Beyond Medicine: A Physician’s Revolutionary Prescription for Achieving Absolute Health and Finding Inner Peace

By Patricia A. Muehsam

• According to fellow pioneer and bestselling author Larry Dossey, Beyond Medicine “may be the only health-and-healing book you will ever need”
• A unique and compelling new perspective that builds on the popular works of practitioner-authors such as Deepak Chopra, Louise Hay, Bernie Siegel, Christiane Northrup, Judith Orloff, and Lissa Rankin
• Teaches simple do-it-yourself techniques — the Five Tools for Absolute Health
• First-time author has been featured in online, print, and radio media including the Los Angeles Times, Thrive Global, the New York Daily News, Alternative and Complementary Therapies, and Massage magazine

• Language: English
• Publisher: New World Library
• Release date: Nov 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781608687008

Book preview

Praise for Beyond Medicine

"Beyond Medicine may be the only health-and-healing book you will ever need. In it, physician-researcher Patricia Muehsam guides us to the rock-bottom essence of health: peace of mind. Like all truly great teachers, Muehsam has ‘been there,’ and this fact lends a powerful genuineness and authenticity to this book. If you are tired of chasing one healing practice after another, you will discover that health consists of being and surrender, not doing and struggling."

— Larry Dossey, MD, author of One Mind and Healing Words

Dr. Muehsam is the physician we have all been waiting for! In this exquisite book, she offers the ground floor to your ever-expanding path to overall well-being. Greater health and vitality are within us all. They always have been. This book will help you find your way in with a gentle touch and an accepting heart.

— Emily A. Francis, author of The Body Heals Itself, Whole Body Healing, and Healing Ourselves Whole

An in-depth guide to better understanding possibilities for rejuvenating and healing our body/mind. Anyone can benefit from the wisdom Dr. Muehsam has transmitted in this cutting-edge book.

— Dr. Marc Grossman, OD, LAc, author of Magic Eye Beyond 3D and medical director, Natural Eye Care

"Beyond Medicine reflects Dr. Muehsam’s years of exploration into the science and art of healing; she gathers all that she has learned — informed by research and personal stories — into a book that not only educates but inspires. It was a great read, and I learned so much. I love that it is experiential; truly a guidebook and such a brilliant way to assemble a wide breadth of knowledge. I will repeatedly turn to this book as a resource."

— Laurin Bellg, MD, author of Near Death in the ICU, board-certified critical care physician, chair of medicine and ICU director, ThedaCare Regional Medical Center

Patricia Muehsam has been on a remarkable journey, one that has tested her soul and challenged modern definitions of sickness, health, and healing. In the process she has made astonishing discoveries about our virtually limitless capacities to determine our own state of wellness. This is not woo-woo stuff; you don’t help found an office within the National Institutes of Health or work at a Harlem methadone clinic unless you’re the real deal. Dr. Muehsam is the real deal, and what she has to share is as important as anything in the world of health today.

— John David Mann, coauthor of the New York Times bestselling and award-winning The Go-Giver

"Beyond Medicine introduces you to a powerful healer with special abilities: you. In this empowering book, Patricia Muehsam shows that everyone, including you, has great healing abilities within, just waiting to be tapped. Her warmth and authenticity draw readers in, inviting them to become participants in a journey toward Absolute Health."

— Marci Shimoff, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Happy for No Reason and coauthor of Chicken Soup for the Woman’s Soul

"In Beyond Medicine Dr. Muehsam has provided a valuable resource for understanding the interconnection of mind and body. The book offers do-it-yourself tools for getting in touch with the emotional links to not just physical health but any and all life challenges. It also provides a succinct overview of various health-care practices, drawing from both ancient traditions and modern research, all of which inform Dr. Muehsam’s model of Absolute Health. I particularly appreciate her recognition that mainstream and alternative medicine are complementary, rather than conflicting."

— Brenda J. Dunne, PhD, president of International Consciousness Research Laboratories (ICRL), former manager of Princeton University’s PEAR laboratory, and coauthor (with Robert Jahn, PhD) of Margins of Reality

This brilliant book offers us clarity and solutions for vibrant health, from an expert guide who stands by us to light the way. It brings us exactly what we’ve been waiting for — a comforting, useful, and timely guide for feeling well, getting well, and living well.

— Amy Scher, bestselling author of How to Heal Yourself When No One Else Can

"Beyond Medicine respects what conventional medicine has to offer while also acknowledging its limits. Dr. Muehsam steps in and invites us to take a more active role in our own health and happiness by harnessing the power of deep inner peace — and enjoying its many biological and psychological benefits. The best part? She gives you step-by-step exercises you can do right now to reach a powerful state of inner peace. Beyond Medicine is a must-read for anyone looking to change the course of their life for the better."

— Kelly A. Turner, PhD, New York Times bestselling author of Radical Hope and Radical Remission

"Patricia Muehsam’s book, Beyond Medicine, is a treasure that we all need to read in order to learn from her experience and wisdom. When I began speaking and writing books, I was called controversial. What Dr. Muehsam writes about is not controversial. It is her experience and mine, too. She has the courage to practice what she preaches and to accept and learn from her experiences. Doctors are trained to treat the diagnosis but not the patient, but Dr. Muehsam shows how the patient needs to come back into the process to actively participate to find Absolute Health. So read Dr. Muehsam’s prescription to help you find health and inner peace."

— Bernie Siegel, MD, author of Love, Medicine & Miracles and The Art of Healing

"A pioneering perspective and a revolutionary prescription, Beyond Medicine is grounded in modern science and graced with ancient wisdom. Dr. Muehsam’s book is a must-read for anyone seeking to claim or reclaim their health and well-being. Readers will learn, firsthand, through the tools that Dr. Muehsam offers, how to do just that: how to find their way to Absolute Health and inner peace. That way is extraordinarily simple — a remarkable offering, given the sophistication and complexity of human biology and our long-held beliefs about what it takes to get well and be well. In fact, Dr. Muehsam teaches us that it takes very little, that our way to health and well-being is easy and effortless."

— Daniel P. Eskinazi, DDS, PhD, LAc, founding deputy director, National Institutes of Health, Office of Alternative Medicine

Copyright © 2021 by Patricia A. Muehsam, MD

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical, or other — without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

The material in this book is intended for education. It is not meant to take the place of diagnosis and treatment by a qualified medical practitioner or therapist. No expressed or implied guarantee of the effects of the use of the recommendations can be given or liability taken. The author’s experiences used as examples throughout this book are true, although identifying details such as names and locations have been changed to protect privacy.

The Guest House by Jalaluddin Rumi from The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks, © 1995 by Coleman Barks (New York: HarperCollins), used with permission of Coleman Barks.

Text design by Tona Pearce Myers

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Muehsam, Patricia A., author.

Title: Beyond medicine : a physician’s revolutionary prescription for achieving absolute health and finding inner peace / Patricia A. Muehsam, MD ; foreword by Larry Dossey, MD.

Description: Novato, California : New World Library, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: Explores the concept of Absolute Health, a state of holistic well-being that encompasses mind, body, and spirit. The author describes an array of methods for achieving Absolute Health, such as breathwork, journaling, mindfulness and meditation, mirror work, and mind-body sensing — Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021037312 (print) | LCCN 2021037313 (ebook) | ISBN 9781608686995 (paperback) | ISBN 9781608687008 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Health--Popular works. | Self-actualization (Psychology) | Mind and body.

Classification: LCC RA776.5 .M84 2021 (print) | LCC RA776.5 (ebook) | DDC 613--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021037312

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021037313

First printing, November 2021

ISBN 978-1-60868-699-5

Ebook ISBN 978-1-60868-700-8

Printed in Canada on 100% postconsumer-waste recycled paper

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

— JALALUDDIN RUMI

CONTENTS

Foreword by Larry Dossey, MD

Introduction: Finding My Way Home

Part 1: Welcome to the Guest House

Chapter 1: Home Sweet Home

Chapter 2: The Healer Within

Chapter 3: Healing Practices

Chapter 4: Healing Partnerships

Part 2: Healing from the Inside Out

Chapter 5: Emotional Healing

Chapter 6: Anger

Chapter 7: Fear

Chapter 8: Sadness

Chapter 9: Emotional Healing and Physical Pain

Part 3: Manifesting from the Inside Out

Chapter 10: From Feeling Feelings to Feeling Well-Being

Chapter 11: Making Things Happen

Part 4: Beyond the Guest House: The Unseen World

Chapter 12: On Consciousness: Beyond Mind and Body, Beyond Space and Time

Chapter 13: Miracles Are the Natural Order of Things

Part 5: The Garden of Forking Paths: All Paths Lead Us Home

Chapter 14: Many Medicines, Many Ways Home

Chapter 15: You Are the Medicine

Conclusion: Finding Your Way Home

Appendix: Additional Resources

Acknowledgments

Endnotes

Index

About the Author

FOREWORD

There’s a secret among genuine healers: Health exists in the shadows of illness and disease. It is an ever-present possibility waiting to be acknowledged, experienced, and realized. This does not mean that illness is an illusion, but that there is a deeper layer of experience that trumps the failures of the flesh. That’s what the beyond in physician Patricia Muehsam’s Beyond Medicine is about.

As an internal medicine physician, I have often been astonished to see that perfect psychological health can be manifested by individuals whose bodies are dramatically failing and beyond hope of repair. In this process, our patients become our teachers. They reveal to us things not taught in medical school. They reveal how illness can serve as a doorway to wisdom, understanding, and peace. Patients often radiate this awareness gently, quietly, peacefully, undramatically.

Illness can also be accompanied by events that are rare within our common-sense notions of reality — events such as visions and revelations that dramatically shift one’s worldview to a spiritual, mystical vantage point. These can be a profound consolation to the sick and dying, as well as their loved ones.

These experiences are supported by modern research about the operations of consciousness. Many scientists are increasingly concerned with the nonlocal manifestations of the mind — laboratory-proven phenomena such as premonitions, telepathy, and clairvoyance that reveal our intrinsic infinitude and oneness in space and time.

This book poses a crucial question: Can we entertain these knowings while healthy? Need they be restricted to the revelations experienced by the sick and ill? Can we go beyond medicine to cultivate these experiences and understandings in times of wellness? The answer is a resounding yes.

This knowledge is an unmistakable part of our species’ history. It is our nature to realize the nonlocal, immortal aspects of our existence, as Muehsam shows.

So, consider Beyond Medicine not as a reminder of who we can become, but as a celebration of who we are: infinite, immortal, united, and one.

— Larry Dossey, MD, New York Times bestselling author of Healing Words and One Mind

INTRODUCTION

Finding My Way Home

This book is for you.

Perhaps you’ve experienced the pain of disease, of living in an unwell body or with challenging life circumstances, and you’re seeking a simple way to be liberated from your difficulties. Perhaps you’re a thirtysomething, a fortysomething, a baby boomer, or in midlife. Maybe you’re a bit younger or a little older. Your life is full and busy. Or perhaps you’re at a stage in life when things are easing up a bit.

No matter your age, no matter what’s going on in your life, you want to know how to thrive in the most natural of ways. Ways that feel simple, ways that are easy for you.

But there’s so much information out there — an overabundance of information — and you don’t need more of it. Rather, you need a new and effortless way to feel well, a simple prescription for health and well-being.

I’m here to offer that prescription, an antidote to the overwhelm. I’m here to offer a prescription for navigating whatever is going on in your life — health-wise and otherwise — a way to feel well, a way to thrive effortlessly, without struggle.

This isn’t a book about healing per se, though it can help you get better from a health issue, if that’s what’s going on for you. Rather, this book is about how to navigate living in a body, with ease, and how to navigate circumstances and situations in your life, with ease.

I’ve been there. I’ve struggled during this journey of being human. I’ve struggled with living in a body. I’ve struggled with the field of emotions. I’ve struggled with the circumstances and situations that life offers us, like illness, relationship challenges, financial stress, and life path choices. Through it all, I’ve come to learn that there’s a path to liberation from the struggles. That path is simple. And effortless. It’s merely a stop, a pause, and a breath away. It’s available to us in every moment.

Sometimes I still struggle. But when I turn to the notions and tools in these pages, that struggle dissolves, and speedily so, into a blissful state of peace. That peace is Absolute Health. It’s the place that we need to be for healing whatever ails us, health-wise and otherwise.

I invite you to travel with me beyond medicine — beyond Western medicine, beyond mind-body medicine, beyond holistic and integrative medicine, beyond any medicine. Beyond the need to search for a cure for what ails us. I invite you into the Guest House to learn more.

The Guest House

Jalaluddin Rumi was a thirteenth-century mystic and poet whose writings are still relevant today, offering wisdom and inspiration for navigating modern life. In the middle of a sleepless night, kept up by worries about writing this book, I happened upon Rumi’s poem The Guest House (see page vii). I wasn’t looking for it. I’m pretty sure that it found me. As I leafed through the pages, seeking some of that wisdom and inspiration, the book opened to this poem. The poem became my mentor and my muse and a reminder that embracing worry liberates us from worry, that allowing what is frees us from it.

The Guest House is our starting place for finding our way home to Absolute Health. It’s a metaphor. But it’s also a real place. Rumi’s poem reminds us that if we can surrender to all that is, we’re taken care of; it reminds us that it’s in the being, not the doing, that all is well. It also describes a place that we can find within that brings us home to Absolute Health, to peace of mind, to our essential nature. In these pages, you’ll come to know Absolute Health, your essential nature, and all the ways you can find your way home to the Guest House, where well-being resides.

Telling My Story

This book came to me in fits and starts. Sometimes easily, sometimes not so. Typing away on my laptop in my Manhattan apartment, taking breaks to walk my dog in Central Park, at times I made a little headway. More often, I retreated.

I was scared to tell my story, to tell the truth about things. I felt a lot of shame. From time to time, I still do. But I worried that if I didn’t tell it, all that I wanted to share with you might come across as shallow — and perhaps even pretentious.

Several years ago, several days after I started to put words on the page, I broke my wrist. I couldn’t write for many months. When I finally returned to the keyboard, I realized that I needed to tell the truth — and especially the truth about the one story that I really didn’t want to tell.

While that story has been difficult to revisit in these pages, my memories have flourished in the retelling of it all. Little bits of shame trickle in, and some sadness, too. Yet the process of bringing this book to life has also given me pause to truly live the teachings that I offer you. It’s been a healing of sorts, and a homecoming — my way home to Absolute Health.

The story I haven’t wanted to tell has helped me to understand.

One Winter in Amherst

That story begins in my early twenties, in college, during a cold, snowy New England winter in Amherst, Massachusetts. I was studying physics, philosophy of science, and music, deeply immersed and reveling in all that I was learning. I must confess that even though medicine would become my calling, I never liked biology much. Math, physics, and music were my first true loves.

During those crisp, frosty days, which began and ended with the long shadows of dawn and dusk, I started to have out-of-body experiences, otherwise known as paranormal experiences or psychic openings. They included telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and psychokinesis. I feel it’s important to emphasize that I wasn’t doing psychedelic drugs or any drugs. I was merely experiencing the drug of an expanded consciousness.

I traveled. I flew over snowdrifts. Beyond my body and beyond my mind, I teleported through space, above ground, unaided by aircraft, trapezes, or zip lines. I could know peoples’ thoughts, hearing their words in the ears of my mind — all verified in sometimes embarrassing conversations. I seemed to have psychokinetic powers — bending metal, for example. Car keys changed form in my fingers, melting like objects in a Salvador Dalí painting. I foresaw future events, like my physics professor’s request that I lead the class when he was away.

Other sensations emerged as well, a little less paranormal, if we’re being technical about it. I felt a deep kinship with dogs — something I’ve always felt. But this was a bit more. It seemed as though I could communicate with my canine friends directly, through the silences of intention and listening.

Perhaps the most compelling experience was the ever-present peace of mind that I felt, no matter what was going on. A feeling of lightness and joy. With this transcendent feeling state came the most certain truth that there is more to life than the experience of my five senses, and that this more is the essential key to a greater and truer reality.

That winter flickered like a tired light trying to come on. The hint of a spring. That continuous peace of mind offered me an insight that I would only come to fully understand many years later. It was my first glimpse of our essential nature, of a way to freedom from suffering, my first glimpse of Absolute Health — a concept of health so unlike anything I had grown up with, so unlike anything I had been taught.

Openings and Closings

These paranormal experiences weren’t my first taste of things out of the ordinary. I’d had fleeting views of another reality in my childhood — isolated occurrences of foreseeing events and knowing the thoughts of others. They were bits and pieces that never came together long enough for me to make sense of them — and they were all forgotten in the fullness of my days of just being a kid.

My psychic openings during that New England winter lasted several months or maybe a bit more. What was vivid and memorable was how it all ended — abruptly, with my incarceration. Talking, perhaps too much, about my experiences with people who didn’t understand them, I was taken against my will to a hospital emergency room and involuntarily admitted to a locked psychiatric ward. A hypodermic needle in my butt numbed my senses and dulled my mind. A wheelchair transported me upstairs to the hospital’s third floor — to a locked ward where I stayed for nearly six weeks. I’d been deemed crazy by a physician friend of my father.

In the days that followed, medications took hold — four of them, to be exact. For schizophrenia, I was given an antipsychotic; for manic depression, lithium; for clinical depression, an antidepressant. Finally, for the side effects of the antipsychotic, yet another pill.

Because of the drugs, I have very few memories of my time in that ward. After that nearly six-week period, I was discharged to my parents, with a psychiatric diagnosis of schizo-affective and manic-depressive. I returned home on those same four medications, destined to be drugged for life. By then, winter had turned to spring, and summer was almost upon us. I withdrew from college, since I’d been away for too long and I was in no shape to return. For the next year and a half, I was essentially asleep in a body, mentally dull, emotionally numb, and physically anesthetized.

Then one stifling hot summer day, my courageous, free-thinking mother came up to my bedroom, where I spent most of my waking hours, and told me that I needed to get off the medications. In an act of great love and faith, she slowly weaned me by cutting tablets and emptying capsules. Little by little, day by day, I crawled back into the person I had always known. As I stopped taking the drugs, thoughts returned. Feelings returned. Physical sensations returned. I returned to my mind. I returned to my body. I recovered from this spiritual awakening gone awry.

Awakening to Absolute Health

That awakening gone awry might have been otherwise. When I first started to have those out-of-body experiences, I shared the details with my music teacher, who understood well the path of spiritual awakening. I was studying composition and East Asian music, and he understood the world of siddhis — the seemingly magical powers of enlightened yogis — and of initiation. He suggested that I travel to the seaside and quietly commune with nature. But it was not to be.

After the locked doors of the hospital opened, and after I found my way beyond the medicines, my journey was a measured one. I awoke slowly to the din of worldly doings. Little by little, I found my foothold on the earth and my knowing connection to more. I took several years to find my way back completely, back to that person that I’d always known. Never did I return to a psychiatrist, a locked ward, or the grip of pharmaceuticals.

I have carried these memories with me, in little boxes, tightly packed, but beautifully wrapped. They’ve been my fuel, my sustenance, my inspiration for carrying on. They’ve been my vital curriculum, and partnering with subsequent gifts along the way, they’ve shaped my worldview and my understanding of healing. They’ve led me to unbridled faith and Absolute Health.

I’ve continued to travel beyond cognition and my five senses, but my trips are tempered now, and I’ve learned to be the master of my experiences, rather than the other way around.

Yet, I wonder, had it all not been quite so, who might I be, where might I be, just now. How might I have come to know such exquisite peace, such unbridled faith?

A New Approach to Health

My profession has lost its way, and it’s in desperate need of a sea change.

The ancient wisdom traditions understand. So, too, the global healing traditions, and the cosmologies of other cultures unfixed by a singular belief in the material world. The physicist-philosophers of the twentieth century understand, and our contemporary spiritual teachers do as well. Here’s what these traditions all conspire to teach us: We can easily be liberated from our suffering; we can easily live in faith, not fear; we can easily heal all that ails us, health-wise and otherwise; we can easily transform circumstances and situations in our lives. Common themes are the intimate connection between our minds and our bodies and the world around us, and the existence of an ineffable reality, beyond cognition and our five senses. Though my education is ongoing, I’ve come to understand these notions, and I’ve learned how to embody them, to live them. This book presents to you what I’ve come to know.

I offer a path out of a modern world that is frenzied and disconnected and invite you into a realm where suffering does not exist and Absolute Health resides. This approach bridges the oft-disparate worlds of holistic health and contemporary spiritual teachings to bring you home to a place where well-being prevails and healing arises. I’ll show you how to experience it all yourself.

Please know that I don’t present myself as the poster girl for the mental illness cure. The physician who healed herself. This book is about much more than that.

However, I share what my winter awakenings have taught me about the psyche — about both dis-ease and disease. I’ve come to understand that Western medicine misunderstands the nature of human beings and the nature of being human. I’ve come to understand that there is a cure for mental illness, and that cure lies beyond the realm of conventional psychiatry.

My Journey Beyond Medicine

My adventures in psychiatry were profound and formative teachers. But they weren’t the only ones.

When I was thirteen, my father had a catastrophic stroke that left him hemiplegic and partially aphasic — he was paralyzed on one side and had difficulty speaking. He was only forty-nine, and up to then, he’d been an extraordinarily healthy man, seemingly well-balanced and vital; he jogged daily, played tennis frequently, and had a spirited and optimistic outlook on life.

In the days that followed his stroke, he was unable to speak. Through weeks and months of therapy, his speech improved. But it never got back to normal, the way it was before.

He couldn’t say what he wanted to say; he had great difficulty find the words. When words came, they came slowly and sometimes not at all. The pitch and timbre of his voice were different, too. His speech was strained and labored. And the stroke affected his syntax — how he put words and phrases together. When he was able to get words and phrases out, they were often in the syntax of his native German. Born in Berlin, my father escaped Nazi Germany in his early teens and went to school in England. The father I knew growing up spoke like an Englishman, with a bit of a British accent. After the stroke, when he was able to get words out, he spoke as if he were translating German, speaking in the passive voice more common in that language.

His personality changed as well. He had been a charming, charismatic man. A people person. Humble, too, with a big heart, a huge smile, and a hysterical sense of humor. He was a cardiologist who made house calls and was adored by his patients. That person I knew was gone. He was sad and cried a lot. He was angry and frustrated and had outbursts of rage.

Nearly eighteen years later, when I was in my final year of medical school, my father experienced a cure that defied conventional medical thinking. That cure was rendered by an unusual physician-scientist — a brilliant and eccentric man who had developed a novel theory about disease causation, diagnosis, and treatment. He individualized his approach for each patient, and it combined a Chinese medicine technique called Qigong with modern-day kinesiology and a protocol of medicinal remedies.

After only days of the treatment, my father’s speech returned to normal. It was astonishing. The words came easily, his syntax the way it used to be. He even used favored sayings and colloquialisms — manners of speech that I hadn’t heard in years. His personality seemed to return as well. The sadness, the anger, the outbursts were gone. He was happy, light, and funny.

However, it was a bittersweet miracle. My father didn’t want to continue with the protocol. I don’t remember why. I’m not sure I ever knew. When he stopped the protocol, a week or so after he started, all of those astonishing changes vanished. He was aphasic again. His sadness and his tears, his anger and his outbursts, they all returned.

Suffice to say, my father’s seemingly miraculous cure, albeit short-lived, gave me more than a pause. Along with my own psychic adventures, I came to understand that what Western medicine held to be tried and true was otherwise, and that reality was not what I had always thought it to be. These and other experiences convinced me that healing beyond the bounds of our conventional biomedical paradigm was not only possible but necessary.

Ultimately, I became inspired to choose medicine as my life’s work. My intention was, and still is, to serve as a bridge and a catalyst for the development of an expanded healing paradigm, to be a conduit to new ways of knowing, understanding, and experiencing health and well-being.

Finding My Way to Medical School

I’d always been drawn to the unseen world. Fascinated by the implications of modern physics and quantum mechanics that I’d studied in college — implications that there is, indeed, a reality beyond cognition and our five senses — and seeking to make sense of my psychic experiences and my father’s extraordinary cure, I became intrigued by the nature of consciousness, mind-matter phenomena, and distance healing. Popular authors had been expounding on the links between modern physics, Taoism, and Chinese medicine, and Dr. Larry Dossey had written his seminal book Space, Time, and Medicine. The parallels between modern physics and an expanded view of medicine and healing that these writers offered fascinated me. I was especially interested in a Chinese healing practice called Qigong — a distance-healing technique. All of it fueled my decision to go to medical school, with the goal of being that bridge, that conduit, to a new approach to health.

After college, I left New England for New York City. In 1987, after several years of living in the real world and running a tutoring business teaching math, chemistry, and physics, I began my medical studies. I was twenty-seven. In addition to the required courses, I pursued my interests in approaches beyond Western medicine. I took weekend acupuncture courses for physicians; I learned about homeopathy, herbal medicine, and the medical and therapeutic applications of yoga, as well as about contemporary mind-body medicine practices.

During the first week of my third year at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine (now the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai), I met an inspiring and open-minded scientist who invited me into his bioelectromagnetics laboratory to explore my curiosities about all sorts of phenomena that Western medicine deemed thoroughly impossible. I spent as much time there as I could — all of my elective course time. I was committed to the notion that science can be a powerful tool for investigating the veracity of phenomena not yet well characterized and understood by the mainstream biomedical community, and I sought to devise experiments to do just that.

We developed experiments to study Qigong