Distant Healing and Prayer
If people are in pain or ill, you help them in some way the instant you want them to get better. Every intention goes to where it is intended. And research has shown that it doesn’t matter whether you are right beside the person or several miles away. In fact, it wouldn’t matter if you were on the moon.
Several scientific studies have investigated distant healing, confirming that intention really does affect people over great distances. Typically the experiments had several individuals in one place visualizing or mentally intending a change to happen in other people at a distance.
In one particular experiment, led by Dr. Dean Radin, currently of the Institute of Noetic Sciences in Petaluma, California, but conducted while at the Department of Parapsychology of Edinburgh University, the “influencers” (the people doing the visualization or sending mental intentions) were asked to try to either calm or activate the other people (the “targets”). The experiment involved seven “influencers” and ten “targets.”
Over 16 individual sessions, the influencers were able to influence the targets in a room 25 meters away. The scientists measured changes in the targets using sensors attached to their skin. When asked to either calm or activate the targets, the sensors consistently measured a change when the influencers sent their intentions.
Other research has indicated that if the experiment had been conducted with a few centimeters, or even kilometers, separating the influencers and targets, the results would have been the same. Distance does not count in matters of the mind!
A study involving 96 patients with hypertension reported that influencers could even reduce the blood-pressure of targets. The influencers were in one place and targets in another. Blood-pressure measurements taken before and after intention was sent showed a reduction in blood pressure.
Professor William Braud and co-workers at the Mind Science Foundation in San Antonio, Texas, also studied blood. They showed that intention could slow down the bursting of hypertonic (salty) blood cells even when the influencers and targets were in separate locations.
In a 1998 study reported in the Western Medical Journal in the USA, scientists described how distant healing could affect AIDS patients. The study involved 40 patients, with half being given distant healing and half not. After 10 weeks, the scientists found that the patients who had been given distant healing had acquired fewer new AIDS-defining illnesses, had a lower severity of illness, had needed far fewer visits by their doctors, and had had fewer hospitalizations and fewer days of hospitalization.
Distant healers can even alter the growth rate of plants. In one experiment, two healers substantially speeded up the growth rate of rye grass when they were 500 kilometers away from it. The grass was monitored as it grew, and when the instruction was given for the healers to focus upon it, it immediately started to grow faster. During some periods, the rate of growth increased by over 600 percent.
In a different kind of study, conducted by William Braud and co-workers, several targets were asked to focus their attention on burning candles. Each time their attention slipped, they were to press a button alerting the researchers. At this instant, an influencer would focus on the candle and try to mentally assist the targets in their concentration. The results were significant, showing that the influencers had helped the targets to concentrate.
Several studies have also shown that people are always acutely aware of others staring at them. You have probably noticed this in your own life. Don’t you just get a “feeling” when someone is staring at you? It’s real! Your body is picking up on that person’s thoughts on a biological level, and so is your mind. Some people can even physically feel it, which as we already know is probably due to the movement of neuropeptides to specific receptors.
All of these results clearly imply that anyone can have an effect upon the heart, mind, and body of anyone else. The effects may be very small, but sometimes they can be large, so this presents all of us with a moral choice.
A significant degree of responsibility is required here. It is morally important to intend no harm toward another. Of course, sometimes it is beneficial to get things out of our systems. Suppressing feelings does no good. But perhaps it is best that we do so with as much tact and compassion as possible. We should endeavor to forgive and to wish the best for each other.
However, if you should feel that others aren’t able to wish the best for you, don’t despair. Studies have shown that we can easily block unwanted intentions. It can be as simple as declaring: “Every day in every way I am protected from any harmful thoughts, intentions, and emotions of others.”
In one particular scientific experiment involving 32 targets, half were asked to shield themselves from the thoughts of the influencers. It was found that they could easily do so.
Some healing practitioners are well aware that during treatments they pick up their patients’ energies — their thoughts, emotions, and issues — and that they have to “psychically protect” themselves. Some therapists like to visualize wearing a “cloak of protection” made of white or golden light that cancels out any harmful thoughts or emotions coming their way.
In fact, there is just as much mental and emotional noise surrounding us throughout the day as there is electrical and magnetic noise. Holding a fluorescent bulb underneath an overhead power line will cause it to light up due to the large electromagnetic field radiating from the cables. In a similar way, people are “lit up” by the mass fields of thoughts and emotions in densely populated areas.
This is why some meditation teachers suggest that we meditate at sunrise or late at night, and it is also why some spiritual masters live high in the mountains or have done their training in such places. Early in the morning or late at night most people are asleep, so there is less mental noise in the air. In a more peaceful atmosphere, not crowded with mental and emotional noise, it becomes easier to access a deeper state of meditation. For the same reason, I wrote the bulk of this book between the hours of 11 p.m. and 4 a.m.
If you climb high hills or mountains, you may even have noticed that the air is quieter and more peaceful the higher you climb and the farther away you get from the mental and emotional noise at ground level.
So, knowing that all emotions and intentions radiate out and have an effect on others, try to be responsible. If others annoy you or have hurt you in the past, try to let it go and forgive them. Instead of condemning their actions, try to feel some compassion for them. Perhaps they might be in so much inner pain and confusion that they need to act that way. You never know. Instead of seeing someone whose actions you disapprove of, try to see the person underneath who is suffering and feel compassion for them. If you do so, you won’t be putting any harmful “noise” into the atmosphere.
Practising the art of forgiveness can also be transformational in your own life, enabling you to forget past hurts and move on. For instance, if someone has hurt you in the past, say a past partner, by going over the events in your mind you generate negative emotions, which we know have a negative effect on our bodies. In addition, your focus on the past can prevent you from enjoying a healthy new relationship. Forgiveness helps you to let go and move on with your own life and also improves your mental and emotional well-being.
Christ set an example when he said, “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.”
As well as forgiving others, you can also pray for them. Prayers are very powerful because as well as intention, they bring faith in the creator into play.
Prayer
One of the best-known scientific studies on the power of prayer took place at the University of San Francisco School of Medicine between August 1982 and May 1983. During that time, 393 patients were admitted to the coronary care unit of the hospital and agreed to be involved in the prayer study. It was led by Randolph Byrd, M.D., and the results were published in the Southern Medical Journal in 1988. Normal medical treatment for all 393 patients took place as required, except that approximately half of them were prayed for by a group of Christians who were not in the hospital, and half were not.
The study showed that the overall severity of illness of the patients who were prayed for turned out to be much less than the patients who were not prayed for. The group that was prayed for needed less ventilatory assistance, fewer antibiotics, and fewer diuretics than the patients who were not prayed for, and there was also less need for CPR (resuscitation).
Please note that although Christians participated in this study, prayers from any religious group are beneficial. In fact, a study took place in 1998 at Duke University Medical Center with 150 patients who underwent heart surgery. Again, half were prayed for and half were not, but this time by different religious groups. It was found that the patients who were prayed for had fewer complications and their recovery rates were 50 to 100 percent faster than the patients who were not prayed for.
These controlled scientific studies, and many others, show that prayer really works. And I believe that science is only just scratching the surface of a larger phenomenon that depends on the person or people doing the praying, the person or people receiving the prayer, who outside the study is praying, and even the circumstances of the prayer and the people involved in the research. Everything is connected, so every thought counts.
I don’t know a single person who hasn’t, at some time in their life, called on a higher power to make themselves or someone else well, or even to change something in their life. Prayer works, in my opinion, although you might not always see immediate results or results that you intended.
The reason the result might not be what you asked for is that when you invite God, or whichever deity you pray to, into your life, then you are inviting in more wisdom and love. Therefore, you will get the wisest, most love-filled result that is best for everyone. If your intentions are consistent with that; for example, if you desire “this or something better that will benefit all concerned,” then you will probably get what you pray for or something even better. If not, then the results might be different from what you desire, but they will still be the best for everyone concerned.
An interesting phenomenon is that when you genuinely pray for the well-being or success of someone else, you also receive well-being and success. You get back what you send out.
A scientific study on prayer, reported in 1997 in the journal Alternative Therapies, found precisely this. It was led by Fr. Seán O’Laoire and investigated the effects of prayer on self-esteem, anxiety, and depression. In all, 496 volunteers were involved, 406 as subjects to be prayed for and 90 as agents to do the praying. Three agents prayed for each subject, and prayer was offered daily for 15 minutes for an experimental period of 12 weeks.
Evaluations were made at the beginning and end of the study of self-esteem, anxiety, depression, mood, physical health, intellectual health, spiritual health, relationships, and creative expression. In all measures, the subjects showed improvement but, remarkably, so did the agents, and in some areas — intellectual health, spiritual health, relationships, and creative expression — they improved more than the subjects. You get back what you give out!
A 2001 study reported in the British Medical Journal also found that the act of praying was beneficial to the person doing the praying. The research studied the effects of rosary prayer and yoga mantras on breathing and on the heart. When the subjects recited Ave Maria or a yoga mantra, their breathing generally slowed to six breaths per minute, which is known to oxygenate the blood and be good for the heart. The prayer and mantras also smoothed the rhythms of the heart.
Many people use prayer not only to restore health but also to change aspects of their lives. Ancient Tibetan and Native American teachings, as well as those in the Dead Sea Scrolls, suggest that there are effective ways to pray and ways that are not so effective. Some of these teachings are described in Gregg Braden’s book The Isaiah Effect.
An effective prayer is one where a person begins with a feeling of genuine gratitude for the current situation. Then they imagine what they desire, either while speaking to a deity or not, and vividly experience their desire being fulfilled. The feeling is key. Last, they give thanks for having had the opportunity to choose.
One of the reasons why prayer works, and why visualization and distant healing work, is because everything in the universe is connected to everything else, as we will see in the following chapters.
