I'm an interventional cardiologist. I work on the heart when people are closest to death. I've spent years in the cath lab doing procedures that can change someone's life in seconds.

And somewhere along the way, something happened in my own life that medicine couldn't measure. I felt something shift that I couldn't explain and couldn't ignore.

I followed every rule we're taught to follow. I trained hard, showed up fully, and believed deeply in the science I practice. But I started to wonder — with openness and curiosity — whether there is more to healing than what our current tools can measure. Not instead of medicine. Alongside it.

This season, we sit with the questions conventional medicine hasn't learned to ask yet. Why did science and soul become so disconnected in the first place? What happens when a physician follows every protocol and still feels something essential is missing? How are practicing doctors quietly using intuition, ancient healing traditions, and tools that don't show up in a textbook — and why does it work?

Open Heart is where those questions live. Honest, grounded conversations about healing — what medicine gets right, what it misses, and what opens up when we stop pretending those two things can't coexist.

If you've ever had a moment — in a hospital room, in the middle of the night, or somewhere completely ordinary — where something shifted and you couldn't explain it, this is for you. If you've ever sensed that medicine had the diagnosis right but still missed something essential, this is for you. I'm learning to ask these questions right alongside you.

This is Open Heart.

If this resonated, subscribe on YouTube or wherever you're listening. And become part of this growing circle.

Follow Priya Rao, MD Website: https://www.openheartpodcast.com

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In this episode of Open Heart, Priya Rao, MD spends time with Fran Bell inside her office, offering a behind-the-scenes look at how integrative healing unfolds in real time. Rather than a conceptual conversation, this episode centers on observation, presence, and what it looks like to work with the body when symptoms, emotions, and life context are addressed together.

In this conversation, they explore:

■ What it looks like to enter a healing session

■ How the nervous system, physical tension, and emotional patterns are assessed through direct engagement with the body

■ The role of touch, attention, and pacing in creating a sense of safety and participation

■ How physical symptoms are explored alongside life stressors, decision-making, and fatigue

■ Why healing work often focuses on restoring responsiveness rather than fixing a specific problem

■ How gratitude, rest, and nourishment are discussed as lived practices rather than prescriptions

■ The tension between wanting clear answers and allowing the body to guide the process

■ What it means to participate in healing without certainty about outcomes

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction and connecting with the body

01:10 Observing the nervous system and physical responsiveness

01:55 Evaluating tension and fatigue patterns

03:00 Beginning physical adjustments

09:08 The role of gratitude in the session

12:48 Discussing nutritional support and deficiency

15:16 Emotional and energetic patterns

21:15 Thyroid and antibody concerns

22:14 Exploring flow and responsiveness

22:52 Changes in lifestyle and awareness

24:08 Fatigue, rest, and self-care

26:31 What it means to hold the role of a healer

28:58 Grief, loss, and integration

32:50 Integrity in healing work

41:29 Connection with nature and grounding

43:05 Healing with horses

Follow Fran Bell

Website: https://franbell.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/franbell_integratedhealing

Hosted by Priya Rao, MD

Website: https://www.openheartpodcast.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/priyaraomd

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/priyaraomd

Subscribe to Open Heart with Priya Rao, MD for grounded conversations with people who are curious about intuition, meaning, and different ways of understanding healing and human experience.

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

In this episode of Open Heart, Priya Rao, MD sits down with Fran Bell, an intuitive healer and former competitive athlete whose work bridges physical injury, lived experience, and forms of knowing that don’t fit neatly inside conventional systems.

Together, they explore what it means to trust intuition in a world that asks for proof, and how healing often begins before we have language for it.

In this conversation, they explore:

■ How a childhood injury disrupted Fran’s life and quietly reshaped how she understood the body and healing

■ What intuition actually feels like in lived experience, not as a concept or belief

■ How people are trained out of sensing and into over-reliance on cognition and control

■ Why many capable, rational people struggle to trust what they feel if it can’t be measured

■ The tension between evidence-based medicine and forms of healing that require participation rather than certainty

■ How physical symptoms, emotional patterns, and life direction often intersect

■ What integration can look like when medicine and intuition are allowed to work side by side

■ Why healing does not always mean “feeling better,” and how meaning, purpose, and wholeness can show up in unexpected ways

Fran Bell works with people whose symptoms, pain, or sense of disconnection have not been fully explained by conventional approaches alone. Her perspective is grounded in lived experience with injury, athletics, and years of working directly with the body. In this conversation, she offers language for experiences many people sense but hesitate to trust, especially when those experiences fall outside familiar systems of validation.

Follow Fran Bell

Website: https://franbell.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/franbell_integratedhealing

Top Moments

00:00 Introduction to Fran Bell: Intuitive Healer

01:25 Fran's Childhood and Awakening of Gifts

03:52 Developing and Trusting Intuition

08:41 Integrating Physical and Spiritual Healing

11:14 Synergy Between Intuitive Healing and Medicine

17:17 Commitment to a Spirit-Led Life

33:16 Gratitude Practice and Its Impact

37:40 Embracing the Path of Healing

38:41 The Journey of Channeling

40:27 Understanding Channeling

41:38 The Role of Trust in Healing

45:30 Integrity in Healing Practices

52:44 The Courage to Heal

55:47 The Deeper Purpose of Healing

01:01:33 Concluding Thoughts on Healing

Hosted by Priya Rao, MD

https://www.openheartpodcast.com

https://www.instagram.com/priyaraomd

https://www.linkedin.com/in/priyaraomd

Our Sponsors

Thank you to our sponsors for supporting this episode:

Don’t Miss a Beat: https://linktr.ee/dontmissabeat

Summit Wealth Financial Advisors: https://www.summitwealthgroup.com/

Subscribe to Open Heart with Priya Rao, MD for grounded conversations with people who are curious about intuition, meaning, and different ways of understanding healing and human experience.

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