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What Studies Show About Prayer and Healing |
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In 1988 at San Francisco General Hospital, Randolph Byrd, M.D., conducted one of the most frequently cited studies of the effects of prayer and healing. For 10 months, he studied 193 patients with heart disease, assigning people to pray for half of the patients and leaving the other half with no assigned prayer helpers. The patients who received prayers showed improvement rates 5 to 7 percent higher than their non-prayed-for counterparts. This group also required fewer antibiotics and diuretics, suffered from fewer cases of pneumonia, and suffered fewer deaths. Of course, this type of experiment contained many factors that were hard to control or measure, but it certainly got people thinking about the potentially powerful influence of prayer. |
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Recently, psi scientists have investigated the distinction made between directed and nondirected prayer. When you pray in a directed manner you have a specific goal or outcome in mind, as in, ''I want my husband's tumor to go away." In this case, you're attempting to steer the outcome in a certain direction, such as curing a cancer or helping a stroke victim regain movement or speech. In nondirected prayer, you would not "tell the universe what to do" but rather leave it open-ended with no specific outcome. |
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Spindrift, a Salem, Oregon, organization concentrating on prayer research, conducted studies on plant life to answer the question about which prayer technique was more effectivemainly because scientists find they can measure the results on simple biological systems more easily than they can on humans. One such study follows how prayer practitioners can affect the development and metabolism of yeast cultures and the sprouting of bean and wheat seeds. In both exercises, they discovered that prayer helped trigger growth. Perhaps surprisingly, the nondirected technique was quantifiably more effective than the directed prayer technique, yielding double the results. |
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The results of the Spindrift studies suggest that a healer or a prayer (meaning someone who prays) is most helpful if he keeps his mind free of visualizations or specific goals. It appears that prayer is most effective when it focuses only on the patient and what he or she needs. In other words, to simply pray for what's best for the individualto pray "Thy will be done" or "May the best of all outcomes happen for this individual or circumstance"appears to be the most effective approach to prayer. Although this approach worked best in the Spindrift studies, it has not been tested widely with people and the jury is still out on the best way for you to pray for your own or someone else's healing and growth. |
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