How Does Healing Intention Work
by Dr. Bruce Forciea
Have you ever been to a healthcare practitioner you were really comfortable with?
Perhaps you experienced faster healing by working with this person. Or maybe your
church congregation prayed for you and you quickly healed from an illness. Or
possibly you helped another person heal by your attitude or consciousness. These
are some examples of a mysterious phenomenon known as healing intention.
Just what is healing intention? Intention can be thought of as having and acting
with a purpose. In the case of healing, it is having the purpose to heal. The purpose
to heal can be directed at one’s self or to another as in a practitioner-patient
relationship. Healing intention also works over great distances.
Early research on healing intention was done with simple living systems such as
plants. In one early study conducted by Bernard Grad 1 two different kinds of saline
solutions were given to plants. One sample consisted of normal unaffected water
while the other consisted of water exposed to healing intentions given by a healer.
The plants given the healing water showed more sprouting were taller than those
given the untreated water.
Another series of studies conducted by Grad showed that skin wounds in mice
healed faster in mice treated by healers who simply laid their hands on them. 2 This
effect of faster wound healing by the laying on of hands has also been found in
human subjects.3 More recently a study conducted by Randolph C. Byrd, a
cardiologist at San Francisco General Hospital showed that healing prayer affected
the recovery of cardiac surgery patients. 4 The prayed for patients experienced less
complications and less morbidity than those who were not prayed for.
A clue as to how healing intention works may be found in the way intention affects
machines. A number of experiments have been done with machines that generate a
string of random numbers. These machines called random event generators or
REGs spew out millions of random numbers that should all statistically cancel out. It
has been found that these numbers deviate from randomness with human intention.
Human subjects can actually influence the machine’s output by just thinking about it.
The effect is small but statistically sound. This effect also occurs over great distances.
The important point is that somehow intention decreases randomness in the
universe. There is some kind of mysterious link between someone’s intentions and
physical reality. At present we know this connection exists but we don’t know exactly
what it is or how it works.
Disease can be thought of as the body moving toward a state of greater
randomness. Think of an infection or something more serious like cancer. The body’
s cells become more disorganized, more random with disease. It may be that
intention works by decreasing the randomness produced by the disease.
Intention is also a non-local phenomenon. A non-local phenomenon does not
happen according to the laws of physics. In other words it does not obey the laws of
space and time. For example, if you drop a ball you can measure a number of
properties related to the event of dropping the ball. You can measure the speed of
the ball, the acceleration and so on. In non-local events you cannot measure these
properties because they appear to transcend physical attributes such as mass,
speed and acceleration. Non-local events are instantaneous and can extend to any
distance in space. If intention is non-local then it elicits its effects instantaneously and
over any distance.
Intention can be used by anyone to heal or to help others to heal. We have seen
that prayer is a form of intention but there are also other ways to use intention. First of
all you must make a decision deep inside you to heal or to help someone else heal.
Then you must hold the intention for a period of time. That means that you can
concentrate on healing or just know in a deep way that you are healing. If you are
using intention to help others you should focus on their health and well-being.
Some techniques go as far as having a group of people such as family members
use guided imagery to help a loved one through surgery. Instead of nervously
waiting in the visitor’s lounge the family members work together by performing an
imagery exercise. The exercise begins by imagining the patient entering the
operating room and then continues by forming an image of a successful operation
and recovery. In my opinion this is time well spent and gives family members a
sense of control over the procedure.
Intention is a great addition to any healing program and should be considered by
anyone wishing to heal or in helping others to heal. It is simple to do, works over any
distance and is supported by a number of studies. Although the actual mechanism is
not known it may work by somehow reducing the disorganization caused by disease.
1. Grad, B. Some biological effects of the ‘laying on of hands”: A review of
experiments with animals and plants. JAM Soc Psychical Res 1965;59:95-127.
by Dr. Bruce Forciea
Have you ever been to a healthcare practitioner you were really comfortable with?
Perhaps you experienced faster healing by working with this person. Or maybe your
church congregation prayed for you and you quickly healed from an illness. Or
possibly you helped another person heal by your attitude or consciousness. These
are some examples of a mysterious phenomenon known as healing intention.
Just what is healing intention? Intention can be thought of as having and acting
with a purpose. In the case of healing, it is having the purpose to heal. The purpose
to heal can be directed at one’s self or to another as in a practitioner-patient
relationship. Healing intention also works over great distances.
Early research on healing intention was done with simple living systems such as
plants. In one early study conducted by Bernard Grad 1 two different kinds of saline
solutions were given to plants. One sample consisted of normal unaffected water
while the other consisted of water exposed to healing intentions given by a healer.
The plants given the healing water showed more sprouting were taller than those
given the untreated water.
Another series of studies conducted by Grad showed that skin wounds in mice
healed faster in mice treated by healers who simply laid their hands on them. 2 This
effect of faster wound healing by the laying on of hands has also been found in
human subjects.3 More recently a study conducted by Randolph C. Byrd, a
cardiologist at San Francisco General Hospital showed that healing prayer affected
the recovery of cardiac surgery patients. 4 The prayed for patients experienced less
complications and less morbidity than those who were not prayed for.
A clue as to how healing intention works may be found in the way intention affects
machines. A number of experiments have been done with machines that generate a
string of random numbers. These machines called random event generators or
REGs spew out millions of random numbers that should all statistically cancel out. It
has been found that these numbers deviate from randomness with human intention.
Human subjects can actually influence the machine’s output by just thinking about it.
The effect is small but statistically sound. This effect also occurs over great distances.
The important point is that somehow intention decreases randomness in the
universe. There is some kind of mysterious link between someone’s intentions and
physical reality. At present we know this connection exists but we don’t know exactly
what it is or how it works.
Disease can be thought of as the body moving toward a state of greater
randomness. Think of an infection or something more serious like cancer. The body’
s cells become more disorganized, more random with disease. It may be that
intention works by decreasing the randomness produced by the disease.
Intention is also a non-local phenomenon. A non-local phenomenon does not
happen according to the laws of physics. In other words it does not obey the laws of
space and time. For example, if you drop a ball you can measure a number of
properties related to the event of dropping the ball. You can measure the speed of
the ball, the acceleration and so on. In non-local events you cannot measure these
properties because they appear to transcend physical attributes such as mass,
speed and acceleration. Non-local events are instantaneous and can extend to any
distance in space. If intention is non-local then it elicits its effects instantaneously and
over any distance.
Intention can be used by anyone to heal or to help others to heal. We have seen
that prayer is a form of intention but there are also other ways to use intention. First of
all you must make a decision deep inside you to heal or to help someone else heal.
Then you must hold the intention for a period of time. That means that you can
concentrate on healing or just know in a deep way that you are healing. If you are
using intention to help others you should focus on their health and well-being.
Some techniques go as far as having a group of people such as family members
use guided imagery to help a loved one through surgery. Instead of nervously
waiting in the visitor’s lounge the family members work together by performing an
imagery exercise. The exercise begins by imagining the patient entering the
operating room and then continues by forming an image of a successful operation
and recovery. In my opinion this is time well spent and gives family members a
sense of control over the procedure.
Intention is a great addition to any healing program and should be considered by
anyone wishing to heal or in helping others to heal. It is simple to do, works over any
distance and is supported by a number of studies. Although the actual mechanism is
not known it may work by somehow reducing the disorganization caused by disease.
1. Grad, B. Some biological effects of the ‘laying on of hands”: A review of
experiments with animals and plants. JAM Soc Psychical Res 1965;59:95-127.
| Dr. Bruce Forciea's New book presents a new paradigm for healing with alternative medicine by using information channels. |
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| How Does Healing Intention Work? |