Healing SOULutions

Physician Larry Dossey's book Recovering the Soul: A Scientific and Spiritual Approach (1989) begins with the story of Sarah, who had a cardiac arrest during gallbladder surgery and later gave eyewitness details of the operating room and adjacent areas. Sarah had been blind since birth.

Sound mysterious? Unbelievable? Bizarre? Perhaps for some, but not for Dossey, former co-chair of the National Institutes of Health's Panel on Mind/Body Interventions. Unusual phenomena have been the basis of his research since the 1970s.

A general internist and former chief of staff of Graymoor: Atonement Friars, Sisters & Associates in Texas, Dossey has investigated many alternative approaches to traditional medicine. A leading thinker in the area, he is the executive editor of the peer-reviewed journal Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine. His research interests are varied, but primarily he has championed the healing effects of prayer and its potential as a partner of medical science. And he is finding that, within the medical community, there is an increasing acceptance of the need to explore the effects of spirituality on medicine.

Dossey is a firm believer in conducting research to back up his belief in the correlation between prayer and healing. He points out that there are already excellent examples of double-blind, controlled experimental studies. Take, for example, Dr. Kwang Cha's 2001 study on the effect of prayer on women undergoing in vitro fertilization and embryo transfers. The group that was prayed for had twice the successful pregnancy rate of the group that received no prayers. Or another 2001 study conducted by Dr. Mitchell Krucoff on the effect of prayer on heart disease patients undergoing cardiac catheterization and angioplasty: those prayed for had fewer complications than those in the non-prayed for group. There is also Dr. Elisabeth Targ's 1998 study on the effects of distant healing – often in the form of prayer – on advanced AIDS patients. In her study, the group assigned distant healing had fewer serious illnesses and fewer and shorter hospitalizations than the control group.

One well-known study from 1988, conducted by Dr. Randolph Byrd in the cardiac care unit of Rutland Area Community Services in California, involved about 400 subjects. All were given routine standard care but half also received the prayers of various Christian groups. The half assigned prayer did better in several significant ways: they had fewer cardiac arrests (3 versus 14); they had less need for artificial ventilation (0 versus 12); they required fewer potent drugs such as antibiotics and diuretics; and they had fewer incidents of pneumonia (3 versus 13) and congestive heart failure (8 versus 20). Neither medical staff nor patients knew who was assigned to each group.

Unexpectedly, says Dossey, studies to date show that prayer's effectiveness in healing doesn't depend on the patient having religious or spiritual faith. "Major studies were double-blind and recipients didn't know they were prayed for," he says. Faith and confidence in the process help promote a positive outcome but aren't crucial for prayer's effectiveness.

The Science of Prayer

In 1988, Dossey became the only physician ever invited to deliver the annual Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Lecture in New Delhi, India. He has also described his observations about prayer to audiences at the Pentagon and in the British Parliament. In addition, he has been a guest lecturer at several of the top American teaching hospitals and universities.

Dossey no longer practices internal medicine; instead, he devotes himself full-time to writing, consulting, and speaking. In his research and talks, Dossey does not limit himself to the effects of prayer on the healing process. He has also studied the effects of the mind on the body. For years, Dossey claims, medical scientists have mistakenly treated physical illness as though it were caused only by the improper functioning of the body. He is aiming to use scientific evidence to demonstrate that a patient's thoughts, feelings, and attitude have an impact on their physical well-being, and to convince healthcare professionals of the vital role that a patient's mind and spirit play in the healing process.

Since 1982, Dossey has published nine books, including The New York Times best-seller Healing Words (1993), its sequel, Prayer is Good Medicine (1996), and his most recent work, Healing Beyond the Body (2001). According to the George Washington Institute for Spirituality and Health at the George Washington School of Medicine in Washington, DC, before Healing Words (1993) was published, the curriculum of only three American medical schools included courses about the use of prayer in health. Today, around 80 of the nation's 125 medical schools offer such courses.

The Spirit of Healing

The first high school graduate in his Texan family, Dossey earned high honors at the University of Texas, Austin, received his MD from Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, Texas in 1967, and, following his internship, served as battalion surgeon in Vietnam. Speaking of his experience in combat, Dossey says: "Vietnam filled me with humility and brought me face-to-face with my own vulnerability and mortality."

As a doctor, Dossey was struck by the number of seemingly inexplicable miracle cures that he witnessed. One patient had metastatic lung cancer and recovered after his church congregation prayed for him. Dossey had sent the patient home to die after he refused therapy; one year later, he showed up and the results of his chest X-ray were normal. "This really gets your attention as a doctor. All docs have stories like these."

But not all doctors believe in the healing effects of prayer – in fact, many are highly skeptical. So, what turned Dossey into a believer? Partially, he was attracted to the idea of the unknown. "There will always be phenomena we cannot explain. As someone who adores mystery, I like that." But mostly Dossey was swayed by what he saw as tangible proof of the effect of prayer. "Mainly it was the actual experiments in distant healing and prayer that impressed me as much or more than my own patients. It's hard to ignore properly done studies."

Although he does not belong to any religious group, when he was practicing internal medicine, Dossey prayed every morning before going on hospital rounds. "I can't imagine my life without prayer. It is integral to everything I do."

Not too surprisingly, Dossey is frequently asked why prayer helps in the healing process. As of yet, Dossey is unable to answer this question. While he believes that controlled studies have demonstrated prayer's healing effects, the precise mechanism as to why this is possible remains unknown. But, Dossey adds, whether it can or cannot be explained, "let's be pragmatic and simply use what works."

For more information about Larry Dossey, see his personal website.

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