Welcome to the Bengston Substack!

Let's keep this thing going!

Thanks for taking the time to check out our new Substack, dedicated to the work of Dr. William Bengston. This effort is spearheaded by Margaret Nies, Bill’s wife and research partner for the last 15 years, and Amy Saville, an author who worked closely with Bill on his second book.

After working for over 18 months to bring the story of Bill’s research to print, we realized there was still a lot more to say. And while sadly, Bill is no longer here to tell the story himself, we are! Research on the healing method he developed is still being conducted, papers are still being published, and there are a lot of people — we suspect you’re one of them — who are genuinely curious about what Bill found and what we’re all still learning about healing and the world around us.

Each week, you’ll find plain-language summaries of published research, stories from long-term practitioners, case studies, and the occasional piece where we push on the harder questions: What do we actually know? What are we still guessing at? What would it mean if we’re right? And if you’re here because you want to learn more about how to heal people using the Bengston Method, there will be opportunities to dive more deeply into Bengston healing, too.

What Is the Bengston Energy Healing Method?

The Bengston Energy Healing Method® is an innovative healing technique that has been shown to be effective on a wide variety of conditions. We have another post with a more in-depth explanation coming up, but for a brief explanation, please read on! (And to learn the method yourself, please visit BengstonWorkshops.com!)

Bill’s first book, The Energy Cure, tells the story of how he discovered and developed this unusual healing method using a mental technique he called “image cycling” — which we refer to simply as “cycling.” To put it very briefly, cycling involves mentally moving through images of things you want. It is deceptively simple, but also not easy to do. The process is belief-free — complete skeptics are often quite effective with the technique. But as with any new skill, it takes practice and commitment to become proficient. When coupled with a brief healing intention, the results — in clinical practice and in controlled laboratory settings — have been quite remarkable.

Although energy healing is a common term recognized by many, Bill proposed that the “energy” in energy healing is information, and that healing information may ride on an energy wave. Research is now pointing toward this being the case.

Bill’s work was recently mentioned in the popular podcast The Telepathy Tapes — a show focused on consciousness and anomalous phenomena — in Season 2, Episode 8 by his colleague Jill Blakeway. In Episode 9, an excerpt about “biofield” therapies featured John Lavack, Bill’s close friend and long-time Bengston practitioner, who has been working with a team at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston to study the impact of The Bengston Energy Healing Method on pancreatic cancer cells, with some seriously interesting results.

About Bill

Bill was a pioneer in healing research. The technique he developed now falls under the general term “biofield therapy”, historically referred to as many things, but most commonly as energy healing. He was a professor of sociology at St. Joseph’s University in New York until he retired in 2022, and received his Ph.D. from Fordham University in 1980. His areas of specialization were research methods and statistics — a background that informed the rigor he brought to 40+ years of research into anomalous healing.

That research demonstrated the effectiveness of his technique in 10 controlled animal experiments conducted in seven biological and medical laboratories in universities throughout the United States, producing the first successful full cures of transplanted mammary cancer and methylcholanthrene-induced sarcomas in experimental mice. He also investigated correlates to healing such as geomagnetic micropulsations and EEG harmonics and entrainment.

Bill had publications in Dose Response, the Journal of Scientific Exploration, the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, and Explore, among other academic journals. He lectured widely throughout the United States and Europe, served as President of the Society for Scientific Exploration for 12 years, and sat on the editorial board of the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine.

In the last years of his life, he worked extensively on two projects to carry his work into the future. The first was answering the question, Could healing be stored and subsequently scaled? The answer is Yes. The second was a book to follow The Energy Cure, detailing the journey through research he took while pursuing this question: How can we make healing go mainstream? We anticipate the book will be available in early 2027. In addition, he worked on training his most trusted practitioners to teach his method to the public — those workshops are taught live and are currently available at Bengstonworkshops.com.

His memoir with Sylvia Fraser, The Energy Cure: Unraveling the Mystery of Hands-On Healing, is available wherever books are sold. An audio instruction program, Hands On Healing: A Training Course in the Energy Cure, is also available from Sounds True.

We’re just getting started, and we’re excited to explore this terrain with you all. Whether you’re just discovering the Bengston Method and Bill’s work, or have been image cycling for decades, we’re glad you’re here.

— Amy Saville & Margaret Nies