Last week I participated in a conference the likes of which I’d never before seen. The content was familiar enough to me as an energy medicine practitioner – energy healing, nonlocal consciousness, psychic perception – as was my participation as a token MD who has crossed that line and can give it some respectability. But the location was totally unexpected – it was held at the conference center of the MassGeneralBrigham Hospital network, the most prestigious institutions within the Harvard Medical School hospital network. And the opening welcoming was given by MGB’s Psychiatrist-in-Chief, Dr. Mauricio Fava. No New Age woo-woo there!
What unfolded was two days of discussion by mainstream clinicians and scientists of the many aspects of healing, from mitochondria and the gut microbiome to Reiki and sound healing and channeling messages from the beyond. Under the direction of the Center for Comprehensive Healing, this first annual Comprehensive Healing Conference featured a keynote by the first Director of the NIH’s Office of Alternative Medicine (as it was then called), Dr. Wayne Jonas. And I hope his talk gets broadcast on PBS, because it was such an excellent overview of the ways that conventional medicine’s focus on fighting symptoms misses the boat on how to enhance the body’s natural healing abilities.
The roster of speakers was impressive, but the one who really stood out for me was Laurie Nealon. A former 2nd grade teacher, she became an energy healer who soon found that she could receive messages from departed souls during her healing sessions. In addition to her experiential breakout sessions, she also joined in the final panel discussion, along with a neurologist, Dr. MaryBeth Toran, whose grief after the sudden death of her teenage daughter responded to Laurie’s work. Dr. Toran also shared how Laurie brought through messages from her daughter with information (an unusual turn of phrase, in one case) that only the daughter would have known, and which helped her to release the sadness and grief that had been weighing her down.
I was on the panel (in the photo L-R: me, Laurie Nealon, Dr. Toran, and the conference organizer, Jill Shah), and shared an overview of the solid research now supporting these claims, from groups like the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS), the Society for a Post-Materialist Science, and the Society for Scientific Exploration.
The conference ended on this high note (in the photo, I seem to be demonstrating just how high that note was), with the 150+ attendees feeling inspired by the experiences and information, all of which occurred under Harvard’s seal of approval. It’s not that the Harvard logo proves something is legit, but it opens the door for many more people to take a look at subjects that were once deemed too far out to waste attention on. Ironically, and in this same vein, the New York Times had just printed an essay by one of its regular columnists about her positive experiences with a psychic medium. It was called “Go ahead and laugh at mediums. They may be on to something.”
More proof, if we needed it, that they times, they are a-changin’.
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