Distance Healing Really Works

From our earliest times as a people, we have turned to God and beseeched Him to heal our family and friends who are beset by illness. The Jewish people boast a long history of caring for its sick through prayer. Most obvious are the mi sheberach’s, the prayers that petition healing for specific individuals, and the prayer in the in the daily service requesting refuah shleimah, a complete healing for all people. Talmudic literature cites numerous examples of caring for the sick, which continues on in rabbinic commentaries up to the present day. Heartfelt prayer can accomplish healing at a distance just as easily as in person. The work we do in our healing prayer group is to be God’s partner and direct His divine energy into those who wish to be restored in mind, body, and spirit. Some people may indeed recover from their illness and health challenges; others may continue to suffer physical and emotional effects. If our prayers will help anyone reach a place of integration and unity within themselves, then we are obligated to help them.

There are many ways one might understand how distance healing works. Much of our everyday experience involves the transfer of energy over long distances -- satellite dishes are just one example. There are energies all about us traveling great distances in short amounts of time such as radio waves and TV signals.
 From another viewpoint, it is not necessary for the energy to "travel" anywhere as some models describe the universe as being like a holograph, where the whole is contained in every part. Time and distance are only concepts that help define our reality. The Holographic Universe by Talbot is especially fascinating in this regard. The laws of nature which describe subtle energies are different than those which describe the physical body.  As physics explores deeper and deeper "layers" of the structure of creation, phenomena are less and less "localized".  Some physicists describe a "unified field" which is non-local: happening everywhere.

Quantum physics is developing theories with insights into non-local phenomena such as distant prayer. For example, Bell’s theorem, which is supported by experimental evidence, indicates that once subatomic particles have been in contact, they always remain connected. A change in one creates a concurrent change in the other, even if they are a universe apart. Some physicists believe that these non-local events are not just limited to sub-atomic particles but underlie everyday events, including prayer

Theoretically, distance healing can help everyone. Elisabeth Targ is a physician who has conducted research on distance healing. Though born into a Jewish family, she never went to temple, and was raised to believe only in rational, scientific evidence. Today Dr. Targ is a practicing psychiatrist, and the Director of the Complementary Medicine Research Institute at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, and one of the country's leading researchers in the area of distance healing. "Distance healing is any purely mental effort undertaken by one person with the intention of improving the physical or emotional well-being of another," explains Dr. Targ. "I knew that various forms of distant healing were widely practiced around the world, including prayer and psychic healing, and I knew that numerous, well-controlled trials had demonstrated the mental effects of distance healing on humans, animals, and other biological systems.

There is ample proof that prayer works. Many scientific studies have been conducted that validate this observation. A 1993 Israeli survey following 10,000 civil servants for 26 years found that Orthodox Jews were less likely to die of cardiovascular problems than their secular brethren.  And a 1995 study from Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH, monitoring 250 people after open-heart surgery concluded that those who had religious connections and social support were twelve times less likely to die than those who had none.

The University of New Mexico in Albuquerque is studying the power of prayer to heal alcoholics. And there is a prayer-and-healing study in progress at Bastyr University in Seattle, Washington, the nation's leading naturopathic-training institute. In the most widely publicized studies of the effect of intercessory prayer, cardiologist Randolph Byrd studied 393 patients admitted to the coronary-care unit at San Francisco General Hospital. Some were prayed for by home-prayer groups, others were not. All the men and women got medical care. In this randomized, double blind study, neither the doctors nor nurses nor the patients knew who would be the object of prayer. The results were dramatic and surprised many scientists. The men and women whose medical care was supplemented with prayer needed fewer drugs and spent less time on ventilators. They also fared better overall than their counterparts who received medical care but nothing more.

 These experiments have shown that prayer can take many forms. Results occurred not only when people prayed for explicit outcomes, but also when they prayed for nothing specific. There are many examples to indicate that prayer and spiritual healing can exert its effect from a distance. As discussed in Larry Dossey’s Healing Words (1993), test subjects (again, normal volunteers with no special “gifts”) can influence the outcome of random physical events even when separated by great distances. A simple attitude of prayerfulness, an all pervading sense of holiness and a feeling of empathy, caring, and compassion for the entity in need, seemed to set the stage for healing. It did not matter whether the praying person was with the person who was prayed for the power of prayer to work. You can pray for someone who is far away and still will have an influence on the outcome.

According to Harold Koenig, director of the Center for the Study of Religion/Spirituality and Health at Duke University Medical Center , "when prayer uplifts or calms, it inhibits cortisol, epinephrine, and norepinephrine - hormones that flow out of the adrenal glands in response to stress. These fight-or-flight chemicals, released over time can compromise the immune system, upping the odds of developing any number of illnesses, including heart disease, stroke, peptic ulcers, and inflammatory bowel disorder.” Many experts feel that the immune system is strengthened and nourished by a sense of peace, which can be transferred from one individual to another or used inwardly. Of course, the ancient Rabbinic literature links healing with faith. So, it is reasonable to assume that something such as prayer that provides comfort and peace would influence how you recover from a disease.

"Prayer works," says Dr. Dale Matthews, associate professor of medicine at Georgetown University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C., and senior research fellow at the National Institute for Healthcare Research in Rockville, Maryland. Dr. Matthews has reviewed more than 200 studies linking religious commitment and health, cited in his book, 'The Faith Factor'. He cites studies suggesting that people, who pray are less likely to get sick, are more likely to recover from surgery and illness and are better able to cope with their illnesses than people who don't pray. Some evidence indicates that sick people who are prayed for also fare significantly better than those who aren't. In fact, some physicians report that people who are prayed for often do better even if they don't know they're being prayed for.

Certainly, the idea of distance healing is catching on even today. Cyberspace is full of fellow believers who post their requests on daily prayer chains. Those who believe in distance healing are not sure how it works, though theories abound. Some say it involves sending some kind of subtle, as-yet-unidentified energy to the person in need. Others, including Dossey, say quantum physics may play a role, or what Cambridge-trained biologist Rupert Sheldrake calls "morphogenetic fields," unrestricted by space or time. In the absence of hard data, it remains either a mystery or a miracle.