“Healing is always a surprise,” says Bill Bengston, PhD. Bengston, a sociology professor and researcher, sat down with host Elise Loehnen to talk about his wild, fascinating, unconventional research. A reformed skeptic, Bengston set out to disprove the effect of hands-on healing, only to be proven wrong himself. (“Don’t spend all your time defending beliefs,” says Bengston. “The world is more interesting than that.”) Throughout his career, Bengston has studied healing techniques on mice with cancer—and tried to make sense of what his findings could mean for the future of healing more broadly. In this conversation, Bengston also shares his rapid image cycling technique. For reasons he doesn’t completely understand—Bengston is hilariously clear about just how much he doesn’t know—he says this technique seems to enhance healing. It involves making a list of twenty things we want, and very quickly cycling through them in our minds. Another suggestion from Bengston: When we put our ego aside, we may find that the answers we are looking for are more simple than we think. (P.S. As always, check with your doctor before beginning any healing process.) (For more, see The goop Podcast hub.)