'The Goop Lab' Episode 5 'The Energy Experience' sees John Amaral try to sell the idea of healing energies
“So often, people don’t slow down and connect. Especially the Western world -- we value achievement over fulfillment,” said John Amaral, who according to his website, is “a somatic energy practitioner, author, educator, and founder of the Energy Flow Formula, a somatic energy healing practice”.
There’s a sort of irony in saying stuff like “we value achievement over fulfillment” -- a critique of capitalism, on a show like Netflix’s ‘The Goop Lab’ that essentially is a blatant display of the overwhelming power of mindless consumerism. The docu-series, after all, takes viewers inside Gwyneth Paltrow’s $250 million wellness brand Goop that sells overpriced, supposedly mystic (but not really) products that anyone can live without. But Goop makes all of these products sound essential.
Moving from there, episode 5 of the series, ‘The Energy Experience’ is focussed on “energies” within the body that can be redirected and utilized to help people. And Amaral claims to be the guy who can help facilitate that process. Of course, a lot that he says sounds like complete hokum.
When someone says things like he can “influence” energy to “heal” diseases, and use terms like “molecules of emotions”, it’s a good bet to assume it’s mystic mumbo jumbo that doesn’t mean anything. This is why a disclaimer like, “The following series is designed to entertain and inform—not provide medical advice. You should always consult your doctor when it comes to personal health, or before you start treatment," makes sense.
When asked about whether he has noted about diseases being cured by his methods, Amaral says (and it’s important to hear this): “I’m not treating a particular condition when I’m working with people, but I have a hypothesis. If you just change the frequency of vibrations of the body itself, it changes the way that cells regrow, it changes how the sensory system processes.”
It is no wonder that Megan Garber of The Atlantic noted, “To watch ‘The Goop Lab’ as a series, with its arcing assumptions about the limitations of medical science, is also to wonder where to locate the line between open-mindedness and gullibility.”
Like the first episode, when Goop employees (they call themselves “Goopers”) participated in a magic mushroom session to relieve themselves of their stress and anxieties, this episode too saw a session with Amaral. True to form, they called the experience transformative. But one has to guess if the script for the docu-series required them to call all of these experiences transformative.
It makes sense to sell the idea of healing energies when you have done your bit to sell $75 candles called “THIS SMELLS LIKE MY VAGINA”. Yes, Goop sells those. And people who spend $75 on stuff like that are an easy target to sell the idea that vibrations and stuff will cure them of their ailments, physical or mental.
‘The Goop Lab’ is available for viewing on Netflix.