I ran across an article on the web that is an eye-opener (& a toe-tapper!)when it comes to distant healing...check it out:
Distant Healing
Theoretically, distant healing can help anyone, so many wonder if it wouldn't potentially be useful for cerebral palsy. 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 the "super rational."3
Nonetheless, her physicist father was intrigued by such phenomena as clairvoyance and telepathy. Beginning in the 1960's he conducted research on parapsychology at the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, California. During college, and then medical school at Stanford University, Elisabeth worked as her father's researcher. Today Dr. Targ is a practicing psychiatrist, and the Director of the Complementary Medicine Research Institute (CMRI) at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, and one of the country's leading researchers in the area of distant healing (DH).
"Distant 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 DH on humans, animals, and other biological systems. However, not enough research had been conducted to definitively determine whether such activities had a clinical impact independent of psychological effects. I wanted to further the research in that area."
Even if DH has measurable effects upon patients, they are unlikely to dwell on the mechanics of the phenomenon. Reverend Laurie Garrett is the Chaplain and Clinical Pastoral Education Supervisor at California Pacific Medical Center, and one of Dr. Targ's colleagues. "It is not surprising to anyone who practices prayer that distant healing makes a difference", says Reverend Garrett. "Prayer is a use of our consciousness that helps us create our reality."
The first DH study that Dr. Targ and her colleagues conducted was on AIDS patients and took place in San Francisco between July 1995 and January 1996. This was before the introduction of "triple-drug therapy" (simultaneous use of a protease inhibitor and at least two antiretroviral drugs), which has been shown to have a significant effect on mortality. This double blind pilot study included 10 control subjects and 10 subjects treated by self-identified healers representing many different healing and spiritual traditions. The subjects and healers never met. The study suggested that there were both medical and psychological benefits of distant healing, with 4 of the 10 control subjects dying during this period, while no one in the treated group died.
Since the sample size was small, and those who died were older, the study was repeated between July 1996 and January 1997, using 20 control subjects and 20 treated subjects. At this point, triple-drug therapy for AIDS patients had been widely introduced in San Francisco, and mortality was less likely.
Different outcomes were evaluated, including:
Improved disease progression (fewer and less severe AIDS-defining diseases and improved CD4+ levels)
Decreased medical utilization
Improved psychological well-being.
DH practitioners were recruited via professional healingassociations and schools of healing, and each had at least five years' ongoing experience as a healer. Practitioners included healers from Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Native American, and shamanic traditions, as well as graduates of secular schools of bioenergetic and meditative healing.
During the six-month study period, the DH group experienced significantly fewer outpatient doctor visits, fewer hospitalizations and days of hospitalization, fewer AIDS-defining diseases, and a significantly lower illness severity level.4
Dr. Targ believed that DH was responsible for the improved health outcomes, as the study adjusted for most other variables, such as age, sex, ethnicity, and years HIV positive.
Fifty-six out of 131 controlled studies dealing with the effects of psychic healing on humans or biological systems have found significant effect, according to Dr. Targ.
http://www.healing-arts.org/children/cp/cpprayer.htm
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"Mathematics is well & good but, Nature keeps dragging us around by the nose."
Albert Einstein
