Brain/Body/Spirit Healing for Post-Traumatic Growth Research Lab
Can brain/body/spirit practices help heal the effects of trauma? Can they lead to even more?
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What happens when the spirit and soul are brought into trauma healing?
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How does this affect and intersect the body and the brain?
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How impactful are energetic, spiritual, intuitive, and brain/body healing approaches in creating lasting change?
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And can such approaches yield more than just recovery?
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The Brain/Body/Spirit for Post-Traumatic Growth Research Lab aims to find out.
About the Lab
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Lenore Matthew, PhD, MSW is a researcher/practitioner with expertise in post-traumatic growth and brain/body/spirit interventions and health. She is a Doctor of Social Work, a Certified Brainspotting Therapist, and an expert in program evaluation research and evidence-based practice design. She is also a trained evidential psychic medium, a Reiki II energy healer, and a yoga and meditation teacher.
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Previously, Dr. Matthew worked as a research and evaluation specialist with international humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations.
Dr. Matthew's ability of mediumship suddenly awoke when her late husband passed by warningless suicide. The awakening of her intuitive gifts, paralleled with the traumatic passing of her late husband, opened her up to a path of holistic healing through a multitude of spiritual, intuitive, and mind/body practices. Through these practices, she found her own deep healing and transformation at the mind, body, spirit, and soul.
Today, Dr. Matthew blends her background as a researcher, practitioner, and intuitive, to explore the nature and impact of spiritual and intuitive experiences and practices on trauma survivors' health, mental health, well-being, and spirituality. She observed in her practice with clients and her own journey that by bringing the body, deep brain, intuition, spirit, and soul into healing, survivors of various kinds of deep trauma were not only healing and surviving, but they were evolving into states of purpose, joy, meaning, and alignment with self. Clients weren't just recovering; they were expanding.
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In witnessing her clients' growth as well as her own evolution as a young widow and suicide loss survivor, Dr. Matthew began to explore the broader implications and reach of energetics, spirituality, and intuition for trauma. Could such transformative experiences be systematically studied? Can broader implications be drawn — and then brought into mainstream trauma recovery and mental health settings? And can energetics, spirituality, and intuitive practices help the mental health world do better — helping trauma survivors not just survive, but expand, thrive, transform, and truly live?
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These are the lines of inquiry that the Brain/Body/Spirit for Post-Traumatic Growth Research Lab seeks to explore.
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Aims of the Lab
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1) Conduct multi-method studies on the effects of energetic, spiritual, and intuitive practices and experiences on people's mental health and well-being, particularly in contexts of trauma.
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2) Discuss implications for mainstream mental health and trauma treatment and suggest ways for mental health and health practitioners to incorporate energetic, spiritual, and intuitive practices into treatment.
3) Normalize trauma survivors' spiritual and intuitive experiences (e.g., intuitive/psychic awakenings, spiritual experiences, etc., in the context of trauma), and set forth positive, meaningful ways to integrate such experiences into mental health support and trauma care.
Current Studies
Effects of Mediumship Readings on Widows' Mental Health, Grief, and Post-Traumatic Growth
Principle Investigators:
Dr. Lenore Matthew, PhD, MSW, private practice and founder of the Research Lab; and Dr. Liza Barros-Lane, PhD, MSW, professor of Social Work at the University of Houston-Downtown and founder of the Young Widowhood Project.
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This study assesses the impact of multiple mediumship readings across time on female widows' mental, emotional, and spiritual health as well as their grieving process.
Specifically, it examines ways in which mediumship readings (with Dr. Matthew and mediums in general) have affected widows' healing process and connection to their loved ones in Spirit. The study focuses on the effects on mental health, emotional health, spirituality, and the overall healing process.
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The purpose of the study is to set forth evidence that will help evolve and expand mental health care for survivors of partner loss, focusing on implications for the mental health and grief support community, and the field of intuitive and spiritual healing.
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All study participants are women, ranging in age from their mid-twenties to eighties. All study participants lost either their spouse or fiance.
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The study uses a phenomenological approach, a form of qualitative inquiry which examines a person's lived experience. It aims to understand a given phenomenon as an individual personally experienced and perceived it.
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The study participants received two mediumship readings from Dr. Lenore Matthew over one year. Some study participants received readings from other mediums as well.
Data was collected in 2023 at two points in time via two methods. First, each widow completed an in-depth, qualitative survey examining the effects of mediumship readings on her mental health, emotional health, spirituality, and grief processing. The survey was administered several months after the first mediumship reading, and qualitatively captured effects over time.
Second, an in-depth interview on the effects of mediumship on grief was conducted. The interviews took place on the day or within a few days of the second reading with Dr. Matthew. This captured impressions and shifts attributed to the second mediumship reading, and the immediate experiential and physiological effects of having a mediumship reading.
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Data analysis is currently underway.
Sudden Intuitive Awakenings After the Death of a Loved One:
Short and Long-Term Impacts on Post-Traumatic Recovery
Principle Investigator:
Dr. Lenore Matthew, PhD, MSW, private practice and founder of the Research Lab.
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Inspired by Dr. Matthew's own lived experience, the aim of this study is to understand the phenomenon of one's ability of psychic mediumship (i.e., the ability to sense and communicate with people in the spirit world) opened suddenly awakening with the loss of a loved one, and the impact of this experience on their grief and mental health.
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This study addresses this massive gap in both the spiritual/intuitive world and grief/mental health support. The study aims to understand this experience and set forth ways to support people living through it — in their grief, their intuitive development, and their soul path forward.
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Preliminary findings were presented at the 65th Annual Parapsychological Association's Annual Congress in Oslo Norway. The research has also been featured in various news outlets, such as YSF Magazine.
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The writing of peer-reviewed articles is currently underway.
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Post-Traumatic Intuitive Awakenings:
A Mechanism for Growth, Resilience, and Trauma Recovery
Accompanying Training for Mental Health Clinicians Forthcoming
Principle Investigator:
Dr. Lenore Matthew, PhD, MSW, private practice and founder of the Research Lab.
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The aim of this applied research project is to set forth a guide and training for mental health clinicians on clients' psychic, intuitive, and mediumistic experiences occurring after traumatic events. Rather than pathologizing psychic/intuitive experiences, the guide views them as potential tools for client growth, resilience, and self-empowerment. By leaning into their experiences, clients can come to develop their newfound intuitive abilities. This facilitates meaning-making, self-compassion, and self-alignment after traumatic events.
The guide draws on an autoethnographic exploration of Dr. Matthew's lived experience of her mediumship awakening amidst traumatic loss and working with her mental health counselors to understand it, and is also informed by clients' and research participants' experiences.
The guide addresses the following objectives: 1) provide clinicians with tools to assess the safety, health, meaning, and utility of the experiences; 2) help clinicians differentiate psychic/intuitive/mediumistic experiences from delusions, dissociation, and other clinical diagnoses, 3) provide clinicians with the tools to help their clients unpack their experiences in session, and integrate their experiences into their own lives beyond sessions; and 4) provide clinicians with the tools to understand their biases, beliefs, and own lived experiences with the psychic, intuitive, and mediumistic.
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The guide is currently being developed and training for mental health clinicians is slated for 2024/2025.
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Dr. Matthew presented her lived experience creating this guide at the Counseling and the Exceptional Experiencer Symposium, hosted by the Parapsychological Association in May fof 2023. The symposium focused on the "exceptional experiencers" in counseling (i.e., someone who has had psychic/intuitive experiences) and psychotherapy. The presenters were exceptional experiencers and mental health practitioners working with this population.
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