A recent study published in Communications Biology offers evidence that a 7-day mind-body retreat combining meditation, reconceptualization, and open-label placebo techniques can produce measurable changes in both brain activity and blood-based biological markers. The researchers observed alterations in brain network function and identified changes in molecular pathways linked to neuroplasticity, metabolism, inflammation, and stress-related hormones.
The researchers designed this study to explore how different mind-body techniques, when practiced together in an immersive setting, affect the human body and brain. Although each of these techniques—meditation, placebo rituals, and cognitive reconceptualization—has previously been studied on its own, their combined effect on biological and neurological systems had not been examined.
“We started to collaborate with Joe Dispenza about five years ago exploring the mind body connection. The retreat setting he offers provides a unique experimental setting to study a number of subjects and apply numerous ways to look at effects on the mind and body. This work is independently funded by InnerScience Research Fund and aims to explore to connection between mind and body,” said study author Hemal H. Patel, a professor at UC San Diego School of Medicine and research career scientist at the Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System.
The researchers selected 20 healthy adult volunteers from a pool of 561 individuals who had expressed interest in participating in a study during a week-long mind-body retreat. These individuals were randomly chosen to represent a mix of prior experience with meditation. Eleven of them had been regularly practicing the specific meditation techniques for at least six months, while the remaining nine were new to the approach.
The retreat itself lasted seven days and was designed to be immersive and structured. It combined three core components: daily lectures, intensive guided meditations, and group healing rituals. Participants attended approximately 25 hours of lectures throughout the week. These presentations emphasized the idea that the mind plays an active role in shaping bodily experiences and that perception and belief can influence physical health.
The meditation sessions totaled 33 hours and followed a guided format with music and vocal instruction. These sessions were grounded in a form of contemplative practice similar to Kundalini meditation. Participants were guided to direct their awareness inward, focusing on breathing patterns and perceived energy centers located along the body’s midline, such as the chest, throat, and forehead.
These practices aimed to reduce cognitive activity related to judgment or self-referential thought and to create a state of present-centered awareness. The instructions often encouraged participants to imagine themselves moving beyond ordinary concepts of space and time and to remain in a receptive, open state.
The healing rituals comprised about five hours and were conducted in small groups. In these sessions, six to eight participants surrounded one individual designated as the “healee.” The others acted as “healers,” engaging in practices that involved focusing their attention on their heart and hands while maintaining a compassionate mental state.
Although no specific biological mechanism was presented to explain how healing might occur, participants were told that the ritual could potentially benefit either the healer or the healee. Importantly, all participants knew that no medical treatment was being administered. This transparency aligns the ritual with an open-label placebo framework, in which positive effects are sought without deception.
The participants underwent brain scans before and after the retreat using functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI. During the scans, participants either rested or followed a guided meditation. The researchers looked at changes in connectivity among different brain networks, especially those linked to self-related thoughts, attention, and emotional processing.
After the retreat, meditation was associated with reduced activity within two key brain networks: the default mode network and the salience network. These networks are often active during internal reflection and emotional monitoring. Meditation also led to decreased whole-brain modularity, which suggests that the brain was operating in a more integrated, less compartmentalized way during this state.
The team also found increases in global efficiency, a measure of how effectively the brain can transfer information across different regions. These results imply that the participants’ brains became more interconnected and flexible after the intervention, especially during meditation.
At a more detailed level, certain regions such as the insula and prefrontal cortex showed decreased communication, while new connections emerged, including between the insula and the posterior cingulate cortex—regions previously linked to immersive and altered states of consciousness.
“We noticed in advanced meditators that a specific region of their brain had more volume (was bigger), an unexpected finding that we are following up on,” Patel told PsyPost, adding that he ws also surprised by “the fact that the brain at the end of a week-long retreat look similar to what a brain would look like on psychedelic compounds like psilocybin.”
“The unique conclusion here is that we do not need to turn outside to change but have a powerful, endogenous ability to affect change by making new chemicals We are further exploring this as well but have evidence in this paper that individual elevated levels of endogenous opioids that likely create the pain mitigation effects. We suspect many other endogenous compounds (which we typically take exogenous drugs to modulate) are also likely elevated after such an intensive experience.”
Beyond brain activity, the researchers examined a wide range of biological markers in blood plasma. They analyzed proteins, metabolites, and small RNA molecules associated with gene regulation. They also conducted cell-based experiments to assess whether blood samples taken after the retreat could influence nerve cell growth or energy production.
In one experiment, cultured nerve-like cells treated with post-retreat plasma showed greater neurite outgrowth—a sign of enhanced neuroplasticity—compared to cells treated with pre-retreat plasma. This was accompanied by increases in proteins linked to the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) pathway, which supports neuron survival and growth.
The team also observed metabolic changes. Cells exposed to post-retreat plasma showed a shift toward glycolysis, a faster form of energy production that occurs in the absence of oxygen. This shift was reflected in higher levels of glycolysis-related proteins in the participants’ plasma after the retreat. These findings suggest that the body’s energy systems may have become more responsive or efficient following the intervention.
The plasma samples also revealed increased expression of both inflammatory and anti-inflammatory proteins, which may reflect a process of cellular renewal or repair. While inflammation is typically viewed as harmful, a controlled increase can support healing and immune function. The simultaneous upregulation of both types of markers suggests that the body was engaged in active regulation rather than a chronic stress response.
Another notable change involved the endogenous opioid system, which regulates pain, mood, and reward. The researchers measured increases in opioid-related peptides, including beta-endorphin and dynorphin, after the retreat. These molecules are known to promote feelings of well-being and are typically activated during placebo responses or physical exercise. That such changes occurred without deception or medication points to the potential of open-label placebo techniques to trigger these systems through belief and engagement alone.
The metabolomic analysis of the blood samples also showed changes in molecules related to neurotransmitter function, especially those involved in tryptophan and phenylalanine metabolism. These pathways influence serotonin and dopamine, two neurotransmitters involved in mood regulation, motivation, and cognitive function. Shifts in these molecules suggest that the retreat may have altered the chemical balance related to mental and emotional states.
The researchers also looked at tiny vesicles in the blood called exosomes, which carry genetic material and signaling molecules between cells. They found that the content of these exosomes changed after the retreat, especially microRNAs involved in synaptic transmission and metabolism. Some of these genetic changes appeared to affect pathways linked to neurotransmitter release and energy processing, providing another line of evidence that the mind-body practices influenced communication between cells.
To better understand which of these biological features were most influential, the team applied machine learning techniques. They found that the strongest predictors of change included specific metabolites, connectivity patterns between brain networks, and proteins involved in energy and immune regulation.
“Our data suggest that the mind is a powerful tool for affecting change, and this can be accomplished in a short period (7 days) through a targeted approach that teaches individuals new concepts, incorporates deep meditative practices, and includes intention-based exercises to support health and resilience,” Patel said. “What is even more profound is that when the mind changes from a functional perspective, the body dramatically changes to form anew to become more resilient from many perspectives (i.e., energy, inflammation, pain mitigation, neuronal plasticity, and molecular and biochemical shifts). Ultimately the mind and body are connected.”
“This study shows that our minds and bodies are deeply interconnected — what we believe, how we focus our attention, and the practices we participate in can leave measurable fingerprints on our biology,” added first author Alex Jinich-Diamant, a doctoral student in the Departments of Cognitive Science and Anesthesiology at UC San Diego. “It’s an exciting step toward understanding how conscious experience and physical health are intertwined, and how we might harness that connection to promote well-being in new ways.”
Despite the breadth of findings, the researchers caution that the study has limitations. It did not include a control group, which means that changes cannot be definitively linked to the retreat activities. Participants may have been influenced by factors such as diet, sleep, social interaction, or simply being removed from daily stressors.
The sample size was relatively small, and many participants were experienced meditators, which may limit the generalizability of the results. Additionally, while the changes observed were statistically significant, it remains unclear how long they persist or whether they translate into lasting health benefits.
“The sample size was limited to 20 individual due to getting individual through the fMRI scanner in the time we have available,” Patel noted. “However, connecting changes in the brain with deep profiling of changes in the blood lead to a unique observation that the retreat setting provides a powerful tool to affect profound change in individual very rapidly.”
These findings may help lay the groundwork for future research on how intentional mental practices can influence physical health.
“We have a number of manuscripts we are working on that span many different areas in to explore the mind-body connection,” Patel explained. “We are looking at the full spectrum of things that can be collected from individual in a relative non-invasive way to see how mind truly impact body form the blood to the microbiome, to human physiology. The power to do this at large scale, in thousands of individuals, in upcoming manuscripts allows us to explore to impact of this intervention on health as well as individual suffering from 50+ different diseases. We are very excited by what we are uncovering and hope that this information will help guide development of new ways to enhance human health and resilience.”
The study, “Neural and molecular changes during a mind-body reconceptualization, meditation, and open label placebo healing intervention,” was authored by Alex Jinich-Diamant, Sierra Simpson, Juan P. Zuniga-Hertz, Ramamurthy Chitteti, Jan M. Schilling, Jacqueline A. Bonds, Laura Case, Andrei V. Chernov, Joe Dispenza, Jacqueline Maree, Natalia Esther Amkie Stahl, Michael Licamele, Narin Fazlalipour, Swetha Devulapalli, Leonardo Christov-Moore, Nicco Reggente, Michelle A. Poirier, Tobias Moeller-Bertram, and Hemal H. Patel.
