The Phenomena Healing Podcast
What don't we know about healing?
Phenomena: The Science and Stories of Energy Healing is a documentary-style podcast series hosted by artist and business innovator Ivy Ross that investigates this and other quietly urgent questions at the intersection of modern medicine and ancient healing.
Right now, healing practices like reiki, qigong, distance healing, and other biofield therapies are seeing a resurgence in interest, not just from those seeking relief from chronic pain and other ailments, but also from leading researchers from Harvard, MD Anderson, Stanford, and UC Irvine. Practices that had previously been dismissed by so-called “hard science,” are being rediscovered, brought into the lab, tested, measured, peer-reviewed, and redefined by a new generation of researchers, scientists, and doctors.
Join Ivy as she shares the latest research findings and the incredible, inspirational stories of energy healers and those who have found relief with them from conditions ranging from chronic pain, PTSD, even cancer.Â
Together, we’ll explore answers to questions like what is energy healing? How does it work? And how do we separate hard facts from hopeful fictions? Because if the answers are what the research suggests, the next frontier of medicine may turn out to be something we've known in our bodies all along.
Latest Episodes
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EPISODE ONE
“The Healer in the Lab | Studying Energy Healing and Cancer at MD Anderson”
At MD Anderson Cancer Center—one of the largest and most respected cancer research institutions in the world—something remarkable is happening in the laboratory. Scientists are bringing energy healers into controlled experiments to measure what happens to pancreatic cancer cells when a biofield therapist (another term for energy healer) goes to work. What they're finding is measurable, repeatable, and difficult to explain: biofield therapy slows the ability of cancer to spread. Not in one study. In multiple, with multiple healers, multiple cell lines, and rigorous controls.
Dr. Lorenzo Cohen, director of MD Anderson's Integrative Medicine program, has spent years putting energy healing to the test, not because he was a believer, but because he thought the question deserved a serious answer. What his team found at the genetic level surprised even him.
To understand what that research means for people—not just cells—we meet Mojdeh Stone, a cancer patient who worked with energy healer John Lavack in the weeks before her surgery. What her surgeon found in the operating room was something she said she had never seen before. Mojdeh's story doesn't explain the science. But maybe the science might finally be catching up to her story.
EPISODEÂ TWO
“Beyond Placebo | The Science of Reiki and Chronic Pain with Harvard and the University of Utah”
Rick Axelson spent his career teaching research methods at medical colleges — evaluating evidence for a living. He also spent decades suffering from debilitating migraines that even his team at the Mayo Clinic couldn't resolve. Then he tried one session of Reiki with a practitioner named Natalie Dyer. Forty-five minutes. And his migraines have never come back.
That story on its own might be easy for some to dismiss. But new research from the University of Utah and Harvard—the most comprehensive study of its kind ever conducted—sheds new light on the possibilities of Reiki for chronic pain. What they found in patients with chronic knee pain matched the effectiveness of treatments medicine already accepts, like opioids. Lead researcher Adam Hanley puts it simply: he didn't expect to see anything. Now he's scrambling to understand what happened.
And there's one more thing about Natalie Dyer that changes this story in a way that is fascinating. She’s not just a healer, she’s also a neuroscientist.Â
Hosts
Ivy Ross
Ivy Ross is chief design officer for consumer devices at Google, where she and her team have launched numerous award-winning hardware products. Her work has established a design aesthetic that is tangible, striking, and unmistakably Google. Ross has previously held a range of executive positions, from head of product design and development to CMO and president, at companies including Mattel and Gap. Ross co-authored the New York Times bestselling book Your Brain on Art.
She has spoken at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit, was cited
by Businessweek as “one of the new faces of leadership,” and, in 2019,
was ranked No. 9 on Fast Company’s list of the 100 Most Creative People in Business. This year, the Eames Institute named her one of the 100 Most Curious People.
Her honors include a National Endowment for the Arts grant, the Women in Design Award, and the Diamond International Award. An accomplished artist, Ross has created jewelry that uses metals in innovative ways; her work is held in the permanent collections of twelve international museums. While creating products and brands in the material world, Ross has simultaneously studied the undeniable power of the invisible This led her to studying sound, vibration, BioGeometry, Reiki and energy medicine. She believes in the combination of art and science to bring great ideas to life.
Meredith Sprengel
Meredith brings more than fifteen years of experience in integrative and complementary medicine research across foundations, universities, and research institutions. She currently serves as the Research and Program Director for the Subtle Energy Funders Collective and as the Fellowship Director for the Biofield Fellowship Research Program. She is pursuing her PhD at Leiden University in the PRSM Lab where she studies energy healing dyads and the psychological, interpersonal, and contextual factors that shape healing experiences.
Her work centers on evaluating how complementary modalities can be incorporated into allopathic medicine for the treatment of chronic disease with the goal of strengthening resilience, supporting wellbeing, and fostering whole person healing. Trained in social psychological research methods along with research evaluation and assessment, she has held research roles with the Samueli Institute, the Samueli Foundation Integrative Health Programs, the Consciousness and Healing Initiative, the John W. Brick Mental Health Foundation, University of California San Diego, Georgetown University, and as a guest researcher with the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research. Meredith holds a BA in psychology and government from Georgetown University and an MS in Conflict Analysis and Resolution.
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Phenomena Healing was created by the non-profit Merraki Media and the Subtle Energy Funders Collective to thoughtfully explore energy healing, using rigorous scientific inquiry, in an endeavor to help reduce suffering and promote wellbeing. "Merraki" is a Greek word that means “doing something purely for the love of it."
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