It had been a rough road through drugs, alcohol and bulimia. Susan hit bottom in 1983 and she joined Alcoholics Anonymous. “Without alcohol in me, I felt so totally alone,” she says. “I felt like I was in a black hole in life and that I was just going to die. And I was glad,… Continue Reading
Davies, a retired electronics engineer, began decreeing when he belonged to the “I AM” religious activity in the 1930s. He used this principle while returning from a spiritual conference in Los Angeles, where he had given many hours of decrees. He was sixteen years old and was riding in a car with his mother, brother… Continue Reading
The partitions around Jay’s work area couldn’t keep out the noise—or the rude comments. As soon as he would begin to type at his computer, his coworkers would start in with belittling remarks and distracting noises. When he began suffering from diabetes, they even joked about his weight loss. Jay felt he needed to do… Continue Reading
Lynette, an artist, proved this to herself one night when she was awakened by an intruder in her bedroom. She could see him silhouetted in the doorway. How could she get him to leave? First she told him to go. “My neighbor will come if I scream,” she said. “He won’t have time,” the intruder… Continue Reading
When Carla first heard about decrees, she couldn’t understand why she had to give them out loud. “I was by nature inclined to silence and meditation,” she says. “Decrees seemed like silly verses to me.” A persistent friend encouraged her to use them, so one day she decided to give them another try. She said… Continue Reading
The Eastern Orthodox Church has also preserved a tradition of repetitive prayer. Their story demonstrates the immense power of the spoken word. For hundreds of years, Greek Orthodox monks have reported extraordinary mystical experiences that stemmed from their repetition of a simple prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me. They repeated… Continue Reading
In the early 1970s, Dr. Herbert Benson, president and founder of the Mind/Body Medical Institute at Harvard Medical School, documented a phenomenon he dubbed “the relaxation response” which he says is the opposite of the body’s fight-or-flight mechanism. Benson experimented using Sanskrit mantras. He told his subjects to sit quietly and repeat the prayer either mentally… Continue Reading
One group of Benedictine monks discovered an unexpected benefit from their Gregorian chants: their chanting seemed to energize their bodies. In 1967 Alfred Tomatis, a French physician, psychologist and ear specialist, studied how chanting affected the Benedictine monks. For hundreds of years they had kept a rigorous schedule, sleeping only a few hours a night and… Continue Reading
Eighty-two percent of Americans believe in the healing power of personal prayer, and 64 percent think doctors should pray with their patients if the patients request it. But many doctors are uncomfortable with this role. However, it may be time for a reassessment if the experiences of Andrew, a surgeon, and Nancy, an anesthesiologist, are… Continue Reading
Scientists don’t know why or how it works, but an increasing number of studies suggest what people have known intuitively for thousands of years: prayer does work. One well-known study found that coronary patients at San Francisco General Hospital who were prayed for did better than those who were not prayed for. The prayed-for patients… Continue Reading
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