Bergel Institute Fellowship - FH1: Expanding our Understanding of Health and Healing Grant

Bergel Institute Fellowship - FH1: Expanding our Understanding of Health and Healing Grant

Status: ACTIVE
Funder: The Bergel Institute
Amount: US $30,000
Last Updated: February 09, 2026

Summary

The Bergel Institute Fellowship - FH1 focuses on expanding our understanding of health and healing through ancient practices like acupuncture, tai chi, and yoga. This fellowship invites applicants to explore the connections between consciousness and healing, challenging conventional health paradigms in the U.S. The program emphasizes research and mentorship, encouraging fellows to investigate the efficacy of various modalities, their historical contexts, and their potential applications in modern health care systems.

Overview

Note: Below are the other Bergel Institute Fellowships: FE1: Bringing an End to the Poverty-Violence Connection in the U.SFE2: Building a Fully-Resourced CommunityFT1: Using AI to Expand Economic OpportunityFS1: Cutting Edge or Pseudoscience?FE3: The Creation of the Mentoring Industry in the United States The Bergel Institute The Bergel Institute is dedicated to the advancement of human knowledge and the human condition. The Institute focuses on six major areas: Economics ScienceTechnology Consciousness Health Culture The common theme in all of the Institute’s work is the pursuit of what is possible. It brings a commitment to critical thinking and the questioning of accepted norms and approaches to issues that lie at the foundation of what we think and how we live. In every discipline, assumptions are tested against evidence. In addition to its research and programmatic endeavors, the Institute offers fellowships. Fellowships come with high expectations and are supported with structure and active mentorship. Bergel Institute Fellowships The Bergel Institute offers Fellowships to individuals of all ages who wish to spend a year in intensive study and project development in a subject area that aligns with the advancement of human knowledge and the human condition. Each year, the Institute will list specific fellowship topics within these areas. Applicants may pick one or propose a different topic, as long as it aligns with the Institute’s goals. Fellowships run from June to May and are primarily virtual, with two paid Institute visits (to the home office in Florida) as the only in-person expectations during the Fellowship year. Fellows are expected to work approximately 20 hours per week and to bring a strong intrinsic motivation for the project. They will spend the year conducting intensive research and/or project development, supported by Institute staff, with monthly meetings and quarterly progress reports to help maintain momentum. The Fellowship is also intended to function as an incubator, providing time, guidance, and structure for work that continues beyond the Fellowship year. As noted above, Fellows travel to the Institute twice during the Fellowship year to present to leadership: once in August, at the end of Q1, and again in May, at the end of the Fellowship year. The May presentation focuses on what was accomplished during the year and the Fellow’s plans for next steps. Final work may take many forms, including detailed manuscripts, the launch of a business or organization; or a video series, documentary films, etc. Travel and lodging for both presentations are covered by the Institute. Upon completion of the Fellowship year, all Fellows are required to serve as mentors for future Fellows, ensuring that accumulated knowledge and experiences are passed to their successors. FH1: Expanding our Understanding of Health and Healing Acupuncture, tai chi, yoga, reiki, past life regression, and other modalities used for centuries point to a definition of the self that goes far beyond skin, bones, and organs. Yet they remain on the back burner when people in the U.S. explore health and healing, or design health care systems. Why are we not more interested in what is possible with regard to healing, or in experiencing health as more than simply the absence of disease? The roots of acupuncture trace back more than 5,000 years. In the last 60 years, brain surgery has been done with acupuncture as the only anesthetic. Yet Western healthcare barely addresses modalities cemented in cultures around the world, even as we often trust approaches that have been around for fewer than 50 years and used by far fewer people. Expanding our approach to health helps us arrive at answers and ask important questions. Do we exist only to the tips of our fingers, or does energy course through our bodies and beyond? Does this energy connect us in a tangible, physical manner, even if not visible to the untrained eye? This Fellowship will explore these questions and include much more than descriptions of practices that may be called alternative or complementary. It will focus on how we can finally apply the full insights of these modalities to our daily lives. Fellows will examine when and where practices began, what is practiced where, what modalities work for what health conditions, and what questions remain. The work will also explore the role of consciousness in healing, including whether it exists and, if so, whether it exists as a connective energy or a personal reservoir of thought and memories.

Eligibility

You can learn more about this opportunity by visiting the funder's website. Applicants do not have to be enrolled in or associated with a school or academic program of any kind. Applicants may also be enrolled in a graduate program at an insititution anywhere in the world. Either way, Fellowship subject matter must fall within one of six major areas: Economics, Science, Technology, Consciousness, Health, or Culture.