when I saw your icon "Doc" I thought you were a doc so I see I was right. we have some really interesting people here on this forum.
Lucy, the asking for healing part is important and I see what you're getting at. doctors and people with credentials are in an excellent position then as healers, because you assume if one comes to their office they are already asking for healing, so theres a good chance they'll get it.
I remember attending Kathryn Kuhlman mass healings. not everyone got healed and I was there to observe and delighted to see the healings that did take place. my mothers tells a story of this energy which was in the auditorium. mother always had very prominent varicose veins from doing heavy lifting and as she sat there while Kathryn was talking, a great warmth came over her legs, like a spirit was attending to her. she spoke to it and it spoke back. she had a desire that nanny would be healed, my grandmother, who interestingly enough I must mention is my mother's guardian now from the other side..for some reason my mother thought this healing energy was limited and so she thought she was being unselfish to say "Not me! Heal Nanny!" the voice spoke and said "so be it as you wish." and the warmth stopped immediately. mother always told this story sheepishly as she realized she had short curcuited the healing by her own will to believe if she received her gift then and there, Nanny would not. apparently, the slightest little wayward thought can stop the energy.
Doc, I think this magnetism is part of the human energy field and is developed by daily thought processes of staying positive although thats a simplified statement to mean dealing with conflicted belief systems we hold and issues of self image. I often think of Jesus's energy field, how far it must have extended beyond the average person's field, as that story in the bible of the woman who just touched his robe and she was zapped! ha! surprised her no doubt! I think he said something to the effect "some virtue just flowed thru me! who touched me?" your faith has made u whole he must of said also, now go and stop erroring within your ways, I assume she was sick and tired of suffering and just wanted to feel whole and break the pattern of her thoughts which made her sick. lol. he just gained a new follower that day!
Last year Lucy I met a Reiki master, only he didn't tell me he had studied this. I've never met him in person, just through emails. I went out in the astral and he worked on my solar plexus; I asked him what did u do to me? lol. then he told me about Reiki techniques which is so similar to laying on of hands, except it goes slightly beyond what I used to do. PUL does seem to be as you say impartial, yet it's deeply personal when it happens to you, but impartial, in that it is for all who are prepared to receive it fully. within this obe state, a feeling of being "out" my brain just interpreted the experience as one fantanstic hug from another who for some reason loved me with love pure and had no conditions on it. later, he told me about Reiki and it made sense, as further interpretation in the brain waves showed me that he had pulled some grief from my solar plexus, taken that real energy I lived with daily, and put it inside of his own solar plexus, grinded it up...(symbology of the image) and it dissolved...I had no idea this person was such a marvelous grinder of grief

I said, "are you god?" lol. he said well yes and no, but I am invincible!"
I got a couple of these healings out there from him which led me to say that astral healing may become a part of the future modis operandi; it surely is quicker than some other methods we use within physical nowdays.
laying on of hands, perhaps any healing method stems from the "we are one" principle behind it, and as one being operating here rather than many, so if we are one, I am also one within another's will and share their pain briefly in removing the pain if their will is the same as mine to remove it.
basically, if you all are wondering about retrievals, the principle is the same..we are one..as you talk with the retrievee you note you have walked in their shoes and so they tend to trust you to escort them from the area of their stuckness, yet you never tell them they are stuck, as that infers judgment on them, in a way retrievals, using PUL, are just a loan of your vision.
thanks for the chat guys....