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Distant Healing - Frequently
Asked Questions
What
is distant healing?
Distant healing encompasses a broad range of healing practices,
many of which are based in ancient spiritual traditions. Virtually
all major religions, including Buddhism, Christianity, Islam,
and Hinduism, endorse and encourage the use of distant healing
among their adherents.
Two of
the most common distant healing practices are offering prayers
for those who are ill and using forms of meditation where
the practitioner holds a compassionate intention to relieve
the suffering of another. Some practices focus on curing a
very specific disease state while others emphasize creating
a compassionate environment that can have a healing effect.
Virtually all distant healing practices are concerned with
alleviating the suffering and increasing the well being of
others.
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What
is meant by "distant" within the context of distant
healing?
When speaking of distant healing, the term "distant"
generally means there may be a physical separation of from
a few feet to thousands of miles between the healer and the
recipient of the healing activity.
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How
does distant healing work?
Different approaches to distant healing are rooted in very
different worldviews and cosmologies and consequently there
are numerous perspectives on how distant healing works. Common
to virtually all perspectives is the belief that a person's
focused intention can have a nonlocal effect, that is, the
healing intention of one person can have a positive effect
on another who is at a distance.
Specific
explanations of how the healing effect occurs are based largely
on the worldview of the healer. Some healers hold worldviews
where God can intervene in a powerful way to alter physical
reality, in which case it is God's action that brings about
healing. Other healers hold worldviews where all reality is
understood as being intimately interconnected and where mind
and consciousness can have nonlocal effects. For these healers,
it is the power of mind or consciousness itself that brings
about a healing effect through the nonlocal transfer of either
energy or information.
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What
is a distant healer and what type of training do they receive?
There are various perspectives on the definition of a distant
healer and how they should be trained. At the broadest level,
many religious traditions maintain that anyone can be a distant
healer and all that is required is a compassionate heart.
In this sense, anyone who prays for healing for another is
a distant healing practitioner. At the other end of the spectrum,
some traditions believe that only certain people have the
"gift" of healing, that this capacity is bestowed
by the divine or God and is not available to all. A more nuanced
perspective is that many people have healing capacities but
that training and practice is required to fully develop these
capacities.
Researchers
have observed that the capacity most commonly held among distant
healing practitioners is "an ability to hold a compassionate
intention for another at a distance." From this perspective,
distant healing can be understood as an "integral practice"
that brings together a healer's capacities for holding intention,
attention and compassion in ways that may enhance healing
effects. Different traditions offer a variety of forms of
training that can increase an individual's capability to hold
intention and attention and express compassion, with some
focusing more on the power of intention and attention and
others on the effect of compassion. Some traditions, particularly
those with a shamanic orientation, may require the healer
to pass certain initiation rites and learn complex healing
rituals.
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How
would I go about finding a distant healer?
There is currently a wider acceptance of distant healing within
spiritual and religious circles than within the medical and
mental health community. The majority of distant healing practitioners
have been trained and continue to work within the context
of a specific spiritual tradition. Consequently, if you are
comfortable with a particular spiritual tradition, that is
often the best place to start your search.
If you
begin your search within a spiritual tradition, you should
be aware of a few issues. First, the term "distant healing"
is used in research circles but often is not used within religious
or spiritual groups. In making inquiries, use terminology
more appropriate to your tradition such as "praying for
healing of someone at a distance" or "meditation
approaches where the focus is having compassion for one who
is suffering." Second, most healers employ a broad range
of practices of which distant healing is only one. You may
have greater success if you seek out individuals who refer
to themselves as healers and then ask about their distant
healing practices rather than looking strictly for distant
healers. Third, be persistent. Within most spiritual traditions
there are a range of attitudes regarding the efficacy of distant
healing. Just because the first teacher or minister you speak
to may not know of any distant healers, virtually all traditions
have large constituencies who do believe and practice distant
healing.
Another
approach to finding a distant healer is to contact hospitals
that have CAM or complementary and alternative medicine practices.
Also, there are a growing number of physicians and other health
practitioners such as chiropractors and psychotherapists who
integrate CAM or holistic medicine approaches into their work
and often advertise themselves as such. These health practitioners
are often supportive of distant healing approaches and may
provide referrals. Another excellent resource is the National
Center For Complementary and Alternative Medicine, which is
a program of the National Institutes of Health. Its website
is http://nccam.nih.gov
and offers a very helpful set of guidelines for exploring
alternative approaches to health and healing.
A primary
commitment of the Institute of Noetic Sciences is conducting
independent research in areas of health and healing and, consequently,
it does not make recommendations or endorse individual health
practitioners or particular approaches to healing.
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How
much does distant healing cost?
Compassionate Intention or DHI is one of least costly forms
of CAM; in many cases, it is practiced free of charge.
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What
will my doctor think of distant healing?
More
and more, members of the medical community are opening to
the beliefs and practices of their patients. The best advice
is to choose a practitioner with whom one feels trust and
confidence in their abilities to help the patient heal. If
this requires that the physician maintain a similar belief
system, this can be one of the questions one asks when choosing
a provider.
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Do
I need to approve it with my doctor before I start using it?
Not at all, although it is always helpful to share as much
information with your health provider as possible.
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What
kind of conditions can be treated by distant healing?
Depending
on their orientation, distant healers answer this question
in different ways:
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Most
distant healers come from a spiritual rather than a medical
perspective and often don't use medical terminology to
describe a particular condition or disease state. Consequently,
they often do not claim to heal specific medical conditions,
simply because that's not the model they operate within.
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Distant
healers who focus primarily on creating a compassionate
environment that facilitates a person's overall healing
process would describe their approach as being beneficial
in assisting in the healing of a particular disease state,
but their focus is not to "treat" a specific
condition but to rebalance the overall system so healing
can occur - often in collaboration with other therapies. |
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Distant
healers who focus on healing or curing specific disease
states do not generally single out particular types of
conditions as being more responsive to distant healing
treatment. |
Scientific
research projects have studied the effect of distant healing
on a numerous disease states, including heart disease, AIDS,
cancer, bacterial infections and recovery from surgery. There
is currently no consensus regarding which conditions are most
responsive to distant healing, but a majority of the research
indicates that distant healing, when used with other therapies,
does enhance the healing process across a broad range of disease
states.
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Can
distant healing ever be harmful?
Thus far, the data suggests that religious and spiritual practice
is beneficial to ones health. There are also a series of basic
science and clinically based experiments that suggest that
DHI also has therapeutic benefit. Clearly more data need to
be collected to better understand issues related to dose,
distance, as well as a range of psychosocial variables that
may or may not be important.
If distant
healing is understood as holding a compassionate intention
to relieve suffering or bringing healing to another, then
it is unlikely that in itself, distant healing could be harmful.
Where distant healing might be harmful is if it was perceived
or presented as a stand alone remedy and a person excluded
other therapies that might be beneficial. This is why many
healers recommend that distant healing be understood as one
aspect of an overall integral medicine model where multiple
therapies are utilized to address a disease state or illness.
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How
widely accepted is distant healing as an alternative healing
practice?
It is difficult to quantify the prevalence of the use of DHI
as a complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapy
in the United States because it is so commonly practiced within
American religious and spiritual life. A national survey in
1996 found that 82 percent of Americans believed in the healing
power of prayer; 64 percent felt that physicians should pray
with patients who request it (Wallis, 1996). A study by Cassileth
(1984) found that 19 percent of cancer patients report they
have augmented their conventional medical care with prayer
or spiritual healing. A survey of women in the American Cancer
Society's support groups for women with breast cancer showed
that 88 percent found spiritual or religious practice important
in coping with their illness (Johnson & Spilka, 1991),
although the extent to which specific prayers or intentions
of healing were part of their activities was not clear. In
acute illnesses, such as cardiac events, these numbers rise
even further. Saudia and colleagues (Saudia, Kinney, Brown,
& Young-Ward, 1991), for example, found that 96 percent
of patients stated that they prayed for their health before
going in for surgery. In certain cultural or ethnic groups,
seeking healing prayers or spiritual healing from an identified
practitioner is commonplace (for eg, Suarez, 1996).
As a whole,
the population of the United Kingdom is less traditionally
religious than the United States, but there are more distant
healers in the UK (approximately 14,000) than there are therapists
from any other branch of complementary and alternative medicine
(CAM) (Astin, Harkness, & Ernst, 2000). This indicates
that that DHI is widely practiced independently of religious
backgrounds.
Spiritual
healing, energy healing, and prayer are rapidly gaining acceptance
among conventional medical professionals. In a 1996 survey
of Northern California physicians (Wallis, 1996), 13 percent
reported using or recommending prayer or religious healing
as an intervention. Non-Contact Therapeutic Touch is used
formally by nurses in at least 80 hospitals within the United
States (Maxwell, 1996), and has been taught to more that 43,000
health care professionals (Krieger, 1979). Among the lay public,
Reiki International, one of the largest training organizations
for "subtle-energy healing" therapies, reports having
certified more than 500,000 practitioners worldwide. While
Reiki healing is frequently performed through physical contact,
one form of Reiki is claimed to be effective over distances
of thousands of miles (Schlitz & Braud, 1985).
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What
are the central scientific issues related to distant healing?
The idea that mental intention can causally influence distant
living systems evokes two scientific problems: The first is
the assumption that "action at a distance" is impossible.
Restated, this assumption presumes that all observable phenomena
are causally connected, and that all causal connections must
be proximally (i.e., spatiotemporally) contiguous. Thus a
phenomenon based on "distant influence," with no
(known) observable causal connections, is scientifically forbidden.
The second problem is that there are no accepted theoretical
reasons to expect that mind can directly interact with matter,
excepting perhaps a mind interacting with "its"
brain. These two problems are sufficient to cause most scientists
to seriously doubt that DHI is genuinely "distant healing."
As a result, it is understandable why skeptics assume that
apparent DHI effects can be completely explained as a combination
of wishful thinking, poor methodologies, embellishment, and
in extreme cases, fraud.
While
thoroughly reviewing the theoretical implications of DHI is
beyond the scope of this paper, it is useful to point out
that both of the above scientific objections to DHI have been
obsolete for over a century. While Einstein complained about
"spooky actions at a distance" in quantum mechanics,
subsequent experiments have demonstrated that the fabric of
the universe is indeed nonlocal, i.e. it not only allows action
at a distance but - the argument can be made - its very essence
is nonlocal. Likewise, the role of observation and consciousness
in the physical world has been seriously discussed by virtually
all of the founders of quantum theory, suggesting that at
some level mind and matter may be fundamentally inseparable.
Thus,
while classical physics and "common sense" disallow
the possibility of DHI phenomena, our most accurate theoretical
descriptions of the physical world, as captured in the formalisms
of modern physics, do provide an accepted physical substrate
for DHI.
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How
does one conduct scientific research on distant healing intention?
In a medical context, distant healing intention (DHI) postulates
that the intentions of one person can influence the health
of a distant person (see Schlitz, Radin, et. al, 2003). In
more general terms, DHI postulates that the intentions of
one or more persons can interact with the physiological, psychological
and/or behavioral status of one or more distant living systems.
DHI is a subset of a broader class of controversial phenomena
suggesting the existence of direct mind-matter interactions.
Many terms
are used to describe forms of distant healing interventions.
They include intercessory prayer, spiritual healing, non-directed
prayer, intentionality, energy healing, pranic healing, nonlocal
healing, non-contact Therapeutic Touch, level III Reiki, external
Qi Gong, and Johrei. Each of these terms describes a particular
theoretical, cultural, and pragmatic approach to influencing
a healing or biological change through mental intention of
one person toward another.
DHI laboratory
studies focused on basic science therefore explore the question:
Can intention alone interact with a distant living system?
Process-oriented DHI studies study personality, environmental,
and physical factors associated with DHI effects.
The word
distant in DHI specifically means shielded from ordinary physical
and psychological influences by means of spatial, temporal,
and/or sensory shielding, i.e. exclusion of all known causal
pathways of human interaction. This distinguishes DHI from
mind/body/energy therapies in which healers are in touch with
or in close proximity to the "target" living system.
A major
difficulty associated with studying effects of intention in
DHI research is that every experiment (indeed any activity
involving more than one person) consists of multiply interacting
intentions. A healer maintains an intention to perform actions
resulting in measurable changes in a distant living system,
a patient maintains an intention to allow the distant influence,
and an investigator intends to produce a successful study.
The coworkers and management of the investigators may hold
other intentions, and readers of articles describing the research
may hold still other intentions. It is not clear how, or indeed
if, these sets of intentions can be cleanly disentangled given
that the "distant" in DHI assumes that intentional
effects are not limited by distance in space or time (these
assumptions are considered in more detail later). These complex,
entangled sets of intentions are unavoidably present in every
DHI experiment.
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What
is the current state of research on distant healing?
Despite only modest scientific proof of its efficacy and a
lack of adequate theoretical explanations, many people regularly
use some form of DHI, such as prayer, in the hope that it
will help friends and loved ones who are ill. The problem
is that in addition to doubt about its efficacy, even those
who regularly practice DHI don't know how much, how often,
or how long they should practice DH to be effective. These
are the types of questions addressed by both clinical and
laboratory DHI research.
| Laboratory
Evidence for Distant Healing Intention |
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Anecdotal
claims of DHI have been reported in a wide variety of
conditions ranging from malignancies and genetic illnesses
to wounds (Dossey, 1993). In a narrative review of controlled
experimental and clinical studies published before 2001,
Benor (2001,2002) found statistically significant evidence
for such effects in 88 of 138 studies. Among these studies
50 were rated as of excellent methodological quality and
37 (74%) of them yielded statistically significant results.
However, the extent of selective reporting in that literature
is unknown, and many of those studies did not use double-blind,
randomized trial designs. |
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| Simple
Life Forms |
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Controlled
laboratory experiments involving non-human living systems
have shown replicable effects of DHI on life forms including
enzymes (Bunell, 1999), fungi (Barry, 1968; Tedder &
Monty, 1980), yeast (Haraldsson & Thorsteinsson, 1973),
bacteria (Nash, 1982; Rauscher & Rubik, 1980), cancer
cells (Rein, 1992; Snel & Hol, 1980), and on hemolysis
of red blood cells under osmotic stress (Braud, 1990;
Braud & Schlitz, 1989). These studies were conducted
under randomized and blinded conditions such that the
person conducting the measurements did not know whether
the preparation had been in the treatment or control groups.
The "healers" in the above studies included
Western and Eastern European healing practitioners of
considerable renown [e.g., in the studies of cancer cells
(Braud, Davis, & Wood, 1979; Rein, 1992) and wound
healing (Grad, 1965)], as well as volunteers, students,
and laboratory personnel in positive studies of hemolysis
(Braud, 1990; Braud & Schlitz, 1989), and bacterial
growth (Nash, 1982). While some of these experiments were
conducted under acceptable controls and resulted in statistically
significant effects, the extent of selective reporting
in this literature is unknown, requiring caution in interpreting
the results. |
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| Animal
Models |
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Significant
evidence of DHI has also been reported in animal disease
models such as amyloidosis in hamsters (Snel & Ver
der Syde, 1995), murine malaria (Solfvin, 1982) and experimentally
induced goiter and surgical wounds in mice (Grad, 1965).
Watkins and Watkins (1971) found more rapid recovery from
anesthesia in animals receiving DHI, an effect that was
later replicated by Schlitz (1982). A more recent exploratory
study of tumorigenesis (Snel & Ver der Syde, 1995)
found increased survival in rats injected with ascites
tumor cells treated at a distance by an experienced healer
when compared to untreated animals and similar results
were reported by Bengston & Krinsley (2000). In the
former study, rats were treated by a professional healer
who was several miles away, and those rats showed significant
benefit compared to a no-treatment control. These experiments,
although small in number and in need of further replication,
appeared to be conducted under sound methodologies, providing
support for the hypothesis that DHI may be able to modify
a variety of biological processes. |
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| Human
Studies |
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Laboratory
investigations have also found evidence for DHI on the
human autonomic nervous system (Schmidt, in press; Schmidt,
Schneider, Utts & Walach, 2002). In these studies
a small but highly significant overall effect size (Cohen's
d = 0.11) has been found for more than 1,000 sessions
in a blind, randomized trials targeting electrodermal
activity. Another series of experiments (Braud & Schlitz,
1989, 1991; Schlitz & Braud 1997; Schlitz & LaBerge,
1994; Wiseman & Schlitz, 1996, 1997) showed statistically
significant changes in sympathetic autonomic nervous system
activity as measured by skin conductance in subjects toward
whom an unseen "influencer" in another room
was sending intention for relaxation or for physiological
excitation at random intervals. A meta-analysis by Schmidt,
Schneider, Utts & Walach (2002) reports a significant
effect size (Cohen's d = 0.13) for an updated set of these
experiments. Of the relevant experimental literature,
this class of experiments is widely considered to provide
the best evidence for DHI. |
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| Clinical
Evidence for DH |
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Several
randomized, double-blind investigations support the
clinical efficacy of DH (Astin et al., 2000; Roberts,
Ahmed, & Hall, 2000; M. Schlitz, Lewis N, 1996).
Based on a systematic review that was recently published
in the Annals of Internal Medicine, (Astin et al., 2000)
reported that approximately 57percent (13 of 23) of
the randomized, controlled trials (RCTs) reviewed showed
a positive treatment effect in a wide range of human
populations.
In
one controlled study at San Francisco General Hospital
(Byrd, 1988), 393 Coronary Care Unit (CCU) patients
were randomized to an intercessory prayer group or to
a control group. While hospitalized, the first group
was prayed for daily by a Christian prayer circle given
the first name and diagnosis of each patient. Multivariate
analysis found a significant decrease in medical complications
during the hospitalization, including decreases in the
incidence of treatment complications such as incidence
of pneumonia (p<.03), requirement for antibiotics
(p<.005), intubation (p<.005) and overall illness
severity (p<.01) in the intervention group. In addition,
significantly more of the patients were found to fall
into the "good" category in a summary score
for medical recovery course. The study suggests a significant
efficacy of DH in some aspects of cardiac illness, although
concerns about possible multiple testing problems have
been raised.
A
larger replication of the Byrd study was recently published
by (Harris et al., 1999). In this study, 990 consecutive
new CCU admissions were randomized to either a standard
treatment only group, or to receive intercessory prayer
from religious community members for four weeks. The
study was double blind, and as in the Byrd study, patients
and "intercessors" never met. This study also
used a summary CCU medical course score as a primary
outcome measure. Compared to the usual care group, the
Prayer group had lower mean scores (p<.04). Length
of CCU and hospital stay did not differ between the
two groups. Unfortunately, like the Byrd study, it used
an unvalidated final outcome measure, where ultimate
clinical significance is uncertain. Both the Byrd and
Harris studies involve the prayer offered by lay practitioners
operating in community, rather than DH efforts by individuals
whose professional work is attempting to use intention
for healing purposes.
More
recently, Krucoff, et al. (J. Alternative Therapies
5(3):75-82, 1999) conducted a pilot study in which DH
represented one arm of a five-arm randomized and controlled
clinical trial. His study compared the results of healing
touch, stress relaxation and off-site intercessory prayer
with standard care alone in patients newly admitted
to a hospital CCU to undergo invasive heart catheterization
and balloon angioplasty. Using a "Unity" monitoring
system, patients were noninvasively and continuously
monitored for heart rate, blood pressure, ischemia and
heart rate variability. Healers were recruited worldwide
from a wide range of spiritual healing traditions. The
results showed that each of the CAM interventions produced
a larger effect size than standard care alone with DH
producing the strongest evidence of healing. A multi-site,
expanded study is now underway to explore these findings
in depth.
Another
randomized double-blind clinical study of post-operative
patient (Bentwich & Kreitler, 1994) documented psychological
as well as physical improvement in a healer-treated
group. In this study, 53 male patients who had undergone
hernia surgery were randomly assigned to a group receiving
pre-recorded taped suggestions for accelerated recovery,
to a group exposed to DH effort by an experienced healer,
or to a control group. The healer was an individual
who claimed substantial healing ability. She was given
the names of the patients and spent approximately one
hour directing positive healing intentions toward them
in the hour before their surgery. The DH group showed
a significant difference (p<.05) on 9 of 24 variables
associated with improved recovery course, including
improved wound appearance, less fever during hospitalization,
and a number of subjective attitudinal factors including
less pain, as well as more confidence in the treatment
when compared to the suggestion tape and control groups.
The finding of benefits in the DH group over and above
those found in the suggestion tape group in this study
provides evidence that DH may offer benefits beyond
what would be predicted for simple psychological expectation
or placebo.
More
recently, Dr. Elisabeth Targ and colleagues from our
laboratory conducted a pilot study and then replicated
the results in a randomized controlled clinical trial
of DH directed to advanced AIDS patients. AIDS patients
given 60 hours of DH had a significantly decreased medical
utilization and better psychological outcomes in both
studies conducted under double-blind conditions (Sicher
et al., 1998).
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Note:
A primary commitment of the Institute of Noetic Sciences is
to conduct independent research in areas of health and healing
and, consequently, it does not make recommendations or endorse
individual health practitioners or particular approaches to
healing. We also do not endorse the specific healers that
we have interviewed, but rather, we chose them objectively
for their broad and varying perspectives on the subject.
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