Before ghost-hunting shows and viral psychic videos, UCLA ran a real parapsychology lab, hidden in the old Neuropsychiatric Institute. In this episode of Nightly Bruin, Jina Bae, Audrey Turner, Olivia Miller and Srinidhi Naragajan uncover the strange history of the lab – from psychic experiments and telepathy tests to celebrity visits and chilling premonitions that turned tragically real. Featuring exclusive interviews with Dr. Barry Taff and Dr. Judith Orloff, we dive into the forgotten story of when UCLA tried to study the unexplainable – and what it cost.
Jina Bae: Hello, and welcome to nightly Bruin, where we uncover the mysterious side of UCLA. My name is Jina bae, and I’m a podcast contributor at the Daily Bruin.
Audrey Turner: And this is Audrey Turner, and I am a podcast contributor as well. Today, we are tapping into the paranormal, the study that tries to explain the unexplainable.
JB: So, first, what is parapsychology?
AT: Psychology Today defines it as a field of study that investigates paranormal or psychic phenomena, including purported mental abilities such as telepathy or telekinesis. Parapsychologists aim to test the existence and explore the nature of experiences and abilities in the paranormal realm.
JB: And what do they study?
AT: So they study extrasensory perception, telepathy, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, psychometry and a lot more.
JB: And where was this studied?
AT: It was actually studied right here at UCLA for 10 years, 1968 to 78.
JB: Wow, how did people react to this?
AT: According to Barry E. Taff, who is a former researcher at the UCLA Parapsychology lab. Reality TV entertainment polluted its legitimacy. This caused people to doubt it, labeling it as pseudoscience. As a matter of fact, Carol Burnett came by the Parapsychology lab to try creating photos with her mind. The people making the exorcist visited while researching for the movie. William Fredkin, the director, actually consulted with the researchers.
JB: Speaking of the entertainment industry, who was Thelma Moss?
AT: Yeah, so she was a Broadway actress turned screenwriter. Her interest in starting the lab was catalyzed by a former encounter with Alec Guinness, the star of one of her movies, and then James Dean, someone who the two met at a restaurant. Dean showed the two a sports car, and Guinness warned him that if he got in that car, he would be dead in the next week. Dean brushed it off, but ended up being killed in an accident the very next Friday.
JB: Did Moss continue pursuing this path as a screenwriter?
AT: No, she did not. Unfortunately, her husband died just after their daughter was born in 1954, which drove her to depression and suicide attempts. She attempted some other psychiatric treatments, but finding them lacking, she turned to LSD assisted therapy. After her positive experiences with it, she wrote a book called “My Self and I,” eventually pursuing a psychology doctorate degree.
JB: Where did her experiences take her next?
AT: Well, she decided to start teaching at UCLA, specifically in the field of medical psychology. However, one of her most notable aspects of her teaching career was founding a lab that studies paranormal phenomena.
JB: What were some of the most significant areas of research?
AT: Her controversial research on Kirlian photography is what she’s best known for. She was excited by the prospect of creating images that embody religious halos and the legendary aura that could aid treatment for rare diseases like cancer.
JB: Is this technique still used today?
AT: It’s not used for treatments Moss envisioned, but rather for more of an art form today.
JB: Is there anyone notable that she trained?
AT: Barry E. Taff, Kerry Gaynor and Judith Orloff are three established parapsychologists who she trained, who completed tasks ranging from examining haunted locations to becoming an associate professor of clinical psychiatry at UCLA.
JB: Barry E. Taff was a researcher with his own psychic abilities; the lab published a paper specifically on Barry E. Taff in a medical journal.
AT: Is this paper available to the public?
JB: No, according to Taff, publishers rejected publication of the research paper as the data collected from him was unique. Thus editors assumed that the equipment was broken.
AT: Well, how did the lab collect data, if not on a researcher himself, like Barry E. Taff, how did this lab operate on a daily basis?
JB: Researchers Barry E. Taff and Karry Gaynor would go to investigate houses. They had a methodological approach, as they had an extensive interview with subjects who reported cases of paranormal activity first.
AT: What were these questions for?
JB: The questions were to weed out cases that had normal explanations. Turns out, in the 4800 cases, most of them had normal explanations.
AT: Okay, well, how about the cases that didn’t have normal explanations?
JB: There was one famous case in Culver City, where reports mentioned seeing objects moving on their own and weird lights appearing out of the blue. The first time researchers entered the house, they said a frying pan flew out of the cupboard at them. Researchers took the cabinet apart in attempts to figure out what was happening, but failed to make meaningful conclusions. Ultimately, the Culver City case was turned into a movie called The Entity with Barbara Hershey.
AT: What happened to the lab? Did anyone visit?
JB: People did. One such case involved Albert Salmi, a Hollywood actor known for Escape from the Planet of the Apes, Dragonslayer, Caddyshack and Gunsmoke. In the 1970s, Salmi’s wife, Roberta, visited the UCLA parapsychology lab. During her visit, several research subjects reported unsettling premonitions – visions of a tragic fate for Roberta. They predicted a dark and violent event involving Roberta and her husband, raising concerns that something tragic might unfold in the future. She ignored the warning.
AT: Wow. So what happened next?
JB: Then, years later, in April 1990 Albert Salmi killed Roberta in a murder suicide in the couple’s home. Taff himself later recounted this event, emphasizing how research subjects at the lab had predicted the tragedy years before it happened.
AT: So, what were the objectives of these studies?
JB: According to Doctor Barry Taff and Kerry Gaynor in an interview following the release of the movie “The Entity,” they stated their effort is to reveal an objective reality to supernatural events that had been treated as subjective experiences for the past hundreds of years.
AT: So, were there other institutions, apart from UCLA lab, that conducted research in the field of parapsychology?
JB: Yes, some other notable institutions included the Duke University’s Parapsychology laboratory of the 1930s to 1960s, Stanford Research Institute, which ran between 1970s to 80s, and the Princeton engineering animals Research Lab running between 1979 to 2007 notably, the Stanford Research Institute was a CIA responsive research to develop military applications of remote viewing, the alleged ability to perceive distant or unseen locations, objects or people through extrasensory perception. The idea was to train individuals to visualize and describe hidden targets, such as enemy military installations, without being physically present.
AT: And I know there are a lot of students who would love a research position in a Parapsychology lab. So, does the UCLA lab still exist today?
JB: No. The lab gained so much popularity that it drew the attention of influential people in the field, like Carlos Castaneda and Uri Geller. But this popularity led to UCLA shutting down the lab and firing Moss in 1978.
AT: So, how long did Thelma continue her work for?
JB: She continued working in private, but due to a cerebral aneurysm in the 1980s she had to stop working.
AT: And, she had a prominent influence, according to her, she was able to improve the telepathic abilities of her subjects with techniques like sensory deprivation, emotionally charged material and drug induction, which are employed by many parapsychologists today.
JB: Our producer contacted Barry E. Taff, who is willing to speak with us for the episode of Nightly Bruin.
AT: Thank you for listening to this episode of Nighty Bruin from Daily Bruin podcasts. You can listen to other Nightly Bruin episodes and other Daily Bruin podcasts on Spotify, SoundCloud and Apple Podcasts.
-
https://www.britannica.com/topic/parapsychological-phenomenon
-
https://dailybruin.com/2010/10/26/ucla_lab_researched_parapsychology_in_the_70s
-
https://library.duke.edu/exhibits/2020/parapsychology?utm_source=chatgpt.com
-
https://www.americanghostwalks.com/articles/thelma-moss-los-angeles-parapsychologist
Olivia Miller: The Daily Bruin sat down with Barry Taff and Judith Orloff to explore the unexplainable and their experiences being involved in the world of parapsychology, which The Bruin couldn’t independently verify.
OM: Doctor Taff, welcome to The Nightly Bruin.
Barry Taff: Thank you for inviting me. I’m happy to be here.
OM: So, can you start by telling us a little about yourself?
BT: Okay, it’s real simple. Growing up, I was having chronic paranormal experiences – telepathic, precognitive, out-of-body – all that. And it was normal for me, but it wasn’t normal for my friends and family. They began to think, “What’s wrong with Barry?” You know? So they kept happening, and the older I got, the more frequent they became.
So I learned that a woman named Dr. Thelma Moss had a laboratory at UCLA dealing with parapsychology – not a department, a laboratory. It was located in what’s called the old Neuropsychiatric Institute, part of the medical center. Now it’s called the Semel Institute because Terry Semel gave money to it. We were on the fifth floor – it was weird, the bottom floors were two levels lower, then it went up. We were on the fifth floor, the small lab, and that’s where the fruitful work was being done.
And what really was the demise of her career was getting involved in Kirlian photography – which is a waste of time. It’s not paranormal photography, it’s corona discharge, and it can be manipulated by things like humidity or lack of moisture. Because she got away from the actual paranormal work and focused on Kirlian.
She was hired as a clinical psychologist to have patients, evaluate them and write assessments – but she was doing more of the Kirlian photography. How all this began was with Dr. West – he was the head of the NPI. We met, but we didn’t really know each other.
What I didn’t know until a few years ago was that he was the one who sent intelligence people to my research group, not Dr. Moss. So he knew what we were doing, but he couldn’t acknowledge it or he’d be fired.
I should say another thing that got me involved with this field is that I’m a medical intuitive. I can look through people like I’m looking through glass. I can diagnose the problems people have – or are going to have – with regularity. And it’s caused a lot of problems. Friends and people feel very awkward or stressed around me, worried I’m going to pick up something on them. It’s that simple, and I can’t explain it.
OM: Do you have an exact reason why it shut down?
BT: Well, it’s pretty simple. Universities – whether they’re public like the University of California or private like USC or Stanford – they exist on endowments. People endow money to the university so they can keep functioning. If the university is linked to something that most people think is wacky or crazy, those endowments disappear. It’s that simple. Paranoia, I get it. If I weren’t there, I’d say, “No, no.” But that’s what it comes down to.
OM: This kind of work is not accepted in mainstream science. And I think in previous phone calls, you were saying how it’s sometimes labeled as anti-science. Right, so how do we bridge the gap between making this a more legitimate field of study?
BT: Study my ability in telepathy and precognition, clairvoyance, whatever you call it. I’d be in one part of the lab, in a special chamber – an isolation chamber that shields you from the environment. I’d be in there, and Dr. Moss would be doing something else on campus or further away. My job was to describe what I saw. This went on for weeks and months. Nothing – until something critical happened.
They took measurements of my body, including an EEG. So they wired me up – electrodes on my head – and in normal waking consciousness, like I am now speaking, I was generating about 10 hertz at about 1,000 microvolts, which would kill a horse. They did it again. You could hear the needles on the dial – boom, boom, boom – because the amplitude was so high. We did it again.
A study was done and submitted to medical journals. One of them published it in 1974 or ’75, I forget the journal’s name. But one thing they refused to publish was the neurophysiological data. They said anyone who had that kind of amperage in their brain would die, go into seizure or worse. They wouldn’t publish it.
We went to three different labs at the medical center and got the same measurements. Most people generate weak EEG signals. So I was talking to Dr. Moss, and they said, “We’re sorry, but this can’t be real. No one has brainwaves like that.”
So I became a research assistant in the lab. I was finishing my bachelor’s degree and then entered a doctoral program at UCLA in psychophysiology and biomedical engineering – a cheaper way to study medicine. But I got in trouble because I asked too many questions in class. Professors told me, “If you keep asking questions, we’ll throw you out.” They didn’t like being questioned, especially when they didn’t have the answers.
I got my doctorate in 1975, and the lab was still running. I did two things. One was what became known as remote viewing – the ability to see what’s in another room or location. This was before video cameras. My theory was, if you use a standard learning paradigm, could you train people to be psychic – people who’d never had those experiences?
Worst case, nothing happens. Best case, something. So we started running the work – couple times a week, using sensory deprivation. Complete darkness, no sound, only your mind. Rather than writing things down, I told people to verbally describe what they saw.
This went on and on. We had lots of people come in – some regular men and women, but others just kept showing up. I didn’t know who they were. One gave us a name for something that sounded really bizarre. I remember describing a new submarine with something called the Trident D5 missile. This was before those submarines were even built.
These people kept showing up. We described environments we couldn’t have known about. And some of the things I or others said were so specific, they demanded we surrender the audio tapes because there was classified information on them.
Then the government started visiting our group more frequently. We didn’t know who these people were at first. They were mostly men, some women – adults, older than me by at least a decade. We had visitors from the Department of Defense, DARPA, the CIA, the NSA – all these intelligence agencies. They kept trying to test us, and it worked.
We could control it to a degree. It worked well enough that we were shocked by the continuity of it. The method we used, standard learning paradigm, if you’re doing a specific task, and you’re informed as to when it is working properly or not working properly, you’ll begin to understand what to do to make it work again. Standard learning paradigm. When you’re in any form of academia, that’s normal.
Eventually, we got bored. We moved on to something even more compelling: investigating poltergeists and hauntings. Over the years, we’ve done thousands of cases. I’d say 99% of them, you go out, interview people, measure the environment, and leave. That’s it. It’s like winning the billion-dollar lottery, very rare.
But once in a while, something happens that really shakes everything up.
My old colleague Kerry Gaynor was in Hunter’s Books in Westwood, talking about our work. A woman overheard and said, “Excuse me, my house is haunted.” She gave us her number. We went out to her house in Culver City on August 22, 1974. Rundown shack. Smelled like something died, decomposing odor, urine.
Her name was Doris Bither. Well, the first thought I had was that she needed psychologist intervention, not parapsychological investigation. The house was horrible – hot, humid, no air conditioning. We didn’t think we could do anything. But about a week later, she called again. More things were happening. It wasn’t far from where both Kerry and I lived, so we went back.
Same kind of thing – really hot, really humid. We were in the kitchen. One of the lower cupboard doors flew open, and an iron skillet flew across the kitchen. We checked – animals, no kids, no wires or springs.
Skeptics say “How far did it go?” Who cares? We were there to collect data. Something paranormal was clearly happening.
As the case evolved, we found that the phenomena were somehow tied to music. When she played certain music, stuff would happen. She played Black Sabbath – music that could drive anything, living or dead, crazy. The cupboard flew open again. In her bedroom, we captured a photo that looked like a comet, this ball of light with a tail.
We were using Tri-X 6400 film, Kodak’s sensitive black-and-white film at the time. Things just kept escalating. Items moved around. Lights showed up in the room. We ended up investigating that case for 10 weeks – long for us.
At one point, we were in her bedroom. Lights started showing up. To make sure it wasn’t coming from outside, we sealed all the windows with black poster board. Since we couldn’t tell how fast it was moving, we even labeled the walls with magnetic orientations – West, North, East, whatever.
And then we saw these beautiful, floating, corpuscular masses – if you remember what a lava lamp looks like. It looks like these large things of green Jell-O zipping around the room. watched them come and go. We took photos.
One night, Doris was sitting on her bed. Lights zipped around her. We captured two of our most famous photos from that case. In one, you see Doris flinching, lights arcing around her. In another, there’s a secondary arc in the upper left corner.
Here’s what we learned. Before Doris moved to Culver City with her four kids, she’d lived in Santa Monica. Similar phenomena had occurred there, but less frequently. So we started to think this was an extension of Doris, not the house.
I don’t personally believe there was some conscious entity assaulting her. That’s what people think, but my gut tells me otherwise. If I met her today, the first thing I’d do is test her for epilepsy.
In my 56 years in this field, almost every poltergeist agent I’ve met turned out to be seizure-prone or epileptic. That doesn’t mean all epileptics are poltergeists, but there’s something in between we haven’t identified yet.
Many people will be like, “Oh, by the way, I’m epileptic,” after telling us about their experience. It’s almost always the missing link.
I discuss this in my book, “Aliens Below.” I use the term “inductive resonance coupling,” a physics concept. If someone is hypersensitive to these services, their body may be more permeable. The environment affects them, and they end up emitting things they wouldn’t otherwise.
Doris eventually moved from Culver City to Carson. Now she was wise. We never brought her in front of the media. She would’ve been a terrible public witness. By that time, I knew Frank Delfino, the filmmaker, director and writer. We invited him to meet Doris. And she was very cryptic with Kerry and I, she wouldn’t even tell us her age. Nowadays, I get up and leave. Not worth our time.
So she moved, and the phenomenon moved with her. She never told her new neighbors about anything.
OM: Now, we turn to our conversation with Dr. Judith Orloff, a UCLA psychiatrist, author and former member of the parapsychology lab who explores the connection between intuition, energy and emotional well-being.
Srinidhi Nagarajan: I saw that you joined the UCLA parapsychology lab when you were 19 years old, so I was curious about what drew you in and what your first encounter with the work was like.
Judith Orloff: Yes, that lab was run by my mentor, Dr. Thelma Moss, who was a premier parapsychologist. And she studied – you know, in today’s terminology, she studied consciousness. In those days, it was called parapsychology.
JO: More she was, what brought me there was that I was an empathic child. I was an empath, and I had very strong intuitions that came true that were very hard for me to integrate into my life, and my parents, who were both doctors, and I have 25 doctors in my family, said, “Never mention another one of your intuitions again at home.” So I went through a period where I got involved with drugs as a teenager, and I was eventually sent to the psychiatrist, Dr. Jim Grold, who was able to say to me, “In order to be whole, you have to incorporate your intuition into who you are.” And I’d like you to go see this parapsychologist, Dr. Thelma Moss at UCLA. So my psychiatrist, at a very young age, sent me over there, which was fantastic. You know, it was the best thing that ever could have happened to me. And she welcomed me into her lab. She gave me to test, me to – she gave me her keys. I went to her little office downstairs, and she tested me, and I held her keys, and she says, “Just tell me what comes to you. It could be anything.” And so I shared some impressions that I had, and she said, “They’re very accurate. I think you need to come and volunteer in our lab, and you’re going to learn so much and feel so much better about yourself as a result.” And so I began, you know, at that age, to work in the most wondrous place that is imaginable for me, because I, you know, it always felt not a part of, I always felt different. I always felt nobody understood me, and this was the first place where they truly did understand me. I mean, more than that, scientists were basing their careers on this topic. So it was just a teeny, tiny little lab. It was like a hole in the wall, and so it didn’t have much space in the UCLA system, but Jolly West befriended Thelma Moss and was her champion, so she stayed there for many years.
SN: I’m very curious to hear a bit more about what Thelma Moss was like as a mentor, like, maybe apart from those kind of – that initial integration throughout your work in the lab, how she encouraged you to embrace your abilities and helped you feel involved in the work that was happening, and just kind of more about your experience with her in general.
JO: Well, she always wore a white coat with her name on it. She was a very strong woman, very authoritative woman. She didn’t put up with much, you know, she just was devoted to the work, and she was very curious. She, despite her traditional psychological background, she wasn’t an MD. She was a psychologist. She invited all kinds of healers to the lab. She was very curious and open. And we had Uri Geller come to the lab, who was a psychic years ago. I’m hesitant to use the word psychic because it turns people off, but an intuitive years ago, who used to bend metal with his mind, and so she brought him to the lab, and we witnessed this. And in fact, my own keys got bent. My house keys got bent during the experiment, so I’ll always remember that. And she was, what she did, she assigned me a project. It was a year-long project of something called Kirlian photography. And what that is, is that it’s a special photographic technique that measures, supposedly, the energy field around plants. And so I picked five of my favorite plants, the leaves, and I would take pictures of them each month to see how they changed with the seasons. At the end, we saw, you know, what happened, you know, in terms of the plants. And we also did some fun things, where if someone came into the lab, we’d ask them to put their hand next to the plants. And sometimes the plant liked the person. And the other times, you know, you saw the energy going completely the other way, you know. And then some people would embrace – so, you know, a lot of people don’t think that there’s anything to Kirlian photography, but I really think there is. And I think plants have been proven, you know, years later, to, you know, have an amazing form of communication with each other and the world and us with plants. So it was before all the information, scientific information, came in. And so I was working in that capacity and witnessing different healers as they did – of laying on of hands, you know, and different kinds of intuitive readings. What was – can you understand what an important turning point that was for me, when I had never been understood before, and here was just all these people suddenly out of the blue. And so I’m very grateful to my psychiatrist at that time, and in fact, he inspired me to go into psychiatry, you know, which I’ve been in for 30 years. It all worked out.
SN: Although there are these researchers that were very supportive of this field, I’m curious how you and the others in the lab handled skepticism that you faced, both internally and from the broader scientific community. I’m curious how that kind of expanded, you know, as you began working with the lab, and how you learned, maybe from your mentors, you know, techniques to handle that, and just how you all approach that kind of skepticism in general.
JO: Well, it’s part of the landscape. You know, what I learned from the lab and what I practice is total acceptance of skepticism. People are entitled to believe as they will, and if it goes against their basic belief system, they don’t want to develop their intuition. They don’t want to see reality bigger than what they’re used to. That’s fine, you know, I don’t have any negative feelings about it, but those what I do know, and certainly since I’ve written books, and, you know, I wrote my first book, Second Sight, which was all about me integrating intuition with traditional medicine and my childhood, and how I came to grips with my intuition, how I brought it together in terms of who I am anyways, you know, I built my whole professional life on the basis that we’re more than just one thing. We can be intellectual, we can be intuitive, we can be heart-centered, we can be logical. You know, we don’t have to just be one thing. And so there’s so many people who are attracted to that, let me tell you that for the ones who are skeptical, God bless them. I hope they’re happy and go about your path, you know. I’m just thrilled everybody’s here on this beautiful Earth, you know, trying to make sense out of it.
SN: Kind of building off of what you just said about integrating the intuitive, the intellectual, all these different fields. What was it that kind of prompted you to pursue traditional medicine after your time at the lab? And did you ever feel sort of tension between your scientific training and your intuitive experiences? Or did you feel like that was kind of a natural path for you?
JO: I kind of swung like a pendulum. I spent those years with Thelma Moss, a few years with Thelma Moss, and then I had a dream while I was working in her lab, in which a voice came to me in the dream and said, “You need to become a psychiatrist in order to have the credentials to legitimize intuition and medicine,” basically. And in the dream, I thought, Oh, my God, that’s – you know, that’s OK. I thought, that’s great. But then I woke up, and it was the last thing I wanted to do, believe me. I didn’t – my parents, you know, I was brought up around doctors all the time, you know. My parents had such active practices, and they were so in love with their work. But I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to become an artist or a writer, and my friends were always on the fringe and the edge, so I had no interest really when I woke up with doing it. But because of Thelma and because I was starting to trust my intuition, I enrolled in Santa Monica College just to see how it would go I had dropped out of school, by the way, at that point when I was with Thelma, and one course became two, became, you know, all the years of medical training, because it was my destiny. And so I just gave it a little chance. I enrolled in one class just to see how it would go. And I remember it was a geography class because there was nothing left. It was perfect because it talked about the physical dynamics of the wind and the moon and the stars and the Earth and how we’re all connected. And it was just perfect for me. So that’s how I got started. And then I – when I went to medical school, I had a very hard time with the first year, because it was a science. I wasn’t – I was more artistic and this was all scientific, and I had a hard time learning to think that way, but I had, you know, very wonderful people along the path who helped me think that way, who helped me study, who helped me to open up my mind to that. And then I graduated USC, and then I did my psychiatric residency at UCLA, where I still supervise residents on a weekly basis, teaching them to integrate intuition and empathy into their patient care. I supervise them with their patients.
And so that’s kind of the long arc of this story, but I want to say that when I went through my medical training, I strayed very far from the intuitive realm. Again, I got deeply immersed in science, and the only people I saw who had any kind of intuition were psychotic people who came into the emergency room, who were psychotic and claiming to see God or claiming to predict the future. And so, psychic was equated with psychotic, which was not good from my perspective. And so I kind of strayed away. That was the only paradigm psychiatry had at that point for trying to explain the whole thing. And so I went very far. But then when I graduated my residency, I went far for about, oh, maybe eight years, eight years, you know, through my medical training. And then after I graduated, my intuitive side began to open up again. And then from then on, it stayed open.
SN: I was wondering if maybe you could explain for us what the difference is clinically between intuition and something like psychosis, and how you distinguish those lines within your psychiatric work?
JO: Yes, well, intuition is listening to the still small voice inside that tells you the truth about things, either through compassion or through neutrality. That’s how the most accurate intuitions are. Psychosis is when you hear voices talking to you, telling you to hurt yourself or hurt somebody else or do something negative or destructive, and intuition never tells you to do that.
SN: I see. So intuition is more about kind of listening to like your inner thoughts, and that are guiding you in the right direction, versus something that you kind of verbally hear, that may be pushing you to do something not ideal, that’s kind of harmful to you and other people. That makes sense, that’s a really great distinction. And I was also wondering what advice you would give to someone who is curious about their intuition but is afraid of judgment or being wrong, or just kind of, you know, associated fears with trusting that part of themselves a little bit more?
JO: Right. Well, you will be wrong. That’s part of the process. Now, when you learn to trust your intuition, it’s a learning curve. So, you know, I suggest people get my first book, Second Sight, or my second book, “Guide to Intuitive Healing,” to have a plan in terms of how to develop your intuition – like listening to your gut feeling, that’s very important. Or listening to a hunch you might have, or listening to a dream that you might get with somebody, or listening to your body, so that if you feel, let’s say, drained around somebody, that’s your intuition telling you something’s off.
So I would suggest be very self-compassionate. It’s a process. The more you practice, the better you get. And to share it with like-minded people. You know what? In the beginning, what you don’t want to be around are all these people – naysayers saying, “Oh, you can’t do it, this is not good,” and there are plenty of them. Let me tell you, there are plenty of them. But to be around positive people who just, you know, want to support you in listening to your inner voice.
SN: I actually had one quick question about the lab that I forgot to ask earlier that I wanted to touch back on. So in my research, I found that the time you were working there, the lab was not officially sanctioned by UCLA. And so I was wondering how that affected, maybe, the work being done, and how seriously it was taken at the time, like that aspect, specifically the thought that it wasn’t sanctioned.
JO: But to be honest with you, when I was that age and I walked in there, I don’t think I knew anything about that. That was not, I wasn’t, they didn’t share that with me. It wasn’t a big worry that I heard about all the time, and so I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. I found my tribe. You know, I just was so happy that somebody understood me.
SN: You mentioned your first book, “Second Sight.” I would love to hear a little bit more about maybe what inspired you to write that, to talk about your journey and compile your advice in that way.
JO: So, “Second Sight” was my first book. It took me eight years to write, and it was because I had so much fear about what people would think of me when it came out. You know, I had a lot of fear that my medical colleagues would mock me or would somehow hurt me in the medical profession. My mother, who was a physician, really fed into that belief system. You know, she said, “Be careful, you know, you don’t want to offend anyone, you don’t want people to think you’re weird,” you know, all that voice. And so that took some working through for me, you know, to be able to feel comfortable.
But my desire to share with people my process – and that as a psychiatrist, as a therapist, as a massage therapist, as – you know, anybody in the helping professions, it is vital to incorporate intuition into how you work with people. And I knew that at the time, and I wanted – and because of my dream that I had years ago, I knew that that was part of what I was supposed to be doing here. And so I wanted to write it in such a way through a personal journey, so people can know what I went through and my pain and my shame of having these abilities and how I was able to get through it, to get to a point of really being helpful to large numbers of people.
And so this book was the vehicle to do that. And I found that when the book came out, and I saw all the positive response to it, and people saying, “I needed to hear this. I needed to learn this. I want to learn how to incorporate intuition into working with patients,” I knew that everything would be all right because I saw the good it could be done from it. So I recommend everyone who’s starting to read “Second Sight” and then my second book, “Guide to Intuitive Healing,” which are five steps to developing intuition that could get you started.
SN: I was also wondering, if you were to design a modern-day research lab like the one that you were part of – the one that helped you feel more connected to yourself and added this scientific validity to things that were affecting you on a day-to-day basis – I was wondering what, you know, the design of that lab might look like? Maybe elements, crucial elements that you would involve in it, or just kind of what ideas come to mind when thinking about incorporating that into the modern day?
JO: Yeah. Well, I think the Institute of Noetic Sciences up in Northern California epitomizes that lab, because they do all kinds of studying of – not – it’s called non-local consciousness. That’s the term that’s the scientific term for it – non-local consciousness. And so, you know, they do – Dr. Dean Radin, who’s this incredible researcher, devoted for many, many years, you know, has done many studies on – double-blind studies on – intuition and what’s accurate and what isn’t accurate.
And so you would need to have a research – a team of research scientists who know – understand double-blind protocols to do this kind of research. And so you need to have qualified people who could organize the study and get grants, you know, in order to prove – well, they don’t need to prove to themselves, but to prove to others in the scientific community how to – you know, what the use of intuition and how it can be documented in the double-blind study and put in journals that traditional scientists would respect. So that’s very important to get the team together.
And there’s always some version of a sensory deprivation chamber where you can do the work so you’re not intruded upon by excess noise or light or people walking in, and to have a very quiet environment. And then also, I would say, to have groups – Thelma did this too – we had intuition groups where we invited the community to come once a week to talk about how to develop intuition and to have that. And, you know, maybe now, you know, online – because we didn’t have any internet – online to be able to have groups or to create communities and to help people learn and grow.
And a special program for healthcare practitioners, as I have a Becoming an Intuitive Healer program that I would love to put into this lab, and, you know, help people in the science – in the scientific community – and those who are treating patients, those in patient care, how to incorporate this into their work, and also how to take care of themselves so they don’t get drained and exhausted from their work. Very important. So there’s a few that I thought about. Those are a few points. Good question.
SN: You’ve talked a lot about kind of the practice of incorporating what you teach into actual patient care. And so I’m curious maybe, what are a couple of the things – the pieces of advice that you give to maybe your residents or healthcare practitioners?
JO: Okay, well, there’s two possibilities. The practitioner could use his or her intuition to help enhance their abilities to understand patients, and/or the patients can learn from the practitioners how to do that and how to trust themselves. And so, first thing always: Trust your gut feeling.
Now, what’s the difference between the mind and a thought, and a gut feeling? Now the mind is linear. The mind will give you A plus B equals C, gives you columns of positives and negatives. But that’s not what the intuition does. Intuition gives you flashes of truth or how – guidance on how to move forward. So to learn the difference between that, to be able to take breaks between patients rather than back to back. And I know that’s hard, because I supervise two women who are psychiatric residents now, and they’re so busy. UCLA keeps them so busy, so it’s hard sometimes to get that – even that breath. But it’s important to at least take a breath between patients so you can be centered and not frazzled.
And then also, too – I’m a big believer in meditation. That’s my primary spiritual practice. And, you know, where you’re able to calm down and breathe and center yourself and come from your heart and connect to yourself every day and say nice things to yourself during meditation – not horrible things like beating yourself up. So learning how to treat yourself in a very positive, respectful way, learning how to tune into your body, your intuition, your gut feeling when you’re with patients and to weigh the intuitive information and learn how to use it.
Like, sometimes– like, one thing that I teach is: When do you share an intuition with a patient? That kind of thing. And I tune into whether it would be helpful or not to share it and how to share it. So everybody has to learn not to do that. You – what I might say if I got guidance to go forward with saying anything is to say, “You know, I think it might be helpful to go to your internist, to get a workup for stress.” You know, I wouldn’t scare people. So there’s a finesse and a technique in how you talk to people with intuition that are common mistakes people make.
So, you know, I would help the patient or the whoever you’re talking to – or, you know – to get through it and to say what’s good to say, what isn’t to say. If they make a mistake, that’s fine. Learn from the mistake. So, as you can see, it’s a beautiful asset, but you have to have someone in charge who has some experience, you know. So, you know, I’m very happy, you know, over the years, to have been able to train other healthcare practitioners with these basic skills so they could go out and do that for other people.
SN: Thank you so, so much for your time, Dr. Orloff.
JO: Thank you.
JB: Thank you for listening to this episode of Nightly Bruin from Daily Bruin Podcasts You can listen to more Nightly Bruin episodes and other Daily Bruin Podcasts on Spotify, SoundCloud and Apple Podcasts.
Comments are closed.