Healing with Biofield Sciences The Future of Health with Dr. Shamini Jain

Interview by Sasha Frate, Introduction by Ainsley Schoppel

As a clinical psychologist, scientist, and founder and CEO of the Consciousness and Healing Initiative (CHI)—a non-profit collaborative accelerator that connects scientists, health practitioners, innovators, and social entrepreneurs to advance the science and practice of healing—Dr. Shamini Jain is on the forefront of a necessary revolution in science, medicine, and healing. Trained in neuroscience at Columbia University and in clinical psychology and psychoneuroimmunology at University of California, San Diego, Dr. Jain now serves as adjunct faculty in Psychiatry at UC, San Diego, where she is an active member of the Center for Integrative Medicine’s Research Committee.

In this discussion, Face the Current and Dr. Jain explores biofield connections, how to foster healing effects, the importance of reconditioning, our imaginal capacity, and the role of sound in healing.

Our biofield is a field of vital life-energy that helps connect us with our environment, and Indigenous medical systems around the world have all embraced using biofields for health and healing. By fostering a connection with the biofield through yoga, breathing, sound, and meditation, we can foster a connection with mind, body, and spirit. What do you recommend people do to use their biofields to heal themselves and others?

There are so many ways to connect with our biofields. The data shows us that whether we engage in timehonored biofield based self-healing practices like Tai chi, qigong, yoga, or various forms of meditation, they all have similar effects on our autonomic nervous systems. As I discuss in my book, Healing Ourselves: Biofield Science and the Future of Health, by regulating our breathing, as well as our attention, we can foster healing effects by enhancing our parasympathetic nervous system activity, and regulating our immune system. Beyond our physiology though, indigenous systems understood that these practices work by connecting us to a larger spiritual whole through feeling and sensing “energy”—or the biofield. Connecting with the biofield means deepening our subtle awareness.

To powerfully connect with our biofields, we simply need to bring ourselves to the here and now, and draw our attention to the sensations inside and outside of our body. The beautiful thing about this is that we can actually do it at any time. We can do it formally, using mind-bodyspirit practices, or we can deepen our biofield connection when we’re outside in nature.

We can also develop our biofield connection as we engage in a creative activity, including art. I am a huge fan of singing and vocal empowerment, which I teach in my workshops. I’ve found that inner soundmaking is a very powerful way to connect and cohere our biofields, both individually and collectively. The ancients knew this well—they described sound as consciousness itself. When we engage in inner soundmaking, whether it’s singing, toning, or mantra practice, we are not only engaging the breath and the vagus nerve for physiological healing, we are also expanding our awareness to feel and express emotions while opening our consciousness to connect more deeply in the spiritual realm. And, the best part is all of us can do this because we all have a beautiful voice to explore our inner dimensionality!

I think the future of biofield science and healing is rooted in a collective realization that our biofields provide a powerful gateway into healing—one that we can access ourselves. While we can sometimes greatly benefit from seeing another person to help connect and cohere our biofields to augment healing, this is truly something we can do for ourselves as well. As we each deepen our own subtle awareness, we really access the Healer within. There are wonderful healing schools in so many forms of biofield healing, including Pranic Healing, Healing Touch, Reiki, Laying on of Hands, Energy Psychology and more, that can deepen our practice and allow us to skillfully work with the biofield to heal others. But the first step is developing our own awareness so that we can also skillfully heal ourselves. When our fields are full, we can better serve others. I discuss a comprehensive path that deepens our everyday connection with our biofields for selfhealing in the third part of my book, which is called the Healing Keys. You are clearly passionate about the role of sound and the voice for healing, and we understand you are also a singer who has performed several styles ranging from classical western to heavy metal. Besides having your own debut album coming out this year, you also integrate artists within your nonprofit, the Consciousness and Healing Initiative (CHI). What role does creativity and art play in healing?

The role of creative expression is grossly overlooked in healing. Despite data showing us that everyday creativity can uplevel our mood, and that creative expression—whether it is music, dance, visual arts, writing, etc.—can improve mental and physical health down to changing markers of cell aging and improving cardiovascular function. The arts are often viewed as simply entertainment, and even worse, many people do not recognize the artist within or consider themselves creative. Yet, simply by being alive, we are each creative. The creative force is within each of us, waiting to be expressed, and is closely tied to healing.

What I have learned from following my own creative journey is that it leads me to fulfilling experiences that I never knew were possible. It allows for deeper healing possibilities for myself and also others, because it allows what is often unexpressed to become alive and expressed. Allowing creativity to be expressed through us takes vulnerability, which is healing in and of itself. My debut album, Kaliyuga Blues, has been a humbling journey, and it’s been fun to engage in the songwriting process. It’s something I never knew was possible for me to do, but I just gave in to it instead of telling myself I couldn’t do it. It’s been fun to witness how these seven songs have taken shape: each reflects the experience of a chakra, which was not planned, but it just emerged that way! The album also reflects different styles that are close to my heart, including rock, electronica, Indian mantra, and folk. We should be releasing the album sometime this fall on streaming platforms, and I’ll certainly share on my social media at @drshaminijain when it’s out.

Beyond my personal experience with art, our nonprofit, the Consciousness and Healing Initiative, brings together the wisdom of artists along with scientists and healing practitioners. Each of these brings a needed perspective and experience to healing, and when we are able to bring these perspectives and experiences together through art, real magic can happen.

Currently, our nonprofit CHI is partnering with an incredible film director and producer, Christina Bresson, on a documentary called The Energy that Heals. The film will not only enlighten the public on the actual research behind the biofield and healing, it will also inspire with real-world experiences and wisdom from patient, practitioner, and spiritual indigenous wisdom holders on the realities of healing. Film is able to touch the hearts and minds of the public in a way that scientific reports simply cannot do. The reality of healing must be known and accessible to all. In order for us to realize our own capacity to heal, it’s important that we are all “on the same page” with the scientific, practical, and spiritual underpinnings of healing. We’re thrilled to be working on this film, which will showcase the incredible community of healing practitioners, scientists, and patients who are showing us the possibilities and meaning of healing in everyday lives.

It’s great that you are engaging the arts in the healing as well as the scientific communication process - and engaging spiritual perspectives as well. You often speak about healing from the spiritual perspective and have mentioned that when we “move beyond the conditioned egoic mind to a deeper sense of connection” we can access a source of healing. Through this connection, we can then channel compassion and enable others to augment their own healing. It sounds advanced, and yet quite simple. Because the egoic mind is so well conditioned and reinforced in modern society, how do you suggest people decondition or recondition and access this deeper sense of connection as a more frequent state?

My favorite way to come out of myself is to Simply Be In Nature. When I’m in nature, I am surrounded by so many biofields that naturally bring me out of my conditioned, overactive mind. I can take a moment to listen to and feel the wind, the trees, the birds, the creek. I can listen to what Nature has to say to me. I can energetically ground myself and connect with the larger whole of the Earth that nurtures and supports us. Coming back into a relationship with the Earth is probably the most powerful way of re-conditioning ourselves.

Another favorite way to “recondition” has to do with balancing the thinking mind with the present moment, as well as what I like to call the imaginal capacity. We currently live in a world where we are bombarded with “information”, and as a result, our brains and minds are overstimulated and constantly active. Because of this lack of peace between moments, our energy is often depleted and we feel lifeless—we are constantly on “output” in a way that separates our minds from our bodies and environment. This is why mindfulness practices that also rely on a sense of bodily awareness are so powerful. Literally bringing our attention to the here and now through our bodily awareness, without judgment, is a way to liberate ourselves from the machinations of the conditioned mind—because now we can more fully observe it without identifying with it. There is also much energy to be gained when we allow ourselves to dive into the imaginal realm and allow ourselves to receive information, or be in “input.” This is even beyond imagination or “fantasy” in the way that we currently think about it. The imaginal realms are actually as real as the conditioned mind realms. They are parts of ourselves that are sometimes lodged in the subconscious that may influence our thinking or behavior without us realizing it, often binding our energy in subconscious patterns that lie in our fields.

To go into the imaginal realms means we can choose to liberate ourselves from the energy bound in the subconscious, and even access what Jung called the collective unconscious. Engaging in creativity is a powerful way to connect with the imaginal. When we engage in creative acts we liberate our energy and we can allow for parts of ourselves, such as the inner child, to fully express themselves. This can be incredibly healing. We also get new information that we may not have gotten before. This is also where we can more fully access intuition, guidance, and the embodiment of aspects of divinity, bringing those more deeply into our everyday lives. Consider that forms of tantric meditation, including mantra meditation, are ways to connect with deities in realms beyond the conditioned mind, to bring those vibrations more fully into our being and enhance our spiritual and service experience. Balancing the imaginal with the thinking mind can be a powerful way to re-calibrate our Being.

There are many ways to connect with the imaginal realm, including engaging in everyday creativity, engaging in guided imagery practices, and even journaling after dreaming. All of the information from the imaginal realms, when made conscious, can greatly liberate our energy, deepen our healing, and help us feel more connected.

You describe our “inner reserves of wellness” as our “independent WELLth”. What are the ways in which people can “store up” on their reserves?

What’s exciting is that the data is clear that we experience WELLth in many dimensions, and they all connect with each other to further our WELLth in other dimensions. So, when we take stock of where we are mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, and interpersonally, we can learn what areas we might want to shore up on more. Once we augment our WELLth in one dimension, we may notice improvements in WELLth in other dimensions as well.

For example, if my physical WELLth is strong because I eat well and move my body, it will also positively impact my mental and emotional WELLth. This means there are multiple ways—directly or indirectly—that we can improve our WELLth in any dimension. I actually have a free quiz where people can get a sense of where they are on their confidence with accessing WELLth across dimensions, with some helpful advice on how to augment WELLth in each dimension. That quiz can be accessed here: www.shaminijain.com/wellth-quiz we have explored this mostly on the behavioral level, where we recognize that when we don’t feel connected, our health suffers. The data is clear that loneliness is more powerful than smoking in terms of shortening our life.

But when we look deeply at neurobiology from a spiritual perspective, we realize that because we truly aren’t separate, we experience what others experience, down to our neural firing. In my TEDx Berkeley talk, I describe neurobiology where we not only feel another person’s physical pain, but social pain as well.

You mention fostering spiritual wellness in addition to physical, emotional, and interpersonal dimensions. What is meant by this concept of wellness in the spiritual dimension? How is it attained?

Spiritual Wellness is actually related to the process of reconditioning, which we talked about earlier. The first step is to recognize that we are more than our conditioned minds, and even more than our subconscious. Then, we go beyond that.

To me, Spiritual Wellness is the heart of healing; it is coming into contact with the Divinity that is within and between all of us. It brings to us an awe and reverence for life itself, and the connectivity between us.

We can deepen our spiritual wellness in many ways. Coming into nature, engaging in spiritual practices like prayer and meditation, and engaging in service are powerful ways to augment spiritual wellness. When we also live according to our values, and express virtues such as gratitude and forgiveness, we can more deeply access spiritual wellness. We can also ask Spirit for help when we need it, which augments our capacity to connect in the spiritual realm and serve with more grace and ease.

Can you speak to our ability to “heal each other?” What does it mean for the “neurobiology of interconnection to help us realize how we are biologically wired to heal each other”?

As I shared in my recent TEDx Berkeley talk, connection is one of our most powerful healers. We truly are biologically wired to connect and heal. Scientifically, we have explored this mostly on the behavioral level, where we recognize that when we don’t feel connected, our health suffers. The data is clear that loneliness is more powerful than smoking in terms of shortening our life.

But when we look deeply at neurobiology from a spiritual perspective, we realize that because we truly aren’t separate, we experience what others experience, down to our neural firing. In my TEDx Berkeley talk, I describe neurobiology where we not only feel another person’s physical pain, but social pain as well. Currently in science, we’re comfortable (to some degree) talking about interconnection when it comes to brain-to-brain communication. But when we deepen our subtle awareness and spiritual WELLth, and we recognize that we are all connected through biofields, we can actually access these biofields to more deeply connect with each other and foster healing.

In that TEDx Berkeley talk, I discussed the data behind connective healing with biofields, and it raised some controversy with TED because biofield science is still not considered mainstream. They chose to flag and release my TEDx talk with a new title, all without telling me, saying my talk was based on my own “personal research.” This was untrue. I had actually given them over twenty-nine peer-reviewed, published references, including papers published in prestigious journals like Science, to back up every scientific statement I made. But outlets like TED are still suppressing the scientific reality of whole-person-healing.

Thankfully, healers have known about the reality of healing interconnectedness for millenia. Deepening interconnection through biofields is what so many healers do when they engage in healing, whether in person, or at a distance. This is absolutely a spiritual practice. As you know, I share all this peer-reviewed, published data on healing and interconnection through biofields in my book, Healing Ourselves. The data is real and shows us the possibilities and truths of interconnectedness even beyond these “bio-body-suits,” as the late Dr. Willam Tiller liked to say.

You describe medical professors (and much of our medical system) and outlets like TED and Wikipedia to be steeped in a particular worldview that has dominated science and medicine for well over a century, to the point that they are ignoring data on healing realities. Why and how do you believe we went through a regression and disconnect in medicine, and why has it been so challenging to revive whole systems medical approaches and make them more accessible to people for healing?

I am a psychologist, so I tend to see things through the psychological lens. For me, this is ultimately a story about belonging, as well as the tendency for the human mind to see in dualities.

When the hard sciences began to advance through empirical approaches, empirical approaches and thinking were adopted by what have been called the softer sciences, such as psychology. It was great to apply analytical thinking and cause-andeffect exploration to the workings of the mind. We have learned a great deal that way.

But in our zeal for psychology to be seen as a legitimate science, we decided that unless we could reduce everything to plausible biological mechanisms, there was nothing in the psyche worth exploring. The psyche, however, translates to “spirit.” The spirit is beyond mere biological mechanisms to explain its existence.

As a postdoctoral fellow, I remember sitting in a meeting at UCLA with junior faculty in psychoneuroimmunology who were complaining that we still had the psyche in psychoneuroimmunology. They felt that even having the word “psyche” would delegitimize them in front of their colleagues in neuroscience and immunology, and they wanted to get rid of that word. It was very saddening for me as a postdoctoral fellow to hear this, but I understood that the tendency of the human heart is to want to belong. These junior faculty members felt they could not be taken seriously if they talked about the role of the psyche in mind-body connection, because the focus was just on elucidating molecular and cellular processes and pathways of change. They felt they couldn’t be part of the “cool group” of “legitimate” scientists if they used this word, “psyche.” Ultimately, they were longing for belonging, for legitimacy, and for their work to be seen and honored. This is one of the reasons we created our nonprofit, the Consciousness and Healing Initiative (CHI for short): to have a safe space for communities of scientists, healing practitioners, educators, and artists to talk about the truth of what they are discovering about healing, synergize with their discoveries, and share it with others.

Because of our need for belonging, and our hesitancy to embrace multiple perspectives (that both measurable biological pathways and less measurable, psychological, and energetic processes are important in healing [and one does not have to reduce to the other]), we decided that if we had a hammer (empiricism and materialism), everything was a nail (the world was only material and explainable through empirical inquiry). However, it remains to be seen whether the psyche, spirit, or even the biofield can be explained solely through biological mechanisms and pathways. This is an age-old conundrum that we often call “the hard problem” in consciousness circles, or simply the “mind-body problem,” dating to the writings of Aristotle and others. Biological changes are simply ripple effects of the healing process. Healing itself is still a great mystery. I believe we have to sit with that mystery to learn from it; only then may we gain insight into how it truly works. ymore info: www.shaminijain.com

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