My own experience, filmed as the feature documentary The Edge of Dreaming, has shown me the powerful connection between the body and the mind. It is a subject that is increasingly important, as incurable diseases continue to rise – cancer, motor neuron disease, diabetes. They affect literally millions of people.

The link between brain and body is one that current medical practice finds impossible to explain. However, articles are beginning to appear in peer reviewed scientific journals and the more popular science magazines: for instance, The New Scientist reported on a man who complained of severe abdominal pain. The consultant in hospital ran tests, and confirmed that it was liver cancer. The patient asked for the truth – what would happen to him and how long did he have? The consultant explained there would be pain, but that medicine could control it. He had three months to live. The patient suffered, but the medicine helped control the pain, and he did indeed die within three months. They did an autopsy. The results were astonishing. The man was physiologically healthy. There had been a mix up of files.

This is called the “nocebo effect”: the sinister cousin to placebo. This film will make the link between our brain and our body vivid and something we can grasp, bringing it into our own lived experience as viewers. It is a subject that fascinates me, and I am willing to give it as long as it takes to make a film that will startle, seduce, explain and help patients towards full health.  I have secured access to 12 health care professionals whose results treating incurable diseases are making conventional medicine sit up and pay attention.

Amy Hardie