IONS Guiding Premise

The IONS Discovery Lab is creating what will become the world’s largest dataset ever on the effects of transformative practices. Like the Framingham Heart Study which revealed the intricacies of heart disease, or the Human Genome Project, which taught us the fundamental building blocks of our DNA, this research project seeks to unlock a deeper sense of what it means to be human and how we can integrate our interconnection to make the world a better place.

Through the IONS Discovery Lab we will deepen our understanding of how transformative experiences and practices — from leadership development to yoga and meditation to distant healing practices and more — have the capacity to influence one’s sense of interconnectedness, to expand our human capacities, to lead to more compassion and innovation, and ultimately to infuse these skills in personal and professional settings.

Through the largest study of its kind, we hope to answer two questions:

1. What is the relationship between interconnection, extended human capacities, and creating a better world?
2. Which transformative practices most positively influence this relationship?

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I believe in intuitions and inspirations… I sometimes feel that I am right, I do not know that I am.Albert Einstein

Our “moonshot” — a multidisciplinary effort to reliably and robustly demonstrate the mind’s influence on a physical system. The first several decades of our research led the way in innovating research protocols to establish small but highly statistically significant ways that attention and intention appear to impact physical systems, even at a distance. Now, we are investigating potential mechanisms by which that can happen, and under what conditions we can boost those effects, with the eventual goal of using the power of our consciousness to improve health and healing, technology, businesses, and our everyday lives.

After decades of research, we know that our consciousness matters. What we think, believe, intend and pay attention to makes a difference, in our own bodies, in our relationships to others and our environment, and increasing evidence suggests, directly in the physical world. Like electricity once was, we think human awareness could be an invisible but powerful untapped resource for shaping our lives, and our collective future. This premise challenges science to improve its methods, champion academic freedom, and move beyond a purely reductionist, materialist stance.

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