In Episode 1, we explore the work at MD Anderson Cancer Center—one of the largest and most respected cancer research institutions in the world—where 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.
Original Airing: 5/12/2026
Produced by Sounds True Studios.
Music composed by Dan Baboulene.
Original Airing: 5/12/2026
Produced by Sounds True Studios.
Music composed by Dan Baboulene.
Lorenzo Cohen: We've been able to replicate, again, with multiple therapists and multiple pancreatic cell lines, that biofield therapy decreases the invasiveness of the pancreatic cancer, as well as the ability to migrate over distances. It slows the whole process down.
Ivy Ross: We are in a time of convergence. Throughout history, almost every culture in the world has used what we now generally call energy healing to help ease suffering. But modern medicine pushed these practices — these phenomena — to the margins, and stories of energy healing became just that: stories.
I'm Ivy Ross, and as a business leader and artist, my life has always been about navigating these two very different worlds: the solid ground of hard data and the undeniable power of the invisible. At heart, I'm a child of wonder. I'm curious about the forces that connect us all, and so I invite you to join me as I explore this new frontier in medicine and healing with astonishing stories, compelling science, and an open mind and heart.
This is Phenomena: The Science and Stories of Energy Healing.
For this episode, we're starting big. If you've heard of energy healing — practices like Reiki, external Qigong, and so on — you might think they only work for issues like mental health and stress. But what if I told you that recently, tier-one research institutions have been quietly studying the possibility of energy healing having a real, measurable impact on chronic pain and other illnesses?
Not only that, but they're also investigating possible applications for one of the leading causes of death in the US and the world: cancer. We're going to hear from researchers at the MD Anderson Cancer Center, one of the world's most respected cancer hospitals and research institutions, about their remarkable findings when they invited energy healers into the research lab to work with pancreatic cancer in cells and in mice.
Like I said, we're starting big. But before we go big, we have to go small, with one woman's story that starts with chronic pain in her left shoulder. Meet Mojdeh Stone.
Mojdeh Stone: My name is Mojdeh. Mojdeh means good news in Persian.
Ivy Ross: Mojdeh is a cheerful woman with a kind smile that always reaches up into her eyes. In 2013, Mojdeh received a diagnosis no one wants to hear, but too many of us do. She had breast cancer.
Mojdeh Stone: It was actually found very conventionally. My annual mammogram — I got a call that something is unusual about it, and this was a Friday afternoon.
Then on the phone call, I scheduled a Monday morning mammogram as well, so that I didn't want to wait. Monday morning at 8:00, I go. They do another mammogram, and they see exactly what they saw on Friday, and they say, "Okay, let's do a 3D. Let's do an ultrasound." Everything kept showing the same mass.
Also, right there they did a biopsy. And at one point the doctor leaves the room and I said to the nurse, "This is cancer, but you just want to make sure." She said, "Didn't hear it from me, but yes, we both think what we see has all the marks." Three days later they called me in and said, "Yeah, now it's confirmed."
It's a very foggy thing — to one day feel great, come back from the gym, and another day get that. And you're still perfect. I mean, nothing has changed.
Ivy Ross: Like most who get a diagnosis, Mojdeh began what's commonly described as the runaway train of cancer treatment. It all starts happening fast — the appointments, the scans, the treatments. It's an all-hands-on-deck approach that can feel overwhelming.
Mojdeh Stone: They wanted to do a biopsy-assisted MRI just to make sure they knew exactly where this thing was. That was really the most difficult part, because an MRI is scary enough, let alone something like a knitting needle going into you and coming out.
Anyway, it's just to make sure what they thought they saw, they really saw.
Ivy Ross: And what they saw was a standard four-centimeter tumor. Mojdeh scheduled the surgery to have it removed six weeks later, and in the meantime kept her diagnosis to just a small inner circle — not even telling her mother at the time, because of her family's difficult history with cancer.
Mojdeh Stone: My sister had it, maybe eight years before I did, and her journey was really difficult. And my first reaction was, "Oh my God, my mother cannot go through this again." I didn't tell anybody. Only my son, my sister, my husband knew, because I didn't want anybody's terrible story. I was on a path of healing.
I didn't want anybody to say, "My neighbor had it — she died." I just didn't want anybody to have any stories at all. I wanted my story. I wanted to only be surrounded by people whose job it is to heal me. I put myself in a bubble of healing, and I wanted John on my team because I had been so successful with the shoulder pain I had — pain that never came back.
Ivy Ross: In addition to all of the nurses, doctors, oncologists, lab technicians, and other dedicated healthcare professionals treating Mojdeh for her cancer, she wanted to add just one more person to her healing team: John Lavack, an energy healer. Mojdeh had met John years before at a seminar. At the time, she'd been suffering for years from chronic pain caused by what she calls a frozen shoulder, and during a break, she and John struck up an unusual conversation.
Mojdeh Stone: He said, "You know, you're holding your left shoulder a little lower than your right shoulder. It must hurt a lot." I said, "Oh my God, yes, it does — and how did you know?" I had a frozen shoulder that came back every year like clockwork in January. Physical therapy and cortisone would kind of calm it down, and then it would come back.
So he said, "Well, we could talk on the phone and get into why it hurts." Two, three sessions on the phone, and my shoulder has never had the same problem.
Ivy Ross: John's treatment of Mojdeh for her chronic shoulder pain is truly fascinating, involving energy healing sessions combined with visualization exercises of Mojdeh letting go of past generations' demands of her. You can listen to that part of the story on our website at phenomenahealing.com.
But right now, I want to stay focused on Mojdeh's cancer story. Because John had helped her solve this seemingly unsolvable issue of chronic pain — which never came back, even years after he first worked with her — he was one of the first people she called after her cancer diagnosis.
Mojdeh Stone: He said, "Let's work on this together, but I want you to also learn this because it will empower you to heal yourself as well." Every day, John and I talked for about 20 minutes before my surgery — probably four or five weeks. He directed my attention to a question: why did you grow a tumor on top of your heart?
Your body is telling you something. We need to learn from this. You need to learn from what your body is telling you. It started whispering, and now it's shouting at you. You need to listen.
Ivy Ross: John was telling her, "Your shoulder pain before — that was the whisper. Now the cancer is shouting at you from the same place. It's all on your left side. This means something." I wanted to know more about John, what he does, and how he does it, so we all sat down with him on a call.
John Lavack: My name is John Lavack, and now I'm doing what I call intuitive resonance healing work for a living.
Ivy Ross: John has rectangular glasses, a snow-white goatee, and a shaved head — which he says only happened because of all the research he's been involved with. After so many times shaving it to attach electrodes and monitor his brain functions, he decided to just keep it shaved. He describes his work as intuitive resonance healing, and shared that sometimes, when he doesn't really want to tell people what he does, he says he works as an energy consultant.
But John hasn't always considered himself to be a full-time energy healer.
John Lavack: I had a different career for a long time. I flew helicopters for 35 years. Part of why I flew helicopters for so long is because I flew in remote areas, mainly in Canada, specializing in flying where I was the only one in the cockpit.
I'd fly sling loads and do that kind of thing, so that I didn't have people around me and wasn't picking up their energies. It probably felt more like a little bit of a curse, because especially going through adolescence, you really want to fit in. You want to be normal. And not fitting in with whatever the norm is — that was hard.
Ivy Ross: John has been involved with research projects for years, including four and a half years with MD Anderson Cancer Center, which we'll get back to shortly. But first, let's understand what he actually does.
John Lavack: I don't know if it's 42 or 46 countries now I've worked with people. Well, lately it's been more with diseases — with lots of folks with different kinds of cancers. It seemed to work to varying degrees with all kinds of cancers.
Ivy Ross: John practices different what are called modalities of energy healing. Most predominantly, he prefers to work in distance healing, which means he can work with someone who isn't in the same room with him, or even in the same country. He can create a connection simply by speaking on the phone or just focusing on the person.
With Mojdeh's cancer, John employed what's called the Bengston Cycling Method. And if you're like me, it is nothing like what you might imagine when you think of energy healing. I'll let John explain.
John Lavack: Basically, it's rapidly going through positive futures — cycling through them. That's why it's called cycling. Going rapidly through the futures that I really want. Like, things I really want, in ways that I'll know I have them, and the feeling of that — but rapidly cycling through that. It creates a sensation or resonant field that healing happens in. And that way you're connecting with futures that you really want, and then you're going to let those futures pull you to them as you're getting into the frequency energy for them.
And that's basically all healing. It's as natural as breathing. It's not like I'm having to consciously do it anymore. It is just as natural as you walking — you don't think about walking when you go out for a walk, you just get up and do it. Same with the cycling. You're just doing it almost as naturally as breathing after you practice for a while.
Ivy Ross: I have to admit, when I first heard this, I thought, "How in the world does cycling through positive futures help heal cancer?" But as we'll hear later in the show, something very fascinating may be happening here — where John's consciousness may actually be affecting the body's ability to heal itself. So Mojdeh and John worked together every day for about 20 minutes for weeks leading up to her surgery, not in the hope that he would cure her cancer, but as an act of agency.
And even though Mojdeh wasn't looking for a miracle, something miraculous did in fact happen — or at the very least, something unexplainable.
Mojdeh Stone: When I was talking to John — my daily routine — one night I told him I felt a dagger went into my left side. And John said, "You know, the tumor just let go because you have learned from this experience as much as possible. You've paid it attention and you've learned everything you needed to learn from it, and now it could let go of your body."
I thought, "Well, that's cute. Okay." Maybe it was just indigestion, I don't know. But when I talk to John, I always feel energy going through my left side. It feels like when your hand falls asleep. But that was very different. It was very directed. It really felt like a dagger.
Ivy Ross: Mojdeh didn't realize just how remarkable this moment was, however, until the day of her surgery.
Mojdeh Stone: I remember it was cold, and it was December. There were two surgeons there. They were complaining, "Who chose Christmas music? It's too early." I saw the other surgeons, everybody said hello — it was really nice. Before going home, the surgeon came by and said, "You know, I've never seen this before, but it was not attached to your body at all. But we took it out. I've never seen a tumor that is just sitting somewhere and not attached to any tissue."
And that's exactly what John said: "Okay, you've learned enough. Your body let go." And that was amazing.
Ivy Ross: Mojdeh's surgeon told her that she saw something she couldn't explain and had never seen before. The tumor, which on multiple scans and biopsies had seemed perfectly typical, wasn't attached to any tissue in Mojdeh's body.
As John put it, it seemed like her body had simply let go, and that the stabbing sensation Mojdeh had felt may have been that moment of letting go. How could simply imagining good things have done this? How could intention and consciousness be working at a level we just don't understand? And how could someone like John seemingly affect someone else's body to heal itself?
These are some of the questions I'm left with. And as you'll hear in the second part of our story, John has been participating in groundbreaking scientific studies to answer just those kinds of questions about energy healing and cancer — and that's where Dr. Lorenzo Cohen comes in.
Whenever I talk with someone about energy healing, it doesn't take long for the conversation to break down into the binary of belief or disbelief. You either buy it or you don't. But as a friend and researcher recently told me, belief isn't a binary — it's a spectrum. When we treat belief like a light switch, only seeing it as on or off, it becomes brittle, and positions can harden in defense.
But when we understand that belief is a spectrum, we're more able to incorporate new information. We have a greater capacity for understanding and growth. The researcher and friend I mentioned who opened my eyes to this is Meredith Sprengel. We'll check in with her a bit later to help make sense of some of the research we're about to hear.
But first, I want you to meet Dr. Lorenzo Cohen.
Lorenzo Cohen: My name's Lorenzo Cohen. I'm director of the Integrative Medicine Program at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas.
Ivy Ross: MD Anderson is one of the largest and most respected cancer care centers in the world. And for the past several years, Dr. Cohen and his team have been doing something remarkable — bringing healers like John into the laboratory to observe and measure the effects of energy healing modalities on one of the deadliest and most destructive illnesses in our world today: pancreatic cancer.
Lorenzo Cohen: In the world of cancer, we need to leave no stone unturned. And although, in my open-minded but somewhat conservative integrative medicine perspective, it seems kind of crazy, right — that somebody with their own energy could send it into another human being, defies laws of physics, et cetera. But I felt it was important and incumbent upon us to put it to the test, and that's kind of how it all started.
Ivy Ross: To me, that's a scientist's answer, and I love it. Not dismissing out of hand, but admitting, "You know what? We don't know it doesn't work, and we should know." I've always thought creative people and scientists react to the unknown in a similar way. We're curious, comfortable with the questions. In fact, we kind of love them. So what are the questions?
Lorenzo Cohen: When we first started doing biofield research at MD Anderson, we wanted to show that the phenomena was real, that this effect was measurable, and most importantly that it was replicable — and then starting to understand some of the mechanisms. Where better to put it to the test than in a setting where you could remove placebo fully? And that's either isolated cancer cells in Petri dishes, or animals that don't know who's sitting in front of them.
What's very important in this kind of research is to have appropriate controls. So in all of these studies, both cells and animals, we had what were called sham controls, colony controls, and incubator controls.
The basic setup: you would have the biofield therapist come in, plates were on the counter, they did their treatment for 15 or 30 minutes, then the plates went back into the incubator, and then we measured all the different biological processes depending on the outcome over time.
Ivy Ross: So picture this: a healer sitting in front of Petri dishes filled with pancreatic cancer cells, hands hovering but never touching, doing their healing — in John's case, cycling through positive futures. Then they put the Petri dishes back and look at the results.
Lorenzo Cohen: The other group was cells or animals that were just left in the incubator — never came out. The animals just lived in the colony the whole time, and we tracked the change in cells and in animal cancer growth over time. And then importantly, there was the sham control, where the cells came out and were put on the counter for the same amount of time. Somebody sat in front of the cells who knew nothing about biofield therapy, had no skills in that area, mimicked the hand positions, mimicked everything identically. The distance from the bench was all controlled. So if there's a difference between those groups, then you're able to say the only thing that was different was the biofield therapy.
Ivy Ross: One note: Lorenzo uses the term "biofield therapists" — that is yet another term for energy healers. Biofield simply means a field of energy, not necessarily electromagnetic, that surrounds and permeates the human body. Now, before we get to the results, I think it's necessary to take a step back and ask a different question. A basic question: what is cancer?
Lorenzo Cohen: Cancer by definition is uncontrolled cell growth. One of the hallmarks of cancer is the ability of a tumor cell to leave the primary organ and go to another part of the body and colonize — and we call that metastasis. Cells are not supposed to do that. A normal cell, when it leaves the breast, it will die — it'll undergo apoptosis. Cancer cells release a number of different products to allow that process to happen. So that's critically important, because what kills people is not the primary tumor that can be excised out. It's the metastatic disease. Once it gets out of the primary organ and starts colonizing in another part of the body, that is typically the cause of death for cancer patients.
Ivy Ross: Cancer, at its core, is uncontrolled cell growth, and its lethality comes from spreading. So ideally, these experiments would determine if energy healing could somehow slow this all down — and this is where the results of Lorenzo and his team are truly amazing.
Lorenzo Cohen: We measured a lot of things over a number of years in this research, and I think one of the most profound findings was the ability of the biofield therapy to slow down the metastatic processes. We're going deeper into this research now, but it was clear — from some of the mechanisms that drive metastasis and the concepts of invasion and migration, which are two of the processes that allow a cell to move to other parts of the body — that multiple mechanisms controlling those processes were shut down or decreased by biofield therapy. And that's extremely impressive from a treatment perspective.
Because if you can keep the disease confined to the site, then it's easier to do radiation, it's easier to cut the tumor out. Once those metastatic processes are activated, it's really hard to shut the system down again. And in repeated studies with animals and in different mechanisms, it's clear that biofield therapy in pancreatic cancer cells was shutting down metastatic processes.
Ivy Ross: Let that sink in for a moment. Cancer cells that got biofield healing grew significantly slower than the cancer cells that didn't.
Lorenzo Cohen: Compared to the sham controls and incubator controls, there's more than a doubling of reduction in cell growth with biofield therapy, and we've seen that measurement across multiple cell lines — both pancreatic as well as other cancers.
Now we can go deeper into the cells, now that we understand some of the fundamental process of turning a primary cancer to become more metastatic in nature. We can look at some of the driving proteins and genes, and we've clearly shown that the gene regulatory pathways linked with this whole process of becoming metastatic were all deactivated with the biofield therapy — decreasing the metastatic potential at the genetic level, at the gene level.
And so we've been able to replicate, again, with multiple therapists and multiple pancreatic cell lines, that biofield therapy decreases the invasiveness of the pancreatic cancer as well as the ability to migrate over distances. It slows the whole process down.
One of the interesting phenomena we found in the cell work was a change in the mitochondria. For those who can't visualize a mitochondrion, think of a kidney bean — it's in the shape of a kidney bean. There are hundreds of mitochondria in every cell, and they're really the energy center. Without the mitochondria, the cell dies. They have this lattice structure — think of a ladder — that keeps the mitochondria oblong and healthy.
What we saw in the biofield therapy samples is that the mitochondria would start to swell, and these lattice works — called the cristae, which help maintain the integrity of the mitochondria — were all in disarray. And you see this image of, instead of a kidney bean, something like a swollen balloon. This was quantified and replicated across many studies. So we're deep into that research now, trying to understand internal versus external processes.
Ivy Ross: Mitochondria are a whole other subject that we're going to go into more deeply in another episode. But as Lorenzo said, in a sense they're the power source for cells and for life, and to see changes in the mitochondria is truly interesting.
For Lorenzo and his team, and all the other researchers doing work in this field — and there are many of them now — they know this is just a first step, and even this first step is a hard one. Even Lorenzo, the man whose team is doing the research and who very much believes in the data his studies are producing, balances these new findings with healthy skepticism and an awareness of the reality of trying to shift paradigms.
Lorenzo Cohen: I still remain skeptical, even though I see it with my own eyes, because I don't understand what they're doing. Until we have the mechanism, the field is going to be questioned — as in fact have all real scientific revolutions, even pre-Galileo. Galileo was dismissed until it was understood.
Dr. Semmelweis discovered that if people delivering babies washed their hands before delivering the baby, it decreased the probability that the child would die and that the mother would die. But he was summarily dismissed — drummed out of town, so to speak. And that was because we didn't know about germs. Once they discovered germs, it's like, "Well, of course you should wash your hands before you deliver a baby" — in particular if you've just come from the morgue, which is oftentimes where the male physicians had come from, doing autopsies, and then they delivered the baby.
But the midwives kind of intuitively knew in the ward that we should wash our hands before we deliver these babies. So the mechanism is key, and we're not quite there yet. I am doing the research and believe exactly the data I'm seeing, because that's the hallmark of a good scientist.
Ivy Ross: We're not quite there yet, but it certainly seems like we're moving in a very interesting direction. We've heard the science. Dr. Cohen's research at MD Anderson shows that biofield therapy can actually slow cancer growth and slow its ability to spread. These are measurable, repeated results in the lab.
Now that we know something real is happening at the cellular level, I want to go back to Mojdeh's story — because here's what I keep wondering: what does it actually feel like? Not the theory, not the Petri dish, but the lived experience of choosing to work with an energy healer while facing cancer. Let's return to those weeks between Mojdeh's diagnosis and her surgery. What was actually happening in those daily sessions with John?
Mojdeh Stone: I told John that I would just talk with him every day for a half hour, just so that we're working on this. The doctors do their thing. I'd like to also be a part of my healing. Once again, as soon as John and I get on the phone, I feel energy going through my left arm. I can't explain it, but it's a tingling and it feels great.
John Lavack: It's more comfortable for me to work with somebody remotely than in person. In person, in a way I'm holding you as too real. Whereas when I'm not seeing you, I'm seeing how you look energetically — and then I've brought you into what I call the energy space, and I'm cycling, and I'm also doing other things like asking, "Okay, where's the energy shifting? What's coming up, and how can I help facilitate the change happening?"
Mojdeh Stone: He said, "It's on your left side. Your feminine energy wants to come out. You're blocking love from entering your life." I mean, he had just brought it to a whole dimension that I didn't understand.
Ivy Ross: This is what they did every day, for 20 to 30 minutes, for weeks. But here's one thing: Mojdeh wasn't looking for a cure — not exactly.
Mojdeh Stone: I knew this thing would not disappear the more I talked to John. I knew that. That was not the goal. The goal was to make the whole process what I call elegant. I was not looking for a miracle. I was really looking to get empowered personally — to feel that I'm part of the solution. I'm not a victim.
I knew that just having that kind of assurance that I have more than one toolbox. In fact, my son was very worried: "Mom, you still have to go to the doctor." I said, "I am."
Ivy Ross: Mojdeh was always going to have surgery. She was always going to follow her oncologist's recommendations. John wasn't replacing her medical team. He was joining it.
Mojdeh Stone: He said, "I'm not telling you you don't need surgery. I'm not telling you you don't need follow-up. But you need to learn from what your body is telling you." In my opinion, if we're open to Western medicine and also understand that there are methods of healing — ancient and modern as well — that could together have the synergy of all these things, it doesn't mean that we don't believe in modern medicine.
It just actually gave me more power to look at this not as a victim, but as a participant in creating healing, as a participant to then be cancer-free. It empowered me instead of, "Oh, I have magic now. I don't need a doctor. John's going to fix it." I think the synergy of all of these things together is the magic — it's not only one thing. It's the sunshine and the clean air and the good food. It's kind of like your health: it's not only one thing. And I think this is something that could very much be a formula for a lot of healing.
Ivy Ross: The question I'm left with after all of this is simply: did energy healing do this? Was the tumor detached because of Mojdeh's energy healing sessions with John — working to learn what her body was telling her?
But maybe the question is: why do we need it to be just one thing? Mojdeh didn't feel like she had to choose between two worlds — conventional treatment or energy healing. She chose both. She showed up as someone who respected Western medicine and also recognized that there was more available to her than just surgery and chemotherapy.
There's so much to unpack here, and to help me unpack it, I invited Meredith Sprengel to have a discussion. She's the researcher I mentioned earlier. Meredith, thanks for joining me.
Meredith Sprengel: Thanks, Ivy. Happy to be here.
Ivy Ross: First, I think you should tell us a bit about yourself. Who are you?
Meredith Sprengel: Yeah. It's quite an existential question.
Ivy Ross: That's why I love you, Meredith.
Meredith Sprengel: I think the hat that I wear the most is I think of myself as a researcher. I have a background of about 15-plus years in integrative and complementary medicine research, and I'm doing my PhD right now in cognitive science. I help to direct the research for the Subtle Energy Funders Collective. The Subtle Energy Funders Collective is heading a movement to better understand energy healing and other consciousness-based healing practices. But I'm here today because I'm just fascinated by this research and everything that's been done in the past 30 years to try to better understand energy healing.
Ivy Ross: Well, so glad to have you. So let's start with Mojdeh and John. What do you think? I was so amazed to hear the connection between her letting go and the tumor appearing to let go. Have you ever heard anything like that before?
Meredith Sprengel: It's really interesting to think about, because cancer is so complicated — we don't know specifically if the tumor was embedded or if it wasn't. But I think for her journey and her story, it's really fascinating that when the doctor came in to remove it, she said, "I can pick it up. I could literally pick it up." There are many different stories of cancer journeys, but I think hers in particular really represented not only her medical journey, but a personal one.
Ivy Ross: Yeah, that was what was so beautiful about the story. And what could the possible explanations be?
Meredith Sprengel: There are so many medical explanations. Maybe it wasn't attached, right? Because sometimes on medical scans you can't tell if they're attached. Or sometimes when they do the ultrasound puncture of the tumor — when they actually invasively look at it — that can also kickstart a healing response.
So who knows? Was it the energy healer? Was it her ability to relax while working with the energy healer, and then maybe being able to put her body in a state where she could start to heal herself? There are a lot of medical explanations for what happened to her. But I think what's beautiful about this story is that something was working. Something was working for Mojdeh, and she was able to treat her cancer well, and she got better.
Ivy Ross: And that's the most important point — I really think energy healing is about triggering self-healing, and it's not about people looking to prove a point. We're just looking to deal with getting rid of pain or how to keep cancer at bay. And so I think we just have to take these stories at face value. So now let's turn to the people who are looking for those answers — the MD Anderson results. Why don't you give me your takeaway from what Lorenzo shared with us?
Meredith Sprengel: I think it's fascinating. Regardless of what's happening, I think it's incredible that they found so many different effects at so many different layers — with the cells and the animals. You had changes in genetic factors. You had it affecting the microenvironment of the tumor. You also have these bioelectric changes on the cell gradient that then can change how the cancer reintegrates back into the body. And then they found this really fascinating result with the mitochondria. So they were able to show that something was happening.
One of the most fascinating things about what Lorenzo and his team found is that it kind of shifts our perspective of how science thinks of us. Right now, we're very much thought of as biochemical beings. But some of the most interesting findings he discovered were about how much we are bioelectrical beings — specifically, that the healer was changing the voltage potentials of the cell, and thereby stopping metastasis.
And right now, we do not have any universal treatment to stop metastasis. The treatments we do have don't always work for all cancers, are very cancer-specific, or cause a lot of symptoms. So this is an incredible finding if it pans out over time.
Ivy Ross: I'm super excited because we're going to get deeply into that subject in a future episode.
Meredith Sprengel: What is happening and how this scales — who knows, right? So from cells to animals to humans, that's a big leap. But what they've found so far is really intriguing and does give a basis for why you might want to explore further exactly what's happening.
Ivy Ross: And that lack of mechanism — I mean, it doesn't really undercut the results, right? We have other things like anesthesia and antidepressants where we don't know the mechanism, but we know it works.
Meredith Sprengel: Totally. And this is the fascinating thing about the whole field of integrative medicine — a lot of this stuff works. Acupuncture, for example: they have theories of mechanism, but no defined mechanism. Yet the scrutiny is higher because things like biofield therapy don't meet the paradigm of what is considered conventional medicine.
But yes, there are plenty of drugs and therapies that do not actually have a known mechanism that get integrated into allopathic or traditional medical care.
Ivy Ross: I know science moves slowly for a reason, but what do you think is needed as the next step here?
Meredith Sprengel: There's going to have to be a lot to prove that there is some sort of mechanism we don't yet understand about how we heal, and that's going to take time and a lot of research. For what Lorenzo's doing, they're going to have to replicate it both within their lab and in other labs — because one of the criticisms could be that there is inherent bias. You need to go to other labs and keep replicating the results. Then you will have to move to humans, and you'll have to start to demonstrate — using different growth factors, genetic markers, or scans — that the biofield healing is literally affecting the tumor, that there's some way it's having direct impacts on cancer growth.
So those are some steps. I think the field as a whole is going to need a wave of evidence — not just one study or two studies. You're going to need a lot of labs, a lot of researchers, and a lot of people coming together to try to really start to understand: is there something we're missing about how we heal?
And I don't think we have a great grasp on what healing is. We have a great grasp on what curing is, but in the medical system, healing kind of gets forgotten.
Ivy Ross: One of the great things for me about hearing this story is I learned so much about cancer — including, really, the importance of slowing cancer metastasis. Tell us more about that. Do you agree that it's an important aspect of what was seen?
Meredith Sprengel: Yeah, completely. I think the slowing down of metastasis is really key for cancer care. Cancer is a waiting game — time is one of the best things you can buy, right? Because a lot of times it takes time for treatment to work. There are all these new treatments, and if you can slow down metastasis, it gives you more time for the doctors to do their jobs and also find out if there are better treatments for your particular cancer.
Ivy Ross: So what I'm hearing, Meredith, is we're really talking about a holistic approach. Slowing down these cells is part of a remedy for someone with cancer. It's not going to take the cancer away, as far as we know right now. But buying more time to try and find a cure, slowing the process down — that's certainly important.
Meredith Sprengel: I think you hit the nail on the head. It's part of an integrative approach — a holistic approach to cancer care. From what Lorenzo has demonstrated in multiple studies, it slows down metastasis, and that in particular can then enable a whole group of different therapies to come in and help.
Ivy Ross: I'm so glad that we started our first podcast with the story about Mojdeh, because she really represents this idea of an integrative approach to it all. She didn't walk away from conventional treatment. She just added energy healing to her program. It's not either/or, it's both/and.
Meredith Sprengel: Yes — I one hundred percent agree with you. It's integrative. It's a whole approach, as we mentioned before: the use of conventional care along with biofield healing could help foster a healing response. A lot of times during cancer care, people's nervous systems become hijacked because they're so stressed about the care, about the next treatment, about mortality. And so maybe biofield healers can help put them in a place to heal themselves — not only biologically, but psychologically.
I love this phrase: a symphony of influences. Healing is a whole group of different facets that can help facilitate the whole healing.
Ivy Ross: And I think we've, in some ways, given our power over — and it's time that we understand that there is a part we play, and should be playing, in our own healing, as well as working with Western medicine. And that's what I thought she illustrated beautifully.
Meredith Sprengel: I think agency is key. When we are our own advocates, and we're responsible for our health and our healing — when you take yourself away from being a victim — then you feel like you have the capacity to do what you need to do to get better.
Ivy Ross: And I'm hearing more and more about these integrative protocols happening in hospitals — patients asking for Reiki for pain, or acupuncture within a hospital setting, which I think is the future.
Meredith Sprengel: And it's interesting — because even though we don't have the evidence yet, Ivy, there are plenty of hospitals that have integrated it, and those patients are feeling better. And there was a great study done by Dr. Natalie Dyer recently where they looked at cancer patient symptoms, and cancer patients who saw a healer after chemotherapy had reductions in pain, nausea, and anxiety. I think it's incredible, and I think it's wonderful that all these modalities are getting integrated as more people express their needs within the hospital system.
Ivy Ross: And we'll talk to Natalie Dyer in a future episode — she's also a healer. So Meredith, with all of your experience, if I'm someone facing a terrible illness, or chronic pain, or something else that's overwhelming — what would you recommend? What should I do?
Meredith Sprengel: Always have a physician. Always have a doctor that you're working with — someone who can oversee different aspects of your disease or your mental health condition, or a therapist if that's appropriate. I would always say that there are all these different practices you can try. There are many different modalities within integrative health that can help make you feel better and can help with your pain. And I think energy healing is one of the ones that can put you in a place to also seek more treatment.
Even just one healing encounter with someone — they hold you in love, kindness, and compassion, right? And you're in a state of panic, or you haven't felt like you've been able to calm down for decades. And then someone says, "Let me care for you. Let me heal you." One of the things I've also heard anecdotally is that a lot of these biofield healing or energy healing modalities give people a taste of what practices they can do for themselves — like meditation, yoga, Qigong, tai chi, or acupuncture.
Ivy Ross: Yeah, and the important thing — and it's one of the reasons why we're doing this podcast — is that people explore these modalities before they get sick. It's so good for your mind and body to have these experiences. It's just deepened my understanding of the world and the way the universe works, and so it's been a gift.
And now, in the last 10 years, to see the research starting to be done that starts to poke at some of what might be happening — that is music to my ears.
Meredith Sprengel: I think that's beautiful. These aren't just practices you do when you get sick. These are lifelong practices that add to your quality of life and also help you connect better in everyday experiences — especially when we have a society that wants to disconnect us so much from just the act of living.
Ivy Ross: And it shifts us away from the mechanical view of the body as a machine, which is so important. I think some of this understanding of self-healing — energy medicine, biofield therapies, whatever you call it — is our birthright, and something we have to come back to and get more familiar with.
Meredith Sprengel: Maybe there's something we always intuitively knew about how to heal and what the mechanisms were, but we didn't necessarily have science to help test that out.
Ivy Ross: As we come to the end of this first episode, this already feels like a lot of information. But what I find refreshing is — especially in today's world of everyone thinking they have the answer to everything — the people we heard from today humbly accept that they might not have all those answers, including yourself, Meredith, which I love.
And even though you've been doing this for 15 years, I love the fact that Mojdeh says it's the synergy of everything together, and John says he doesn't heal anyone — he helps them heal themselves. And Dr. Cohen says he believes his own data, even though he doesn't fully understand the mechanism yet.
So the question isn't whether this is real, because we have some compelling evidence that says something is happening. The question is: what do we do with that knowledge? How do we make it accessible? How do we integrate it into a healthcare system that desperately needs new approaches? And maybe that's the biggest question.
If there really is energy between us, if consciousness can influence healing, if we're all connected through some kind of field — what else does that mean about who we are and what we're capable of? For me, that thought is so exciting and something I want to explore deeper.
Join me next time on Phenomena, when we'll explore Reiki, one of the most well-known forms of energy healing. We'll meet someone whose chronic pain was transformed through Reiki, and we'll talk with researchers who were recently involved in the most rigorous clinical trial ever done on healing energy for chronic pain — by researchers at the University of Utah and Harvard, no less.
Can energy healing actually work better than pain meds? The results are pretty remarkable. You can learn more at our website, phenomenahealing.com, where you'll find resources, the story of Mojdeh's shoulder healing, more from Lorenzo Cohen, links to the research we discussed, and information about the documentary series also called Phenomena.
If this episode moved you or challenged you, share it with someone. These conversations matter. We're at the beginning of something — a new understanding of what healing can be. And the more people who engage with these questions, the faster we'll find the answers.
I'm Ivy Ross. This has been Phenomena: The Science and Stories of Energy Healing. Thank you for listening.
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