Coming home: An investigation of the enfolding-unfolding movement of human environmental energy field patterns within the nursing home setting and the enfoldment of health-as-wholeness-and-harmony by the nurse and client

The study Coming Home was an investigation of energy field patterns within the nursing home setting and the enfoldment of health-as-wholeness-and-harmony by the nurse and client. The purpose of the study was to enhance the theory and knowledge base of Rogers\u27 Science of Unitary Human Beings through testing, deepening, and clarifying the theory of Enfolding Health-As-Wholeness-And-Harmony. The study sought to answer the question: can the nurse and client, through Rogerian nursing practice, coparticipate in the non-linear and acausal change of human field-environmental field energy field patterns of fragmentation and disharmony to those of wholeness and harmony? The natural setting was a one hundred and eighty bed nursing home. Coparticipants were identified through dynamic purposive sampling and consisted of residents and staff of a thirty-bed unit. Rogerian nursing practice was introduced through various healing strategies such as a unit support group, healing circles, memorial services, and other modalities that were posited to support the movement of energy field patterns of fragmentation and disharmony to those of wholeness and harmony. A new and creative qualitative process of inquiry was utilized which included deep immersion in the field by the nurse-researcher and coparticipants as well as the introduction of non-linear and acausal change. Four new instruments were developed and provided the data for qualitatively measuring human and environmental energy field patterns, the phenomena of central concern to this study. Synthesis of data included both deductive synthesis in which the a priori theories were tested and inductive synthesis in which the inductive data was explored for the potential generation of new unitary theory. Both the inductive emergence of data and creative measurement verified the non-linear and acausal movement of fragmentation and disharmony to that of wholeness and harmony. While the data did verify the enfoldment of wholeness and harmony, there were several significant theoretical findings challenging some of the assumptions and concepts of the two a priori theories. In particular, Rogers\u27 principles of homedynamics were not supported and the nature of evolutionary change was challenged. Additionally, the emergence of the two unitary phenomena of unconditional love and spirit were found to be notable