

Relation to Thought Field Therapy and energy psychology

The Science-Based Medicine critique states that Loyd studied under Roger Callahan in 1999 and derived the system from Callahan's Thought Field Therapy. The coach's 2008 article, published in a journal of healing and caring, lists energy psychology among its keywords and records that its author met Callahan's phobia method in 1991 before becoming a Healing Codes coach. It also calls the Healing Codes an energy modality.

Energy psychology is covered on its own page, which sets out Thought Field Therapy, Emotional Freedom Techniques and the trials of tapping protocols. Those findings concern different procedures and are not carried over to the Healing Codes here.

Names in use

The method appears as the Healing Codes, with the same system sometimes written as the Healing Code, which is also the title used for a Loyd book. Published Iranian studies call the training self-healing or the self-healing approach, and one of them states in its title that this means the Healing Codes. Another cites a self-healing method of Loyd and Johnson, spelling the first name with two l letters. The sources do not establish whether every study using the label self-healing used the same protocol.

Terms within the system

Within the system, healing centers are the head and neck locations toward which the fingers are pointed. A code is a sequence of these positions. Truth focus statements are affirmation-like phrases grouped by theme, with peace given as one example, and custom codes are individually assigned sequences supplied by a coach. Cellular memory is the central theoretical term: Loyd is reported to hold that cells store destructive energy patterns, and that stress held in these memories drives illness.

These are terms of the method and its developers. Science-Based Medicine states that there is no scientific evidence for a human energy field or for memory stored in cells in the sense Loyd uses, so the terms should not be read as established biology.

The sequence as described

The Science-Based Medicine critique describes a sequence of finger positions pointed, without touching, toward the bridge of the nose, the Adam's apple, the jaws and the temples. Each position is held for 30 seconds, the cycle is repeated, and the whole takes about six to eight minutes. The user is told to focus on a troubling memory, think positive thoughts and pray, and to rate the memory's intensity again until it reaches zero.

A coach's account is similar in outline. The client states an issue, says a prayer asking for the issue, the feelings, the images and the cellular memories connected with it to be healed, and then moves through the hand positions while concentrating on a positive memory, a place or a truth focus statement. The coach describes a prescribed 12-day routine in which each day addresses a different theme, among them unforgiveness, wrong beliefs, love, joy and peace.

Programs, coaching and products

The developer's website describes a digital package with a manual, video series and audio coaching sessions, one-on-one coaching with practitioners it calls highly skilled, and formats it names as physical, digital and live. It also advertises a one-year money-back guarantee for the digital package. The coach's article says that coaches can help clients find a love picture to focus on and can supply custom codes, and that the author has been a Healing Codes coach and trainer since 2003.

The Science-Based Medicine critique reports package prices of up to several hundred dollars, and says custom codes are described as expiring after a short time so that further codes are purchased. These are the critic's observations from 2015 and may not match current offerings.

Claims made by the developer

The developer's website states that the method addresses the source of 95 percent of disease, which it identifies as stress, and lists physical, emotional, relational and success issues, with examples that include anxiety, irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia, warts and financial stress. The Science-Based Medicine critique reports further claims attributed to Loyd: that beliefs control DNA, that 528 hertz is the frequency of love, and that the method has helped people with serious illnesses.

Uses described by coaches and in studies

The coach's article presents the method as a way to reduce stress and increase peace, and reports that some clients describe physical changes, some emotional and some spiritual ones. It rests on four client accounts and the author's own account, and its conclusion expects that research will later show what is happening.

The small studies discussed below used the training with men with a history of addiction, women with psychological distress and, by the title of one study, women with addicted husbands, with outcomes such as psychological capital, forgiveness and cognitive distortions. These are psychological outcome measures and do not test the physical claims above.

Searches run and what was found

PubMed searches for Healing Codes with Loyd, with energy psychology and cellular memory, and for Loyd as an author with healing code, returned no records. A search for self-healing training with healing codes and psychological outcomes returned unrelated titles, and none of the records scanned reported a trial of the method. The Science-Based Medicine critique found no published clinical trials by Loyd either, and notes that his claimed years of testing were not published with control groups. Open web searches located the small journal reports below. Other databases and Persian-language indexes were not searched in full, so other reports may exist.

Two small Iranian studies

A 2021 study in the Journal of Research and Health enrolled 30 men aged 20 to 40 with at least three years of addiction, chosen by convenience sampling and allocated by sealed envelopes, 15 to training and 15 to control. The training was 14 weekly 90-minute sessions, and questionnaires on psychological capital and sense of coherence were completed before, after and 45 days after the program. The authors report significant group differences for self-efficacy, hope, resilience and coherence, but not optimism. They name the all-male sample as a limitation and declare no competing interests.

A four-page 2022 report in the Journal of Applied Family Therapy screened 40 women with psychological distress, assigned them randomly to 20 training and 20 no-intervention controls, and used 14 sessions of 90 minutes from a self-healing method attributed to Loyd and Johnson. It reports effects on forgiveness and cognitive distortions that persisted at follow-up. The cognitive distortion result was borderline at p of 0.05. One author, Latifi, is also an author of the 2021 study.

How far these reports go

Both studies are small, used a no-treatment control and not a comparison with another attention-matched activity, relied on self-report questionnaires, and come from a single region of one country. They cannot show whether the finger positions, the focus on memories, the group teaching or the attention itself accounts for any difference, and they do not test the cellular memory or energy concepts. Neither addresses physical disease. The results should not be applied to people with other conditions or to individual use at home.

The developer's website presents a table of heart rate variability measurements for 254 people tested between 1998 and 2002, and states that autonomic balance persisted at 24 hours in over three-quarters of cases. The page names no researchers, institution or publication, so it cannot be appraised as research. The same site says elsewhere that university studies exist, but the page it points to was not reachable, and no list of such studies was verified.

Indirect harms and care boundaries

Holding the finger positions is not described by any source reviewed as physically hazardous. The concerns raised concern what the method may replace. The Science-Based Medicine critique warns that relying on it could delay medical or psychiatric treatment and so cause serious harm, and describes customer reviews on a retail site that report bad reactions, worsening conditions and regret over purchases. Those reviews are anecdotal and were not independently checked here.

The coach's article describes a client who was flooded with emotion for weeks after starting, and says people often report old memories surfacing. The Iranian reports read for this page did not describe how adverse effects were recorded. Because the method asks the user to dwell on distressing memories, a person who has severe distress, trauma or thoughts of self-harm is better served by speaking to a physician or mental health professional, and the method should not delay or replace necessary medical or psychological care.

Cost, claims and training

The sources describe paid packages, coaching and a money-back guarantee, and the critique raises repeated purchases of custom codes as a concern. Consumers weighing a purchase can compare the strong disease claims with the evidence described above. No professional register, protected title, regulator or independent training standard for Healing Codes coaches was found in the sources or searches for this page. The coach whose article was read was trained and has trained others through the Healing Codes company, and she also holds a diplomate credential from an energy psychology association, which is a separate body.