This post has started, stopped, started, stopped. The Telepathy Tapes podcast, which I’ve already written about here and here, has gotten so full, that after its official second season began, I decided I wasn’t able to actually articulate anything about it. I figured the next best thing would be to share its social media posts across my social media.
And so I shared about it across the inter webs, time and time again.
However, Episode 50 of Season 2 Talk Tracks got me wanting to try and write about the whole shebang again. What are The Talk Tracks? They are extension episodes from each season of The Telepathy Tapes. These releases further explore the topics that come up during the original podcast.
In Episode 50, energy healing was mentioned again.
Let me preface this with a quick run-down of my own experience with Reiki, an energy healing technique from Japan. I got my first session around 2008/2009, and by 2012, I had received enough training to teach it to others (which I still do). I offered a free clinic, took clients, and offered it (along with foot reflexology) at the Piedmont Fayette Cancer Wellness Center south of Atlanta in 2011 and 2012.
This was FIFTEEN YEARS AGO! Egads!
In summary, the episode is about research that was done with MD Anderson Cancer Center about energy healing and the difficult process with being published in the scientific community when it comes to things like this. This episode combining with my recent deep dive into open science via NASA, and my son’s science class learning about mitochondria, well, the world makes sense again.
(Name that movie and you win brownie points with me! Another aside: does anyone remember A Wind in the Door? I am desperately trying to get my son to understand the universe as I do by reading A Wrinkle in Time Quintet.)
Anyway, Episode 50 immediately starts off telling the listener to go back to episodes 8 and 9 of the second season of The Telepathy Tapes.
And so I did.
A thing I found interesting about Episode 8 was the fact that a science-loving massage therapist was interviewed. She shared her story about being a nonbeliever to becoming a Reiki Master. This in particular was of interest to me, as I was a Reiki practitioner first before becoming a licensed massage therapist. I traveled in reverse, looking for a more tangible, recognized practice to support the Reiki I already did, allowing me to live anywhere as a LMT who practiced energy work–even as I considered myself the opposite.
The episode then moved into discussion about sending distance Reiki. The practitioner says how she believes her distance Reiki is almost more potent than in-person Reiki. I must say, this echoes things my fellow practitioners and I have spoken about. Maybe not so much that it is necessarily more potent, but more so that it’s almost easier to come by, easier to “feel” and “process” the Reiki if you aren’t in the same room with the client.
It’s not such a crazy leap to understand. Think about it–if you remove the distraction of actual tangible human bodies, you would then have to resort to other senses.
Episode 9 contemplates how distance healing works. If we consider energy healing as a type of electromagnetic wave, then theories suggest over time and space the waves should become weaker thereby energy healing shouldn’t work from afar. Yet, it does, meaning it does not appear that this wave lessens over time and space. This brings us into the suggestion of a yet-to-be-discovered shared consciousness, or a shared information field.
FASCINATING, but I’m not going to go down that rabbit hole here. Episode 8 also talks about the scientific definition/discovery of the interstitial system of the human body (something older systems of healing have been talking about for eons), but rather than trying to dissect that, either, I’ll quickly leave my own personal analogy on the topic: the interstitial system is perhaps like dark matter.
What came first? The chicken or the egg?
Episode 9 also shares a study about Reiki by the University of Utah and Harvard in regard to pain relief. There was fake Reiki, actual Reiki, mindfulness, and a randomized wait list. Whereas every procedure had an effect on the patient, Reiki was much more nuanced in the recorded brain scans as well as the self-reporting of the patients. Remember, they didn’t know what they had received when they were self-reporting. Read about it here.
Which leads us to the dreaded placebo.
I hand out an energy healing flier to new clients describing my feelings about placebo vs energy work. To wit, I suggest I don’t care, because if placebo is scientifically known to work anyway, who am I to judge? I may not know exactly how energy work works, but it works.
But this is why the MD Anderson study is sooooo important.
If a placebo is something that works–without any known reason why–then why call it a sham? So what if it’s working because the subject is creating this self-fulfilling prophecy, therefore creating the change the placebo was faking to make?
Which means, if you remove the thinking human, this thinking human who is self-prophesying this placebo….
The MD Anderson study takes out ego-consciousness altogether by directing energy healing to CANCER CELLS and MICE. Both respond. But if you can’t describe the mechanism of the healing is taking place, how do you get our materialistic scientific method to support it?
Well, that’s part of the problem, and if you listen to Episode 50, you’ll understand the conundrum even more. BUT! None of these issues with any of these studies negate the measurable changes that occur–either in a science lab, or directly from a human’s experience.
It’s a shame that spooky action at a distance is still so darn woo-woo, but alas, perhaps we will soon collectively start asking the right questions about how energy healing works so we can figure out what it is to better measure why it works and what it can actually do!
From listening to Episode 50 and the first episode of the Phenomena podcast (which is where all this data is coming from in The Telepathy Tapes), I can now better understand how things like acupuncture, chiropractic, etc, are more mainstream now, even as they have yet to rid themselves of the “yet-to-be-explained”. Maybe one day Reiki can become that, too.
Rather than continuing this deep-dive into uncertainty, discovery and excitement, I’m going to go ahead and close. With a quote. From the recently released Practical Magic 2. Sandra Bullock’s love interest says, “I like this… your molecules next to my molecules. It’s chemistry… and magic.”
See, this is what I keep saying! Science IS Magic!
If you’ve never listened to The Telepathy Tapes, by all means, go back and listen to ALL of it. It is so captivating. But if it’s too daunting of a task because there’re so many episodes out now, I encourage you to simply tackle Episode 8, 9 and then 50. You will not be disappointed.
This WooWootastic post is brought to you by Allison of Nani Lotus Bodywork & powered by Meditating Squirrel. AI was not used in crafting this article, thus, all errors belong to Allison. Also–she is in no way affiliated with The Telepathy Tapes. She just can’t stop talking about it or listening to it.
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