Think “energy medicine,” and you think wellness world: all those practices aimed at healing the human “energy body,” whether acupuncture, chakra balancing, reiki, crystal healing, etc.—often decried as “woo woo” wellness. Western medicine and ancient medicines (TCM, Ayurveda and Shamanic traditions) do take radically different approaches to healing: The former embraces the anatomical/biochemical model while the major indigenous medical systems independently devised healing approaches based on interventions in the body’s energy fields (whether “qi” in TCM or the doshas in Ayurveda).

Despite polar-opposite approaches, traditional medicine and “ancient wellness” are now finding some common ground. Scientific researchers are discovering that the human body is indeed a complex biofield of electromagnetic frequencies and light waves that serve as control central for our physical and mental functioning—and that we’re also immersed in other complex environmental electromagnetic fields that change human cells. If medicine ignored the “energy body” for a century, new discoveries are shaking up entrenched thinking in biology.

The future is the medical AND wellness worlds innovating new tools and technologies to optimize human energy fields to prevent illness and boost health. Frequency therapies are crucial here: electromagnetic, light and sound interventions.

In medicine, electrifying new insights will keep coming around bioelectricity, the “organized lightning” that our cells use to grow and communicate. Michael Levin at Harvard’s Wyss Institute is just one top scientist uncovering the bioelectric “language” that cells use to coordinate everything from their own regeneration to cancer suppression. Biophotons are the light particles radiating from our cells that help regulate our biological systems—and the emerging field of Biophotonics will use coherent light (lasers, lighted crystals) to positively impact tissues and organs. New “optogenetic” tools are exciting neurons using light, allowing them to map the brain’s connections and activate brain circuits.

Humans are increasingly bombarded by electromagnetic frequencies in our hyper-networked world, which will only surge with the next-gen cell network 5G, unleashing an unprecedented storm of high-energy photons through our dwellings and bodies. The science around cellphones’ impact on health is shrilly contradictory, but electromagnetic pollution will be the new public health issue. The future: solutions shielding us from the biophotonic blitz. Architects will design homes, schools and workplaces to maintain a healthy human energy field. Wellness resorts and real estate developers are already making moves: At Germany’s Villa Stephanie, a flick of a button copper-lines your room so electricity and Wi-Fi is blocked; Troon Pacific’s luxury homes have shielded cables in bedroom walls to block exposure to electromagnetic fields, and flipping lights off at night also means flipping off Wi-Fi.

More wellness destinations will go “high energy”: serving up even more ancient energy medicines, more cutting-edge energy technologies, and more blending of both ancient and modern solutions. Six Senses Resorts’ “Grow a New Body” program—dubbed “neo-shamanism”—deploys many approaches to fix your energy body. On the modern side, energy-medicine evaluations with doctors, light therapies, altitude training, and ozone and oxygen therapies—while ancient shamanic approaches include mitochondria-boosting diets, fasting, plant medicine, and intensive spiritual work to clear negative emotions.

Energy medicine is at a pivotal moment, with the medical world and “ancient wellness” finding some common—at least in principle—theoretical ground.