Timothy Schultz:

I am so excited to be joined here right now with Lynne McTaggart. She is an award-winning journalist and an internationally bestselling author of The Field, The Intention Experiment, The Power of Eight, and several other books including The God Notes, which is coming out soon, but Lynne, how are you doing today?

Lynne McTaggart:

I am just great.

Timothy Schultz:

It's great to be here with you. Thank you so much for taking the time. I really, really appreciate it. I'm very much looking forward to this. For people who are watching or listening today who might not yet be familiar with you and your work, you're known for running what is called intention experiments. What are these exactly? How do they work? What does the evidence actually show?

Lynne McTaggart:

Okay great, thank you for asking. I wrote a book called The Field when I got curious about why something like spiritual healing works. I have a background as an investigative reporter. When I started my professional life in my early 20s, I planned to put bad guys in jail. So I broke baby selling rings, I had hidden tape recorders, I did all of that kind of stuff. And then coming a little while later, I got very interested in writing about health, and in the course of doing that, I found these very good studies of spiritual healing. And I kept thinking to myself, wait a minute, if you can have a thought and send it to someone else and make them better, that undermines everything we think about how the world works. So I wrote this book called The Field, which was... The result of talking to a lot of frontier scientists, physicists, biologists, engineers who were coming up with evidence that demonstrated our paradigm. Our scientific paradigm is completely out of date and that we are instead of being these separate well-behaved things that are described in Newtonian science, we are part of a giant energy field. But in the course of writing that book, I had some unfinished business after a number of the scientists I interviewed had carried out very good studies of what they called mind over matter, showing that thoughts are actually things that affect other things. So, being the investigative reporter I am at heart. I started thinking, okay, well, how far can we take this? Are we talking about just shifting something very, very small, like a quantum particle? Or are we talking about curing cancer with our thoughts? And I also, by that time, knew a lot of scientists working in this area and had a lot readers because the field was in 30 languages at that point. In 2007, I published a book called The Intention Experiment. Which was not only a collection of all of the evidence for intention. Thoughts are things that affect other things, essentially, but also an invitation to take part in intention experiments. And what I did was I started collaborating with one of a number of scientists who would set up a controlled experiment, and then I would invite my readers around the world or an audience, if I was speaking somewhere, to take part in this experiment. So to date, we've run 42 experiments. Everything from trying to make seeds grow faster, to purifying water, to lowering violence in war-torn or violent areas, to even healing someone of post-traumatic stress disorder. Of those 42, 38 have shown measurable, positive, mostly significant effects. And these are done only with scientists from prestigious universities like University of Arizona, University of California, Penn State, Princeton, and numerous European universities. Just to put that in context, there is no drug out there with that consistent track record. Our latest one was trying to lower violence in Washington, D.C. We ran a giant intention experiment. On February 1st of this year. And we've just got the data back because you have to wait some months to find out if your intention had an effect. And we found in the three target areas we chose, violence was 58% of what it was the year before. So we lowered it by an extraordinary amount.

Timothy Schultz:

Oh my gosh, that is quite remarkable. So how many people typically participate in one of these intention experiments? And more importantly, how does it really work? I mean, and how are, like, how does this happen, do you think?

Lynne McTaggart:

That's a $64,000 question, how come intention works? Well, how it works in terms of the experiment is very simple. I gather together my readers around the world or I, and in the case of Washington DC, we had an audience of 300 at the Gaia Sphere, Gaia's headquarters, but we also had about 10,000 people participating on live stream. Now we have had anything from 25,000 people to an audience of a hundred taking part in intention experiments. So what we found is size doesn't matter. I'll give you an example of this. Not only size, but distance doesn't matter. I ran an experiment in Sydney, Australia. And this was the first of a batch of experiments we did trying to make seeds grow faster. I was working with the University of Arizona, the noted psychologist, Dr. Gary Schwartz, who set up a very well-controlled experiment with four sets of target seeds, labeled ABCD. When I got to Sydney, I had an audience of about 700. I had them choose one of the sets of seeds. We didn't tell the scientists. We did our intention. Let's say it was group A. We told the scientists we were done, still didn't tell them which ones. That was their cue to plant the seeds. And then they were to measure them five days later. When they finished measuring, I unblinded the study, and lo and behold, the seed with that intention grew significantly higher than controls. Now, we ran that five more times in different locations with different size audiences from New York and South Carolina to Dallas, Texas, LA, and then over the internet with my audience around the world. Every single time, the seeds with intention grew significantly higher than the three controls. And now, let's just think about this for a minute. So, I'm in Sydney, Australia. The scientists had sent me photos of the seeds, so we were sending intention not to the thing itself, but a photograph of the thing, a symbolic representation of the things itself. We were also 8,000 miles away from the target, which was in Tucson, Arizona, those seeds. So... I started realizing that when we do intention, we create a psychic internet of sorts that connects us with the target of our thoughts. And as I said, size didn't matter. Now all we ever do with intention experiments is hold the intention for 10 minutes. So it's not hours of prayer or hours of meditation. It's a very focused thought and is just for 10 minutes, and it's worked every time.

Timothy Schultz:

So you put the energy towards that? Like how do you think... If if I were to participate or someone that's listening or watching this right now, and we were going to participate in an intention experiment, how do you put out the intention effectively?

Lynne McTaggart:

Well, I teach that in a big, big course called the Intention Masterclass. But I'll give you one hint, which is, it's really important to be specific. A lot of people think, oh, I can't be too specific because it will limit what I'm intending for. Nothing could be further from the truth. As I mentioned earlier, we've run intention experiments, and four didn't work. A few of them were technical problems, but one of them, one or two of them were that we weren't specific enough. When we just sent love to water, we didn't have an effect. When we sent an intention to shift it more alkaline by one full pH, we had an effect, so what we've found, and I've found this with working with thousands of students, that when on teaching intention, that they have to be specific, and the more specific, the more likely they are to achieve success. So we're highly specific. We indicate with that seed experiment, we indicated that it needs to be at least a certain amount of centimeters by the fifth day of growing kind of thing. We're always highly specific.

Timothy Schultz:

I don't know from your research if you would even put this in the same category, but how does it compare to like prayer or meditation? In addition to that, with one person intending something versus a group of people, how do you compare those two scenarios?

Lynne McTaggart:

Sure, good question. Well, first of all, it's nothing like either prayer or meditation. Prayer essentially is a supplication. It's sort of saying, God, you decide, thy will be done. With intention it's a very focused thought. It's a very respectful, but very specific request to the universe. And it's non- it's not and it's secular it's non-denominational essentially, which is nice because when people are not religious believers they can still take part. Now what happens with groups is it seems to supersize the intentions and there's a lot of things that happen. But before I get into that, I want to also say that it is completely not meditation and we know this because I did a study with a team of neuroscientists at Life University, one of the largest and most prestigious chiropractic universities in the world. They were interested in my smaller groups, Power of Eight groups. So we did a studied where we put an EEG cap on one member of each of the group and then we had them do an intention for a member of the groups with pain or with sort of physical issue. And what we found was very quickly, and this surprised us because we thought we were going to see brainwave signatures almost identical to those in meditation, and they were completely different. We found that very quickly the parts of the brain involved in feeling, making us feel separate. The parietal lobes which sit back here, they help us navigate through space, they tell us this is me, this is not me. They were dialed way down. So were the parts of the brain, the right frontal lobes, involved with worry, doubt, negativity. They were also dialed down. Now in meditation, certain. Brain waves are increased, alpha waves, slower brain waves that are slower than those of ordinary waking consciousness. Ours, everything was turning down. So our brainwaves looked nothing like those of meditation, to our surprise. What they did look like was almost identical to the work of Dr. Andrew Newberg, a famous neuroscientist then at the University of Pennsylvania who did studies of Sufi masters during chanting and Buddhist monks during ecstatic prayer. So our people were in this study. We're in a state of ecstatic oneness. They turned off the parts that make us feel separate. They were connected. They experienced what many people talk about, essentially a mystical state. And here's the most interesting thing about it. To become a Sufi master, it takes years of practice. To become a Buddhist monk in ecstatic prayer, it usually takes a long time of priming. And yet our people were total novices. These were all students who hadn't even meditated before. Nevertheless, within a minute or two, they entered into that altered state of oneness. So. What I realized from that was, particularly with small groups, power of eight groups, but also intention experiments, where you have groups of thousands, it is essentially a fast track to the miraculous because you enter an altered state. You enter a state of oneness. And we don't get to feel that in our ordinary life. You know, we all talk about, hey, we're all one. But we don't experience life like that. We experience life in a kind of desolate separation, feeling of being lonely people on a lonely planet in a lonely universe. But during these power of eight groups, during these intention experiments, you do get to experience that extraordinary state. And I believe that's the state of transformation.

Timothy Schultz:

So this state of oneness, what do you believe from your research is actually happening?

Lynne McTaggart:

Well, as I mentioned, you know, we operate on, you know, I'm not one who believes everything. All our thoughts are contained within and our consciousness is contained inside our skulls. I believe that the brain is much more of a transducer. It sends out and it receives back and consciousness is sitting out here in the in the field, essentially. But those parts of the brain that are receiving a sense of separation are turned off. So I think that that state of oneness is our natural state. We are all part of this giant energy field, but we don't experience life like that when we get a glimpse of it. It's extraordinarily healing. Now, I should explain that I don't just do intention experiments, but also in 2008, the year after I launched the intention experiment, I decided to try to shrink this all down into a workshop. I wasn't really sure what to do. So I was kicking this around with my team and my husband. We were just sort of saying, well, how would we do this? And I said, I don't know, maybe I'll put them in groups of eight or so and have them send healing intention to a member of the group with a health challenge. And my husband is also a journalist and a very good headline writer. And he said, I love it, the power of eight. And that's how it came about. I didn't expect it to be much of anything other than a feel-good exercise. So I put people into groups of eight on the Saturday of a weekend workshop, had them send intention to a member of the group with a health challenge, and said, okay, come back tomorrow and let's see what happens. And the next day, I called upon the people who had received intention and said Okay, tell us what happened. And there was a woman who had been limping badly from knee arthritis and she walked in normally that day. And somebody else with a really bad, really bad gut problems who said she felt normal. You know, her gut had settled down. Somebody else with depression who said it felt lifted that day and then most extraordinarily someone with cataracts who said she felt her eyes were 80% better. So I was blown away by this and shocked. And it took me 10 years to start studying this, looking at it, practicing with thousands of groups after 10 years of doing all of this and trying to figure out why this was the case. I started recognizing certain things were aiding this. And as I said, I've seen thousands, tens of thousands of healings. Everything from reversing cancer to reversing blindness. The Gaia did a documentary about my work called The Power of Intention. And we have a woman there who was going blind. And doctors couldn't do anything for her. She had damaged retina. She did a power-bake group, and she now has 20-20 vision. We had somebody else who was born with a liver defect, meaning she wasn't producing enough of a certain enzyme, and her liver was deteriorating. She was in her 40s then. Her liver was deteriorating. Doctors could do nothing for her. They said, you're probably looking at a liver transplant soon. And she did one power of eight group, one intention, felt all of this energy in her body, and went for a scan a few months later and her liver and spleen, both of which had been deteriorating, were normal. And I've seen this, as I say, thousands and thousands of times, all kinds of healing. Not just with physical health, but people healing their relationships, healing their businesses, their finances, finding new relationships, finding a new home, finding a new life's purpose. So there's something extraordinary about power of Eight groups. And I've tried to understand it, because I'm not a healer. I'm a journalist, as I told you by background. But what I found is there are several reasons for this. Number one, intention works. No question. The science is there. It's evident. Number two, groups lift us. We were meant to belong. We need community more than we need to breathe. A small group, as the psychologist, the French psychologist Emile Durkheim put it, they create a kind of collective effervescence. We all feel energized by a group. Then there is altruism, which is a huge piece of my work. Because in power of eight groups, and what I do is in numerous classes of mine, I put people into groups and have them meet once a week and do intention for each other. Altruism is really powerful. When you start studying the research on altruism, as I did, you find it's like a bulletproof vest. When you do things for other people, you live longer, healthier. Healthier, happier lives. There's no question about it. And so with a power of eight group, seven-eighths of the time, you're intending for someone else. And I've seen as many healings when people were intending for someone else than when they've had it done for them. So I'll give you an example. Andy Spiros. Andy was desperate to get a job. She was going through a divorce. She had two small children. She needed money and she had sold her gift store business and she just couldn't get work. She was trying to be a coach or a marketer and she was talented in both. Nothing. So I finally said, she was part of my master class. I finally said to her, Andy, get off of yourself. Stop intending for yourself. Stop having your group intend for you. Focus on someone else, and I've got a perfect person for you, and that person was a 15-year-old boy called Luke, who had broken up with his first serious girlfriend, and in a fit of adolescent peak, he threw himself off a 40-foot structure onto hard ground. Now, Luke broke every bone in his body. He had brain damage. He had nerve damage. And doctors were pretty sure he wasn't going to live. So I got my whole master class after hearing from his parents when he asked me to do an intention for him, an emergency one. So I had them do intention for Luke on three successive Sundays while his parents kept a diary of what happened and they shared it with me. What happened right after he got into intention? Well, upshot was Luke got out of the hospital in record time. He was healed and he's now a normal young man in his early 20s. But the most interesting thing is what happened to Andy. The week after she started intending for Luke, she gets a call out of nowhere from somebody she doesn't even know, offering her her dream job. So that I see happening over and over and over again, altruism is like a. Something you put out to the universe and either it is that you change your own state or the universe wants to reward you. Now the most convincing study about that looked at two groups of people and looking at how their lifestyle affected their immune system markers. Now the first group were wealthy. They were with what the researchers called pleasure seekers. They had a lot of money. They enjoyed the good life, as we'd put it. They went on all the kind of holidays they could. They just enjoyed themselves. So the researchers thought, oh, these guys are going to have a great immune system. They had terrible immune system workers. They were perfect candidates for all of the list of degenerative diseases, Alzheimer's, diabetes, heart disease, you name it. These guys were going to drop like flies. They looked at another group. They weren't as wealthy, didn't have as many holidays, but they were living a life of service. They had robust immune systems. These people were going to live forever. So that to me was probably one of the most convincing studies I've ever seen about the power of altruism. And when you look at all the literature about it, it's absolutely clear. Even if you have an illness, if you help somebody else with the same illness, you're more likely to get better. If you suffer all kinds of setbacks in your life, you help other people with it, you're more likely to heal and go forward in your life and so forth. So altruism is a big piece that I think the secret sauce of power of eight groups, more than anything is that sense of oneness. And I've seen it in my intention experiments too. With my February 1 experiment, and in fact, everyone I've done since 2008, I surveyed the participants, and what I find is really extraordinary. Consistently, about 40 percent say they feel more connected, they make up with different relationships, their estranged partners, their estranged children, their estranged parents. They're getting along better with their not-very-nice boss, their relationships are transformed, and interestingly enough, about 50% half consistently say they feel more love for everyone they come in contact with. Essentially, they're hugging strangers. Then about 40 percent report healings. Something is improved or something is downright healed. I'll give you an example from February 1st. A fellow called Dorsi, who had been a type A personality, had started changing. He had taken a master class of mine and his knees, which had been really beat up from playing too much football, were improving. But after he participated in the February 1st experiment, his diabetes, which had been way up at 10, and they'd been giving him a Zempik, they'd be giving him insulin, and it wasn't making a difference. Suddenly, those numbers went down to seven, nearly normal, his blood sugar. And he also had regained hearing in one ear, and his eyesight improved. So, that's an example of some of the things that happen. I've had other people who have reported all kinds of extraordinary healings. Another woman had thrombocytopenia, not enough red blood cells, and her numbers really increased after taking part. One 10-minute experiment. In that case, we ran it 10 minutes a day for five days. But one 10-minute experiment over five days, and they have not only healed Washington, areas of Washington, but they've healed themselves.

Timothy Schultz:

Wow, that is extraordinary. It's very extraordinary. A lot of people watching or listening this particular show, in addition to everything we're talking about, are interested in success and luck or what we see in the material world. Am I understanding correctly that altruism and helping other people is one powerful way to help bring that about?

Lynne McTaggart:

Oh, absolutely. I mean, it shouldn't be your motivation I'm going to help in order to get. But it's what happens. And that's why I like power of eight groups so much, because there's such a virtuous circle. You give without even thinking, because you become really close to this group. They become your intentioned family. I see it over and over again with my master class, where people are sending intentions seven days at a time for other people. But they're getting it back, whether they're receiving and the conscious receiver of it or sending for other people. And they do get in the material world. So it's not just about physical healing. It is also about changing their lives. I just ran a clinic for my master class for 2025. So what happens with a master class is I put people through intention bootcamp, as I put it, and they attend for six successive Saturdays, starting in late February, and for two hours on Zoom. And I teach them all of the big, deep, essentially best techniques for doing intention properly. And really working on it and bringing it out to every area of your life, not just getting stuff but also, although it works with that, but also with relationships, being able to have relationships with anybody, even the people you really don't get along with. Learning how to become more intuitive so you do improve your relationships, learning how to overcome negativity, your own and everyone else's. Learning how to use intention not just for health, but for finances, career, relationships, a new one, or improving it, and life purpose. And also all the big deep dive into how to run a power of eight group. And then I put people into groups. And then, I also run intention clinics quarterly where I mentor people then, and I give them personalized coaching. So I just ran one last Saturday third of fourth for, with my current master class. And I heard from several people, there was one woman who was moving to a part of Portugal with her husband where it should take months to find an apartment and actually secure it. It took her one week with the help of her group. And it should have actually taken even longer than that to even find it. With another woman who intended to start this business, and she got all of the financial aid that she needed right away, right after doing the intention. One of my favorites had to do with a woman who was, she needed 40,000 euros to publish her book, and she really wanted to do this. She had her own little business, but it wasn't doing very well. So her group did an intention for her to have the money to create her book. All of a sudden, she gets 20,000 euros more in business. And she gets $20,000 from a tax rebate from the government. And boom, all of a sudden has the 40,000 she needs. So. We see this over and over and over again. Yes, there is material success that happens over and over again, but that's not the only thing that intention does. We had another woman who was arguing with her husband all the time, and she joined the master class and she had her power of eight group, and suddenly their relationship became really peaceful. And her life became peaceful and she just floats through it now. She says, as the driver of her own life. And that's what also happens too. Also when you are dealing with negativity, I have all kinds of techniques that help you to overcome whatever is getting thrown at you, and there's a lot of negativity out there. But I think there is something else that happens in a group with intention that's really powerful. Another study we did for our February 1st experiment was to take 44 people in the audience and use special equipment created by Dr. Konstantin Korotkov, a Russian physicist, to measure stress and also the activity of the autonomic nervous system, among other things. So we measured stress before, and of course stress was high as an aggregate with these 44 people, because we're all pretty stressed out now when we see what's going on in world. They also looked at their autonomic nervous system. That's the stuff that runs our fight or flight mechanism and also our rest and digest mechanisms. So all of us are on sympathetic nervous system dominance right now. That means we're triggered all the time because so much is being thrown at us. So they looked at what happened before the experiment. Stress way high, sympathetic nervous system super dominant, and then afterward where the stress came right down, and so did sympathetic nervous systems dominant, it became much more equal. So participating in a group has this extraordinary transforming, calming effect, and you don't get it individually. It's the group effect that really does it. And I see it so often, well, I do teach people you can use this by yourself, but it's so much better in a group. It's so more supersized in a groups.

Timothy Schultz:

Well, you have a master class coming up in the end of, or in February. And so that is, I mean, it sounds like one opportunity, but is that correct? What is the master class that's coming up and where can people find you?

Lynne McTaggart:

Okay, thank you for asking. So my master class is my signature course. I have many others, but this one is the big year-long course and what makes it different is that I work with you live. So I'm working with you in live and in interactive session. So you join me for the first six weeks on zoom every Saturday for two hours and I teach different aspects of how to be, how to really master intention. They're more advanced than the beginning classes. It's good for people who have studied this kind of area for a while and also are, you know who really want to dive into it with groups. So after the six weeks of intention boot camp, I then put you in groups. And we organize it for you in a friendly time zone, and according to your preferred meeting times. So our team organize all of that. And then my assignment is, OK, you meet once a week for an hour. And you do intentions for each other. And I give you loads and loads of instructions about how to do it and how to it effectively. And then I... meet with you through the year periodically to help mentor, to hone your skills, to give you personalized coaching, and so forth. And I also send a bunch of things to you that are things to try, ways to improve, etc. So it's, we work together through the year. And people can find out about it by coming, going to my website LynnMcTaggart.com. And there's information about the master class on the front page, and you can also find it under courses.

Timothy Schultz:

Beautiful and we will put a link to that in the description if you're watching this on YouTube or in the show notes if you're listening to this today. And Lynne, this is so fascinating. I have questions that could literally go on for hours, but I know our time is limited and I respect your time But I can't let you go without asking you this. Some people, a lot of people in fact that are watching or listening to this show are really into, and I know you mentioned one aspect of a master class is to, or one thing that someone can do is increase their intuition, if I was hearing you correctly. So, how does intuition relate to what you study and what you're doing with intention?

Lynne McTaggart:

Well, what's really important with intention is to turn off the logical mind, and what I teach people to do is just that. When we're trying to be intuitive, and I'm trying to teach people how to be intuitive about other people, you have to realize that the evidence shows we know what other people are thinking only about 20% of the time, and not very much more. Even with a loved one, even with our partner, we don't know what they're thinking. So I want to teach people how to find out more about what people are thinking, so they can improve their relationships with them. One of the keys is to turn off that logical analytical mind. And so I explain to people that scientists show that our brain operates in in different ways. So if we saw a bear over there running toward us, or something we thought was a bear. It's a shadow. We think, oh God, it's a bear! That thought is in our amygdala, the more primitive part of the emotional brain. And we go, eek! And that immediate hit is really important because if it were a bear, we could hightail it before it ate us. Now, it takes about 11 seconds to then travel to the front of the brain. Which is the logical mind or the logical part of the brain. And then in those 11 seconds, it will clarify it and say, no, no. It was just the wind rustling. It's not a bear at all. But it was very good that we got that initial information because we could, as I say, get out of there. If we waited 11 seconds we would be somebody's breakfast by then. So I teach people how to turn off that logical mind, and to just bring in sense impressions that give people more information. And I show them how to do that. I show how to increase that intuitive part of the brain with a variety of exercises, including... Staying curious, staying awake, essentially, staying, noticing more without judgment. So there's a lot of techniques we do in that particular class.

Timothy Schultz:

That is extremely fascinating. I'm definitely going to check that out. But Lynne McTaggart, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. Is there anything that you want to say today that I don't know enough to ask or that you just want to say?

Lynne McTaggart:

Well, a couple of things. First of all, Gaia are going to be releasing the second part of our documentary soon. And that will be available, I'm sure, through Gaia and eventually on YouTube and definitely on our website, which will tell you all about all of the extraordinary things that happened with our group who did the February 1 experiment. I run periodic experiments myself. They're always free for everyone to join. So if you join my website, you can find out more about it. We've also just launched a membership scheme. You can be part of my club, which is essentially an alternative to Netflix. You can just join me and we do live events every month and I provide a whole lot of goody stuff. So you can find out more about that. You can have access to all kinds of information about how to do intention and many other things by again, checking it out on LynneMcTaggart.com. And also my community, if you want to create a Power of Eight group, you can come onto my community site again at LynneMcTaggart.com. And just advertise, hey, I wanna join a power of eight group. Is there a group in this time zone? And just tell them what your time zone is. But there's lots of other material. I do blogs, I do podcasts, I have a newsletter, a weekly newsletter. And I have new book coming out, which is not going to be out until October, 2026, but it's called The God Notes, and it's all about sound and how sound creates everything from our cells and our brains to our relationships, to nature, and even the cosmos. Believe it or not, the sun makes a very strong note and that note affects us on Earth. So it's all about that and it's about which notes are good for us and which notes are harmful.

Timothy Schultz:

Well, it sounds very, very intriguing. And with sound and vibration and all of this, it is so interesting. So perhaps, hopefully we can have you back for another interview and get deep dive into that. But Lynne McTaggart, thank you so much for your time today. It's extremely fascinating and inspirational. So thank you very much for everything you're doing.

Lynne McTaggart:

Thank you, it's been great to be here with you.