If you want to achieve maximum health, here are a few things that you should do: exercise regularly, eat nutritious and minimally processed foods, drop those extra pounds -- and pray. That's right, regular prayer and meditation has been shown in numerous scientific studies to be an important factor in living longer and staying healthy.
Prayer is the most widespread alternative therapy in America today. Over 85 percent of people confronting a major illness pray, according to a University of Rochester study. That is far higher than taking herbs or pursuing other nontraditional healing modalities. And increasingly the evidence is that prayer works.
It doesn't matter if you pray for yourself or for others, pray to heal an illness or for peace in the world, or simply sit in silence and quiet the mind -- the effects appear to be the same. A wide variety of spiritual practices have been shown to help alleviate the stress levels, which are one of the major risk factors for disease. They also are powerful ways to maintain a positive outlook and successfully weather the trials which come to all of us in life.
The relationship between prayer and health has been the subject of scores of double-blind studies over the past four decades. Dr. Herbert Benson, a cardiovascular specialist at Harvard Medical School and a pioneer in the field of mind/ body medicine discovered what he calls "the relaxation response," which occurs during periods of prayer and meditation. At such times, the body's metabolism decreases, the heart rate slows, blood pressure goes down, and our breath becomes calmer and more regular.
This physiological state is correlated with slower brain waves, and feelings of control, tranquil alertness and peace of mind. This is significant because Benson estimates that over half of all doctor visits in the U.S. today are prompted by illnesses, like depression, high blood pressure, ulcers and migraine headaches, that are caused at least in part by elevated levels of stress and anxiety.
Dr. Andrew Newberg, director of the Center for Spirituality and the Mind at the University of Pennsylvania conducted a study of Tibetan Buddhists in meditation and Franciscan nuns in prayer which showed comparable decreased activity in the parts of the brain that are associated with sense of self and spatial orientation in both groups. He also found that prayer and meditation increase levels of dopamine, which is associated with states of well being and joy.
The effects of spiritual practice appear to be more than just the result of enhanced focus and concentration. Ken Pargement of Bowling Green State University instructed one group of people who suffer migraines to meditate 20 minutes each day repeating a spiritual affirmation, such as "God is good. God is peace. God is love." The other group used a nonspiritual mantra: "Grass is green. Sand is soft." The spiritual meditators had fewer headaches and more tolerance of pain than those who had focused on the neutral phrases.
But are the calming effects of spiritual practice temporary, or do they last even after we get up from the meditation cushion or leave a prayer service to reenter our less than serene lives?
In one National Institutes of Health funded study, individuals who prayed daily were shown to be 40 percent less likely to have high blood pressure than those without a regular prayer practice. Research at Dartmouth Medical School found that patients with strong religious beliefs who underwent elective heart surgery were three times more likely to recover than those who were less religious. A 2011 study of inner city youth with asthma by researchers at the University of Cincinnati indicates that those who practiced prayer and meditation experienced fewer and less severe symptoms than those who had not. Other studies show that prayer boosts the immune system and helps to lessen the severity and frequency of a wide range of illnesses.
A recent survey reported in the Journal of Gerontology of 4,000 senior citizens in Durham, NC, found that people who prayed or meditated coped better with illness and lived longer than those who did not.
But the question remains: By what physiological mechanisms does prayer impact our health? Herbert Benson's most recent research suggests that long term daily spiritual practices help to deactivate genes that trigger inflammation and prompt cell death. That the mind can effect the expression of our genes is exciting evidence for how prayer may influence the functioning of the body at the most fundamental level.
But what about praying for others? On the question of whether intercessionary prayer works, the jury is till out. Slightly over half the research done to date suggests that it helps, wile the rest concludes that there is no measurable effect. Critics of these studies say that there is a big difference between praying more or less mechanically and at a distance for a stranger because a researcher has told you to do so and the heartfelt prayers for friends and relatives which arise spontaneously from within.
Prayer, unlike say the behavior of a rat in a maze, cannot be directly observed, and the subtle effects on self and others are difficult to quantify and assess. Moreover, it would be wrong to view prayer as merely a technique to heal illness and promote physical health.
Spiritual practice aims to connect the individual with God or a Higher Power, to open one to the Divinity dwelling within the self, and to make one fully present to life in the here and now. These are not goals that lend themselves to being measured in double blind experiments. The sense of deep peace and radiant well being that spiritual practitioners in different religious traditions report are also not testable by scientific means.
What science can tell us is that people who pray and meditate trend to be statistically more healthy and live longer than those who do not. Whether these boons are merely unintended side effects of still deeper spiritual benefits remains a matter of faith.
Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld: Prayer as Medicine for the Sick
Prayers for you to use, for: Salvation, Healing, Health and The Holy ...
Prayer and Healing: Prayers for strength, healing, and coping with ...
A Prayer for Health and Healing | Kenneth Copeland Ministries
Is Prayer Good for Your Health? A Critique of the Scientific Research
http://thinkunity.com
in other activities, like diet and exercise.
“We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.”
So, doesn’t the power of prayer come from positive thoughts?
Buddhists aren’t theists or deists. They don’t believe in a Creator God – but they pray a lot.
I wonder who they’re praying to?
And I wonder who’s listening to their prayers – and to everyone else’s prayers?
Isn’t it the ONE Universal Awareness?
And doesn’t the true power of prayer lie in accepting and opening to THAT -
inner Infinite in each of us?
My point is that it's not prayer, it's creating a state of mind at peace which can be achieved through many other techniques as well.
I've done this and found that I've become quite peaceful and serene when I discovered that there is no need for a supernatural/superstitious explanation for anything..
You seek a confirmation bias for your conceits, and fail to recognize a difference between correlation and causation.
They've done prayer studies with control groups and there has never been any evidence that prayer has any effect on anything. As far as health due to prayer.. at best there couldn't be any more benefit than you would find with meditation or a placebo effect. Both of those are well documented to have beneficial effects. It doesn't support any evidence for a god.
Who are "they"? Please cite references.
Here's a quick article on it. It has all the info you need to look up the study results and who exactly the people were involved. I know you won't but there it is.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/health/31pray.html?pagewanted=all
It even included a few other studies of prayer that pretty much showed the same thing. i hadn't heard of those before but you can look up those citations as well to write in your diary or wherever you keep your list of citations for everyone that ever contradicted what your weekly church pamphlet has taught you. Do enjoy!
OH.. can you provide any citation by a non christian group or payed for by a non christian group that proves the power of prayer? Christians make the claim that prayer works so where's your cite-able evidence and references? Any for the actually existence of god would be greatly appreciated too. Thanks!
An alternative, simpler, less fantastic, and more religious (yes more) explanation is that people who pray tend to be healthier because when your life already is living Hell you do not look forward to the next one.
Prayer is for for saying thanks not asking for selfish favors (which is why it is said 'God does not answer prayers.')
What I don't do is use prayer to seek instant gratification.
There might be no evidence of God but there is no evidince that there is no God. Your claims that prayer is a "primitive tribal behavior" and that "no civilized person should promote such activity" don't even have studies attached and could also be called "nearly useless" as well.
So many disciplines are designed to distinguish themselves for economic purposes that they fail to meet their highest potential. Prayer is fine, but it would be much greater by sharing its energetic commonality with other disciplines. Combining prayer with healing techniques makes both more effective.
but i see no logic in the points you make, and no evidence for distance healing.
Those of us who practice Tong Ren see a great deal of benefit produced from it in others as well as in ourselves. While helping others, we experience a growth in consciousness of subtle energy. As a result, we want to bring the benefits of using subtle energy to others, including many people who resist accepting a new belief system like the Tao. The intent based work of Tong Ren is sufficient to show people benefits and open them to learning more. Even if I don't know its true nature, I can and do use subtle energy to help others to heal. Being a student of subtle energy, I accept the fact that defining it means that I don't know its true essence.
My postings are vague to get others to think about it. My comments about religion are not directed at the Tao.
Thanks again for your longer post.