There’s Something Between Us | The Science of the Healer-Patient Connection at Harvard

I think there is something that's being transferred and something that's happening.

What that is, we don't know about.

What that is, you know, still I think has to be researched.

This connection, this, like, social connection between healer and healee, between, you know, patient and clinician, that is an important neurophysiological element as well in part of what we might call the placebo effect, what we might call energy healing.

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.

Something happens in the space between a healer and the person they're healing, something that isn't just technique or trust or belief.

What is that something? I've been thinking about this ever since we started this podcast because every healer we've talked to describes it in a similar way, not as something they do to someone, but as something that moves through them, between them, a connection that's at the center of the healing.

There's a word that sometimes gets thrown at that connection: placebo.

And it's worth saying plainly, yes, belief is powerful.

Relationships are powerful.

Feeling truly seen by another person is powerful.

We know that.

We have research that shows it.

But I think placebo is too small a word for what we're about to hear, and there's a researcher at Harvard who built a way to scan two brains at the same healing moment and found something that neither brain knew was happening.