S2E8: Energy Healing: Consciousness at Work in the Body Part 1

Summary

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The Telepathy Tapes – S2E8: "Energy Healing: Consciousness at Work in the Body" (Part 1)

Host: Ky Dickens
Release Date: December 3, 2025

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Main Theme

This episode of The Telepathy Tapes delves into the enigmatic world of energy healing—where intention and consciousness interface with the physical body. Host Ky Dickens investigates historic and contemporary accounts, lived experiences, and groundbreaking science that challenge the foundations of Western medicine. The episode features stories from skeptics-turned-believers, perspectives from both Chinese and Western traditions, and emerging explanations for how energy healing might occur—even at a distance.

"Energy healing is where the mysteries of these unseen forces leave the mind and enter the body—where intention meets biology and telepathy meets physiology." (Ky Dickens, 01:40)

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. A Scientist’s Paradigm Shift: Dr. Simon Duan’s Story

(02:28 – 10:44)

• Background: Dr. Simon Duan, a Cambridge-trained materials scientist, grounded in the belief that only what can be measured is real.
• Turning Point: Suffers severe wisdom tooth pain; a friend sends him to a non-traditional dentist in Beijing who uses "incantations"—not anesthesia—to remove teeth.
  • Experience: The tooth is extracted painlessly, quickly, with no medication.

    "He tapped my cheek...He recite this incantation silently which allowed him to make the tooth loosen. Then he can take them out effortlessly." (Dr. Simon Duan, 04:00)

  • Dr. Duan’s skepticism challenged so deeply he begins to study consciousness and energy healing.
• Historical Context: Ancient Chinese medicine included psychic elements—viewing inside the body and communicating with medicinal herbs.

  • "The top doctors...are psychic people—they are able to use their psychic power to see through the body, see the organ." (Dr. Simon Duan, 06:55)

  • Psi (telepathy, clairvoyance, etc.) was once an "applied technology" in Chinese medicine, suppressed during 20th-century reforms but now resurfacing.

2. Energy vs. Information in Healing

(10:44 – 12:14)

• Distance Healing: The Beijing dentist claims to perform extractions remotely (not in the same room as the patient).

  • Dr. Duan distinguishes between "energy" (which weakens with distance) and "information" (which does not).
  • This reframes energy healing as interacting with an informational field—called by various names: collective consciousness, the Dao, universal intelligence.

  "If it's energy, normally we think about energy as a wave...it deteriorates with distance. If it's information...the distance can be the other half the globe." (Dr. Simon Duan, 11:07)

3. The Western Skeptic Experiences Reiki: Julie Gilts’ Journey

(13:13 – 25:46)

• Introduction to Reiki:

  • Julie Gilts, a science-minded massage therapist, is persuaded by her teacher to learn Reiki despite skepticism.
  • She turns to Reiki when her husband, John, faces life-threatening lymphedema after cancer treatment.
  • During a session, she "sees" fluid flowing away from his neck; his symptoms resolve and disappear for good.

  • "The fluid went away—and after it went away, it never came back the same way that it had...I was no longer skeptical." (Julie Gilts, 16:11)

  • John has remained disease- and lymphedema-free for over 8 years, confirming the results for both of them.

• Remote Healing Experiences:

  • Julie finds she can "tune in" to clients across the world, sometimes even remote viewing their environments.
  • Notable anecdote: She senses a client isn’t in Florida and describes a townhouse in D.C. that matches the client's new home (22:14 – 23:26).

  • "I said, are you in like the Washington DC area? And she said 'yeah, exactly.'...I was like, oh look at that. Wow." (Julie Gilts, 22:14–23:26)

  • Observes that sometimes remote healing is "more potent" than in-person (24:34).

• On the Nature of Energy Healing:

  • Sees herself as simply facilitating the body's innate capacity for healing; doesn’t claim to direct or channel something of her own ego.

  • "Energy healing is our body's innate healing mechanism. I just get to be there to help facilitate that...the healing session belongs to the patient." (Julie Gilts, 25:05)

4. Bridging Traditions: Jill Blakeway and the Science of Energy Medicine

(26:18 – 45:44)

• Defining Energy Medicine:
  • Encompasses practices that prompt the body's self-regulation, including acupuncture, prayer, hypnosis, and hands-on healing.

  • "We have a coherent intelligence from the top of our head to the tip of our toes—and that is what's directing operations." (Jill Blakeway, 27:53)

  • Chronic disease often reflects a breakdown in this communicative coherence.

The Physiology of Energy Healing:

• The Interstitium Discovery:

  • Dr. Neil Theise, pathologist, discusses the discovery of the "interstitium"—a newly recognized system of fluid-filled spaces inside the body that conducts electricity.

  • "The collagen of the fascia itself probably produces electricity...it's producing a bioelectromagnetic field around the body." (Dr. Neil Theise, 31:47)

  • Healers from other traditions recognize the interstitium as the "channels" they’ve worked with for millennia.

• Consciousness as Foundation:

  • Theise posits consciousness is fundamental, giving rise to physical existence—reality, bodies, and healing might all be interfaces within a unified field.

  • "Consciousness doesn't come out of the structure of the universe—it's what gives rise to the universe." (Dr. Neil Theise, 33:29)

Experience and Technique:

• Becoming the "Antenna":
  • Jill describes entering a "flow" by using qigong postures and bypassing the ego.

  • "Your ego is the little bit of you that's really invested in being separate...When we let that flow through us, magic happens." (Jill Blakeway, 36:59)

  • She receives continuous feedback from her patients—correlating sensation with intended effects.

Placebo & Scientific Study:

• Placebo as a Form of Energy Medicine:
  • "Placebo" triggers the body’s own self-healing and isn’t imaginary—it produces measurable physical effects.

  • "Placebo is just a prompt to self healing...It causes measurable physical changes in the body." (Jill Blakeway, 39:11)

• Bill Bengston’s Mouse Experiments:
  • Mice with cancer, healed by skeptical students performing a healing technique, survive; even control-group mice remit if near the healing sessions.

  • "The most skeptical...students could do it—they could all keep their mice alive." (Jill Blakeway, 41:10)

Language and Healing:

• Power of Language and Coherence:
  • Avoids "battle" metaphors with cancer patients—focuses on language that supports internal coherence, which she believes fosters real recovery.

  • "We should be encouraging coherence. As your body communicates better internally, it cleans up cancer cells all the time until they get overwhelmed." (Jill Blakeway, 42:39)

A Sceptic’s Testimony:

• Tim Daly’s Story:
  • Actor and initially skeptical patient unexpectedly experiences strong, involuntary sensations—and rapid healing—during energy healing after a severe injury.

  • "When I busted my legs the sensation...was profound." (Tim Daly, 45:52)

  • The more urgent his need, the more pronounced the effect.

  • "My abilities...increase depending on need—the effect is more dramatic the more you need it." (Jill Blakeway, 46:24)

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• "[Qigong] has a way of enhancing those energies...your body and the cosmos are connected." —Dr. Simon Duan (06:00)
• "Historically psi was very much an applied technology in the culture of China." —Dr. Simon Duan (08:11)
• "Sometimes my clients see the same thing...we're just so connected during the sessions." —Julie Gilts (21:05)
• "If consciousness is primary, then everything physical...all arise out of that same field." —Dr. Neil Theise (34:57)
• "Life has a vibration—it’s got a little fizz, that’s your chi." —Jill Blakeway (36:15)
• "Placebo is just a prompt to self healing, and it causes measurable physical changes in the body." —Jill Blakeway (39:11)
• "I still—as does Jill—want to find some people who will put it into a context of scientific process or method." —Tim Daly (46:41)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 02:28 – 10:44: Dr. Simon Duan tells his tooth extraction story and outlines the "psychic" tradition of Chinese medicine.
• 10:44 – 12:14: The debate: is healing energy, or information?
• 13:13 – 16:11: Julie Gilts’ husband’s healing from lymphedema through Reiki.
• 21:11 – 24:41: Julie's remote healing and instances of accurate remote viewing.
• 26:18 – 30:00: Jill Blakeway describes defining and practicing energy medicine.
• 31:27 – 33:15: Dr. Neil Theise explains the interstitium and its potential as the somatic basis for energy medicine.
• 33:29 – 35:29: Theise’s big thesis: consciousness creates reality, not vice versa.
• 39:11 – 41:10: Discussion of placebo, Bill Bengston’s mouse experiments, and implications for energy medicine.
• 43:37 – 46:29: Actor Tim Daly’s story—a skeptic’s powerful physical reaction to energy healing.

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Flow, Tone, and Style

The tone remains open, inquisitive, and grounded despite often mystical subject matter. Guests speak honestly about their skepticism and awe, and Ky Dickens frequently reiterates questions a skeptical listener might have. Throughout, the show blends personal stories with scientific hypotheses, always circling the idea that we may need a broader understanding of consciousness and connection to explain energy healing’s most compelling evidence.

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What’s Next?

The episode concludes with a tease for Part 2, promising lab-based experiments measuring what happens during healing and even whether distance healing can affect cancer cells in a Petri dish miles away.

"Next week, we ask—if something is moving between us, can we catch it in the act, and if we can—even in the smallest way—our ideas about what a body is, and where it ends, may have to change." (Ky Dickens, 47:03)

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This summary covers all educational and content-driven portions—the episode skips extended ad reads and production credits.

Transcript

[A]

Hi everyone this is kai dickens and you're listening to the telepathy tapes podcast in season one non speakers showed us that telepathy is possible shattering our assumptions about the world itself this season we're turning to others who've also been dismissed doubted or mocked for the ways they claim to know see heal or create what if only by listening to those who've been ignored we could unlock the deepest mysteries of who we are where we come from and where we're going this is the telepathy tapes and we're opening up the next channel the telepathy tapes is brought to you by progressive insurance fiscally responsible financial geniuses monetary magicians these are the things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to progressive and save hundreds because progressive offers discounts for paying in full owning a home and more plus you can count on their great customer service to help you when you need it so your dollar goes a long way visit progressive dot com to see if you could save on your car insurance progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates potential savings will vary not available in all states or.

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[A]

Week we explored whether psychedelics could help us tap into a larger field of consciousness because if they're one of the oldest bridges humans have to tap into a larger field it invites another question does consciousness or the larger information field only engage with our mind or can it engage with our physical bodies too energy healing is where the mysteries of these unseen forces leave the mind and enter the body where intention meets biology and telepathy meets physiology it's one of the oldest practices humans have ever created found in cultures across the world long before modern medicine existed and today it's resurfacing through research data and lived experiences that challenge the very foundation of western science and to begin we start with someone who never believed in any of this a cambridge trained material scientist who had his worldview altered by a single.

[C]

Experience i was happily working as a materials scientist so i came to study from china with a phd in material science from cambridge university the metals ceramics polymers advanced semiconductors this is doctor simon.

[A]

Duan founder and ceo of medicomputics labs he studied material science so he trusted matter and measurement and nothing really began beyond it until something happened in doctor duan's life that defied his understanding of the world and the logic of material.

[C]

Science that's why i go beyond physics and get into the consciousness study because i realize material science cannot really explain what i have experienced what i have.

[A]

Witnessed the experience that would change the course of simon's career happened in the early two thousands while traveling in china when he was struck by a horribly painful toothache back near his wisdom teeth.

[C]

My wisdom tools start to become very painful it's not pleasant so i consulted the conventional dentist i was told i actually need a fairly significant operation and to get the general anesthetic to take it out so then a friend of mine said oh why don't you go to see this dentist the dentist his.

[A]

Friend recommended was not a traditional dentist it was someone who worked with energy and not traditional dental tools and didn't even use things like general anesthesia i.

[C]

Was skeptical i went to his place he tapped my cheek and he just.

[A]

Took them out wait so he just took out your teeth like what do.

[C]

You mean with what with a paraphrases yeah no anesthetic no anesthesia and no medication so it takes less than a minute all the procedure so it's very.

[A]

Straightforward okay so the tooth came straight out with tweezers but was it painful.

[C]

It wasn't painful then we went to lunch together yeah during the lunch i asked him what the hell did you do to me what actually happened he said i have an incantation it's like.

[A]

A spell like a mantra incantations or mantras are words or phrases repeated to channel energies or to achieve an altered.

[C]

State of consciousness he said he recite this incantation silently which allowed him to make the tooth loosen then he can take them out effortlessly simon told me.

[A]

That the dentist can even perform very complicated extractions where a broken off tooth leaves roots impacted inside a patient's gums.

[C]

Roots are left in the gum he managed to just get those roots pop out.

[A]

So so how can a mantra physically loosen a tooth is it a miracle or is this dentist on the outskirts of beijing working with a technology that has been obscured in most of the modern world to understand this we need to look at qigong an ancient system of chinese healing and spiritual practice and qigong sits at the heart of many branches of traditional chinese medicine and is deeply connected to taoism an eastern belief system that sees the tao as the underlying life force that moves through everything in these traditions a qigong healer is trained to align with that universal energy through breath and focus and intention the healer actually becomes a conduit for qi this natural force or energy that brings the body into balance and from that perspective a focused mantra isn't magic it's a way of directing qi toward an area that is blocked or out of harmony perhaps even towards a stubborn.

[C]

Wisdom tooth qigong has many levels to practice qigong is to cultivate the energy unity between your inner energy and outer cosmic energy your body and the cosmos qigong has a way of enhancing those energies enhance those connections promoting the balances of energies so that's the traditional chinese method it has been used for thousands.

[A]

Of years traditional chinese medicine or tcm is the contemporary name for interconnected practices of medicine spirituality and philosophy originating in china over five thousand years ago forms of traditional chinese medicine are practiced worldwide today in both the east and the west and things you've probably heard of like qigong acupuncture tai chi and herbal medicine however today these forms are not always practiced with the same psychic and spiritual dimensions that were once fundamental to.

[C]

Ancient chinese healers in traditional chinese healthcare the top doctors all the famous chinese medicine men are psychic people they are able to use their psychic power to see through the body see the organ they can use their mind vision to.

[A]

Exam patients simon is saying something that made me have to rewind a few times that in traditional chinese medicine the top doctors are often psychic and can use their psychic powers to see through the body and to see organs and.

[C]

Bones so how did they discover different herbs have a medicine property it's because the psychic people actually can communicate with.

[A]

Different herbs and just like we explored in episode six about plant communication simon said that these top psychic doctors in china could communicate with different herbs and plants to decipher their medicinal properties so.

[C]

By communicating with different herbs we can discover the energy property of this particular herb the property of certain herbs used in chinese medicine is actually discovered by psychic people by communicating with the plant so traditionally historically sai was very much an applied technology in the culture of.

[A]

China simon just referred to psi which is a term for mental phenomena that cannot yet be explained including things like telepathy clairvoyance and other experiences suggesting that consciousness may extend beyond the brain and doctor duan just said that historically psi was an applied technology in the culture of china especially in medicine but as often happens with the stuff all over the world political and cultural upheavals in china in the mid twenty th century pushed many traditional healing practices into the shadows some were suppressed and others were just reshaped to fit western medical models and as a result the subtle energetic methods doctor duan described as psi technology largely disappeared from the public view even though the psychic or energetic element to their medicine had been used successfully for.

[C]

Thousands of years chinese intellectuals become sort of disillusioned about chinese culture they think the reason china is so weak is because china lacks science and technology suppression started anything non scientific many chinese leaders.

[A]

Became convinced that the nation's strength depended on embracing modern science and simon said that anything that did not look scientific including ancient healing practices was pushed aside.

[C]

During cultural revolution traditional chinese culture was actually destroyed the most after mao dying in nineteen seventy six things started to.

[A]

Loosen up so mao zedong who led china for almost thirty years imposed strict limits on many of the traditional practices but when he died in the late nineteen seventies those restrictions eased and parts of chinese ancient medical heritage began to return and this renewed interest in qigong helped bring back the kinds of energy healers who could perform procedures like removing a tooth without anesthesia and it was this discovery that pushed doctor simon duan to re examine his own beliefs and return to the tooth clinic outside of beijing and but this time not as a patient but as a researcher i.

[C]

Went to his clinic a few times after that because i became curious and i saw on his wall clinical wall full of photos of celebrities movie stars and politicians including the communist party politburo members they all took their tooth out in his clinic and he's still doing that he does it daily he actually claimed he can take people tooth out over distance i haven't seen that happening.

[A]

So he can remove a tooth effortlessly and painlessly using a mantra but he can also do that remotely like not being in the same physical place as.

[C]

A patient yeah yeah he can do it remotely over distance okay so is.

[A]

This tied to qigong i've never heard anything like this before qigong in some.

[C]

Cases the qigong master can do distant.

[A]

Healing but isn't qigong a form of energy medicine which then you'd think you have to be in the presence of a physical body to like harness and transfer the energy into another physical body.

[C]

Depends what your perspective about qigong many people have different understanding of qigong so some people think it's energy some people think it's informational if it's energy normally we think about energy as a wave like sound and like light yeah it's all electromagnetic wave it travels in a kind of a field normally it deteriorates with distance the further you go away the weaker it becomes so that's energy.

[A]

So simon's making a distinction between energy which moves through space and weakens with distance and information and that information he's referencing is is more like an informational field and on this show you've heard it called many things collective consciousness universal intelligence the dao and so remote healing would be impossible if it depended on energy alone but it's not impossible if a healer is interacting with an invisible informational field naked to the eye but everywhere like the ocean we're swimming in.

[C]

So it's not energy i mean it's information in his case it's information i think the distance can be the other.

[A]

Half the globe if healing can happen without two people being in the same room then what we're talking about may not be energy in the usual sense at all simon might be right we may be dealing with something closer to information or something else entirely that does not weaken with distance so before diving into what energy healing is how it works and what the science says i wanted to understand one simple can healing truly happen at a distance because if it can the whole question shifts are we really studying energy or is it some other subtle force as i started researching and looking for stories and healers i was introduced to a uk based science forward film team that's been working on a documentary series about energy healing for years it's called phenomena and they've been deep in this world following some of the most groundbreaking research that might finally answer our biggest questions about energy healing and on our first phone call they mentioned an incredible healer who said that doing energy healing remotely or from a distance was easier for her than healing in person person i'm julie gilts.

[D]

And i live in barrington new jersey with my husband and we raised our twins there we are empty nesters with two dogs i'm licensed as a massage therapist and i've been doing this for about fourteen years and i absolutely love it but i am also a reiki.

[A]

Master reiki is a healing practice that originated in japan where the practitioner uses gentle touch or holds their hands near the body to support relaxation and the body's natural healing process but julie did not plan to learn reiki she was skeptical about it unsure and only agreed because her teacher was persistent that she had a gift worth exploring years after.

[D]

I began at my practice one of my massage therapy teachers came to my building and she walked in with a book about reiki and she said so i was cleaning out my library and i found that i had two copies of this book and i'm supposed to teach you reiki and i was like oh that's nice but i'm really not interested i was really skeptical because i feel like the work that i've always done has been from a scientific background learning about anatomy and working with people's.

[A]

Muscular systems but her former teacher did.

[D]

Not let up she talked me into it and i have great respect for her but i was still very skeptical.

[A]

This incident would prove to be a blessing when her husband john was later diagnosed with cancer having thirty two lymph nodes and his tonsils removed and undergoing radiation in recovery a side effect developed.

[D]

That could be life threatening he developed lymphedema in his neck it was almost like a bladder in his neck that kept filling up with lymph fluid it was getting worse and we went to many specialists and it turned out that he really needed to clear the fluid on an hourly basis because it just kept filling up it was filling more rapidly and more fully it was just.

[A]

Getting worse and worse lymphedema has no known cure only management strategies john was tasked with constantly having to self drain the lymphedema fluid from his neck or he could essentially drown so john became julie's first reiki patient john was skeptical.

[D]

Of reiki but i knew nothing else was working i was in early stages of training for reiki or early practice of reiki i had just been working with my teacher and she said that she wanted me to do six reiki sessions with six different people so i chose john as one of my people of course and when i was doing his reiki treatment and i went to his neck i really wanted to focus there of course because he was having an issue there let's just try it so as my hands were near and around his neck it looked like a dan broke fluid like water rippling over rocks in a river or in a creek the fluid was just rolling over but i could see it like bubbling like a babbling brook and the fluid went away and after it went away it never came back the same way that it had everything changed that day i was no longer skeptical it was.

[A]

Phenomenal and how's john's health today john.

[D]

Has been with no evidence of disease and without lymphedema for at least eight and a half years.

[A]

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[D]

Witness when i work with reiki it seems to awaken other parts of my brain and other parts of the brains of my patient so i'll feel heat in my hands sometimes i feel sensations in my body sometimes i'll even feel intense pain but i know that it's not my pain and i don't know how to explain that it's a sense and i would say in the early years that i was practicing it i would sometimes take my hands away from the patient so that i could validate that and see if the pain went away in my body and i learned that it did go away when i work with reiki i tend to see colors it's usually purples and emeralds and what's amazing to me is that sometimes my clients see the same same thing so we're just so connected during the.

[A]

Sessions julie's mastery now enables her to heal people remotely when i started doing.

[D]

Distance healings i was a little skeptical of that too what amazed me with distance healing is that i could actually connect or tune in to people who were across the country you know and then across the world and i could actually see their environment where they were.

[A]

So physical proximity doesn't matter the first.

[D]

Patient that i remember is a cancer patient who was getting treatment out on the west coast and i could tell where she was like i could see and feel where she was in her car across the country were you thinking.

[A]

That she'd be in a hospital yeah.

[D]

I asked her which hospital she was going to be at i wanted to know where it was on a map and what it looked like but i could tell where she was like i could see and feel where she was in her car across the country okay.

[A]

So i just want to clarify this for the audience so you thought she'd be in the hospital but then you saw her in a car instead and then you verified it with her and she confirmed it right well yeah and.

[D]

Then i thought okay well that was just a flu you know so then i had another distance session with a woman who lived in florida i said okay i called her up and i couldn't find her like i couldn't connect to her energy at all and i was like getting a little frustrated and feeling like i was a fraud and feeling like this was wrong and i shouldn't be doing this so i had a bit of imposter syndrome going on and then something told me i heard like something that said she's not in florida and i asked her are you in florida and she said no i moved and i said oh okay well that makes sense i said are you in like the washington dc area and she said yeah exactly and i was like oh okay and i said do you live in like a townhouse or a row home that's across from a park and when you walk in the front door there's a staircase to your right and you go up the stairs and then you go you're in the back room on the left side of the house if you're looking at the front of the house and she said yes exactly and i was like oh.

[A]

Look at that wow so like can.

[D]

You see it i can see it like i was walking into her house.

[A]

It sounds like julie's talking about remote viewing which we've talked about on the show before and just for a recap remote viewing is an ability to see a location that you're not physically in it can pretty easily be taught and it's been used by governments around the world with success so it's a thing.

[D]

It'S so amazing to be able to see where people are sitting in their environment when i'm working with them have.

[A]

You been able to connect with everyone remotely that you've ever tried to connect.

[D]

With yeah one of my clients she asked if i could check in on her mom who lives in korea and do a healing on her mom and i don't know what korean homes look like i've never been to korea and i ended up describing where i knew her mom to be sitting when i connected with her she's got a spot that she sits in in the house it's attitud table and there's some corner behind her and whatever is going on in that corner is very toxic energy what was behind that wall is the sewer line for the people who live in the apartments above her do you.

[A]

Feel like when you're doing healing remotely.

[D]

It'S as strong i actually tend to feel that it's more potent when i do remote healings for some reason that.

[A]

I can't explain so it seems like in addition to healing you can also remote view but my question is do those two go together can you remote view when you're not healing i don't.

[D]

Think i ever have when it wasn't connected to a healing it's so interesting.

[A]

So it's almost like your remote viewing is tied to your ability to energy heal so i guess my question for you is what is energy healing to you how would you define it energy.

[D]

Healing is our body's innate healing mechanism and i just get to be there to help facilitate that healing to help kind of tap into it and i teach my students that they should leave their egos out of their healing sessions because it's not about us the healing session belongs to the patient and we just get to be there to help facilitate it some may call that channeling i don't connect to that word i just i sense it and facilitate it.

[A]

What do you think is at play now that you've been doing it for.

[D]

So long i really don't know how to answer that i wish that i knew it's just something that i don't.

[A]

Understand julie feels it her patients feel it but she's honest about not fully understanding what's moving through her hands or her body and why distance makes it even stronger for her so what's actually at work here if healers can sense an intelligence they can't name maybe that intelligence isn't coming from them at all maybe it's rising from the body's own coordination system or from something deeper that we've always been connected to to widen this out i spoke with someone who spent her life exploring this terrain across cultures across histories and has volunteered herself to be researched for science i'm jill.

[E]

Blakeway i'm the founder of a center in new york called the inova center and i practice chinese medicine both herbology and acupuncture and in twenty nineteen i published a book called energy the science and mystery of healing and i went on a bit of a journey really to explain myself to myself i had energy for want of a better word at the time coming out of my hands that my patients could feel and over the years i was doing acupuncture and then i would just get the needles in and do the hands on healing because i wasn't under any pressure to deliver hands on healing i never charged for it so i don't feel under pressure at all i got to play and i got feedback from the patients when it got stronger and when it didn't and i thought what if this is just placebo what if i have very impressive energy that comes out of my hands that people can feel but it doesn't does nothing at all and they're very impressed by it and thanks to the placebo effect they get better and i've been taking credit harpercollins commissioned me to go and find out the science behind what i was doing and so i talked to scientists and healers and started to work out oh yeah this is real it's measurable and i began to understand that i was manipulating my own biofield and that i was part of a much bigger sort of oversold biofield and i now understand quite a lot of the science behind it and why it works so jill.

[A]

You'Ve studied energy healers around the world and from what i understand you've created a wide range of things from cancer to fertility to physical injuries through energy healing so i guess maybe to start how do you personally define energy medicine.

[E]

I include as energy medicine anything that prompts the body's own self regulating systems to do the work so i would include prayer in that and hypnosis i would include guided imagery in that hands on healing hands over healing acne acupuncture these are all forms of energy medicine because they're a prompt albeit a subtle one to the body to self regulate energy in asia was always known as chi in india it was known as prana every ancient culture understood that we have intelligence you have intelligence in your body that is quite outside of your mind we sort of think of our brain as directing operations yeah like the hardware for the software and the brain does a lot of directing of information but all day your body is digesting lunch and regulating your thyroid and transitioning hormones and regulating respiration and you never have to think about it your brain it's involved but your conscious mind is not and that intelligence is coherent and i think in science we by necessity started to view the body as very mechanical with a series of systems which have specific functions and therefore can malfunction but actually the thing that we miss by doing that is that we have a coherent intelligence from the top of our head to the tip of our toes and that is what's directing operations and a lot of the chronic diseases that medicine struggles to solve for people are in fact problems of coordination and synchronization in that communication system some of that communication is done through the nervous system some of it's done chemically through the blood but some of it is done electromagnetically and that is what we mean by qi qi is your body's intelligence and acupuncture is a very well thought out and old method of directing that intelligence to help it become more coherent and prompt the body to heal.

[A]

Jill describes qi as a kind of intelligent life force something that moves through us maintains coherence and communicates moment to moment a consciousness and information system moving through the body and while that sounds mystical in twenty eighteen something unexpected happened a group of scientists in new york discovered an entire structural network inside of the body one that some believed to be facilitating an energetic intelligence connecting the body's interrelated systems one of those scientists was doctor neal theise a liver pathologist and stem cell research pioneer so neil.

[F]

Introduce yourself i'm a liver pathologist clinically that's my training and you know how cancer starts in human livers i stumbled into some novel anatomy thanks to some colleagues of mine i used to be at beth israel medical center and that's.

[A]

Where this work started this novel anatomy was stumbled upon when neil's colleague doctor david carlock was testing a new high tech endoscope this miniature microscope enables the viewing of live tissue in real time instead of viewing non living tissue on a glass slide when viewing dead tissues on glass slides collagen dries producing a visual artifact that looks like cracks or so it was believed that that's all.

[F]

They were they looked like cracks and the explanation was that collagen is so stiff that when you try to make a very thin section to make a microscope slide it cracks that's what i was taught that's what i taught people.

[A]

But viewing live tissue with the endoscope would reveal that these cracks were something else a significant anatomical structure of fluid filled gaps between cells it turns out.

[F]

They'Re remnants of fluid filled spaces and so for the first time we saw the actual structure they called it the.

[A]

Interstitium a fluid filled highway like communication network that we now know holds more fluid than all the blood in the body and once researchers knew what they were looking at they started noticing something else this isn't just plumbing it behaves.

[F]

Electrically the collagen of the fascia itself probably produces electricity and the spaces that we've defined also are producing electricity and this gets into the bioenergy thing because if you've got a continuous network through the entire body and it's all producing electricity independent of the nervous system then it's producing a bioelectromagnetic field around the body and then you might be able to start talking about chakras and meridians energy bodies et cetera could this be.

[A]

What the ancient chinese intuited as qi long before the invention of microscopes or.

[F]

Endoscopes one of the questions i've been asking myself with the interstitium work is should we have known this was there should we have known we should be.

[A]

Looking for something news of the interstitium went viral worldwide but many healers and scientists working in other traditions did not agree that this was a new discovery.

[F]

Whenever i speak to someone about the interstitium from another culture of healing or healing health shamanic healers energy practitioners taoist healers acupuncture ayurvedic medicine they all see this structure and go that's what we've been talking about there was a senior person at the chinese version of nih for traditional chinese medicine and he laughed and he said yes and we've been speaking about it for four thousand years.

[A]

So how were healers able to access and influence this system before technology made it seeable how did they know it was real and communicate with it to promote healing and in order to answer that neil suggests that we zoom out beyond the body into the very fabric.

[F]

Of reality itself consciousness doesn't come out of the structure of the universe it's what gives rise to the universe on the one hand i would say that the universe is consciousness on the other hand i would also say this world at this level of scale is in fact material consciousness is becoming stuff that looks material and then works through that at the same time to communicate consciousness.

[A]

This is where neil makes a leap that can sound huge at first he's saying if consciousness is the foundation of reality not the brain then everything physical including our bodies is shaped out of that same field and the interstitium this newly seen network woven through every organ and every tissue might be one place where that larger consciousness interfaces with us physically in other words the body may have a built in communication system that's not just mechanical or chemical but informational.

[F]

But how is that going to give rise to this world there's an urge within that pure fundamental awareness that wants to know itself and in order to know itself it has to start to distinguish within itself a subject and object but to really turn into a subject an object to really have that moment of discovery you have to have space separating the subject and object space and time and suddenly you have space time which is an energy rich field if.

[A]

Consciousness is primary then everything physical space time atoms molecules all arise out of that same field and eventually those building blocks form the structures inside our bodies including the interstitium which raises a could the system not just be carrying fluid.

[F]

But information the structures that combine together from space time up through the quantum foam as it's called to quantum level stuff to atoms to molecules that form the interstitium is it also mediating some form of consciousness as a communication network.

[A]

In the body if that's true then our sense of being separate are little subjective islands of consciousness may only seem that way in reality there may be no hard boundary between you and me between subject and object between our bodies and the wider field that we're part of or from a faith perspective between us and god and if none of us are actually separate if physical form is just one expression of consciousness then maybe energy healing isn't about sending something at all but interacting through a field we already share a field that could let one person influence another in ways that we can't see or fully explain and that's exactly what jill blakeway experiences.

[E]

In her work i'm a bit more of a transmitter than a receiver but.

[A]

I am an antenna jill blakeway describes feeling like an antenna when she's tuning into the energy healing frequencies coming through.

[E]

Her body life has a vibration to it and when you tune in it's got a little fizz that's life yeah it has movement to it that's your.

[A]

Chi working with the concept of qi she connects to a universal consciousness i.

[E]

Call it the dao because i practice chinese medicine but it is a network of communal consciousness and lao tzu said the dao that can be spoken of is not the true dao because it's incredibly complicated and i think of it in my mind as just this matrix of connection going infinitely many qigong exercises.

[A]

And philosophies draw inspiration from lao tzu's teachings in particular his emphasis on balance and the interconnectedness of mind and body.

[E]

It'S when you're flowing with the same intelligence that runs but the bigger version of it and here's something interesting if i try and direct it it goes away and it was my first hint that i have to get my own ego my own sense of separate self out of the way in order to do this because your ego is the little bit of you that's really invested in being separate i think it is about a dropping of the separate self and feeling your way into alignment and when you let that go and just feel the greater coherence when we let that flow through us magic happens synchronicities happen amazing coincidences happen jill's abilities seem.

[A]

To be living proof that bypassing the illusion of a separate self seems to open up paths to healing the body so jill have you always been able to do this or how did you.

[E]

Figure it out i had energy coming out of my hands that my patients could feel that was my first clue kai because they'd have their eyes shut and they'd say oh you're over my abdomen i can feel it i can feel it in my abdomen and i think i wonder what they can feel i developed i think quite naturally a way of regulating my breath and my body to make it get stronger and i got feedback from the patients when it got stronger and when it didn't and i'm so i'm very much self taught and that's what sent me on my journey to work out what the energy that heals us for want of a better word actually is and then.

[A]

Can you describe how you physically you know prepare to channel this energy to.

[E]

A patient i stand in what's called horse stance in qigong which means i bend my legs are sort of shoulder width apart i bend my knees i tip my pelvis forward a little bit and i get my spine really straight and then i feel something tingling down my spine it's almost fizzy feeling in my spine then i have energy that comes out of my hands that the patients can feel and i hold it over specific areas in my case based on their chinese medicine diagnosis what about.

[A]

The placebo effect what role does this very real and measurable phenomena play and isn't the placebo effect one of the arguments that skeptics raise about energy medicine.

[E]

There are studies as i'm sure you're aware that show that the placebo effect isn't just that you think you're better if you believe that something is going to work your body produces chemicals to make it work so i would say that the placebo is just a prompt to self healing and and it causes measurable physical changes in the body it's not just i think i'm better so i feel a bit better i love.

[A]

This because sometimes i think that the placebo effect in and of itself is the best evidence we have of energy healing we have so much evidence of this in science that deeply believing your body can get better can help it.

[E]

To get better so i usually start by explaining the placebo is energy medicine actually and what you think your body can hear you the tighter and tenser you get the harder it is for your body to communicate coherently all the.

[A]

Way through so you learned to heal through intuition training your mind to bypass the ego tuning into your body's energy and then connecting to your patient's response but did you have any notable teachers or you know masters that helps you to understand this better doctor bill bengston.

[E]

Who died recently sadly and he was an absolute pioneer he was a professor at city university in new york and he would gather together skeptical students and faculty and they they would take mice that were specially bred to have cancer poor mice and they would inject them with cancer and then his students would do the technique and they would remit and they did this on tens of thousands of mice over the years the technique he taught his students was a form of ego distraction like i do but he had them flash ego gratifying images in their heads while they held their hands over in this case the mice these aren't your noble wants like world peace these are your like i don't know a beach house of winning the lottery type ego gratifying things and he would have them flash about twenty images round and round and round really quickly so they couldn't think of anything else they were just flashing wow that's.

[A]

Fascinating it's like distracting the ego with.

[E]

The ego itself and when they measured the frequency coming out of the healer's hands it was seven point eight seven hertz which is the most common frequency of the earth the schumann's resonance the.

[A]

Schumann resonance this is often called the earth's electromagnetic heartbeat and many believe these frequencies influence human physiology but again he.

[E]

Was distracting the ego keeping the separate bit of self occupied so that the healer can just let whatever this is flow through them the most skeptical sneering iron of students could do it they could all keep their mice alive so.

[A]

Interestingly the control group mice who were not receiving any healing started to remit or just get better as well how did that happen when they visited the.

[E]

Control group they looped the control group of mice into the healing field and they remitted two so bill in the end had to send the control mice to a different lab in a different state i know you looked at rupert sheldrake's work it was creating a resonant.

[A]

Field and that's where the mouse study becomes interesting because mice can't be skeptics they cannot placebo themselves or talk their way into feeling better yet the effects still show up with humans the picture gets even more layered and jill pays close attention to the energy of language when she works with cancer patients she believes that phrases like fighting cancer or battling cancer can actually pull the system out of coherence instead she focuses on language that helps the body remember its.

[E]

Own capacity to heal using battling language you know teaching people to visualize little pac men eating up the cancer and things like that and if you think about all the language we use about cancer it's all about winning the war and battling it and i realized oh this is the wrong track we should be encouraging coherence yeah because as your body communicates better internally it cleans up bodies clean up cancer cells all the time until they get overwhelmed and can't.

[A]

When jill talks about coherence she means the body's communication system working in sync instead of in chaos it's like an orchestra playing the same piece of music instead of a bunch of instruments out of sync making discordant noise so when the body is coherent it can recognize what doesn't belong including cancer cells and clean them up the way it's designed to do a skeptic who became a longtime patient of jill's is actor tim.

[G]

Dal like many people i thought energy healing was bullshit my natural predisposition is to be i would say an open minded skeptic but i hadn't experienced anything that showed me that it was significant in any big way until i experienced the electric magnetic whatever it was this incredible feeling of energy and power of some kind some invisible thing going through.

[E]

My body he was quite skeptical he liked the acupuncture he's quite a fit gym going person i would use acupuncture to help his knees and things like that so he didn't really need much just the odd tweak when he pulled his back or something like that and i would play around with energy medicine and to be honest he was a bit eye rolly in an affectionate way he'd be like yeah do whatever you think and then he was in a skiing accident and he broke both his.

[A]

Legs and anyone who's ever worked in tv knows once production dates are locked.

[E]

They don't move and they wanted him back to work within a week with.

[A]

Two broken legs jill began working on tim's legs combining acupuncture with her form of energy healing she placed the needles then moved her hands slowly above his skin never making physical contact and yet both of them reacted as strong waves of sensation moved through his body she.

[G]

Was just doing something with her hands at the bottom of my feet and she said this is energy medicine at work this was beyond her putting needles in me energy healing i wasn't gonna put my shattered tibial plateau back together but it sure helped heal the nerves and helped make my recovery a lot.

[E]

Faster when i put my hands over the brakes his whole leg would shake and he'd be like what are you doing to me he could feel the energy running through his legs and his legs would vibrate completely out of his control i would say things like try and stop it and he couldn't it was like his legs had been taken over and he was back at work within about a week to ten days he healed very very quickly his doctors were amazed by how well he healed.

[A]

When jill and tim were filming for phenomena tim joked that in their first few energy healing sessions he didn't really feel anything remarkable i remember the first.

[G]

Time you did energy healing on me the sensation was almost non existent and i you know indulged you and let you do your thing but when when i busted my legs the sensation that i got from the work you did.

[E]

Was profound the teacher who taught me so much used to say healing is an autonomic response to need and i have noticed that my abilities such that they are increased depending on need because.

[A]

His need for healing was greater his body responded more intensely to your energy.

[E]

Tim had never really needed me before he had a bit of acupuncture for the occasional minor thing and now he really needed me it was a completely different experience the effect is more dramatic the more you need it i still.

[G]

As does jill want to find some people who will put it into a context of scientific process or method it's something that is very hard to measure unless you are some of the scientists who are really using cutting edge technology what i want to know is why why do we experience these things and.

[A]

Tim isn't alone in asking that if people really experience these things they should be measurable they should leave traces somewhere in part two of this episode we'll follow jill and tim into a lab that tracks what happens between their hearts when healing begins we'll hear how reiki stacks up against standard pain treatments and we'll visit a lab where something groundbreaking may have happened a healer impacts cancer cells from miles away next week we ask if something is moving between us can we catch it in the act and if we can even in the smallest way our ideas about what a body is and where it ends may have to change and the bigger question that science has skirted isn't just whether energy healing works it's what kind of universe would make this possible at all a very special thank you to the emerald gate charitable trust and the subtle energy funders collective for their incredible research in this space and their help consulting on this episode and i want to thank our producers jesse steed jill pichesnik and kathryn ellis contributing producer also working on the phenomena film debbie hinigan original music is by rachel cantu mix mastering and additional music is by michael rubino our associate producer is selena kennedy original artwork is by ben kendora design and i'm kai dickens your executive producer writer and host to learn more about phenomena a three part documentary featuring access to groundbreaking scientists transformative healers and evidence that's rewriting what we know about energy healing you can visit phenomenahealing dot com telepathy tapes this podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes it is not intended to substitute the advice of a physician professional coach therapist or other qualified professional.