Visual Healing

It’s great to be here with you. My name is Louie Schwartzberg, and for over four decades, I’ve been using cinematography to explore, understand and document the incredible power and beauty of nature and our relationship to it.

One of the worst things about this pandemic is the feeling of disconnection from our friends and family. But what my work has shown me is that, for the most part, disconnection is a mindset, not a reality.

In fact, we’re all part of a giant ecosystem called life on Earth.

Because of my series Moving Art, I’ve received incredible feedback from people all over the world who say that it’s a healing modality and that watching my imagery has helped heal them. So I began to think about how my work might be more connected to healing and healthcare.

Through Moving Art, I’ve helped bring virtual nature and visual healing to the state-of-the-art UC San Diego Jacobs Medical Center. In all 249 rooms, patients are provided with a tablet that controls the lighting and shades in their room and gives them access to their medical records.

I asked them to put a question on the tablet that says, “Where in the world do you want to go to be healed?”

The choices are forests, ocean, desert and flowers.

We’re going to collect data to see how visual healing helps reduce heart and respiration rates, reduce pain and improve sleep. We’re giving patients the power to choose when choice has been taken away from them.

I want to share the story of Tony Head, one of the psilocybin therapy patients I filmed at Johns Hopkins. I met him, and he taught me how this can empower people on the end-of-life journey.

[Video plays]

Tony Head: I’ve been diagnosed with prostate cancer. My diagnosis was so bad that my prognosis was, you know, they weren’t giving me any chance whatsoever.

Researcher: Once a volunteer is enrolled in the study, we’re with them for the preparation, the psilocybin sessions and the integration follow-ups afterward.

Okay, lift your head up. It’s really just about experiencing what comes up as psilocybin takes effect.

Tony Head: In the intense part of this journey, this world and the things that matter to most people, family and all that, that wasn’t even what it was about.

They say anything mystical can’t be explained. It’s something like that. It’s a feeling of such immense power that you can’t even imagine. I’ve never felt anything like it before.

It was about being in a place of infinite space and just being there.

Researcher: There’s an experience of positive mood, sometimes openheartedness and love, a transcendence of time and space. And then, finally, it’s thought to be ineffable. People say, “I can’t describe that.”

Keep going. Experience it. You’re doing beautifully.

One-third of individuals in the study said it was the single most spiritually significant experience of their lives. About 70 percent said it was among the five most personally meaningful experiences of their lives.

And you say, “Well, so what? What does that mean?”

Initially, I thought, I wonder if they don’t have pretty dull lives.

But people would say, “When my firstborn came into this world, I’ll never forget that, and life has never been the same since.” Or, “My father passed away. That was deeply moving to me. I’m different now in the world.”

It’s kind of like that.

Tony Head: The most glorious part was that it made me feel more comfortable with living, because you’re not afraid of dying.

[Video ends]

Making the invisible visible has been a lifelong passion for me, and I’ve seen how nature’s imagery can help people heal.

Later this year, we’re going to do a clinical trial at the Pacific Neuroscience Institute using psilocybin and my nature imagery to treat patients with alcohol use disorders.

These are not programs. They are portals that can take you through time and space.

Let’s take a look at one of those journeys right now, traveling to New Zealand’s highest peak, Mount Cook, and soaring above the heavenly clouds.

[Video plays]

[Video ends]

When you look at nature’s patterns and rhythms, you’re looking into a mirror. You’re going, “Oh my God, I recognize you.”

It is truth and a homecoming for your soul.

We need to feel this ultimate connection with all living things on the planet. That’s the shift in consciousness that we need right now to care about everybody and everything.

This interconnection between us is what makes the world go round.

Let’s take another journey now, this time guided by the voice of Melinda Singer, a doctor who is double board-certified in family medicine and integrative and holistic medicine.

She has discovered that our bodies can find peace and calm quickly if we learn how to take a deep breath and remember our common humanity.

[Video plays]

Melinda Singer: The morning sun finds its way to our faces, and rays of light illuminate contours and shapes unknown and unexpected.

And finally, the light reaches into the very chambers of our hearts.

As you breathe now, place your attention on your heart.

Let the softness and fullness of your breath, breathing next to everyone around you, open you to your own love, your own forgiveness and the magnificent journey of conscious evolution that we all share.

[Video ends]

We all think that stress is easily triggered, and it is. But the healing response is just as easily triggered in the body.

When you experience wonder and awe, you’re in the moment. You experience the divine. And it turns out that blowing your mind is medicinal, and it’s good for the soul.

We feel small in a grand universe, and that experience can help us achieve a profound sense of peace and calm.

This feeling of connectedness with the divine guides us in valuing what is truly most important: the feeling of love.

Let’s share the gift of nature’s healing energy. Let’s empower people with a choice of where and what inspires them, and give them control during their transformational journey.

Thank you for all the great work that you do.