What prayer is,
What scientific evidence there is for prayer,
What kinds of controversy surround prayer experiments, and
How best to pray
Then you'll be delighted to know that Dr. Larry Dossey has
written an excellent book, Prayer is Good Medicine, which answers these
questions in detail. Dossey has written several excellent books on this
same topic over the past decade, which set the standard for books written
on the subject of prayer and health.
In his book, Healing Words, Dossey points out how some of
people get turned off to prayer by being told there is "only one best way
to pray". Many of us will be glad to know that Herbert Benson of Harvard
University Medical School has conducted research which reveals that
prescribing "one right way" to pray can disenfranchise people from praying
and create "prayer drop-outs".
I'm a big fan of Dr. Dossey's work, which I consider to be some of the most
comprehensive and most readable books on the subject of prayer and healing.
Dossey consistently provides examples of how we all pray (even those of us
who think we don't), and what the effects of our intentions can be.
Dossey's books are consistently full of scientific supporting evidence to
back up his fascinating anecdotal stories.
Not one to avoid controversial subjects, Dossey delves into the dangers of
negative prayer, including curses, hexes and just plain old angry thoughts.
He has one book dedicated to this subject, called Be Careful What You Pray For... You Just Might Get
It, which I dearly love.
Most of us don't realize that when we are wishing for something like that a
loved one "... would just give up that crazy dream of becoming a writer",
we are effectively making a prayer that can have long-term effects. One
man wondered why it was that his writing career never seemed to take off...
until his mother finally told him that she'd been praying for years that
he'd give up that dream and do something different.
Dr. Dossey is one of several doctors who are now writing books and giving
lectures on the importance of considering prayer to be an important part of
any healing program, since many recent studies are proving the power of
prayer to help people heal. If you'd like more details about these
studies, you'll probably enjoy reading my article Scientific Research Confirms Distant
Healing.
The good news for those of us who weren't raised in religious homes and
don't have religious training or affiliation is that those things don't
seem to matter. Prayer is something that we are all doing anyway... it's
the way we express our desires to the universe every day.
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