Prayer. Now there’s a word that has been bandied about in the context of health and healing. Some churches say special prayers for the sick and the Spiritualists offer hands on healing in their churches. There are hundreds of thousands of healers all over the world: folk healers, shamans, healers registered with approved associations; there are even groups who have a specific time to stop what they are doing and pray for people who are sick. This is known in some circles as “The Healing Minute” because it doesn’t need to take more than that.
So How Do We Do It?
We use the word “prayer” to explain globally what we’re doing, but some people feel uncomfortable with it and in a group to which I belong, our methods and our beliefs are our own business; we are just required at a certain time every day to stop and send healing in our own way to the people on the main list and our personal lists.
What do I do? Not wanting to impose anything on someone who may not have asked for help, I just see the person smiling and surrounded by white light. I expect some of the people in the group do much more traditional things, but it doesn’t matter. Whatever we do is never wrong if we have the good of the person in mind. And what does seem to prove its efficacy is the fact that group healing sessions, or the sending of light, or praying, or whatever at a time when lots of people do it together gives very positive results. The group members and the recipient don’t have to be in the same room nor even in the same country; in fact some healers insist that sending healing to someone who is not present works best,
Does It Really Work?
It has been shown how people fervently praying for the health of one person can have great results. Take the amazing case of Eben Alexander.
In his book Proof of Heaven, Alexander, a neurosurgeon who was totally brain dead and in a coma for seven days tells us that he was so far away he had no memory of anything on earth but when he started to “come back”, to come out of his coma, he could hear murmuring all round him although he couldn’t understand the words. He became aware of countless beings surrounding him kneeling in arcs that stretched out into the distance. It was only afterwards when he was fully back and writing about his experiences that he realized they were people who were praying for him. Although he reports that he was deeply sad to be leaving behind the wonders he had experienced, the vision of these people gave him an odd feeling that everything was going to be fine.
He wasn’t religious and rarely went to church, but his wife knew the local minister and prayer groups were rapidly organized. Although I’m not saying the prayers were the reason he recovered, what I am saying is that it was his vision of what turned out to be people praying that comforted and reassured him on his return, and that’s a successful result by anyone’s standards.
Every Thought Counts
Even when we are not necessarily sending healing or praying, just thinking of someone in a positive way can be helpful. We used to have a saying in our family when we talked about somebody who was having a hard time: “Ah, bless his heart”. We meant nothing more by it than an expression of compassion, of empathy for a fellow human being, but that’s really what praying for someone is all about and that’s why we do it.