Prayer Is Good Medicine: How to Reap the Healing Benefits of Prayer

Great read for anyone who is curious about prayer. I’ve read it twice now. It gives scientific evidence from a physician’s experience on the frontline in patient care and prayer and its effects on his patients and their healing. I can’t think of anything I disliked about this book. It’s a wonderful book! I highly recommend it to anyone.

Larry Dossey has thought deeply about the mind/body relationship, nature of consciousness and the power of prayer. In this book, he highlights evidence for the power of prayer, but in general he backs up his assertions with facts appropriate to the area of inquiry. On the other hand, he is also open to other ways of validating truth claims than the scientific method. For example, it would be difficult to study love or consciousness using a microscope, but I don't think many people would argue that these things exist. In general, I like all of Larry Dossey's stuff and this is one of his very popular books. It's a relatively short read and not a bad place to start. I also think his books on hearing are very encouraging, enthusiastic and written in the spirit of a true healer. His presence in medicine as a physician is a blessing. I hope many more books will come from his pen, here are a few more you may want to try: Reinventing Medicine: Beyond Mind-Body to a New Era of Healing, Healing Beyond the Body: Medicine and the Infinite Reach of the Mind and Be Careful What You Pray For...You Just Might Get It.

I, like many people, started praying when I was old enough to talk. I vividly remember my favorite Aunt teaching me the "now I lay me down to sleep" prayer when I was about 3 or 4 - and I said this prayer every night before bed until I was old enough to come up with my own. Although I prayed every night, I never really thought about whether or not my prayers would be answered - I guess I just assumed they would be. That was until I became an adult, and began to realize that some were not being answered at all. Of course, I realized afterwords that the "unanswered prayer" is sometimes a blessing in and of itself! This book helps explain why some prayers are answered and others are not, and shows through scientific evidence that there is in fact power in prayer. This is an amazing breakthrough, as we are now facing a time when prayer is being banned in all of our schools - and yet it's being shown that prayer can be an amazingly wonderful & powerful force. This book also raises some of the issues that may await our physicians now that it has been shown that prayer can in fact help to heal the sick. Will there be malpractice law suites if a dr. chooses not to pray for his/her patients? Will people who don't want to be prayed for sue their doctors who have prayed for their health? These are quite scarey questions! Also, what about the people who choose prayer INSTEAD of western medicine? Are they really making the right choice? According to Dr. Dossey, the best route to take when faced with medical crises is to use all that is available to us - western medicine, alternative medicine, AND prayer - no one of these is mutually exclusive. The most important finding though, in my opinion, is that prayer has been found to be equally effective regardless of one's religious beliefs. Although this finding has upset fundamentalists, I think it's a step in the direction of tolerance towards those who espouse beliefs that are different than our own. In this respect, as well as other's, this book has the potential to "change the world"... I would recommend this book to everyone in the health profession, those suffering ill health, and anyone who is just plain interested in the power of prayer. The scientific evidence is out, and it appears that prayer has an amazing power - why not utilize this power to help yourself and your fellow man?