The word "pseudo" carries a quiet sharpness. It slips into conversation dressed as discernment, but often functions as a barrier. A quick dismissal. A way of shutting the door on something that doesn't sit neatly within the lines of traditional logic.
I’ve noticed how swiftly we reach for it when we’re confronted by ideas that feel unfamiliar. Especially when those ideas don’t come wrapped in the safety of clinical trials, published studies, or expert panels. If it doesn’t come stamped with data, we’re increasingly taught to treat it with suspicion. To discount it entirely. To label it as less than.
And yet, history shows us that so many of the truths we now take for granted were once laughed at. Marginalised. Rejected. The idea that the mind could shape the brain was once considered nonsense. The notion that breath could influence our physiological state sounded absurd. The truth about ulcers was ignored until someone proved they weren’t caused by stress alone, but by bacteria. He was met with disbelief until he won a Nobel Prize.
This is what science does when it’s working well. It evolves. It asks questions. It makes space for the unknown and the not-yet-understood. Science at its best is a living process, not a static verdict. It is a method of discovery. A way of learning. A tool for deeper understanding. And science, at its best, is open to that. It evolves with new evidence, with new ways of seeing. And sometimes, it’s our lived experiences that spark the questions worth studying. They aren’t in conflict. They’re part of the same unfolding.
So much of what we experience in the body, in the heart, in the subtle shifts of awareness, can’t always be measured in the moment. But that doesn’t make it any less real.
There is value in the pause you feel during meditation. In the tears that come when a breath softens the body. In the energy you sense when you sit in stillness or gather with others in search of healing. These things may not come with clinical citations, but they carry something true, something felt.
The tension between science and spirituality, or science and lived experience, is largely manmade. They are not in opposition. They are simply two different ways of exploring what it means to be alive. One offers the how. The other invites the why.
And the truth is, we need both.
To live well, to grow, to heal, we need the structure of science and the wisdom of experience. We need to understand the data and also trust our bodies. We need the proof and we need the feeling. These two ways of knowing are not enemies. They are partners. One keeps us grounded. The other keeps us open.
The people I trust most are the ones who hold both. They don’t dismiss data, but they don’t worship it either. They trust their intellect, but they also trust the knowing that comes from deep within. They are willing to say, I don’t understand this yet, but I’m curious enough to stay.
If we can resist the urge to label and dismiss, we get to live in that middle space. The space of wisdom, wonder, and genuine openness. And that’s where I believe the real growth begins.
If this resonates, I invite you to listen to the latest episode of Sarah’s Thoughts, where I explore this exact idea. The conversation is one I hope challenges the reflex to shut down and instead encourages all of us to soften, stay open, and listen more closely to the things that don’t always come with a citation, but often come with truth.
You can listen to the audio here.
With love,
Sarah
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I love this. It's something I talk about often with my friends: the sense that it is *more* logical to be open-minded than not, given the history we have behind us of things assumed to be "magic" that turn out, in fact, to be science (which I would argue, is the greatest kind of magic)