A Chinese guqin zither on a weathered wooden table, with a second zither in the room beyond, in warm golden light

Rupert Sheldrake and morphic resonance, fairly examined

ByRaymond Hackland

Frontier & Speculative Ideas

About this series. Frontier & Speculative Ideas is a series on ideas at the edge of science that often come up around Qigong, breath and sound practice. In each article we state the idea fairly, look at how it has actually been tested, and keep three things apart: what the tradition says, what research shows, and what practitioners notice in their own practice. Every section carries its own label, so you can see at a glance which is which; most of these ideas are 🟠 Speculative, and that label describes the state of the evidence, not the people who hold them. Where we describe what practice feels like, we add 🟣 Lived experience beside an evidence label, never instead of one.

Evidence label: Speculative Morphic resonance is a hypothesis by a Cambridge-trained biologist. It can be tested in principle and has been tested, but it is not supported by robust, independently replicated evidence. “Speculative” describes the state of the evidence, not the person.

Author: Raymond Hackland · Last reviewed: 21 October 2026 · Reading time: about 20 minutes

In short

What this is: Rupert Sheldrake proposes that living and non-living systems are shaped by “morphic fields” with a built-in memory. Through “morphic resonance”, what similar systems did in the past makes the same pattern easier in the future, so that the laws of nature are “more like habits” [1]. This article in our Frontier & Speculative Ideas series looks at the idea, the tests, the criticism, and a possible parallel with Daoist and early Chinese ideas of resonance that I find meaningful.

What the evidence says: A handful of tests exist, most of them run by Sheldrake or by researchers open to the idea. Results are mixed. The best-known joint test with a sceptic was read in opposite ways by the two scientists who designed it [18, 19]. A positive result with Chinese characters failed to replicate in two later studies by the same research group [22, 23, 24]. The 2026 Wordle studies found one positive result out of three, which then did not replicate [25]. There is no proposed physical mechanism, and the idea conflicts with how biology understands memory and inheritance.

What it means for your practice: Nothing in Resonance Heritage Qi depends on morphic resonance. “Resonance” in our practice means the ordinary acoustics of the voice and breath, together with the tradition’s own language of qi. The sense of connection you may feel when practising an old form is real as an experience, and we take it seriously. But it is not evidence for morphic fields, and it has good ordinary explanations.

What Sheldrake proposes

Label for this section: 🟠 Speculative (this describes the hypothesis, not established science) · 📜 Documented history (books and dates).

The books. Sheldrake first set out the idea in A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Formative Causation, published in 1981 by Blond & Briggs in London and by J.P. Tarcher in Los Angeles (library records give 1981 for the Tarcher edition; Sheldrake’s own list of his books gives 1982) [2]. He developed it at length in what he calls his main theoretical work, The Presence of the Past: Morphic Resonance and the Habits of Nature, published in 1988 by Collins in London and Times Books in New York [1, 4]. Both books have been revised: A New Science of Life in 2009 (in the US under the title Morphic Resonance), and The Presence of the Past in 2012, with the new subtitle Morphic Resonance and the Memory of Nature [1, 3, 4].

The key terms. In Sheldrake’s own words on his research page [1]:

  • Morphic resonance is “a process whereby self-organising systems inherit a memory from previous similar systems”.
  • Habits of nature: in its most general form, it means “that the so-called laws of nature are more like habits”.
  • Memory without traces: memory “need not be stored in material traces inside brains, which are more like TV receivers than video recorders, tuning into influences from the past”.
  • Inheritance beyond genes: much of biological inheritance, he suggests, “depends on morphic resonance from previous members of the species”.

Morphic fields are the fields through which this is meant to work. Sheldrake describes them as organising all self-organising systems, “in a nested hierarchy” from the folding of proteins to flocks of birds and schools of fish, and as having “an inherent memory” [7, 45]. He also links them with Jung’s collective unconscious [5]. And, of interest to anyone who practises a traditional form, he applies them to ritual and cultural inheritance [4, 6].

Not the same as a morphogenetic field. Developmental biologists do use the term “morphogenetic field”: a region of the embryo that develops as a unit, explained by genes, signalling molecules and cells [8]. Sheldrake took the word as a starting point, but his morphic fields add something new: a memory that acts across space and time without any physical carrier. It is that addition which is speculative.

Why it is testable. The hypothesis makes a clear prediction: if many animals or people learn something new, others should later learn it more easily, even far away and with no contact [18]. When Nature attacked the book in 1981, one reader pointed out in the letters that Sheldrake “clearly states that he would regard failure as disproof” [12]. That is to Sheldrake’s credit, and it is why the tests below matter.

The experiments he cites, and what happened next

Label for this section: 🟠 Speculative for the main claim; each study is described for what it found and how it was designed.

If you want to know why a single positive study is not enough, see Study types explained: from anecdote to meta-analysis.

McDougall’s rats and the Agar re-test

The psychologist William McDougall trained rats over 32 generations to escape a water tank by choosing the dim exit rather than the lit one, which gave an electric shock. He reported that later generations learned faster, and he took this as evidence that acquired learning is inherited [17]. A team led by W.E. Agar repeated the experiment for 20 years. Their final report of 1954 says they “too have obtained long duration trends of improvement in learning-rate”. But the effect “is not sustained”, and it also showed up in a control line of rats whose ancestors were never trained. Agar’s team concluded that this “forbids a Lamarckian interpretation”, and that the changes in learning rate tracked the health of the laboratory colony [16].

Sheldrake reads the same result differently. If untrained rats in the same laboratory also improved, he argues, that is what morphic resonance would predict [25]. This is a fair point about Lamarckian inheritance, but it is not a test of morphic resonance: the experiment was not designed to tell resonance apart from changes in the colony, the handling or the procedure, and Agar’s team found such a link with colony health [16].

The chick experiment with Steven Rose

The best-known test was planned jointly by Sheldrake and the neuroscientist Steven Rose, a sceptic, and run in Rose’s laboratory at the Open University [18, 19]. Day-old chicks pecked either a small yellow light or a chrome bead. After pecking the light, test chicks were given lithium chloride, which made them mildly sick, and learned to avoid it; control chicks got salt water. The procedure was repeated with new chicks on 37 days. If morphic resonance were real, later chicks should have avoided the yellow light more and more readily [18].

Both men published in the same 1992 issue of Rivista di Biologia, with opposite conclusions:

  • Sheldrake wrote that the results were consistent with morphic resonance, with high statistical significance (p < 0.01) when aversion to the light was measured relative to the control bead, and added: “Rose disagrees with this interpretation” [18].
  • Rose titled his reply “So-called ‘formative causation’: a hypothesis disconfirmed”. He wrote that Sheldrake’s interpretation “is invalid” and that the results “by no means confirm his hypothesis” [19].
  • In a further reply, “Rose refuted”, Sheldrake referred to Rose’s “alternative interpretation” of the trends “in terms of ‘floors’ and ‘ceilings’”, and said that Rose had withdrawn from a planned joint paper [20].

We could read only the opening paragraph of Rose’s paper, quoted on Sheldrake’s website, so we don’t present his statistical argument (see the source note). The lesson for readers is simple: when the same data support opposite conclusions depending on how they are analysed, the result cannot count as confirmation.

Other tests in the laboratory

  • Morse code (1987). Arden Mahlberg compared how quickly people learned real Morse code and a newly invented code. As summarised by later authors, participants learned the real code more accurately, and later participants also learned the new code increasingly well [21, 25]. This was a single study that we have not seen replicated.
  • Chinese characters (2010, 2011, 2021). Kimberly Robbins and Chris Roe showed 60 people real and invented Chinese characters. Participants recognised more real characters, as morphic resonance predicts, but they also reported more false memories of real characters they had not seen [22]. Roe then ran a replication with a better randomised design and 101 participants: there was no advantage for real characters, and the authors concluded the earlier result was best explained as “methodological artifact” [23]. A third study by the same group, with 154 participants, found that people actually preferred the invented characters, and concluded that the findings “fail to support the idea of morphic resonance” [24]. That a research group openly reported its own failure to replicate is a good sign for the field.
  • Word recognition and crosswords. The Wordle paper’s literature review also mentions a word-recognition experiment by Zoltán Dienes that was significant once and not on repetition, and a crossword study with mixed results [25]. We have not read the originals, so we mention them only as reported.

The Wordle studies (2026)

The newest test comes from Sheldrake’s own circle: Georgia Black, Bethany Butzer and Rupert Sheldrake, published in the Journal of Anomalous Experience and Cognition in March 2026 [25]. The idea: millions of people solve the same Wordle puzzle each day, so if morphic resonance exists, the puzzle should get easier as the day goes on.

  • Study 1 (a questionnaire: 583 responses from about 342 people, with a control group playing a custom Wordle) found no link between time of day and score.
  • Study 2 (WordleBot data over 12 days) found a significant rise from morning to evening in the share of players solving in one or two guesses. The effect was tiny: for a first-guess solve, 0.6% in the morning against 0.7% in the evening.
  • Study 3 (the same method over 30 days) did not replicate this; the shares went down rather than up.

The authors note that the hypotheses were not pre-registered. They conclude that “if morphic resonance is at play, it is likely a subtle effect that is easily inhibited by factors such as conscious cognitive processes” [25]. That is honest, but it also shows the problem. An idea that can explain a positive result, a negative result and a failed replication equally well is hard to test at all.

What mainstream biology explains through material channels

Label for this paragraph: 🟢 Well studied (culture and learning) · 🟡 Early evidence (transgenerational epigenetics in mammals).

The things morphic resonance sets out to explain are real: animals inherit behaviour, people learn from people, and some skills spread fast. Biology explains them through channels that can be traced: genes; teaching, imitation and culture; and epigenetic marks on DNA. A 2014 review in Cell points out that while epigenetic inheritance “can certainly occur”, particularly in plants, how much is driven by the environment and how far it happens in humans “remain unclear” [26]. Rising IQ scores over the last century, which the Wordle authors also cite as consistent with morphic resonance [25], are attributed by the first formal meta-analysis mainly to ordinary factors such as faster life histories, social multiplier effects and economic prosperity, although its authors say the causes still “remain elusive” [27]. All of these mechanisms work locally and through material carriers. Morphic resonance adds an influence with no carrier, acting at any distance. That is the extra step no test has yet established.

Box: related “extended mind” claims (not direct tests of morphic resonance)

Label for this box: 🟠 Speculative.

Sheldrake also uses morphic fields to explain telepathy and the feeling of being stared at, arguing that minds are fields that “extend far beyond” brains [1, 45]. These studies test those claims, not morphic resonance itself.

  • Being stared at. Sheldrake reported more than 15,000 trials with a significant excess of correct guesses, including tests through closed windows [28]. Colwell and colleagues found that above-chance results appeared only with feedback, and disappeared with truly random sequences; they put the effect down to implicit learning of patterns in the non-random sequences used [29]. When Richard Wiseman, a sceptic, and Marilyn Schlitz, a proponent, ran the same protocol in the same place, Wiseman’s sessions showed no effect and Schlitz’s did, which points to an “experimenter effect” that is itself unexplained [30]. Two 2004 meta-analyses of studies that measured skin conductance found “hints of an effect, but also a shortage of independent replications and theoretical concepts” [31].
  • The dog who knew. Sheldrake and Pam Smart videotaped her dog Jaytee in 12 experiments in which she came home at randomly chosen times, and in more than 80 further homecomings at times of her own choosing, and reported that he waited at the window far more while she was on her way home [32]. Wiseman, Smith and Milton ran four experiments with the same dog and concluded the data “did not support the hypothesis” [33]. Sheldrake argues that Wiseman’s own data show the same pattern and that the disagreement is about how to score it [32].

Reception in the scientific community

Label for this section: 📜 Documented history.

“A book for burning?” On 24 September 1981 Nature published an unsigned editorial with that title about A New Science of Life [9]. It was widely taken to be by Nature’s editor, John Maddox; one reader’s reply addressed its author as someone with “the responsibilities of the editorship of Nature” [10, 14]. As quoted by readers and by Maddox’s Guardian obituary, it called the book “the best candidate for burning there has been for many years”, dismissed his morphic fields as “pseudo science”, objected that hypotheses “can be dignified as theories only if all aspects of them can be tested”, and warned that the book was “well on the way to being a point of reference for a motley crew of creationists, anti-reductionists, neo-Lamarckians and the rest” [10, 12, 13, 14]. Its conclusion, often forgotten, was that the book “should not be burned, but, rather, put firmly in its place among the literature of intellectual aberrations” [14].

The replies Nature printed. On 15 October 1981 Nature printed four letters under the heading “Incendiary subject”, all critical of the editorial’s tone or reasoning [10–13]:

  • Robert Hedges (Oxford) wrote that Nature “could have served us better by arranging for the publication of two careful and opposed critical reviews” [10].
  • F.W. Cousins quoted Milton’s defence of free publication, Areopagitica [11].
  • C.J.S. Clarke (York) argued that the editorial’s objections would apply to any new hypothesis, and that Sheldrake had said he would accept failure as disproof [12].
  • The physicist Brian Josephson (Cambridge) argued that electricity and magnetism had once had the same status that Nature now criticised [13].

Since then. Most biologists have simply not taken the hypothesis up. In 2021 Alex Gomez-Marin, of the Institute of Neuroscience in Alicante, wrote in BioEssays that the idea was “quickly met with dogmatic skepticism, dismissed as scientific heresy, and ultimately ignored”, and that forty years on its “experimental implications” remain “largely untested” [15]. Both things can be true: the 1981 editorial was harsh, and the tests that have since been run still don’t support the hypothesis. A harsh review doesn’t settle a scientific question either way; good tests do.

Resonance in Daoist and early Chinese thought: a possible parallel

Label for this section: 🔵 Tradition only (what the Daoist and early Chinese texts say) · 🟠 Speculative (the bridge to Sheldrake).

This section explores an idea, not evidence. I find a real kinship between Sheldrake’s “habits of nature” and the way Chinese tradition speaks about the Dao, qi and resonance. We think the parallel is worth looking at closely, and we also want to be clear about where it stops.

What the tradition says

Label: 🔵 Tradition only.

The Dao and qi. In early Chinese thought the Dao is the way things go: not a thing among things, but the pattern by which the world arises and returns. Qi is the stuff and the vitality of everything. In the Zhuangzi, the Yellow Emperor says that human life “is a gathering of qi; when it gathers there is life, when it disperses there is death”, and concludes: “throughout the world there is just one qi” (通天下一氣耳) [35]. Our articles What is Qigong? and Jing, qi and shen explain how Qigong and neigong use these words.

Ganying, “stimulus and response”. Early Chinese texts describe how things of the same kind respond to each other across a distance. The classic image comes from music:

  • In the Zhuangzi (chapter “Xu Wugui”), Zhuangzi tells of Lu Ju, who tunes two zithers and places one in the hall and one in an inner room: “strike the gong note and the gong string moves; strike the jue and the jue moves” (鼓宮宮動，鼓角角動) [34]. The context matters. Zhuangzi tells the story while teasing his friend and rival Huizi in a debate. In it, Lu Ju dismisses his disciple’s feats (lighting fires in winter, making ice in summer) as merely “using yang to call yang” and offers the zithers as a demonstration of his own Dao. If one string were retuned so that it matched none of the five notes, he says, striking it would make all twenty-five strings move. Zhuangzi then asks Huizi whether his own arguments are like that [34].
  • The Lüshi chunqiu (3rd century BCE, book 13, “Ying tong”, “Responding to the same”) states the principle: “things of a kind attract each other; when qi is the same they unite, when sounds match they respond” (類固相召，氣同則合，聲比則應) [36].
  • The Huainanzi (2nd century BCE), chapter 6, repeats the zither image and adds that the mutual responses of things of a kind are “mysterious and subtle; knowledge cannot discuss them, argument cannot explain them”: when the east wind arrives, wine overflows; when silkworms spin silk, the shang string breaks [37]. Charles Le Blanc’s book-length study of this chapter is devoted to this idea of resonance, ganying [38]. A full English translation is Major and colleagues’ Huainanzi [39].

(These translations are our own working translations.)

Lineage and transmission. Traditional practice is passed on from teacher to student. Students often see themselves as part of a line that goes back, sometimes for centuries and sometimes by legend, to a founder. Our articles on neijia and waijia and on stillness and posture show how such lineages were described and sometimes constructed.

Where the zither image comes from

Label: 🟢 Well studied (the acoustics) · 🔵 Tradition only (the cosmology).

The zither example describes something real. A string tuned to the same pitch will start to vibrate when its partner is played: that is sympathetic resonance, ordinary physics explained in What resonance really is. The early texts take that observable fact and widen it into a cosmology in which seasons, colours, organs and rulers respond to each other “by kind”. The same correspondence thinking lies behind the pairing of sounds, tones and organs in Liu Zi Jue; see The Chinese five tones and the Five Phases.

The bridge to Sheldrake

Label: 🟠 Speculative.

The parallel is striking. Both ganying and morphic resonance say that like responds to like, across distance, without contact. Both picture nature as held together by patterns and correspondences rather than by fixed mechanical rules. And Sheldrake himself applies morphic resonance to ritual and to the passing on of cultural forms [4, 6]. Read this way, practising a centuries-old form could mean “tuning in” to everyone who has practised it before, much as one zither string answers another.

This is a meaningful image, and it speaks to me. But it is an interpretation, not evidence, for three reasons:

  1. Neither supports the other. The early Chinese texts are a philosophy of correspondences, not experiments. Morphic resonance is an unconfirmed hypothesis. Putting two unproven ideas side by side does not make either more likely.
  2. They are not the same idea. Ganying works between things that are alike now, like two tuned strings. Morphic resonance is about memory: the past shaping the present. The early Chinese texts do not speak of a stored memory of past practitioners.
  3. The zither part is ordinary physics. The one piece of ganying we can test, sympathetic resonance between strings, works through sound waves in the air, a material channel. It does not need morphic fields.

Why practising an old form may feel “connected”

Label: 🟡 Early evidence (ritual psychology [43]). The anthropology and history cited below are scholarly description, not studies of effects.

If practising an old form feels “connected”, there are ordinary explanations for that, and they make the experience richer rather than smaller:

  • Shared culture and teaching lineage. A form reaches you through a chain of real teachers, books and corrections. The anthropologist Elisabeth Hsu, who studied with a Qigong master in Kunming, showed that the way knowledge is passed on (secretly from a master, personally from a mentor, or in standardised college courses) shapes what students understand by the same words [40]. David Palmer’s history of the Qigong movement describes how master–disciple transmission was replaced in the 20th century by doctor–patient relationships and then by mass networks [42]. The “line” you feel is, among other things, a social fact.
  • Embodied learning. Hsu and Chee Han Lim describe learning the Yijinjing as “enskilment”: a sensitivity built up “through repeated imitation of precisely choreographed movements”. Hsu’s teacher gave no explanations; he had her copy him and only now and then pulled or pushed her into position [41]. Knowledge that lives in the body is felt rather than reasoned, which is one reason it can feel as if it comes from somewhere beyond you.
  • The meaning of ritual and repetition. Psychologists who study ritual describe three main functions: regulating emotion, regulating performance, and creating social connection, through both the physical features of a ritual and its meaning [43]. Practising a form that others have practised for centuries carries exactly that kind of meaning.
  • The felt sense of continuity. Some of the continuity is real and some is constructed. The Health Qigong forms, for instance, are carefully researched modern versions of old practices; see Health Qigong: how China’s standard forms were made. A modern form can still connect you to an old practice, because what continues is the practice, the images and the attention, not an unchanged set of movements.

None of these explanations needs morphic fields. And none of them makes the experience less real.

Key concepts of Qigong, neigong and taiji, one by one

Label for this section: each item is labelled separately. The tradition’s own view is 🔵 Tradition only; anything that has been tested is described with its quality; any bridge to Sheldrake is 🟠 Speculative.

Here is how the ideas above relate to the main concepts of Qigong, neigong and taiji, one by one.

Qi. 🔵 Tradition only. In Qigong, neigong and taiji, qi is the vital breath that practice cultivates and moves. Research has not measured qi as a substance; as the tradition describes it, it is probably not testable (see Jing, qi and shen). Studies that try to measure “energy” around the body, and experiments with “external qi”, are beyond the scope of this article. 🟠 Speculative bridge: if qi is pictured as “one qi” running through everything [35], it is tempting to call it a morphic field. That is a comparison of images, not a finding.

Intention and qi (意 yi, 气 qi). 🔵 Tradition only. The internal traditions teach that intention leads and qi follows. A taijiquan classic, the Shisan shi xinggong xinjie, says “use the heart-mind to move qi” (以心行氣) [46]; the authorship of these classics is debated. A text preserved in the Yunji qiqian and headed as the work of Gushenzi (Pei Xing) says “where intention arrives, qi arrives” (意到則氣到) [47]. Modern descriptions of taijiquan put it as 以意导气, “use intention to guide qi” [48]; we have not found this four-character phrase in a classical text. Our article Guiding with the mind: yi, intention and visualisation in the internal traditions traces these sayings. Tested? Attention clearly changes how we breathe, move and feel, and the hub covers some of that research for the breath (see Slow breathing and heart rate variability, 🟢). Whether intention steers something called qi, beyond these ordinary effects of attention and expectation, has not been shown. 🟠 Speculative bridge: Sheldrake would describe a mind as a field extending beyond the brain [1]. Reading “intention leads qi” as one field steering another is an interpretation, not a test.

The dantian. 🔵 Tradition only. The lower dantian is where many forms gather attention and settle the breath. The classical texts place the dantians in the abdomen, chest and head but describe them as “devoid of material counterparts”, and no research has found one as a physical structure (see The three dantians). There is nothing here for morphic resonance to explain or be tested against.

Song (松, relaxed and released). 🔵 Tradition only. Taiji and Qigong teachers ask for song: a relaxed, released body that stays upright and alive, not slack. A commentary on Ba Duan Jin published by China’s Health Qigong Management Center notes that Qigong masters through the ages stressed relaxation and developed methods for it [44]. Lim’s Yijinjing teacher, Lau, played on the sound of 鬆 song (relaxed) and 松 song (pine) and told him to “let go and be a pine tree”: relaxed, yet as unmovable as a tree in the wind [41]. The two accounts differ in how much is explained. Hsu’s teacher gave no explanations: he had her imitate him and only occasionally pulled or pushed her into position. Lim’s teaching, by contrast, came with a great deal of explanation, and Lau’s pine-tree pun is itself an explanation [41]. Tested? General research on relaxation and slow breathing exists (🟡–🟢, see Qigong and tai chi: what systematic reviews say), but song as the tradition defines it has not been studied as such.

Standing practice (zhan zhuang). 🔵 Tradition only · 🟡 Early evidence (for Qigong and tai chi in general). Standing still for long periods is the foundation of yiquan and of many Qigong schools, and the Liu Zi Jue form opens with a standing posture (see Stillness and posture). Reviews of Qigong and tai chi, which include standing practice, show early evidence for some outcomes, often from low-quality studies; the historical claims about posture and qi have not been tested. 🟠 Speculative bridge: reading any felt sense of connection in standing practice as contact with earlier practitioners would be an interpretation, not evidence for morphic resonance (see “Why practising an old form may feel ‘connected’” above).

Resonance in the Six Healing Sounds. 🟢 Well studied (the acoustics) · 🔵 Tradition only (the organ pairings). When you voice a sound, the vocal tract shapes it and the air in your chest, throat and mouth resonates. That is ordinary physics, explained in Vowels and formants: the acoustics of the six sounds and What resonance really is; how you can feel that vibration in your own body is covered in Feeling your own voice: bone conduction and chest vibration. The idea that each sound resonates with an organ is traditional correspondence thinking, like the zither in the Huainanzi (see the history of Liu Zi Jue). Despite the shared word, morphic resonance has nothing to do with acoustic resonance [1].

Transmission between teacher and student. 🔵 Tradition only. Traditions speak of a teacher passing on not just movements but something felt, sometimes almost without words. Hsu’s account of learning from a master who taught by touch and imitation describes exactly this [40, 41]. Anthropologists describe it in terms of embodied learning, close attention and long practice [40, 41]. Whether anything passes from teacher to student beyond what can be seen, heard and felt is the question that external qi experiments try to test (beyond the scope of this article). 🟠 Speculative bridge: morphic resonance would make transmission partly a matter of “tuning in” to the teacher’s field. No study has tested that.

What is unproven, and what would change the label

Label for this section: 🟠 Speculative.

Unproven:

  • that morphic fields exist;
  • that memory is not stored in the brain;
  • that learning spreads at a distance without any physical channel;
  • that a form “gets easier” because many people have practised it, rather than because of better teaching, books, video and practice.

What would change our label:

  • pre-registered studies, with the hypotheses, analysis and sample size fixed in advance (the Wordle studies were not pre-registered [25]);
  • independent replications by laboratories with no stake in the result;
  • joint studies by sceptics and proponents, as Wiseman and Schlitz modelled for staring [30], designed so that both agree in advance what would count as success or failure;
  • and, ideally, some proposal for how the effect works that makes new predictions.

If such studies consistently found the effect, we would update the label, as we promise for every article (see Our labels).

Where popular claims go beyond the evidence

Label for this section: 🟠 Speculative.

“Science has proved morphic resonance.” It hasn’t. The few positive results have not survived replication [23, 24, 25], and the authors of the newest study describe any effect as, at most, “subtle” and “easily inhibited” [25].

“Sheldrake was attacked, so he must be right.” The 1981 editorial was harsh, and Nature’s own readers said so [10–13]. But a harsh reception says nothing about whether a hypothesis is true. The tests do.

“Sheldrake is a crank.” Also not fair. He trained as a biologist at Cambridge and states his hypothesis openly enough to be tested [1, 4, 12]. “Speculative” describes the evidence, not the person.

“Morphic resonance is quantum physics.” Sheldrake discussed morphic fields with the physicist David Bohm in a dialogue printed as an appendix to the 2009 edition [1]. A conversation is not evidence. See our article “Quantum healing” and the observer effect.

“Practising Liu Zi Jue taps into the field of everyone who ever practised it, and that is why it works.” This turns an interpretation into a claim of effect. There is no evidence for the field, and our practice makes no health claims.

“Daoist ganying proves Sheldrake right” (or the reverse). As shown above, they are parallel images, not evidence for each other.

How this relates to the Six Healing Sounds, Qigong and neigong

Label for this section: 🔵 Tradition only (traditional concepts) · 🟠 Speculative (any link to morphic resonance).

Resonance Heritage Qi does not depend on morphic resonance. If morphic resonance were disproved tomorrow, nothing in the practice would change. The resonance we work with is the resonance of the voice and breath, which you can hear and feel, plus the tradition’s own language of qi, which we present as tradition.

I find the Daoist and early Chinese idea of resonance, and Sheldrake’s image of nature’s habits, a meaningful way of thinking about why an old form feels the way it does. We have presented that view as an interpretation, next to the ordinary explanations, so you can decide for yourself. Whatever you conclude, the sense of connection when you practise is worth noticing for its own sake. It needs no theory to be real as an experience, and no theory can promise it. This article makes no health claims.

Resonance Heritage Qi is a personal, music-assisted practice inspired by Liu Zi Jue: connected to it, not a replacement for the traditional form or for study with a teacher of that tradition. No study has tested it, and we make no claims about its effects. Where we use music, tuning forks or particular tones in sessions, these are aesthetic choices and an invitation to listen closely, not health claims.

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Sources

  1. Sheldrake R. Morphic Resonance: Research and Papers. Author’s research page, sheldrake.org, accessed 20 October 2026. https://www.sheldrake.org/research/morphic-resonance
  2. Sheldrake R, 1981. A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Formative Causation. London: Blond & Briggs (ISBN 0856341150); Los Angeles: J.P. Tarcher (ISBN 0874772214; 1981 in library records, 1982 in the author’s own list of his books). Records: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2042887W
  3. Sheldrake R, 2009. Morphic Resonance: The Nature of Formative Causation (revised and expanded edition of A New Science of Life). Rochester, VT: Park Street Press. ISBN 9781594773174. https://www.innertraditions.com/books/morphic-resonance
  4. Sheldrake R, 1988. The Presence of the Past: Morphic Resonance and the Habits of Nature. London: Collins (ISBN 0002177854); New York: Times Books (ISBN 0812916662). Records: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2042886W . Revised edition: The Presence of the Past: Morphic Resonance and the Memory of Nature. Rochester, VT: Park Street Press, 2012. ISBN 9781594774614. https://www.innertraditions.com/books/the-presence-of-the-past
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  6. Sheldrake R, 1987. Society, spirit & ritual: morphic resonance and the collective unconscious, part II. Psychological Perspectives 18(2):320–331. https://doi.org/10.1080/00332928708410861
  7. Sheldrake R, 2006. Morphic fields. World Futures 62(1–2):31–41. https://doi.org/10.1080/02604020500406248
  8. Gilbert SF, Opitz JM, Raff RA, 1996. Resynthesizing evolutionary and developmental biology. Developmental Biology 173(2):357–372. https://doi.org/10.1006/dbio.1996.0032
  9. [Unsigned editorial], 1981. A book for burning? Nature 293:245–246 (24 September 1981). https://doi.org/10.1038/293245b0
  10. Hedges R, 1981. Incendiary subject (correspondence). Nature 293:506 (15 October 1981). https://doi.org/10.1038/293506d0
  11. Cousins FW, 1981. Incendiary subject (correspondence). Nature 293:506, continued on p. 594 (15 October 1981). https://doi.org/10.1038/293506e0
  12. Clarke CJS, 1981. Incendiary subject (correspondence). Nature 293:594 (15 October 1981). https://doi.org/10.1038/293594a0
  13. Josephson BD, 1981. Incendiary subject (correspondence). Nature 293:594 (15 October 1981). https://doi.org/10.1038/293594b0
  14. Dixon B, 2009. Sir John Maddox (obituary). The Guardian, 15 April 2009. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2009/apr/15/sir-john-maddox-obituary
  15. Gomez-Marin A, 2021. Facing biology’s open questions: Rupert Sheldrake’s “heretical” hypothesis turns 40. BioEssays 43(6):e2100055. https://doi.org/10.1002/bies.202100055
  16. Agar WE, Drummond FH, Tiegs OW, Gunson MM, 1954. Fourth (final) report on a test of McDougall’s Lamarckian experiment on the training of rats. Journal of Experimental Biology 31(3):307–321. https://doi.org/10.1242/jeb.31.3.307
  17. McDougall W, 1938. Fourth report on a Lamarckian experiment. British Journal of Psychology 28(3):321–345. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8295.1938.tb00878.x
  18. Sheldrake R, 1992. An experimental test of the hypothesis of formative causation. Rivista di Biologia 85(3–4):431–443. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1341836/
  19. Rose S, 1992. So-called “formative causation”. A hypothesis disconfirmed. Response to Rupert Sheldrake. Rivista di Biologia 85(3–4):445–453. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1341837/
  20. Sheldrake R, 1992. Rose refuted. Rivista di Biologia 85(3–4):455–460 (discussion to [19]). Summary on [1].
  21. Mahlberg A, 1987. Evidence of collective memory: a test of Sheldrake’s theory. Journal of Analytical Psychology 32(1):23–34. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1465-5922.1987.00023.x
  22. Robbins K, Roe CA, 2010. An empirical test of the theory of morphic resonance by using recognition for Chinese symbols. Explore 6(4):256–262. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.explore.2010.04.001
  23. Roe CA, Hitchman GA, 2011. Testing the theory of morphic resonance using recognition for Chinese symbols: a failure to replicate. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 75(4):211–224. https://nectar.northampton.ac.uk/id/eprint/3900/
  24. Vernon D, Hitchman G, Roe C, 2021. An implicit and explicit assessment of morphic resonance theory using Chinese characters. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 85(3):129–144. https://nectar.northampton.ac.uk/id/eprint/17441/
  25. Black G, Butzer B, Sheldrake R, 2026. Memory Within Nature: A Study of Morphic Resonance Predictions on Learning (the PDF heading reads “Memory In Nature”). Journal of Anomalous Experience and Cognition 6(1):11–37. https://doi.org/10.31156/jaex.27438
  26. Heard E, Martienssen RA, 2014. Transgenerational epigenetic inheritance: myths and mechanisms. Cell 157(1):95–109. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2014.02.045
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  28. Sheldrake R, 2000. The “sense of being stared at” does not depend on known sensory clues. Rivista di Biologia 93(2):237–252. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11048482/
  29. Colwell J, Schröder S, Sladen D, 2000. The ability to detect unseen staring: a literature review and empirical tests. British Journal of Psychology 91(1):71–85. https://doi.org/10.1348/000712600161682
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  32. Sheldrake R, Smart P, 2000. A dog that seems to know when his owner is coming home: videotaped experiments and observations. Journal of Scientific Exploration 14(2):233–255. https://www.sheldrake.org/research/animal-powers/a-dog-that-seems-to-know-when-his-owner-is-coming-home-videotaped-experiments-and-observations
  33. Wiseman R, Smith M, Milton J, 1998. Can animals detect when their owners are returning home? An experimental test of the “psychic pet” phenomenon. British Journal of Psychology 89(3):453–462. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8295.1998.tb02696.x
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  35. Zhuangzi 莊子, chapter 22, “Zhi bei you” 知北遊. Chinese text on Wikisource. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/莊子/知北遊
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  37. Huainanzi 淮南子, chapter 6, “Lan ming” 覽冥訓. Chinese text on Wikisource. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/淮南子/覽冥訓
  38. Le Blanc C, 1985. Huai-nan Tzu: Philosophical Synthesis in Early Han Thought. The Idea of Resonance (Kan-ying), with a Translation and Analysis of Chapter Six. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. ISBN 962-209-169-5.
  39. Major JS, Queen SA, Meyer AS, Roth HD (trans. and eds), 2010. The Huainanzi: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Government in Early Han China. New York: Columbia University Press.
  40. Hsu E, 1999. The Transmission of Chinese Medicine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511612459
  41. Hsu E, Lim CH, 2016. Enskilment into the Environment: the Yijin jing Worlds of Jin and Qi. Preprint 486, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin. https://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/sites/default/files/Preprints/P486.pdf
  42. Palmer DA, 2007. Qigong Fever: Body, Science, and Utopia in China. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 9780231140669. https://cup.columbia.edu/book/qigong-fever/9780231140669/
  43. Hobson NM, Schroeder J, Risen JL, Xygalatas D, Inzlicht M, 2018. The psychology of rituals: an integrative review and process-based framework. Personality and Social Psychology Review 22(3):260–284. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868317734944
  44. Huang Jian 黄健, 2017. 健身气功·八段锦的中医解读 (A Chinese-medicine reading of Health Qigong Ba Duan Jin). Health Qigong Management Center, General Administration of Sport of China, 21 December 2017. https://www.sport.gov.cn/qgzx/n5407/c840284/content.html
  45. Sheldrake R, 2019. Can morphic fields help explain telepathy and the sense of being stared at? Mindfield Bulletin 11(1):26–33. Abstract on [1].
  46. 太極拳經 Taijiquan jing (compilation headed 山右王宗岳, “Wang Zongyue of Shanxi”), 十三勢行功心解 Shisan shi xinggong xinjie. Chinese text, Wikisource, accessed 20 October 2026. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/太極拳經
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  48. Shenzhen University, 体育非物质文化遗产 (Sports intangible cultural heritage): 陈氏太极拳 (Chen-style taijiquan). Accessed 20 October 2026. https://fy.szu.edu.cn/fyxm/xmdq/hns/cstjq.htm

Source quality note:

  • [1]–[7], [18], [20], [25], [28], [32] and [45] are by Sheldrake or his co-authors and state the case for the hypothesis. [25] appeared in a journal specialising in anomalous experience; it is peer-reviewed, but its hypotheses were not pre-registered. We read [25] in full; for [1], [7], [18], [28], [32] and [45] we read the abstracts or the author’s own summaries. We have not read the books [2]–[4]; their publication details come from library records (Open Library, which gives the Library of Congress numbers) and the publisher’s pages.
  • [19] is Rose’s critical reply; we read only its opening paragraph, which Sheldrake quotes on his website, and PubMed has no abstract. [20] we know only from Sheldrake’s summary.
  • [16], [22], [26], [27], [29], [31] and [33] are peer-reviewed; we read their abstracts (PubMed or the publisher). [16] is the final report of the re-test of McDougall [17]; we read its abstract, not the full paper. [21] we know only from its PubMed record and the summary in [25]. [23] and [24] were read on the University of Northampton’s repository (abstract for [23], abstract and discussion for [24]). [30] was read as its university record and abstract.
  • [9]–[13] were read in the original Nature pages, apart from the editorial [9] itself, which we quote only as quoted in [10]–[14]. [14] is a newspaper obituary; [15] is an opinion essay in a mainstream biology journal, sympathetic to Sheldrake.
  • [34]–[37] are classical Chinese texts. We used Wikisource because the scholarly database ctext.org was not reachable for us; the passages were checked in the Chinese original and translated by us. [38] and [39] are scholarly studies and translations, listed for further reading ([38]’s university repository handle did not resolve when checked, so we give its ISBN); we have not used them for specific claims beyond their subject.
  • [46] and [47] are classical Chinese texts read on Wikisource, used only to document the traditional wording on intention and qi; the authorship of the taijiquan classics [46] is debated. [48] is a university heritage web page, used only as an example of the modern phrase 以意导气.
  • [40] and [42] are scholarly books, checked on the publishers’ pages. For [42] our summary of transmission also draws on a published review we could read only in a search-engine extract. [41] is a scholarly preprint, not peer-reviewed, read in full. [43] is a peer-reviewed review, abstract read. [44] is an official Chinese source, read in the original.
  • None of these sources studies health effects of qigong, and this article makes no health claims.

Disclaimer

This article is for general education only. It is not medical advice and does not replace diagnosis or treatment by a doctor or other qualified health professional. Qigong and the Six Healing Sounds are traditional practices; we make no claims that they cure, treat or prevent any illness. If you have a health condition, are pregnant, or are unsure whether a practice suits you, please talk to your doctor first.

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