Articles
Spiritual/Energy Healing Research

Excerpts from Media Watch column by Lisa Butler published in the National Spiritualist Summit

Prayer Research. What are the appropriate criteria for designing healing prayer studies? A recent prayer study at Harvard, led by Herbert Benson, had everyone praying the same standardized prayer, even if it differed from their normal practice. In contrast, the late Elizabeth Targ would not accept into her studies a person who did not have years of experience offering healing intention or prayer. It is wise for all of us to remember the importance of designing these experiments. When we read that a prayer study failed, it might have nothing to do with prayers failing to heal but with researchers failing in the design of a study.

Intention and Training Important in Healing. The January 2007 of the SPR's Paranormal Review carried an overview of the 2006 Parapsychological Convention held in Stockholm. An article written by Chistian Gaden Jensen mentioned two studies by US researcher Dean Radin. Regarding a study done by Radin and Eva Lobach, Jensen wrote, “Their study suggested that the human nervous system anticipates future events in ways that cannot be explained conventionally.” In another study by Radin on the effects of distant intention with a focus on the roles of motivation and training, Jensen wrote “The study supported earlier findings that the sender’s distant intention correlates with changes in the receiver’s autonomic nervous system and suggested that both personal motivation to heal and be healed as well as training in directing one’s intention may be modulators in this relationship.”

Study verifies Power of Positive Thinking. Your medication really may work better if the doctor talks it up before giving it to you. A study from the University of Michigan is showing that the power of expectation has a physical affect and is not just psychological. Men whose jaws were injected with saltwater to cause pain were told that they were getting a pain reliever when they really got a placebo. Their brains immediately released more endorphins blocking the transmission of pain signals between nerve cells and the men felt better. A study in Italy hooked pain patients to a computerized morphine injection system. Sometimes they knew that morphine was being administered and at other times they did not. The morphine was up to 50% more effective when the patients knew it was being given to them.

“Tough Guy” Mentality Helps Healing. He never reads the directions for a recipe, won’t ask for directions when he’s lost, hates doctors, and if he is hurting you’d never know it. A new study is showing that one of the above stereotypes may be a good thing. While many scientists have considered these masculine tendencies to be barriers to health and recover a small study of fifty men suggests the man-of-steel mentality, often associated with military men and those in other high-risk occupations, can assist and even speed up a man’s recovery from a serious and/or traumatic injury. The scientists reported “that perhaps an inner narrative is the engine behind the boost in health. For example, a brawny boy might think, ‘Yeah there are tough challenges, but nothing will stop me from reaching my goal…’”

From: “Man-Of-Steel Mentality Helps Guys Heal Faster,” Livescience article by Jeanna Bryner, www.livescience.com/health/070316_tough_guys.html

Comparing Wicca with Christianity: “In the April 2007 Journal of the Society for Psychical Research article, “Paranormal Phenomena in British Witchcraft and Wiccan Culture With Special Reference to Spellcraft,” Melvyn J. Willin questioned Wiccans concerning their practice of casting spells and Christians about their use of prayer. Spell casting is generally used for the same purpose as prayer, but with different assumptions, and certainly different practices. Here are the main comparisons we noted in the article:

• The practice of prayer and how to pray is prescribed in religious text and by religious leaders while Wiccans tend to “invent” technique based on their belief systems and cast spells as a service to others or for their personal development.

• Christian respondents assumed the authority from their religious beliefs to pray for others while Wiccans were generally very concerned with the ethical practice of spell casting and were careful to have permission.

• Wiccans did provide some measure of proof of their success while Christians generally assumed success.

To quote the article, “Witches obviously gave considerable thought to the matter of ethics before casting their spells, etc., whereas Christians’ faith in God allowed them to put their faith in God’s goodness rather than taking responsibility for their own actions. This is an important difference between the two faiths. Overall, there were similarities between the intentions of witches’ spells and Christians’ prayers. They were both aimed at providing healing, peace and comfort to the sick and their friends and families, even if the former contained a wider range of desired manifestations. Where they differed was in the intense personalization and energy used by the witches in respect to the individual spells in contrast to the Christians’ more traditional format….”

Puerto Rican Mediums Healing Work: In his article, “Mediums at Large,” Patrick Huyghe says that mediums are regarded as therapists and healers in large parts of Central and South America, Africa and Asia. Jesus Soto Espinosa, of the Spiritist Confederation of Puerto Rico, is quoted as saying that patients suffering from alcoholism, cancer and depression have been treated by their physician or mental health professional along with the assistance of a medium. Huyghe writes, “the mediums become possessed by spirits and experience visions in order to heal the patients.”

From: “Mediums at Large,” by Patrick Huyghe, Fate Magazine April 2007.

Dreams have Power.  Dr. Rosemay Ellen Guiley spoke of the power of dreaming in her Gateways column of the September 2002 Fate Magazine.  Dr. Guiley pointed out that our dreams can be a powerful tool for healing and inspiration, if we would only make the effort to express some guidance to ourselves as we go to sleep.  She is encouraging people to join together in a common effort to help our community and the world.  From her column, “We set the night of the 11^th every month as the time for dreamworkers everywhere to incubate this affirmation.  While it actually can be done any time, it is important to have a set time for focusing of the power of collective thought and intent.”

Dr. Guiley asks that sometime during the day of the 11^th, dreamworkers think of a specific goal for the common good—something that is important to the dreamer.  Then the dreamworker should hold this thought as an affirmation, and when he or she retires for the night, say, “Tonight I dream the awakened mind.”  The following day, the dream is recorded.  The dreamworker should take time to meditate, and using the affirmation, “Today I awaken the dreaming mind,” to help interpret the dream.

Is consciousness the basic building block of the universe?  Dr. Sam Parnia, senior research fellow at the University of Southampton, and Dr. Peter Fenwick, a consultant neuropsychiatrist at Oxford University, are seeking funding to conduct a large-scale study to discover if clinically dead people really have out-of-body experiences and if consciousness lives on.  The researchers have founded a charitable trust, Horizon Research, to promote studies in this field.

Last year Parnia published a study indicating that ten percent of patients who were clinically dead, and then later resuscitated, reported memories while their bodies were lifeless.  Fenwick and others are not positing life after death per se, merely consciousness after death.  Nevertheless, the implications are enormous.  If near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences do not come from the brain, where is consciousness based?  One theory proposes that the basic building block of the universe is not matter, but is instead, consciousness itself.  This is described as the "transcendent" view, a perspective shared by many of the world's religions.

Parnia’s studies have been interpreted by some researchers as an indication that consciousness behaves as a field, much like magnetism, which can be affected by other fields.  If that's true, then it is possible for a person's consciousness to affect another person.  This could help explain how absent or distance healing works.  Fenwick and Parnia hope to add new near-death and out-of-body experiences to their research findings.

Extracted from the 38^th Edition of the News from NSAC email newsletter published by Robert Egby.  You can find more information about Horizon Research at www.diamondway-buddhism.org/news/8-2001.htm.

More on Belief.  Japanese researcher, Siyoh Tomiyama, has written a report on experiments being conducted in his country.  Siyoh writes about a hot spring in Japan, which has healing powers like the water at Lourdes in France.  The composition of the water has been analyzed and found to contain many rare minerals.  But the results have been inconsistent and change from day to day and experimenter to experimenter.  One experimenter found the composition of the water changed when someone passed behind him!

Siyoh notes that science is unable to deal with inconsistencies.  The uncertainty principle, developed by German physicist, Werner Heisenberg, in 1927, allows for such inconsistent results in the world under the microscope, but not in our day to day world, even though such inconsistencies do occur.

Siyoh writes that those who do not believe can actually stop phenomena from happening around them without even knowing it, by using their subconscious power.  He references work done by a professor at Toohoku University.  The professor had written a report and had done many experiments that proved his theory.  The results were sensational and attracted the attention of world scientists, many of whom believed the results were ridiculous and impossible.  They then tried to replicate the professors’ results and failed.  After many years the professor told an acquaintance of Siyoh, “What a malicious thing the collective thought is!  I conducted the experiment several hundred times before I announced it.  The results were always duplicated.  But now, somehow, I sometimes have difficulty reproducing them.”  You can read the report in it entirety at www.worlditc.org/newscience.htm.

Mind-matter Interaction Phenomena. The Consciousness Research Laboratory, directed by Dean Radin, has studied mind-matter interaction effects on living and inanimate systems, precognition, correlates of apparitional sightings and “field consciousness” effects in groups.

They have studied whether thinking about someone at a distance affects their nervous system. The context of these studies is usually cast in terms of investigating “distant healing.” Conventional scientific procedures are employed, such as the use of randomized, counterbalanced, double-blind protocols. Their research has involved both individuals and groups, separated in some experiments by distance and in others by time. The results indicate that distant mental influence of the human body does occur in the laboratory under well-controlled conditions.

From: www.psiresearch.org/research.html

X-Ray Vision. A story in a Canadian paper had an interesting description of X-Ray vision. The story was on a sixteen year old boy who claims to have healing powers and X-ray vision. When asked about it the boy, Adam, said that it was hard to explain and was more like ‘MRI-vision.’ “When I go into someone, I see a 3D holographic image. I start manipulating the image in front of me. I see blockages, green dots. Basically, I grab them out, these energies, I tear them apart and push them outside the skin, and they die very quickly without a host organism.”

Rock star Ronnie Hawkins was diagnosed with terminal cancer last summer. Recent tests show that he is cancer free and he has written a testimonial in Adams new book Dreamhealer.

“Local teen claims healing powers,” by Mike Roberts, The Province, Canada.

Animals Healed by Touch. This was the name of an article written by Carly Wall in the September 2003 Fate magazine. The article gives an overview of Healing Touch or laying on of hands healing and how it has been successfully used on animals. We read that the healing classes for animals given by Dr. Joy Craft are, “charged with energy as she explains her healing methods and demonstrates her techniques to relax the bodies of pets, helping release toxins that restrict and harm…. She instructs that you must channel love while focusing on the presence of a higher healing energy, learn to listen to your animal’s needs and feel that vibration opening to an innate power that even a beginner can use and develop.”

Meditation improves Immune Response. Brain scans have shown researchers that meditation changes brain activity and improves immune response. In other studies, meditation has been shown to lower heart rate and blood pressure thereby reducing the body’s stress response.

From: “Faith & Healing” by Claudia Kalb, Newsweek Nov. 10 2003

Negative Thoughts Make you Sick. Activity in the right pre-frontal cortex of the brain is linked to negative emotions and activity in the left pre-frontal cortex is linked to positive emotional responses. Researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison studied people with high levels of brain activity in the right pre-frontal cortex (negative emotions). The study linked “negative” brain activity with a weakened immune system. Dr. Richard Davidson, who led the research, said, “Emotions play an important role in modulating bodily systems that influence our health.”

From: BBC News, Negative Thoughts make you Ill, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3198935.stm

Mind/Body Medicine. The National Institutes of Health will spend 3.5 million over the next several years on mind/body medicine. As you can see from the above two items there is a growing belief in the medical community that a person’s mind can be as important in healing as what happens on a cellular level.

From: “Faith & Healing” by Claudia Kalb in Newsweek Nov 10.2003

Healing with Color:  In an article written for About.com by Janet Boyer, we are reminded that there are many ways to use color to heal. During his life, Ghadiali Dinshah extensively researched the effects of color on disease, developing the use of colored filters and lamps. His work is probably the most extensive and detailed of any this century.

But it is not necessary to have colored filters and lamps to work with color healing. You can drink color by filling a colored glass bottle that is three quarters full of water and keeping it in sunlight. Sunlight will charge the water in six to eight hours. Use a cork or cap to keep the dust out and clean the bottle once a day. Alternatively, wrap colored cellophane around a transparent bottle but don’t use the cellophane if it is faded.

You can also benefit by wearing the color that you need or by meditating with color cards found in art stores. It also works to visualize the color that you need surrounding you and filling every cell of your body. There are actually online color mediations (http://myth.com/color/med.htm) where you take in the color through your eyes.

From: Can Color Heal by Janet Boyer http://bellaonline.com/articles/art9740.asp

Prayer Research Facing Critics: An article in the New York Times by Benedict Carey talks about the Government financing of intercessory prayer research which began in the mid-1990s. Critics are expressing indignation that the federal government has contributed $2.3 million for prayer research in the past four years. They say the government should not spend taxpayer money to study something that has nothing to do with science.

Dr Richard J McNalley a psychologist at Harvard is quoted as saying, “Intercessory prayer presupposes some supernatural intervention that is by definition beyond the reach of science, it is just a nonstarter, in my opinion, a total waste of time and money.”

Prayer researchers, many themselves believers in prayer’s healing powers, say scientists do not need to know how a treatment or intervention works before testing it.

From: the New York Times “Can prayers Heal? Critics Say Studies Go Past Science’s Reach, by Benedict Carey, www.nytimes.com

Thoughts for the New Year: Last year at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) in New York City, the APA’s, Osker Pfister Award Lecture was entitled, “Dialogue from the Rims of the Grand Canyon: On Bridging the Post-Freudian Chasm Between Religion and Psychiatry.” Elizabeth S. Bowman, M.D., of Indiana University, spoke about how Freud’s theories on religion created a Grand Canyon of eroded trust between psychiatry and religion…. “Freud depicted religion as inherently pathological and inconsistent with psychological maturity. Yet many of us in the field of emotional and psychological well-being have felt the opposite. We have been aided and guided in our work by spiritual concepts from both ancient and more recent traditions.

“Some of us, myself included, entered the field of medicine for religious or spiritual reasons. My Jewish background taught me, ‘If a person saves one life, it is as if he has saved an entire world. And if a person destroys one life, it is as if he has destroyed the entire world.’ (Mishnah, Sanhedrin) This sentiment, embodying all that really matters in the universe, continues to be my touchstone. With its simple eloquence, this lesson reminds us that every life is of infinite value and deserves to be nurtured. It advises us to respect the internal world of the self, as that is where much of real consequence in this world resides. It extols the virtue of self-love and love of others. It instructs us on how to find meaning and fulfillment in life: Save yourself and save others, love yourself and love others, grow yourself and help others to do the same.

“What ingredient is most crucial to our healing? Our belief in the power of the possible. We need to keep searching for those providers, partners, mentors and guides who nurture us. We must use what makes sense as long as it makes sense to us, continue to ask for help and never allow ourselves to give up. Where there’s a will to transform a life, there’s a way to do it. Nurturing spirit, in this sense, saves lives. By working together to build bridges between disciplines rather than canyons; we can better save the world, one life at a time.”

From: The International Journal of Healing and Caring “Building Bridges, Saving Lives” by Eve A. Wood, MD www.ijhc.org

Induced After-Death Communication: Induced After-Death Communication (IADC) is a new therapy that has helped thousands of patients permanently assuage their grief by allowing them private communication with their departed loved ones. Dr. Allan Botkin, a clinical psychologist, created the therapy while counseling Vietnam vets in his work at a North Chicago VA hospital. Induced After-Death Communicatio: A New Therapy for Healing Grief and Trauma (Hampton Roads Publishing Company, ISBN 1571744231) presents the story of how Botkin initially made his discovery and includes eighty-four cases of patients who have experienced the therapy’s profound healing effects. After more than two decades as a clinical psychologist specializing in the treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Botkin founded the Center for Grief and Traumatic Loss.

The typical IADC involves the patient reporting having seen a deceased person and that deceased person having told him or her that everything is okay and not to grieve. In a number of cases, the deceased person relates information previously unknown to the patient. Even atheists and skeptics who underwent the therapy experienced an after-death communication.

Why Religion Helps: A Newsweek Poll found that going to church promoted healthy habits and that those who attended weekly were more likely to make positive changes. They were 131 percent more likely to be less depressed, 78 percent more likely to quit smoking, 54 percent more likely to exercise and 39 percent more likely to stop drinking.

From: “Faith & Healing” by Claudia Kalb in Newsweek Nov 10.2003

Healing Touch Study:  In an American study, patients having heart surgery received pre-surgery treatment from a ‘Healing Touch’ therapist. They also were instructed in breathing exercises, visualized being in a peaceful place and played calming music. The patients who did this were more likely to be alive six months after their operation and suffered far less distress than other patients.

From:  Music, imagery, touch, and prayer as adjuncts to interventional cardiac care: the Monitoring and Actualization of NoeticTrainings (MANTRA) II randomized study. The Lancet, 366, 211-217.

Laughter, the Best Medicine: Perhaps we could learn a thing or two from the people of Hong Kong. The city best known for its serious pursuit of money held a laughing contest sponsored by the Joyful Mental Health Foundation. The event was aimed at educating the public about depression, a sickness that has only been recognized in Hong Kong in the past few years. Contestants were judged on how long they could laugh and the quality of their laughter. The judges also looked at whether the laughter was infectious and genuine.

From: Reuters “Hong Kong seeks to make laughter the best medicine,” news.yahoo.com

Healing Prayers:  A survey of 31,000 adults released by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that forty-three percent of patients surveyed prayed for their own health while twenty-four Percent had others pray for their health.

Prayer and Healing: An article in the Washington Post states that, “In churches, mosques, ashrams, healing rooms, prayer groups and homes nationwide, millions of Americans offer prayers daily to heal themselves, family, friends, co-workers and even people found through the Internet. Fueled by the upsurge in religious expression in the United States, prayer is the most common complement to mainstream medicine, far outpacing acupuncture, herbs, vitamins and other alternative remedies.”

This outpouring of spiritual healing has inspired a group of researchers to attempt to use the tools of modern science to test the power of prayer to cure others. The results of one of the largest and best-designed projects are due to be published in April. Mitchell W. Krucoff, of Duke University, says that the study will have an interesting impact on people’s thinking. Krucoll wrote an editorial that will accompany the closely guarded findings in the American Heart Journal.

From: The WashingtonPost.com, “Researchers Look at Prayer and Healing Conclusions and Premises Debated as Big Study’s Release Nears,” By Rob Stein, Friday, March 24, 2006; Page A01

The Power of Prayer.  David Marshall was sitting in a small class of church students led by the minister, the Rev. Charles Harding, with the room dark and the session coming to an end.  David wrote, “At the time my wife had been on the other side for a number of years and my son, who was about 42 years old, was dying of AIDS out in California.  As I rose to turn on the lights I said to my wife in a prayer, ‘Take him by the hand and lead him over the threshold.’  I was wondering if she received my message and as I stood up to go turn the lights on I got a very strong aroma of Channel #5 perfume, which was her favorite.  I always gave it to her for a Christmas present.  At that moment I realized the power of prayer was working.  The next day I received a telegram telling me my son had died.”

Does Spiritual Prayer Heal? Many religions believe that prayer has the power to heal. That belief is now being put to tough scientific testing in Tucson. University of Arizona open-heart surgery patients are receiving special prayers to see if prayer can ease pain and speed up the recovery process. Patients will not know whether they are being prayed for or not. Chief of Surgery, Dr. Allan Hamilton, a Harvard-trained neurosurgeon said, “…I’m interested in the scientific outcome of surgical therapies and the use of advanced technologies, but we can’t forget that these are human beings in our care … I have seen that patients who are spiritually and emotionally connected do very well in their recovery. What we want to find out is if there is scientific validity to this – yes or no.”

The University of Arizona study is funded through the National Institutes of Health. The project follows several smaller studies in the past two decades that indicate distant prayer benefits patients with serious illness and injuries.   From: www.dailystar.com

Intercessory Prayer: David R. Hodge of the College of Human Services, on the Arizona State University’s Campus, has conducted a meta-analysis on the effects of intercessory prayer or prayer offered for the benefit of another person. Some studies in this area have found positive results while others have found no effect. Hodge looked at the entire body of empirical research in this area, seventeen studies, and found that prayer offered on behalf of another yielded positive results.

From: Research on Social Works Practices, “A Systematic Review of the Empirical Literature on Intercessory Prayer,” by David R. Hodge, 3 2007; vol. 17: pp. 174 - 187