Prayer for Health

Through age and time, spirituality and healing have been interconnected. The combination of herbs and prayers has been used for the purpose of healing. Among major religions, illness has been attributed to the presence of discord between the forces of nature and forces within the individual. The focus for healing, therefore, is the restoration of harmony, correct behavior, and rebuilding fractured relations.

For the terminally ill, the drug addicts, those in emotional despair, and many who suffer from chronic pain, the need to discover a spiritual foundation becomes more evident, for medical intervention independent of complementary healing alternatives, most often is insufficient to relieve symptoms of pain. Drugs provide temporary relief, but are never the cure for the physical pain or the emotional and mental anguish. Suffering is manifested in behavioral cues, such as agitation, somatic complaints, apathy, depression, isolation, and anxiety. Addictions to alcohol, food, sex, consumerism, gambling, or even the internet become adopted coping mechanisms, for lack of knowledge of alternatives. Unable to cope adequately to the stress creates havoc on our heart, nerves, and immune system. Heart disease is the number one cause of death in the United States. This is followed by cancer and stroke, second and third respectively.

How Does Prayer Help Us?

Prayers have been a common spiritual practice for healing amongst major religions for thousands of years. Within the past two decades, modern science, through the support of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), has increasingly acknowledged the practice of prayer as a form of complementary alternative medicine. A recent study of 31,000 adults found that 62 percent had used complementary and alternative medicine. Among the respondents,

• 45 percent had used prayer for health reasons
• 43 percent had prayed for their own health
• Almost 25 percent had others pray for them
• Almost 10 percent had participated in a prayer group for their health.

Prayer is defined by NCCAM, “an active process of appealing to a higher spiritual power, specifically for health reasons; it includes individual or group prayer on behalf of oneself or others.”

Prayer is one practice of spirituality, which is defined: “an individual’s sense of purpose and meaning to life, beyond material values.” In our personal quest for understanding answers to ultimate questions about life, about meaning, and about relationship to the sacred, the spiritual journey leads us to the path where we may find meaning in our relationship with others, as well as become an influential factor in our daily behavior. Finding this meaning can be helpful to understand the why and how of daily challenges that affect us physically, mentally, or emotionally.

Of 100 studies performed in the past century, 79 of these found those with a spiritual practice had significantly greater well-being, life satisfaction, or happiness than those without a spiritual practice. Amongst these, 15 studies found those with a spiritual practice had a significantly greater purpose and meaning in life.

Prayers can lead an individual into the discovery of peace which calms the turbulent soul. Because the experience of inner peace prevails, there becomes a direct effect on lowering anxiety levels, which in turn decreases stress that has a negative influence on disease.

When the aging process becomes manifest or illness dominates, and medical intervention, alone, is not sufficient, then the need to uncover the deeper source from where the suffering exacerbates disease symptoms must be acknowledged. Through prayer, as an example of one form of complementary alternative medicine, there is hope for many in the relief of suffering.

Sigmund Freud quoted: “only religion can answer the question of the purpose of life. One can hardly be wrong in concluding that the idea of life having a purpose stands and falls with the religious system.”

Gandhi quoted: “I believe that prayer is the very soul and essence of religion, and therefore, prayer must be the very core of the life of man, for no man can live without religion.”

Gandhi, while praying with the Quakers, stated: “Emptying of the mind of all conscious processes of thought and filling it with the spirit of God unmanifest brings one ineffable peace and attunes the soul with the infinite.”