Dr. Helen Wahbeh, director of research at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), presents a scientific framework for understanding channeling, intuition, and extended human capacities, drawing on her clinical research background and lifelong personal experience growing up in a Palestinian American family with a multigenerational tradition of trance channeling and spiritualist practice.
Channeling as a Natural Human Capacity
Channeling is defined broadly as accessing information and energy from beyond conventional notions of time and space, encompassing the full spectrum from everyday gut hunches to trance channeling and mental mediumship.
Everyone has the capacity to channel in some form, but the specific expression — the “noetic signature” — is unique to each person, shaped by both genetics and environment, much like any other human talent.
The question shifts from “do I have it?” to “what is my unique way of expressing it?” because tapping into this noetic wisdom consistently correlates with improved decision-making, health, and relationships.
Trance channeling involves the channeler’s body being used as a vehicle for a non-physical being to speak, write, or move through, with no conscious awareness of what will come next; mental mediumship differs in that the medium receives impressions (symbols, images, sensations) and then translates them for the sitter.
Channeling is not limited to a single entity; some trance channelers (like Wahbeh’s uncle) serve as open but protected channels for varying sources depending on who is present, while others (like Darryl Anka or Lee Harris) consistently channel a specific named being.
The Noetic Signature: 12 Characteristic Ways of Receiving Information
Research at IONS identified 12 main characteristics of how noetic information shows up, derived from statistical factor analysis rather than predetermined categories.
General intuition appears in three flavors: mental knowing (a thought-like certainty), gut feeling (somatic sense of truth), and emotional resonance.
Embodied sensations signal incoming information — goosebumps, heat, dizziness — that the person learns to recognize as a distinct “signal” rather than ordinary physiology.
Physical sensations from others (clairempathy) involve feeling another person’s pain or symptom in one’s own body (e.g., a sudden headache that matches a friend’s undisclosed migraine), which typically resolves once acknowledged.
Psychometry: touching an object and receiving information about its history or owner; formal research on this is limited but underway (e.g., Christine Simmons Moore’s ring studies).
Visualization and mental imagery used to gain or affect information, including remote viewing and manifestation practices.
Healing as a form of mind-matter interaction, often employing the same visualization capacities.
Telepathy, precognition, clairaudience (hearing words or sounds), and apparent communication with non-physical beings (mediumship/trance channeling).
Practical application: whether the information is actually used in daily life for decision-making — a meta-characteristic reflecting integration rather than a distinct perceptual mode.
Dream-based noetic information: the only characteristic that cleanly separated people in recent studies — either you receive noetic information in dreams or you don’t; content can be precognitive, telepathic, or other types.
Energetic Hygiene and the Chakra System
Without awareness and management, high sensitivity leads to overwhelm: picking up others’ emotions, thought forms, and physical symptoms in crowds or social settings, resulting in exhaustion, headaches, and functional impairment.
The chakra system provides a practical map: seven primary energy vortices (root, sacral, solar plexus, heart, throat, third eye, crown), each with front/back funnels except root (downward) and crown (upward), correlating with physical organs, emotional themes, and colors.
The crown chakra functions like a camera aperture — consciously visualizing it narrowing before entering stimulating environments (parties, hospitals) and widening for intentional intuitive sessions protects energetic boundaries.
The throat chakra relates not only to self-expression but to surrendering personal will (“not my will but thine”); thyroid issues often correlate with unspoken truths or suppressed voice.
The heart chakra’s front funnel governs giving love, the back funnel receiving; imbalance in either direction affects relational and physical health.
Unresolved trauma, especially sexual abuse, frequently manifests as chronic pain or medical issues in the corresponding lower chakra regions, illustrating how the body holds memory energetically.
Intention, Ego Filters, and Discernment
Intention — focused attention plus will — is the steering mechanism; a clear guiding life intention (e.g., “to be a channel of divine love”) aligns intuitive input with purposeful action rather than reactive chasing of psychic impressions.
The human personality (ego), built from childhood conditioning, intergenerational trauma, and unconscious beliefs, acts as a filter that distorts channeled information; an ego-clearing practice (psychotherapy, hypnosis, Hoffman Process, shadow work) is essential for clarity.
Example: setting an intention to manifest beneficence while holding an unconscious “I’m not worthy” belief will manifest the belief, not the intention — leading people to falsely conclude “it doesn’t work.”
Discernment requires using intellect alongside intuition: Is this information relevant, useful, actionable? Avoid pedestalizing channelers or outsourcing life decisions to external authorities.
Information is time-sensitive; a snapshot (e.g., a psychic predicting a career milestone at age 34) reflects a probable trajectory that can shift with action — holding it rigidly creates distress and self-fulfilling limitation.
Neurodivergence, Sensitivity, and Cultural Conditioning
Many people labeled neurodivergent or “highly sensitive” may actually be psi-sensitive — naturally permeable to noetic information — but lack cultural context to understand or manage it, leading to misdiagnosis and unnecessary pathologizing.
Western culture’s extreme external focus (information overload, constant stimulation) severs connection to internal knowing; the remedy is not rejecting intellect but balancing external facts with internal barometer readings.
Children are born in an open, aware state; socialization conditions them out of it; practices like meditation, somatic work, and psychedelic journeys temporarily restore access, but integration — “bringing it down from the mountain” — requires daily energetic maintenance.
Practical Tools and Ongoing Research
Daily aperture visualization (crown and solar plexus chakras) for energetic boundary management.
Pre-sleep intention setting to close apertures and prevent nocturnal absorption of others’ energies or distressing dream content.
Knowetic Signature assessment (Chapter 8 of Wahbeh’s book The Science of Channeling) helps individuals identify their dominant receptive modes and build on strengths rather than chasing others’ expressions.
IONS continues genetic studies on channeling heritability, controlled psychometry experiments, and research on energy healing mechanisms — aiming to move the field from anecdote to measurable, replicable science.
Part two of the conversation will address UAP/extraterrestrial contact through channeling, energy healing quantification, exorcism as removal of dense non-physical beings, and the hosts’ personal telepathic/inception experiences.
