What is the “energy” in energy healing? Every healer in this series uses the word. Every patient reaches for it. Ancient traditions built entire systems around it. But what is it — biologically, physically, measurably — and how does it move through the body to heal? Three renowned scientists begin to offer answers: Columbia University's Martin Picard on the mitochondria that may link consciousness to biological health, Richard Hammerschlag on the biofields that run all the way in and all the way out of our bodies, and NYU's Neil Theise on the interstitium, a newly discovered hidden network coursing through us. Together they reveal an eye-opening vision of the body not as a machine, but as a dynamic energetic ecosystem. Original music composed by Dan Baboulene. Additional music by Starluxe.
What is “energy” in energy healing? Every healer in this series uses the word. Every patient reaches for it. Ancient healing traditions built entire systems around it. And modern researchers are striving to study it.
But what is energy — biologically, physically, measurably — and how does it move through the body to influence health and healing? In this episode, three renowned scientists offer remarkable visions that, taken together, start to answer this question.
Martin Picard, PhD, of Columbia University has spent his career studying mitochondria, the body's cellular power sources, and has found them far more connected to our inner experiences, our consciousness, than biomedicine ever assumed, and likely far more central to how we heal.
Richard Hammerschlag, PhD, co-authored the paper that helped define the modern science of the biofield: the organizing fields of energy and information that operate within the body and extend outward from it. Like the nested Qi fields of older traditions, these are dynamic interrelating layers — energy running all the way in and likely all the way out.
Neil Theise, MD, of NYU helped identify the interstitium, a remarkable recent major discovery of a fluid-filled network running throughout the body. Consistent with the intuitions of ancient healing systems, it may help explain how signals fundamental to health and healing actually travel, a new communication network in the body previously overlooked by modern medicine.
Together, these three voices present a compelling, eye-opening, and deeply human vision of the body and mind not as a machine, but as a dynamic energetic ecosystem.
And to close out the season, we also welcome Jonathan Cohen, Co-Creator and Executive Producer of Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown, who joins Ivy and Meredith to help land these big ideas of energy, healing, and life.
Original music composed by Dan Baboulene.
Additional music by Starluxe.
Martin Picard: The Science & Experience of Energy
Richard Hammerschlag: Biofield Physiology: A Framework for an emerging discipline
Structure and Distribution of an Unrecognized Interstitium in Human Tissues
Neil Theise, Notes on Complexity: A Scientific Theory of Connection, Consciousness, and Being
Mayim Bialik's Breakdown Podcast: Overcome the Illusion of Separation, with Neil Theise