Here is the full transcript of radiologist Dr. Mitchell Abrams’ talk titled “The Medicine of Frequencies. What Did Einstein Mean?” at TEDxTrinityBellwoods 2023 conference.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
The Future of Medicine: Understanding Energy and Frequencies
Future medicine is the medicine of frequencies. What did Einstein mean? As a physician, as a radiologist, I can tell you this makes total sense. We don’t use scalpel blades. We don’t use prescription pads. We use a fundamental understanding of energy and physics to non-invasively dissect the human body like a loaf of bread, using an MRI machine or a CAT scan.
Now, the deeper meaning of this insight, however, I only began to appreciate in my very first year of medical practice. I was diagnosed with a heart condition and required open heart surgery. Turned out I had a big heart and as I shortly returned to work, I was appointed the Chief of our Department.
And very quickly did I realize that our entire system was so outdated. And in fact, how we study, how we define health and wellness was so narrow in scope. I realized that there was something fundamentally missing.
A Journey of Exploration
This catapulted me on a journey of deep exploration and research, looking at how other cultures approached health and wellness. I found myself traveling to India and very quickly realized that there is an entire discipline of science that we are not exposed to in the West, in the medical education model or otherwise. The science of mind, the science of connection, how to feel deeply connected to yourself, to others, perhaps something greater than ourselves. The science of consciousness.
And because of my radiology background, very quickly I realized that the philosophies and the model that I was experiencing and learning was so deeply rooted in science, particularly physics. And I recall this light bulb moment when I thought of Einstein, when he said, “Everything is energy.” Now, we can all appreciate this.
I mean, when you go to the doctor, you know, we use a blood pressure cuff to measure your blood pressure. An electrocardiogram is measuring the electric current running through your heart. Electroencephalogram is measuring your brainwaves.
We Are Energetic Beings
We are energetic beings. Imagine you are approximately 50 trillion cells. Every cell is made of molecules, and molecules are made of atoms. And atoms, my friends, are over 99.99999% space.
Atoms are high frequency vibrations of energy. And in fact, Nikola Tesla said, “If you wish to understand the universe, you have to think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.” Even your thoughts are forms of energy. Our emotions, in fact, are also forms of energy.
Now we can talk about love, but when you experience it, you know it. That lightness, that expansiveness that we may feel, that inclusivity. And yet when we’re stressed, when we’re anxious, we feel confined and constricted. We get so hyper focused on the issues at hand. These emotions, these energies are actually encoded into the rhythms of our heart. And we can identify these rhythms through what we call the heart rate variability.
Understanding Heart Rate Variability
Heart rate variability is the description of the interbeat intervals between every heartbeat. And they’re constantly changing. But when you feel good, when you feel love, compassion, one of these considered energy renewing emotions, your heart rhythms become very rhythmic and sinus where the heart begins to speed up and eventually begins to slow down again. And then it will speed up and slow down.
And what we’re actually witnessing is the balance between the two arms of the autonomic nervous system, your sympathetic and your parasympathetic. These rhythms from the heart are transferred to the brain. And it has a profound, a very important role because it affects how the brain functions. Think of times when you’re super stressed. Maybe you’re preparing for a TED talk, maybe you’re about to write an exam.
The Power of Coherence
And that anxiety, that stress your mind goes blank. You don’t even know what you know anymore. But imagine times where you’re just on fire. You’re in the flow of life. That moment, that is a state of coherence. And when that happens, the rhythms from the heart actually synchronize with the brain waves. So now you’ve got what we call in physics, it’s entrainment.
Your heart rate, your heart rhythm and your brain waves begin to synchronize and they get phase locked. And then they begin to feed into each other. They grow in amplitude and in strength. This is very important because it affects the areas of the brain that’s involved in the way that we think, the way that we act, the way that we perceive information, the ways that which we react or respond to our environment or to others.
And in fact, this coherence has been shown to be extremely powerful when it comes to improving mental health, particularly those that are most at risk and in fact, implementing coherence programs in high schools.
The Impact on Education and Health
They also demonstrate radical improvement in test scores, particularly college prep scores. Looking at mathematics, there is an increase of 73% of test scores when children learn how to tap into their true nature, tap into this energy.
Now, it’s not just the brain that’s affected by the heart, but it’s the entire body. Imagine going to the symphony tonight. We show up early. The musicians are on stage warming up. They’re all playing their little piece. The conductor hasn’t showed up yet. We’d be sitting in the audience, listening to the most incoherent noise.
The Symphony of the Body
We wouldn’t hear any music. But the moment that the conductor shows up, wow! All the musicians are now synchronized and you hear this beautiful, coherent piece of music.
The body is no different.
In fact, the heart is the conductor, and every biological organ system that we have are musicians in this beautiful symphony called you. And when this happens, just as how the heart pulled the brain waves into synchronization and this entrainment, when you have heart, and brain entrainment it pulls all the other organs into sync. And then they all begin to feed into each other and they grow in strength and amplitude. So imagine what we’re saying now that you begin to vibrate with this optimal energetic state, this frequency of energy.
The Power of Self-Regulation
So imagine now your heart rhythms, your brainwaves, your blood pressure, your respiratory rhythms, even the electric potentials running through your skin are all vibrating and synchronize with each other. You would imagine that this would put you at the most optimal state for healing and thriving.
Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, many of you may have heard of him, the Godfather of Mindful Based Stress Reduction therapy. His research showed that when patients with psoriasis and inflammatory skin condition, when patients learn how to use their mind like a muscle, they healed four times faster. Four times!
And in fact, a research paper showed that over 5700 people, those that had the highest self regulation skills, were 50 times more likely to be alive in 15 years without chronic disease. This is a game changer when it comes to medicine. And as a physician, this is extremely exciting, extremely.
The Mind as a Muscle
Dr. Sara Lazar from Harvard, she has identified that the mind acts like a muscle. The more that you practice techniques that cultivate coherence, the easier that it becomes. The greater effects, that relaxation effect that is elicited is stronger and becomes easier to practice.
And in fact, just like your muscles will change in structure and appearance, you know, for a month or two going to the gym, your brain structurally changes. And this research now shows us that we have this capacity to self regulate. And when you practice enough, your body will physically change. Parts of the brain like the amygdala the less evolved parts of the brain, it shrinks. And yet we know that the frontal cortex, it actually expands, it gets thicker.
Identifying this capacity that we have is like technology that we can all access in any moment. Here is a graph of a police officer in training hooked up to a heart monitor. And essentially you can notice that at 11:40, the police officer encounters an angry individual. A situation, fight or flight kicks in. His heart rate jumps up to 180 beats per minute. He’s tachycardic.
After the scenario, you notice how the heart rate decreases, but it stays elevated at about 100 beats per minute. That is still an elevated heart rate. That’s still tachycardic. Trauma does not just exist in one moment, trauma lingers within the body.
The Power of Mental Flexing
And if you notice how at about 11:54, the officer is asked to flex his mental muscle, cultivate that coherence and look what happens. The heart rate immediately drops down to baseline. And what’s really interesting is that all of these effects of the heart, not just improving brain function or mental health, it’s not just improving our state of being for thriving and healing, but it turns out that your energy extends well beyond the physical boundaries of your body.
Your heart is a largest source of bioenergy. An EKG is literally you’re looking at how the electricity is, you know, the currents running through your heart. Well, Physics 101 says anything that’s got electricity running through it also creates a magnetic field.
We each have a field of energy around us that are 3 to 4ft in diameter. Just as your heart can pull your brainwaves into this beautiful state of entrainment and can pull all your organ systems into entrainment to synchronize and grow in amplitude, you can pull other people into coherence.
The Interconnectedness of Our Energy
Imagine what I’m saying now. This isn’t just about you. Your thoughts and your intentions, your state of being affects everybody around you. And in fact, in this graph, you can see this is actually taken with two people sitting four feet apart from each other, both wearing heart monitors.
And you can clearly see that both of them who have been asked to cultivate a sense of compassion and kindness for not just themselves, but also for that other person, look what happens. They cultivate a coherent state and their heart rhythms synchronize with each other.
Now, this is huge in medicine, okay? Scientists at Haifa University identified that when you create this physiologic coupling, your pain perception can decrease by over 50%. Okay.
The Impact on Medical Outcomes
In fact, the Journal of American Medical Association identified in a randomized controlled trial patients who receive one pre-op visit just to create a state of a compassionate connection results in 50% less opioid use post-op and statistically significant decrease lengths of stay in post-op complications following surgery. Even CEOs of organizations and companies, they’re catching on.
When you provide people the tools so that they can self regulate and access their peak potential and now you bring them in together as a team, you’re creating a very inviting and productive, coherent environment. In fact, the research shows that productivity increases, your creative problem solving increases, your health care costs decrease.
Everything that you would imagine when everybody on your team is now operating at this optimal physiological mental state of being. Why is it that our biology and our energies are designed in such a way that they are so connected that we influence each other at such a subconscious level?
The Interconnectedness of Everything
Now to answer that, think of what Da Vinci once said, “Learn how to see. Everything is connected to everything else.” Now, when working with physicians and organizations, I provide a lens for them to see the world through. And this lens is really a geometry.
Can you notice that Einstein is staring at the centerpiece called a vector equilibrium? This is a 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the buckyball, and it represents the most energetically balanced system of energy that we know of. And in this diagram, it represents all of our Western science and technology.
The Dalai Lama, on the other hand, is staring at the background lotus flower. This is an ancient symbol that has always represented the science of connection, the science of consciousness.
The Rhythm of Nature
Can you notice how these two diagrams, they flow into each other? They occupy the same space. There’s a fundamental mathematical ratio that they both share. And now, you are going to begin to recognize that every flower, every fruit, every leaf, everything from Mother Nature is dancing with the same rhythm. It flows with the exact same rhythm. We call this the Fibonacci sequence, the golden ratio, sacred geometry.
To be honest with you, I don’t care what you label it as. I’m a radiologist, I am more concerned that you learn how to recognize it. Because once you begin to recognize it in Mother Nature, you also begin to recognize it within yourself.
The Dance of Life
As a radiologist, I teach medical students, and I can tell you that every aspect of our physical being is dancing to this rhythm. Every bit. And it’s important to recognize because from the spiraling arms of the galaxy down to our DNA, this frequency, this energy, this rhythm permeates and is ubiquitous. It connects us all.
And when you layer this awareness with the fact that we are all 99.9% genetically identical, it creates a new framework of how we understand ourselves and our relationships to each other. And it’s key.
And it’s key not just for our own health and our mental wellbeing, but it is key to addressing what Einstein said was the greatest illusion – separation. We are unfortunately in a very confused state. We don’t recognize ourselves.
A New Perspective on Life
You realize, well, sure, you know, life can be a culture of cells in a petri dish, or it could be a super organism called a human being, or perhaps another super organism called Earth. When we begin to understand these perspectives, that sense of connection becomes tangible.
And in fact, it helps us reframe. It’s not about you versus me. It’s about when we help each other and one another, we’re helping ourselves. Because we now have the technology that’s accessible, free, easy to use, that can literally track and measure your coherence in real time through your phone, free! Imagine you can measure your coherence, you can track your progress over time, and we can now measure our collective coherence.
A Call to Action
When we come together to practice techniques, we’re now practicing not just for our own self care, but we’re now practicing with the love of common humanity in mind because we are so interconnected. So I encourage all of you go online, find a friend, join a group, join a challenge, start a practice.
Even if it’s for five minutes a day, I guarantee you, you don’t have to listen to me or to listen to critics. I guarantee you, if you take five minutes and you begin to tune in to your true nature, you will feel something. And if you stick with it with intention, I guarantee you it undoubtedly changes, you are changing your biochemistry, your neurophysiology, the way that we think, process information, your resilience.
