The Goop Lab (2020–…): Season 1, Episode 5 - The Energy Experience - full transcript

When I started goop in 2008,
I was like,

"My calling is something else besides,
you know,

making out with Matt Damon onscreen
or whatever."

And now, it's this modern lifestyle brand.

To me, it's all laddering up to one thing,
which is optimization of self.

Like, we're here one time, one life...

How can we really, like,
milk the shit out of this?

You have a hundred needles
in your face, Elise.

Just another day at the office.

The opportunity that we have
with the goop lab

is that, as a company,
we can go out in different groups



and go on a much deeper dive
into some of these topics

that our readers are curious about.

This is gonna be my first experience

- with mushrooms.
- Oh!

You have to let go of your ego.

So, what happens in a workshop?

Everyone gets off.

What the fuck are you doing to people?

We get to explore, like,
is this real? Do we feel better?

And grapple with some topics
that are hard

and embarrassing or shameful.

Isn't that beautiful?

Relax.

That was, like, next level shit.



So, are you guys ready to go out
in the field and make a ruckus?

- Yeah.
- You can handle it, right?

The entire universe is made of energy.

Only 4.6% of the universe
is considered physical matter.

The human body has an energy field...

...and we're processing
the world through it.

All right, come on up sitting.

The more connected you are energetically,
the healthier you will feel.

So often people don't slow down
and connect,

especially the Western world.

We value achievement over fulfillment.

But I believe the 21st Century
is the age of energy.

Close your eyes. One more, inhale.

We're gonna see this
holistic approach in Western medicine.

Now I'm gonna send that energy through.

We're gonna see energy healing
more and more.

My body was, like, waving and reacting.

There you go, right there.

The first time that John worked
on me, I really just cried.

I had an exorcism.

Beautiful.

What the fuck are you doing to people?

So, I work with energy as a body worker
and a chiropractor.

You have energy that's bound up
in the muscles and ligaments

and spine and fascia and organs
when you're under stress.

So I show up and actually influence
how energy's moving,

so that your body can heal faster

in your physical being,

your emotional being,
your mind, your soul.

Do you find in your practice
that you see people who have diseases

and that through the energy work
things start to shift?

Yeah, for sure.

I'm not treating a particular condition
when I'm working with people,

but I have a hypothesis:

If you just change the frequency
of vibration of the body itself,

it changes the way the cells regrow,

it changes how the sensory system
processes.

- It's amazingly integrated.
- Yeah.

Dr. Lekkos, as an integrated physician,
how do you relate to this?

I've been studying energy medicine
for a few years,

things like magnet therapy,

laser therapy, light therapy,
vibrational therapy

and how they're manipulating
the energetic field of a person

to heal or break up tissue, et cetera.

So, we're seeing more of this manifest
in our medical system.

Yeah.

In the United States right now,
there's integrative medicine residencies

to teach physicians how
to treat people with energy

- with their hands.
- Right.

So, John is trying to teach me
a few pointers and things.

I hear that this is the first time
you've ever let anybody film your work.

Mm-hmm. You know, out of context,
what I'm doing looks...

it just looks wacky, you know?

Because people might be wondering,
"Is this person having a seizure?

Is this an exorcism?
Is this person, um, having an orgasm?

What's happening here?"

- Right? So...
- I wish.

You know?

So, I've been hesitant to show it,

- just because it can look strange.
- Yeah.

But I think it's time
for the world to see.

You look like a Svengali,

- puppeteer master.
- Yeah. Yeah.

What is objectively happening when you,

with your hands feet above a body...

- Yeah.
- ...lift?

What are you pulling on?

What's happening?

You can measure the energy field
of the body,

somewhere between
four and six feet off the body.

The body doesn't end right here
at the skin.

The body is multi-dimensional,

there are layers to it,

and I'm interacting with those layers.

So when I'm moving my hands in the air
and I'm snapping my fingers

and I'm making sounds with my hands,

I'm putting energy into the field
around somebody's body,

and I'm changing their energy system
just by the way I interact with it.

The way we interact with someone,
without even touching them,

at the subatomic level,
changes them in some way, shape or form.

Aah! Sound.

There's been some amazing research done

in the realm of quantum physics
to support this.

One foundational study
is called the double-slit experiment.

It proved empirically,
without a shadow of a doubt,

that our consciousness actually shifts
or alters in some way, shape or form,

physical reality.

But there's also a physical component
of it.

I'm touching the sacrum area

and the lower part of the neck
to generate the wave

moving through the spine...

to try to manipulate the flow
of information

between the brain,
nervous system and muscles.

This approach was actually developed
by a man named Donny Epstein

in an approach called Network Spinal.

I studied with him for many years.

We had a session,

we did a four-way,
like nothing's happening.

- It was a group session.
- Yeah, we had four tables going at once.

- It was three goopers,
- Yeah.

and Julianne Hough joined as our fourth.

You know, it was a really
just extreme somatic experience.

Why wasn't I invited to this shindig?

Because you got
a one-on-one, princess.

Hi, thank you for calling goop.
Ayanna speaking.

Julianne, hello.

Hello.

I have known Dr. John Amaral since 2013.

This work is so transformative

that I just wanted to share my experience

with every single person that I could.

And so, here we all are.

All right, Brian,
is there anything going right now

that you think would be relevant
for me to know?

Yeah, just, you know,
kind of normal stresses of life.

I tend to just be a kind of uptight person
in general.

I think everybody at goop knows me
to be a bit of a skeptic.

I'm gonna be working
off the physical body,

- in the field of energy around your body.
- Mm-hmm.

The scientist in me wants
to question everything.

- Hi, Janay.
- Hey.

I just wanna check in with you.

- I would say a lot of, like, chest pain.
- Okay.

Gets hard to sleep sometimes.

I have episodes of sleep paralysis.

It's a very scary experience.

It's like you can't move, you can't talk,
and you're kind of, like, stuck.

Get comfortable there
and I'll be right back over.

So, right, what's going on? Anything?

Just anxiety.

It's just been a really intense few weeks.

Okay.

I am anxious always, um...

which is sort of my...
one of my baselines in my life.

Go ahead and go face down.

And I just want to, honestly, release.

I'm gonna come a little bit
off the body here,

about three or four feet is where
there's the most access

in the field of energy around you,
right there.

You're...

It'll help that move through
that lower sacrum area.

Your physical body is held
in different patterns by so many factors.

A lot of people's emotional energy
gets bound up.

The tip of the tailbone will tuck under

when we feel, like, victimized
or traumatized.

So we can see that our emotional system

is like a fluid network
through the whole body,

it's not like emotion happens
in your head.

It actually happens
in the sites on our body.

And so, when I'm working on people

and when energy starts moving
and they start releasing,

how emotion expresses
is through movement and sound.

Right there.

The first time
I worked with John,

I'll never forget this
because I'm a dancer.

I'm very connected to my body,
and my body just sort of took over.

There was this one moment last year

when John was actually working
around my foot,

and I got angry.

And then I just had such deep sadness.

And it was actually a memory that I had,

and it was connected to a trauma
that happened to me when I was ten

that I hadn't even thought of
for 20 years.

At ten years old,

my parents
went through a pretty aggressive divorce,

and I lived with my dance coaches.

It was not the best living situation,

and so I had this, like,
really just pissed-off anger,

like, literally attached in my foot,
basically.

Oh!

This method works incredibly well for me

because it helps me experience
and go back to things

and be able to shift them.

Finish that stretch there.

Beautiful, Brian. Sweet.

Really nice.

Here. We're gonna come off the body here,
out in the field. There you go.

What's happening when I'm working
with people

is that they're feeling
intense experiences and feelings,

- that whole emotional range,
- Right.

from absolute sensitivity
and vulnerability

to the range of absolute frustration,
anger and despair.

- Hello, Janay.
- Hi.

There's that area
right behind your heart.

And imagine this kind of funnel of energy

going from the back of your heart,

all the way through the front,
shooting out the front.

Yeah. Good. Beautiful.

Yeah, that's coming
right through your heart now.

Now, just let that out with a little...

Janay, who had
a very emotional experience with you,

quiet, not a lot of movement,
but emotional.

I'm not a big crier.

But I'm somebody who keeps a lot
of their emotions close to their chest.

I fell into, like, a deep meditative state

and then it kind of intensified.

I was, like,
playing everything back in my life.

It was a way to express myself
and let things go,

that I was holding onto for, I think,
a really, really long time.

She felt all this density
and pressure in her heart,

and she felt physical tension
in her heart.

- That's actually sadness or grief.
- Yeah.

When I first met John,
there was a woman on the table.

She was screaming,

and her body was just kind of,
you know, moving.

And I immediately thought,
"Wow, what's... what's wrong with her?"

You know, "Woo-woo," you know,
"bullshit, not true.

Just, you know,
a bunch of privileged people in LA."

But, you know, at the same time,
I was curious.

I wanted to get on the table myself.

During the time that I met John,
I was living with massive pain.

I had migraines and depression.

The first time I got on the table
with John,

I started to sob uncontrollably.

Memories started coming up
of my childhood, growing up.

I grew up where food was a scarcity.

Um, there was a lot of abuse,

and at the time,
I was so ashamed of my childhood,

and I was so ashamed of,
quote, unquote "where I came from."

And the session on the table,

it was almost like this release

of... what I had been holding in.

I left with this
completely different perspective.

Fast forward to now,

I feel this overwhelming peace
and calmness,

and every single cell in my body

knows it and feels it.

Dr. Lekkos, do you believe that

- there is a correlation between
- Yeah.

what's happened to you
and different traumas,

to how it's showing up in the body
and expressing the symptom?

It's almost like a memory gets stored
in your brain

or the emotion sometimes will store
in your body.

- Like molecules of emotion?
- Yes.

I've had the privilege to work
with a body worker here in LA,

pushing on people's thighs

and grown men starting to cry
like babies and memories coming out.

So, we're seeing how emotional pain
gets stored in our cells.

There are researchers, PhDs,

looking at the science behind
the human energy field

and people like you, Dr. Lekkos,

- are actually open to exploring.
- Exactly.

I don't think the technology's quite there
to measure energy healing,

but just 'cause something isn't proven,
doesn't mean it doesn't work.

Look what he's doing
and other people who do what you do,

- they're helping people get better.
- Yeah.

Come over to you, Elise. Here...

I'm gonna actually come off your body
quite a ways,

just because this is where
it's most receptive to you out here.

And energy move
right through here, up...

and there.

Doing amazing
letting the sound come through.

I have to get it to release.

Yes.

Sound is hard, you know.

I don't even know if I could scream
into a pillow.

- Hmm.
- Really?

I don't know that
I'm unlike a lot of women.

I feel like it's hard.

Culturally, we so suppress sound

and the expression of weird sounds.

We don't want to make weird sounds,
because then we'd be weird.

And so a lot of people's anxiety,
a lot of people's stress,

it's not expressing as emotion,

it's not actually coming out
as the movement and sound.

It's like contorting yourself
or lowering your standards

to make other people comfortable,
trying to be perfect,

- doing things you should do.
- So, just being a woman, basically?

Right, totally.

Just gonna draw the energy
up through the front of your solar plexus,

your heart, your chest, your throat.
There you go right there.

When you've worked on thousands of people,
you start to see patterns.

This pattern usually shows up for people

that have all these roles
and responsibilities and duties,

and they torque themselves up.

Is my body in half?

Feels like I'm bending in half.

Yeah, well your... your whole...

Yeah, your whole sacrum, lower spine
is raising up right there.

I had an exorcism.

Further from the body.

Okay, let your neck rock back
into extension.

Let this come up through.

And it felt like I was being, like,
pulled by a rope.

It was very painful, actually.

And then he just snapped his fingers
and I just started retching.

I dry heaved for a while.

Could you, like, get any goop-ier?

I could not get any goop-ier.

- Now people are gonna think I'm a witch.
- Yeah.

She's goop-ier than I am.

Yeah.
It feels amazing when you get the release.

But I pray that it looks

less crazy than it feels,

because I felt like I was standing
on my head

at points during that session.

When you've had the work,
what has it felt like for you?

Um...

Well, the first time that John worked
on me,

I really just cried pretty much
the whole time.

So, for me,
I felt like John was just helping me

- sort of metabolize a whole lot of stuff.
- Hmm.

As an actor, you're embodying these
different experiences,

like putting yourself
into a certain energy,

you're building up, like, an architecture,
an armory.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think everybody
does it differently.

For me, it is a very energetic experience.

But how do you preserve your energy?

Like, how do you keep it clean and strong?

I see John as much as I can,

but he's busier than I am, almost.

All right, so what's going on
for you right now?

Um... I'm just...
I'm really, really tired.

Um, it's been a really stressful
couple of weeks of just work.

I feel like all the energy's
just zapped out of my body.

Well, I'm glad that we're
doing this session.

Me too.

So, we'll get your body out
of the go, go, go, stress mode

and get it into the parasympathetic,
rest and relaxed.

I'm gonna have you go
face down on the table.

Okay.

We're starting to get some energy moving.

I noticed when you work on me,
my nervous system, it'll sort of spasm,

especially places where I've had injury.

Like, I had an emergency cesarean
with my daughter,

after being in labor for three days.

- It's not a good story.
- Yeah.

Um... but the cesarean scar
is really still...

I wouldn't say...
It's more emotionally painful to me.

It doesn't feel like physical pain,
but I feel it as like this wound, still.

When our bodies are cut into,

we don't think about, like, the energetic
kind of planes that we're rupturing.

In my experience,

it's more difficult to heal
on the energetic level than the skin,

which heals, knits together very quickly,
but for me anyway,

those interventions really have stayed
with me and need care.

Yeah, that's such
a well-articulated thought there.

I'm a true believer that the fascia,
the connective tissue,

that when you have a C-section
or when you have a surgery

or you have an injury
that injures those fascia tissues,

they actually are made up
collagen fibers,

and they transfer energy through them,

like a fiber optic cable, almost.

- Right.
- It's considered a liquid crystal,

which is like when you touch,
like, an LCD screen,

you see the little ripples come out.
That's how energy goes through the...

It's like a whole...

And it's so weird, it just looks
like Saran Wrap or something,

and it holds all
of this incredible information.

But it's totally dismissed
by most conventional doctors, right?

They're like,
"Fuck fascia, it's connective tissue."

Probably one of the well-known researchers
in this area, James Oschman,

has done incredible work

around the science of how fascia
and connective tissue

is a whole matrix of which
consciousness is expressed.

We're coming up against
some limitations

of the matter-to-matter kind of healing,

where you do physical
to work on the physical.

But sometimes people need
to have surgery,

- and you can't avoid it.
- Yeah.

I just want to use all the tools we have
and all the modalities and work together

- to help people on this path.
- That's exactly right.

I had follicular B-cell lymphoma,

which was creating numbness
from the chest down.

I was unstable. I couldn't run.

The great thing is it's a curable cancer.

What they didn't know was
what would happen with the numbness.

They're like, "You know, you might
never get that feeling back."

And I was like,
"No, I'm going to get that feeling back."

I've heard of John's work
through other people,

through more word of mouth.

I didn't get on the tables at first

and I sit back, watching
and I'm thinking,

"Okay... uh, this is interesting."

And then we actually
did a session that night.

He didn't even touch me.

In that particular session,
my back was starting to, you know,

kind of crack, crack, crack, crack,
and he was not touching me.

Which I found super,
and I go, "What is going on, John?"

He goes, "Your body's just kind of
moving itself where it needs to go."

You know, after four
or five sessions with John,

I could feel the energy flowing up
and down my spinal column.

And I'm happy to say,
I'm able to run again.

So, that's cool.

- Turn your head to the left.
- Okay.

Okay, great, then back to the middle.

After the session, we had Janay come in,
and she laid on the table.

And he's trying to teach me how
to treat people like this.

Why don't you come around this side

and I'll just show you...

We're gonna start in her sacrum area.

If you touch right here, very gently,

you'll feel an area
where it's more receptive,

- It's almost like...
- A sponge.

It kind of of draws you in, it's softer.

So he had me put my hand on her back,

and I closed my eyes
and was kind of concentrating

and trying to feel or open
my consciousness into what's going on...

There's really a lot of energy
flowing right in this one little point.

Lighten your touch up and ask her,
in a way, her body to just open.

Right there.

And that's where
that opens this dimension up

between energy and the physical

- and you go into, like, a space...
- Yeah.

and that space is where things
can really start flowing.

And I felt my hand go inside of her body,

it went down.

Even though I knew my hand was still,
but I felt it go down

- and then up again.
- Oh, my gosh.

And then down, but with her
respirations,

I could feel it go really deep.

So, I was like,
"Maybe this is some kind of...

I'm playing a trick on myself."
I was like, "Let's try it somewhere else."

Come right into like...

You're looking for that same feeling.
Like, right here.

Mm-hmm.

We're gonna send that

and direct it, actually, up.

Tell me when you feel it at that end start
to move a little bit.

There.

The same thing.

My hand goes inside of her head,
outside of her head,

inside, outside.

And that was really awesome.
I'm like, "John, what is happening?"

It's like you're feeling
another dimension.

You're on another plane.

It's not a physical touching thing,
it's really interesting.

We used to take a phone book
in chiropractic college,

and we would put, like,
a little needle under some pages

and then we would put more pages...

And pretty soon, by the end,

you could feel the needle
through the whole book.

You're training your receptors
to pick up information

rather than try to go down through it.

And that's key
to having this kind of response happen

is being able to receive that information.

- How do you explain that?
- I don't know.

That's what I'm saying,
you can't measure this stuff.

So, Janay, do you notice,
when we're doing this off your body,

do you notice something going on?

- I feel like I melt into the table.
- Yes.

Janay woke up in the middle of the night
and purged for an hour.

- Really?
- Yeah.

She threw up from three a.m. to four a.m.

Her body went out
of flight or fight.

It went into relaxation
and the parasympathetic nervous system,

which is in charge of resting
and digesting

and healing and detoxing, kicked in.

So, it's not surprising
that later that night

her body was continuing to purge
because emotions,

if you can't move it through
as waves and sounds and vibrations,

then you hold it as physical tension.
So, there's this loop.

The first time, I also kind of bar...

Not barfed, but I thought I was gonna.

I think you said it was an energetic...

- Barf.
- Yeah.

Nothing came out,
but it felt as if I was throwing up.

It was like the slate
had just been cleaned, you know?

And I think afterwards,
I felt incredibly, deeply...

peaceful.

All right, Gwyneth, come on up sitting.

How you feeling?

I feel like I could sleep for, like...

I feel like I could go to bed
for the whole night right now.

Yeah.

But I feel much better.

Your body needs sleep.

But give it about, like, ten or 15 minutes
and you'll start to come back up,

'cause you just went
to a really deep place

- where it will recharge and reset.
- Yeah.

One more, inhale.

Fold forward. Release.

This is the century where
we're gonna have massive upgrades

in how we view energy,
human energy, the human energy field.

Inhale, warrior two.

Are simple things
that everyone can do

to try to get energy flowing better?

Exhale. Reverse your warrior.

We can use our hands almost like
a stethoscope to feel ourselves.

Take one last inhale together.

What's there just needs a...

Exhale. Down dog.

I do that all the time now.

So if I feel anxious or I'm at my desk

and I start to feel like out of body,

I put my hands, like throat and heart,

and I just, I'm like, "Oh, wow,
there's a lot going on in there."

And then, I just kind of breathe
and it's almost like bringing...

You said, "Bring some tenderness,
you know, through your hands to it."

Lay down on your back.

Anybody could sit at home

and kind of put their own hands
on the areas of their body

where they feel the most stuck
and just sit with it, just observe it.

Namaste, guys. Thank you so much.

So many of us walk around in our heads,

with our to-do lists
and what we have to do,

and the experience of being in our bodies

and integrated with our bodies

is not something a lot of us experience
all day, every day.

The first time I worked with John,

it was, like, really trippy and crazy.

I could almost feel
where his hands were going to be

- Yeah.
- without seeing them. It was really weird.

My body was, like, waving and reacting.

The scientist in me wants to, like,
do some research,

ask some questions,
come up with, like, a hypothesis

and then kind of rinse and repeat
and see if I do notice anything different.

But I think that the fact that I was able
to relax and quiet my mind,

it was therapeutic for me in that sense.

I feel very airy and grounded.

I've been sleeping like...

I'm not saying it may have fixed this...

- but I have been sleeping a lot better.
- You have trouble sleeping, right?

Yeah, I usually have
sleep paralysis-like episodes.

As we get more integrated
and more whole,

that means all the parts of us
that are hard to be with, the sad parts,

the scared parts, the helpless parts,
the parts that feel lonely,

the parts that feel like
we're not enough...

if we start to feel those
and be with them,

we can be fully accepting of them.

What happens is that those things
don't trigger us

in the world out there so much,

and we can be with so much more

of the range of human experience
and emotion

without getting triggered.

It was really crazy.

It seems pretty normal for a day
at goop now, don't you think?