NESBEM'S RESEARCH FARM · 40 ACRES · NEW ENGLAND
Where NESBEM studies
how living systems maintain
coherent relationships.
THE UNIFYING RESEARCH QUESTION
How does coherence manifest and propagate across living systems? How does coherence in one system modulate coherence in others? And what changes in the larger relational field when coherence expands?
▲ MIXED-METHODS INQUIRY · QUANTITATIVE + QUALITATIVE + PHENOMENOLOGICAL
NESBEM RESEARCH FARM · UNC 501(C)(3)
SOURCE · ARGONNE NATIONAL LABORATORY · U.S. DOE
Coherence is a measure of how well certain systems will maintain their relationships with each other and how well we are able to predict the evolution of those systems.
Martin Holt
Argonne National Laboratory · Q-NEXT
THE RESEARCH PROGRAM
A different order
of inquiry.
The prevailing research landscape has narrowed coherence in two ways. Valuable work on cardiac coherence has focused within one physiological system. Meanwhile, pharmaceutical and biotech industries are moving to claim frequency medicine as proprietary commercial domain.
NESBEM's Research Farm occupies a fundamentally different position. We study coherence as a multidimensional, multi-system, interspecies phenomenon — across all vital resonance systems simultaneously, across species, and across the relational field between living beings.
This is not single-system measurement expanded. It is a different order of inquiry: coherence as the organizing intelligence of living systems in relationship.
OUR RESEARCH PARTNERS
"The natural world teaches what data alone cannot."
FOUR PILLARS
Four pillars
defining the farm's research domain.
Active studies nest within them. Future studies extend them. Comprehensive enough to guide decades of inquiry; focused enough to maintain a clear research identity.
PILLAR 01
Human–Animal Bioenergetic Coherence
What happens — measurably and experientially — when humans interact with animals in intentional, relational ways. Direct proximity, distance healing, interspecies communication, and the coherence effects of ongoing animal relationships. Our most distinctive research lane.
GRANT ALIGNMENT · ANIMAL-ASSISTED PROGRAMMING
PILLAR 03
Nature-Immersion and Bioenergetic Outcomes
What happens to human coherence when people are embedded in intentional relationship with living systems beyond animals — plants, trees, water, weather, soil, and whole landscapes. The unit of analysis is the human-with-living-system dyad, not the human in a setting.
GRANT ALIGNMENT · NATURE-BASED THERAPEUTICS
PILLAR 02
Multidimensional Coherence Measurement
Developing the instruments, protocols, and assessment frameworks needed to measure coherence across multiple dimensions — physical, emotional, mental, soul, and the cosmic bridge that integrates them. A validated coherence assessment instrument is the long-term horizon.
GRANT ALIGNMENT · METHODOLOGY DEVELOPMENT
PILLAR 04
Applied Protocol
Research
Testing specific practices and interventions — somatic, energetic, nutritional, relational — for their measurable effect on coherence states. NESBEM's curriculum provides the protocols; the Research Farm provides the validation.
GRANT ALIGNMENT · INTEGRATIVE HEALTH
CURRENT
RESEARCH
AGENDA
Three
inaugural
studies.
All three share a common methodological through-line: heuristic, phenomenological inquiry centering the human's lived experience of being in intentional relationship with other living systems.
01
PILLAR 01 · HUMAN–ANIMAL COHERENCE
The lived experience of distance healing with animals
Our inaugural study and methodological flagship. The act of directing intentional healing energy toward an animal changes the person — through the inherent value of offering something good to another being. We investigate this from within, centering the participant's lived experience rather than measuring outcomes on the animal.
Methodology: Heuristic inquiry · IRB-reviewed protocol
02
PILLAR 03 · NATURE-IMMERSION
The lived experience of distance healing with plants
A parallel study extending our relational research lens to a different category of living system. Using the same heuristic methodology across animal and plant domains begins to build a comparative body of evidence about the coherence effects of interspecies relationship itself — regardless of species.
Methodology: Heuristic inquiry, parallel design to Study 01
03
PILLAR 03 · NATURE-IMMERSION
The lived experience of spending time with nature
Existing nature-immersion research overwhelmingly uses the preposition in. People walk in the forest. They are immersed in nature. Our study reframes the relationship: spending time with nature treats the landscape as a co-presence — something the human is in relationship with, not merely surrounded by.
Methodology: Phenomenological inquiry with optional quantitative pairing (HRV, biomarkers)
With
A SINGLE PREPOSITION FOCUS
In
shifts the entire research lens.
METHODOLOGICAL SIGNATURE
From environment
to relationship.
Most research on nature-based wellness treats the natural world as a setting. People go in nature. They walk through forests. They are surrounded by green space. The implicit frame is that nature is a container, and the human is the subject within it.
We operate from a fundamentally different premise. The natural world is not a container. It is a relational presence. Humans do not go in nature. They are with nature — with the horse, with the oak, with the field at dusk.
That single preposition shifts the entire research lens from studying environments to studying relationships.
THE RESEARCH FARM
Forty acres.
Living laboratory.
The New Hampshire property serves as NESBEM's dedicated research campus. It is not a venue for events or education. It is a living laboratory where the relationships we study actually occur. The animals are not research subjects in the reductive sense — they are relational partners. Their welfare, autonomy, and dignity are non-negotiable parameters of every research protocol.
