The Power of Intention
Scientific journals contain hundreds of research papers that show that we can use mental techniques to affect both our own bodies and those of other people. As we have already learned, thoughts of appreciation, care, and compassion can smooth the rhythms of the heart and elevate the immune system, and even our genes dance to the tune of our hopes and dreams.
We can also use mental techniques like visualization to speed up healing in any area of the body. The results of visualization are not always obvious, because many people are looking for the “instant fix.” Most think that if they visualize themselves in good health, an illness should go away right away. It should! But there are very few people whose beliefs are strong enough to make it so.
Instead, many of us do the opposite. We believe that it isn’t possible for the illness to disappear right away just as strongly as we believe it is possible and, like a negative placebo effect (the nocebo effect), this interferes with the healing process. We end up taking two steps back for every three we take forward, and eventually the stronger belief wins. The result is that visualization only appears to have small effects. But even so, a small effect is better than no effect.
No matter what ache, pain, or illness you might experience, intend to get better. Determination coupled with hope and faith can move mountains. The placebo effect clearly shows that the body has the ability to heal if we believe it can.
Our thoughts and feelings can affect other people’s bodies, too. Have you ever noticed that if you are in a bad mood you quickly affect the mood of everyone around you? The same is true when you are in a good mood.
Scientific research has actually proven that a good mood is infectious. Publishing in the Journal of Nonverbal Behavior in 1981, Howard Friedman and Ronald Riggio found that when a person in a good mood (as determined by a score on a questionnaire) sat facing a person with a lower score for two minutes, their mood was transmitted. The person with the lower score felt better.
If you affect a person’s mood, then you also affect their biology, given that the body and mind are intertwined. In this way, then, you can intentionally affect someone’s health in a positive way.
For example, if you generate a warm feeling of appreciation for people when you are in their company, imagining, perhaps, a time when they said or did something nice, they will pick it up from you and their feelings will have healing effects throughout their body. The same happens when you say something nice or do something kind for another person. In a very real sense a loving intention heals.
A loving touch also makes a big difference. We have seen that a mother lovingly stroking her infant will switch on genes that help it to grow and switch off genes that produce stress hormones. It is likely that a similar thing occurs with adults, aiding their growth and repair process and reducing stress.
Over the last few years there has been a rapid rise in the number of practitioners of healing-touch techniques. In fact, in some countries there are far more practitioners of techniques like Therapeutic Touch and Reiki than there are doctors.
Such practitioners are trained to place their hands on or just above an area to be healed. Many use visualization techniques, while others simply trust that healing is taking place. I know a number of people who have testified to feeling incredibly relaxed during and after a healing session and whose physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual condition has cleared up shortly afterward.
Anyone can perform healing on another person. Proper training can teach anatomy, physiology, and diagnosis; medical science and ethics, but anyone can help others by simply gently stroking, massaging, or embracing them. Even compassionately willing them to recover can make a big difference.
This happens all the time, only we rarely notice the role our intentions played, instead putting recoveries down to specific medicines, food, or even luck. Of course, medical treatment and nutrition will have had a powerful effect, but so, too, will your intentions.
However, please note that at some point in people’s lives it will just be “their time,” and all you can hope for is to give them some comfort in the final stages of their lives.
To focus your intentions, you can actively visualize a person in perfect health. You can even put your hands on them while imagining this. All that is required is compassion, a willingness to help, and a little faith that you might indeed be helping in some way. On an ethical note, I prefer to always ask a person’s permission before I do this.
Scientists have studied some of the healing touch therapies and have proven how effective they can be.
The Power of Touch
In the 1960s, for instance, Dr. Bernard Grad of McGill University in Montreal measured the effects of healing touch on mice. He asked a healer named Oscar Estebanay to place his hands every day upon individual goiterous mice in a selected group to see if he could speed up healing in those mice relative to others that he wasn’t to perform healing upon. Over the course of the study, Dr. Grad found that Mr. Estebanay had indeed slowed down the rate of development of goitre in the mice that he touched.
In a similar way, he studied the effects of Mr. Estebanay’s touch on the rate of healing of skin wounds on mice. After daily healing treatments the wounds closed up much faster.
In the last chapter we learned that regular handling of pups would switch on genes in the brain and also that thoughts and emotions could affect the rate of wound healing. These mechanisms most likely played a role in the observations that Dr. Grad made. The touch would have activated certain genes and also reduced the stress that the mice undoubtedly felt upon being wounded, both of which would have contributed to their healing. And these effects might also account for some of the positive results of massage.
Massage has been known for many years to help people suffering from a range of illnesses. It has often been dismissed as just a relaxation session and any positive results labeled as placebo effects (both of which, we now know, cause powerful and beneficial changes in the body), but recent evidence has provided concrete proof of some of the changes that can occur.
In 2005, for instance, scientists at the University of Miami School of Medicine found that when women diagnosed with breast cancer were given three massage sessions for five weeks, there was a significant increase in the number of natural killer cells and lymphocytes in their bodies, which are important components of the immune system. And publishing in the International Journal of Neuroscience, they also reported that these sessions reduced stress hormone levels by 31 percent, boosted serotonin by 28 percent and boosted dopamine by 31 percent, the latter two of which are important for mood.
And a 2007 study of 85 hospital outpatients found a long-term reduction in chronic disease symptoms, including back and neck pain, depression and even fatigue, and an improvement in quality of life following regular massage.
As well as the ways in which touch can heal, many studies have shown that no direct touch is needed, suggesting that other healing mechanisms are also at work.
The Power of Mind
In 1972, for instance, Mr. Estebanay was involved in a study that looked at the effect of healing touch on some enzymes held in a jar, where he had no physical contact with the enzymes. Enzymes are molecules that the body uses to transform one substance into another. Many enzymes are involved in digesting food, for example, breaking it down into other substances that the body can use. The study found that daily healing treatments on the enzyme trypsin, over a three-week period, improved its performance in converting substances.
A similar study conducted in 1999 by Toni Bunnell at the University of Hull studied the effect of healing touch on an enzyme called pepsin. Over a series of 20 trials, she found that the healer speeded up the rate that it carried out its converting.
Similarly, a 1984 study looked at the effects of healing on the mutation of live bacteria, something that occurs quite naturally in the human body. The bacteria Escherichia coli, or E-coli as it is more commonly known, mutates from one strain, known as lac-negative, into another strain, lac-positive. Fifty-two people were involved in the study and were given nine tubes each, containing a mixture of both the negative and positive strains. Each person was to hold the tubes in their hands then try to mentally speed up mutation in three tubes, slow down mutation in another three, and leave the last three alone to serve as controls.
The results were highly significant. The researchers discovered that the tubes where the subjects had tried to speed up mutation had much more lac-positive E-coli than the control samples. The subjects had speeded up the mutation. There was also much less lac-positive E-coli in the tubes where the subjects had attempted to slow down mutation.
Healing at a distance has also been studied. A 2004 study jointly performed by the California Pacific Medical Center, the Institute of Noetic Sciences, and MD Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas found that practitioners of the technique known as qigong were able to influence human-cultured brain cells held a minimum distance of 10 cm from their bodies. Each practitioner directed healing intentions towards the cells for 20 minutes and was able to increase the rate of growth of the cells.
Healing also works with plants. In one of Dr. Grad’s experiments, he damaged a set of barley seeds by watering them with saltwater. Half of them, however, received saltwater that had been held for a few moments by a healer. Dr. Grad then dried the seeds in an oven and watered them every day with ordinary water. At the end of the experiment, he discovered that the seeds that had been watered with the saltwater held by the healer had grown much faster than the seeds that had been watered with “unhealed” saltwater. Somehow there had been a transfer of energy from the healer to the water and it was able to cancel out the damaging effects of the saltwater.
You have probably heard of the old wives’ tale that talking to your plants makes them grow better. Scientific evidence shows that this tale should be taken quite literally.
In his book Autobiography of a Yogi, Paramahansa Yogananda describes some of the work of Luther Burbank. Yogananda noticed that Mr. Burbank’s garden had cactus plants with no thorns and this intrigued him. When they were first planted, he was told, the cacti did have thorns, but Mr. Burbank spoke kindly and tenderly to them on a regular basis, explaining to them that they didn’t need their thorns anymore because he harbored no intentions of ever harming them. Gradually the cacti gave up their thorns!
I once visited my friends Andrea, Seth, Kenny, and Pamela and was quite impressed by the abnormal size of some of the plants on their windowsill. Andrea told me that she had been giving them Reiki treatments every day since they were seeds. It had clearly helped their growth.
I am sure that many of you reading this right now have noticed that your plants grow better when you are kind to them. It’s just the same with people. Every day most of us come into contact with lots of people — family members, colleagues, friends, and strangers. There is clear scientific evidence that our thoughts about them have an effect upon them. Do you appreciate other people, or do you harbor anger or resentment toward them?
I have noticed that I can sometimes effortlessly change the atmosphere in a room simply by thinking how much I appreciate each person there and then feeling the appreciation. Quite often there’s a profound transformation right before my eyes. A cold or even openly hostile environment can be transformed into a warm, loving, happy, peaceful, or forgiving one.
A kind thought, a smile, or a few genuinely kind words cost nothing, but they can go a very long way.
Go with the Flow
Exactly how healing works is not fully understood at present. The act of touch stimulates nerves, switches genes on and off, boosts mood chemicals in the brain, and sends neuropeptides and other hormones around the body. But studies where no touch was involved suggest that something else is going on, too. These studies seem to show that there is a flow of energy through the air from the healer to the organism or patient. And this flow of energy is affected by, and directed by, intentions.
This knowledge is quite new in the West, but it has been well known for thousands of years in the East. Ancient healing traditions in China and India, for instance, are based upon the flow of vital and health-giving energy around the body. This energy is known by many names in many cultures, but the most common are: qi (“chee”), prana, and life-force.
These traditions teach that the body requires qi to function. A healthy body contains lots of qi flowing smoothly throughout, just as blood flows through veins. When a person is ill, the flow of qi might be blocked, just as a body would become ill if blood flow were blocked. It is well known that a blockage in the blood flow to the heart, for instance, can cause a heart attack. In the same way, a blockage in the flow of qi can bring on a whole range of illnesses by depriving an organ of its vital energy.
Think of it this way: If you were to build a dam on a river, blocking it, then people who needed water downstream would not get enough to drink and to nourish their crops. In the same way, if the flow of qi along a particular “river,” or “meridian,” as it is called, is blocked then any organ that usually receives qi from that meridian will not get the supply it needs, so its health will suffer.
Accordingly, to heal an organ that is not getting enough qi, you would need to remove the blockage. This is what acupuncture and many other complementary and alternative therapies try to do. Acupuncturists place needles on meridians at specific locations, known as “acupuncture points,” to stimulate the flow of qi so that it dissolves the blockages.
Up until recently, Western science hadn’t accepted the existence of acupuncture points or meridians, but relatively recent scientific studies have changed that outlook. Even though microscopes can’t see acupuncture points, scientists have measured 10- to 20-fold differences in electrical resistance on acupuncture points compared to other points only a centimeter or two away. They have also discovered different amounts of key chemicals at these points. They have even injected radioactive substances into acupuncture points and then followed their flow around the body, creating a map that was found to be identical to the ones drawn up by ancient Chinese and Vedic practitioners.
And recent studies have shown genetic effects. In 2006, Chinese scientists performed acupuncture around the spinal column for 14 days and found substantial increases in activation of the IGF-1 gene, which promotes muscle growth. And in another 2006 study, they showed that acupuncture also increased the activation of the NP-1 gene, which promotes resistance to infection.
And a 2007 study even showed what happens in the brain during acupuncture. Publishing in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, scientists at MIT and Harvard Medical School took PET and MRI brain scans and found that acupuncture produced significant activity in a wide range of brain areas including the limbic area, which controls motivation and emotion and is important in memory; and the prefrontal area, which controls concentration.
Earlier we learned that emotions can be stored anywhere in the body, because neuropeptides associated with emotions have receptors all over the body. We also now know that storing emotional pain can cause disease. Stores of negative emotion, then, may block the natural flow of qi to an organ or other body part just as a storage of, say, fat or cholesterol may block blood flow to the heart. Expressing and resolving suppressed negative emotions must also, therefore, clear the qi blockages.
Qi blockages can also be removed by any medical treatment or therapy that restores the natural flow. This often causes a release of previously blocked emotion, just as unblocking a dam would result in a sudden deluge of water downstream. This is why acupuncture and other energy therapies like Reiki or Shen sometimes cause patients to laugh or cry.
Several years ago I had an acupuncture treatment at a time in my life when I was having difficult mental and emotional challenges. As is normal at such times, I was taking life very seriously, perhaps a bit too seriously, and forgetting to see the lighter side. After a few minutes of having needles placed in me, I began to laugh. I don’t think I’d laughed for several weeks before then, so it was quite a relief. As the treatment removed a blockage of qi, it also cleared a blockage of emotion that I had stored up. The acupuncture treatment was a highly beneficial and well-needed therapy.
A simple exercise that I have found useful in clearing blockages is as follows:
Joining my hands together in the prayer position, I focus my attention on my left hand and try to become aware of what it feels like.
I then mentally move that feeling up through the wrist, up the forearm to the elbow. Then I move it up the bicep to the shoulder, along to the neck, through the neck to the right shoulder, then down the right side to the right hand and through to the left hand as the circuit begins again.
When I’ve done several circuits, I then mentally move the flow anywhere in my body, through any blockages or areas where there are problems.
What I am doing is becoming aware of qi in my body and mentally encouraging its movement to where I want it to go. This technique can be used to direct energy and healing to any diseased or painful part of the body.
Some healing techniques, like this one, guide qi to flow through blockages in the hope that the passage of energy might unblock them, just as the rapid flow of water along a blocked pipe, for example, might dislodge the debris that is blocking it.
A scientific study into stroke investigating qigong, a practice that uses intention to direct qi around the body, was performed over a 30-year period and involved 242 hypertensive patients. Half of the patients performed 30 minutes of qigong twice daily and the other half did not.
The number of patients who experienced a stroke in the group which didn’t practice qigong was around 40 percent (there is a well-known link between hypertension and stroke). But in a clear demonstration of the power of qigong, in the group that practiced it, the figure was only 20 percent. Regular practice had halved the number of patients having a stroke.
An additional bonus of the experiment was that the group that practiced qigong used their medication less, and 30 percent of them stopped their medication altogether.
Another research project showed that qigong was of enormous benefit to people with cancer. It involved 120 cancer patients, 90 of whom practiced two hours of qigong a day for three to six months. During the course of the study, all patients received medication for the cancer.
In the qigong-practicing group, physical strength increased by 80 percent, yet by only 10 percent in the other group. Appetite increased in 60 percent of the group who regularly practiced qigong, but only in 10 percent in the non-qigong group. Following this, a significant weight gain was measured in 60 percent of the qigong group but in only 15 percent of the non-qigong group. Last, the strength of the immune system increased by 15 percent in the qigong group but decreased by 20 percent in the group that didn’t practice qigong.
It is likely that the practice of qigong helped to unblock some suppressed emotion as well as increase the amount of vital energy being supplied to all of the organs.
It’s Nice to Be Nice
Intention is very powerful. We intend things throughout the day, although mostly we are not even aware of it. But every one of our intentions goes somewhere. Quite likely, if we are thinking of specific people, it will be going right to them, just as healing intentions will go right where we want it to in our bodies.
This is good if our intentions are kind, compassionate, appreciative, or even uplifting, because we will be helping ourselves or another person in some way, but how often do we slip into thinking about how someone has offended us or hurt us in some way, or how we disapprove of their behavior? What effect do you think your intentions will be having then?
It can do more good to find it in yourself to forgive people, or to accept them just as they are, rather than to send harmful intentions to them. How would you feel if you knew that someone was judging you unfairly without knowing the “real” you, or thinking angry thoughts about you because of something you might or might not have meant to do?
Every person you have ever interacted with might be a good father or mother, husband or wife, son or daughter or friend, and is dearly loved by someone, just as you are. The way you might have experienced them is not who they really are; it is just how you have experienced them. You will probably never know the real reasons why they behaved that way at that time. And you have probably behaved less than perfectly on at least one occasion of your life. So try to be fair to people. Remember, what you give out always comes back to you in one form or another.
Being genuinely good to people is a good way to improve your overall health, too. My dear friend Margaret McCathie, after suffering years of depression and even attempting suicide, was told by Dr. Patch Adams (known for the Hollywood film Patch Adams), “Go out and serve and see your depression lift.” She did so and within a few months her depression had indeed lifted. She is now a professional laughter therapist, inspiring others to find their inner joy through service, laughter, and kindness. The effect she has on people is extraordinary. The gift of joy she gave to people was returned to her, not only lifting her out of depression but also helping her to develop into an abundant embodiment of happiness.
