There’s Something Between Us | The Science of the Healer-Patient Connection at Harvard
About this episode
The episode explores the healer-patient connection through personal experiences and scientific research.
What actually happens between a healer and the person they're healing? It starts at a dinner table — energy healer Laurie Nealon and her old friend Alan Brown, visiting from Brisbane. A 20-minute kitchen table session leaves him changed: heat through his head, a jolt through his chest, and a connection he says he'd never truly felt before. That moment leads us to two researchers taking the question seriously. Tor Wager (Dartmouth) argues that trust and connection aren't noise in healing — they're the data. Vitaly Napadow (Harvard) proved it by scanning clinician and patient brains simultaneously during treatment: the more their brains synced up, the more pain relief the patient felt. Science has found the instrument. It hasn't found everything that plays through it.
More episodes of Phenomena Podcast: The Science & Stories of Energy Healing
- Not a Machine but a Flame | The Biology of Energy at Columbia and Beyond
- No One Left Behind | PTSD, Healing Touch, and the Military’s Research Into Finding Relief
- Healing as a Way of Life | Qigong, Meridians, and the Science of Qi at Harvard
- Reiki versus Fakey | A Clinical Trial on Chronic Pain with Harvard and the University of Utah
- The Healer in the Lab: Studying Energy Healing and Cancer at MD Anderson
- Phenomena: The Science & Stories of Energy Healing
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