Can Religion Help Heal Chronic Illness?
Botanical Biohacking
Dr. Andrew Miles breaks down research suggesting that religion may influence recovery, heart health, mental health, and pain in ways modern wellness advice often overlooks. After 20 years in Chinese medicine, Andrew noticed a pattern: people experiencing major turnarounds from chronic illness often shared something in common. In this episode, he explores that mystery through studies on Christian prayer, Hindu and Buddhist mantras, Islamic prayer, and group singing—looking at how rhythm, breath, and community may shape the body in measurable ways. You’ll learn why reciting prayers and...
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Your Hidden Mastery
Botanical Biohacking
The more carefully experts watch themselves, the worse they get. That counterintuitive truth sits at the heart of this episode, where Dr. Andrew Miles shows why real mastery often looks like clumsiness - and why overthinking can destroy performance, healing, and flow. Drawing from martial arts, Taoist philosophy, and cognitive science, Andrew explains how the ancient idea of the "uncarved block" or *bao pu* reveals the hidden cost of self-consciousness. He shares lessons from 20+ years teaching Praying Mantis kung fu, working in real-world combat situations, and watching students...
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Healing Burn Out in a Most Unusual Way
Botanical Biohacking
What if the advice to “calm down” is exactly wrong when your system is stuck? This episode explores a remarkable story about Huo Tuo, one of history’s most extraordinary physicians, and the idea that some emotional blockages may need activation—not relaxation. Andrew Miles unpacks the legendary case of a silent lord, a deliberately provoking diagnosis, and the surprising physiology behind it—from freeze states and vagal responses to the possibility of a powerful nervous system reset. If you’ve ever been told to breathe, relax, and let it go, this conversation will challenge that...
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Your Eyes and Your Heart
Botanical Biohacking
In this episode, you’ll learn: - Why the eyes can offer clues about nervous-system arousal - How the pupils, noradrenaline, and alertness are linked - Why narrow, screen-focused attention can keep the mind activated - How widening your visual field may help signal safety and relaxation - What lateral eye movement has in common with walking and other calming practices - A simple eye exercise Dr. Miles suggests for settling back to sleep Dr. Miles also unpacks a line from the "Yin Fu Jing: “The heart is born from things and dies from things.” He considers what it means to guide your...
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Hidden Borders of Your Life
Botanical Biohacking
What if the things holding you back aren’t obvious and aren’t fate? In this episode of the Botanical Biohacking Podcast, Dr. Andrew Miles explores how subconscious barriers can shape our health, habits, and sense of what’s possible. Andrew shares a simple practice that prompted unexpected changes: asking, “Where are the hidden borders of your life?”without trying to force an immediate answer. He reflects on how insights can emerge through dreams, symbols, and moments between sleep and wakefulness, and how seeing your life from a third-person perspective can reveal patterns...
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Grief which Tears the Flesh
Botanical Biohacking
Dr. Josh Park and Dr. Andrew Miles Grief does not just live in your mind. It can affect your gut, your heart, and even your immune system. This episode explores how ancient Chinese medicine and modern neuroscience both point to a striking truth: loss can become physical, even when the suffering is not visible. Andrew begins with a sixth-century story of a young woman whose grief becomes overwhelming after she sees a cherished object that belonged to her mother. He then turns to the scholar Yan Zhitui, who recorded cases of “broken intestines” and described how grief can affect people in...
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Liao Fan part 2: The ledger
Botanical Biohacking
A fortune teller says your future is fixed, and for most people, that can become a life sentence. This episode explores how one man challenged that prediction, changed his trajectory, and discovered that what looks like destiny may be a pattern that can be changed. Dr. Andrew Miles tells the story of Liao Fan and the monk Yun Gu meets Liao Fan sitting in stillness, he sees not enlightenment but resignation, then offers him a practical path toward change. You’ll discover: - How wandering thoughts and fixed expectations can keep people stuck - What “Destiny is made by me” means for fate,...
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Seeing Lights
Botanical Biohacking
Seeing lights while meditating can be alarming or lead people to fantastical conclusions. Here Danel Zhang, an inheritor of the Wu Liu pai school fo Taoist yogic Alchemy describes what is really happening and I add some musings based on current neuroscience. Neither believe nor disbelieve what you see, neither advance nor retreat from it. Allow any sensations to find their bay back into the smooth functioning of the body and spirit.
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Change Your Destiny: Liao fan Part 1
Botanical Biohacking
What happens when a fortune teller can name your exam results, your promotions, and even the exact hour of your death? One Chinese scholar's life is shaped by a prophecy so precise it seems impossible to escape. Until the real question becomes whether fate is fixed, or whether the brain learns helplessness when it stops seeing a way out. Dr. Andrew Miles turns a centuries-old Ming dynasty story into a striking exploration of destiny, psychology, and Chinese medicine. A boy once destined for the imperial exams is redirected into studying herbs and pulses by his mother. Then he meets Kong from...
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Why Your Heart Rate Can Make People Trust You or Pull Away
Botanical Biohacking
What if the way people respond to you is being shaped before you say a word? In this episode, Dr. Andrew Miles explores how heart rate variability (HRV), nervous system regulation, and emotional synchrony may influence trust, conflict, and connection. From couples caught in escalating arguments to people who naturally draw a group’s attention, Andrew looks at how our bodies can affect the rhythm of an interaction. He discusses how stress and low HRV may shape the way we read facial expressions and tone, and how calm, breathing, and regulation can help people feel safer and more connected. In...
info_outlineDr. Andrew Miles breaks down research suggesting that religion may influence recovery, heart health, mental health, and pain in ways modern wellness advice often overlooks.
After 20 years in Chinese medicine, Andrew noticed a pattern: people experiencing major turnarounds from chronic illness often shared something in common. In this episode, he explores that mystery through studies on Christian prayer, Hindu and Buddhist mantras, Islamic prayer, and group singing—looking at how rhythm, breath, and community may shape the body in measurable ways.
You’ll learn why reciting prayers and mantras can slow breathing to about six breaths a minute, how that may affect heart rate variability and baroreflex sensitivity, and why those markers matter for long-term health. Andrew also unpacks the difference between prayers that ask for specific outcomes and prayers of surrender, and why those forms of devotion may affect the brain differently.
The conversation explores the science behind group singing, including synchronized breathing, shared heart rhythms, increased closeness, and even higher pain thresholds. You’ll also hear how volunteering, religious group membership, and social identity may reduce loneliness, lessen mental-health stigma, and support well-being.
Andrew doesn’t ask you to take a spiritual leap—he asks you to look at the data without dismissing what may seem irrational at first. For anyone interested in biohacking, chronic illness recovery, meditation, prayer, or the link between community and healing, this episode challenges assumptions about what helps people get better.
A science-minded look at why ancient practices may still offer powerful tools for health
rawn from search results on 15 Oct 2026, not from the full papers. Study details come from abstracts and summaries, so check the full papers before quoting numbers on air.
• Sleight et al., rosary and yoga mantras, BMJ 2001
• Müller & Lindenberger, cardiac and respiratory synchrony in choir singing
• Vickhoff et al., music structure and singers' HRV
• Ensemble singing with physical contact, Frontiers 2022
• Hyperscanning during cooperative singing
• Hyperscanning and religious communities
• Weinstein et al., singing and social bonding
• Tarr et al., synchrony and exertion in dance
• Prayer and meditation EEG, IJERPH 2020
• Aftanas & Golocheikine 2001
• EEG of Buddhist concentrative meditation
• VanderWeele et al., religious service attendance and mortality in women
• Mediators of the attendance-mortality association
• Global Flourishing Study results, RNS
• Global Flourishing Study, UK coverage on childhood attendance
• Jenkinson et al., volunteering meta-analysis
• Okun et al., volunteering by older adults and mortality
• Campbell review, volunteering and all-cause mortality
• Borgonovi 2008, religious volunteering
• Musick & Wilson 2003
• Church-based volunteering and self-rated health
• Volunteer work, religious commitment and resting pulse
• Religion, volunteerism and health, Texas sample
• Greenaway et al., group identification and personal control
• Community identification and loneliness
• Kearns et al., identification and stigma of mental ill-health
• Haslam et al., The New Psychology of Health
• Choma et al. 2016, interfaith prejudice
• Begeny & Huo, intragroup status, identity and health