Sweet 16. The age when cares are few, friends are plenty and life is just plain fun. That’s the way it was for Matt Gifford, until one cold, December day when news of a friend’s car accident brought the fun to a screeching halt and loaded on a heavy burden of cares.

“When Matthew came home from school the day he heard of the accident, he was deeply depressed,” recalls his mother, Laurelle Shanti Gaia. “This was of great concern to me because he is always happy, and depression is just not a state of being I have ever been able to associate with him.”

With a motherly, caring, compassionate smile, Laurelle took her son into their family’s Reiki room. Reiki is a form of spiritual healing and spiritual practice believed by its adherents to be beneficial for treating physical, emotional, mental and spiritual diseases.

Because he didn't feel balanced enough to send Reiki himself, Matthew helped his mother connect to his friend, so she could send Reiki.

“I was guided to place my left hand on the back of Matthew's heart chakra, and my right hand in the air in front of me in a sending position,” says Laurelle. “Matthew was asked to visualize his friend as he was [the] last time they spoke. His friend was laughing and telling jokes. He was then asked to see his friend back in school, and the time was one month in the future. In this future projection, Matthew was asked to see his friend laughing and whole and healthy again.”

According to Matthew, he went to school the next day and his principal announced that the night before – the same night they did the Reiki – his friend came out of the coma, was sitting up and talking to his parents and physicians.

But here’s the kicker: After about a month of Matthew’s friend's month-long stay in the hospital, he finally came back to school. “Just as I had imagined him in the Reiki treatment,” says Matthew, now 27 years old. “I think this is a very good example of the kind of miracles that Reiki can help come true.”

Laurelle says she reminded her son that they were only two of many people praying for his friend. “However,” she adds, “the fact that our visualization included a one-month timeframe to complete healing, and the young man was back in school nearly one month to the day from our Reiki session, is certainly a point to ponder.”

Putting Faith in Healing Properties of Prayer

Across the board in the healthcare field, researchers are investigating, examining and calculating the power of prayer because of remarkable cases like Matthew's. In fact, Sir John Templeton, renowned stock investor, businessman and former mutual-fund tycoon, spends as much as $30 million annually funding scientific research to help explore the measurable consequences of spiritual ideas. And spending $3.5 million over the next several years, the U.S. National Institutes of Health plans to research “mind/body” medicine.

Andrew Newberg, MD, associate professor in the department of radiology at the Philadelphia-based University of Pennsylvania (Penn), is studying the biological effects of meditation and prayer on the brain. “There has been a great deal of interest in complementary medicine techniques,” says Newberg. “Learning how, when and why meditation and prayer is effective and when it’s not might help us better understand how to use it in a clinical setting. I think we will see a lot of this information percolating down into the healthcare profession in many different ways.”

Some of the research already starting to percolate is highlighted in journalist Steven Kotler’s new book, West of Jesus: Surfing, Science and the Origins of Belief (Bloomsbury, 2006). In the past few decades, Kotler says, hundreds of studies done by hundreds of researchers have shown that spiritual people live longer and have healthier lives than non-spiritual people.

“Studies have shown that some kind of participatory faith lowers the risk for drug addiction, suicide, cancer, high blood pressure, stress, stroke, heart disease and dozens of other serious ailments,” Kotler says.

In the past five years, researchers have begun doing meta-studies; one of which, conducted by the Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic in 2001, reviewed nearly 350 studies of physical health and 850 studies of mental health, and all the studies used religious and spiritual variables. According to Kotler, the Mayo researchers found that spirituality was consistently associated with “better health outcomes,” while eighteen recent longevity studies showed that those spiritually inclined lived up to 30 percent longer than atheists.

“For years, these health benefits have been attributed to socio-economic, environmental and psychological factors, but a number of these meta-analysis have been designed to remove all of these elements and still the outcomes stay the same,” says Kotler. “In plainer terms, as Dr. Harold Koenig of Duke University Medical Center recently pointed out to The New Republic: ‘Lack of religious involvement has an effect of mortality that is equivalent to 40 years of smoking one pack of cigarettes a day.’”

Imaging a Higher Power

Newberg and his research team at Penn originally started using Single-Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) imaging to measure the changes in cerebral blood flow with people engaged in practices like meditation and prayer. By inserting an intravenous catheter before the person started any type of spiritual practice, they were injected with a radioactive tracer and resting state images were obtained for comparison. Then, the person was positioned in the SPECT system to perform their spiritual practice. Toward the end of their practice, the Penn researchers injected a tracer a second time through the catheter and scanned them again for the “prayer scan.” They compared the resting and prayer state and discerned what changes occurred.

One of the researchers’ main findings is that when the subjects were engaged in spiritual activity, the frontal lobe, which helps to focus attention on a particular type of concentration tasks, was activated. Another finding that interested Newberg is that the parietal lobe, which typically takes a person’s sensory information and develops a 3-D representation of themselves and in relation to things around them, was activated.

“Our hypothesis is that people preferentially inhibit the sensory information going into that area. And as that practice continues, they’re depriving that area of information,” says Newberg. “As they’re trying to establish a sense of self, it no longer has the information to do that, and that’s where we think people experience that sense of self, a oneness or connection with something greater than themselves.”

There were a number of other areas activated, such as the limbic areas, which tend to be more emotional areas. Also, there was activity in the thalamus, which helps different parts of the brain connect to each other.

Future research will be performed using neurotransmitters, predicts Newberg. “A lot of neurotransmitter tracers have been used in other studies and I think it will be interesting to see if the meditation and prayer has any effect on the dopamine or serotonin,” he adds.

Newberg says this research will draw the medical community closer to answering the question about whether or not spirituality actually affects one’s ability to heal. “Our model does suggest that we would expect to find [changes] in the body itself in response to the changes that are going on in the mind,” says Newberg. And although a fully integrated study has not yet been performed, Penn is preparing to do so. And Newberg is optimistic about what they might find.

“There is evidence to suggest that prayer and meditation affects the entire body, and possibly the immune system as well,” he says. This optimism is directly related to one particular area of interest in many Penn studies: the hypothalamus, which regulates autonomic systems and hormones including the stress hormone cortisol.

“A number of studies,” says Newberg, “have shown that in a decreased stress state, cortisol – an immune suppressant – levels go down, we can expect to see an enhanced functioning of the immune system parameters. We’re getting a more coherent model of all the things going on in the brain and in the body. And it does seem like there are some overall effects that can probably occur, but no one has done the definitive study yet.”

A Group Effort

Much of Penn’s original research was based on human ritual, performed as an individual or in a group. “The group effect is an important one,” says Newberg. “From a clinical perspective, we know that these types of group practices can create a reverberating resonance where a lot of people start to get involved and feed off of each other. Certainly, group rituals can be very powerful and effective.”

The social interaction garnered from group spirituality practices has undeniable benefits. In fact, Newberg says group rituals can, in many ways, be as effective, if not more effective than an individual practice, depending on the individual.

And these prayer groups are taking many forms. Prayer requests were once scribbled on a piece of paper and hand delivered to the pulpit during a worship service. But now, there is a major transition toward e-spirituality. Case in point: Erik Block, a 24-year-old Williamsburg, Ohio resident, recently e-mailed 60 of his closest friends, colleagues and family members about Wyatt, a child that attends his Methodist church, who was undergoing serious heart surgery. Block explained his relationship with Wyatt, the child’s condition and need for prayers.

“From my perspective,” says Block, “our church is not the only group of Christians that can ask the Lord for a gift of healing on an innocent child. So, I decided to break out to my other Christian friends, some in other countries and states.” Block says he sent this e-mail because Wyatt holds a special place in his heart. “I love this little boy and was sincerely concerned for his health as it is extremely serious surgery no matter what age,” he says.

On most occasions, though, when someone is in need of a prayer, Block will utilize his church’s e-mail prayer chain. Through this, he can send a note to a distribution list of individuals in the church that have asked to receive prayer requests. “I think that e-spirituality is a trend that has already caught on,” says Block. “Visit any church’s Web site and you will likely find a link to some e-mail or Web site where you can make prayer requests.”

In fact, you can even e-mail Pope Benedict XVI at benedictxvi@vatican.va. And while it is unlikely you will receive a personal response if you send an e-mail to him, the Holy See does claim to read, collect and route all mail.

A Place for Prayer

Darrell Hermann, MD, a pediatric surgeon at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, recently raised a few eyebrows, even among advocates of prayer. Hermann says he felt compelled to raise prayer with his patient’s parents, whose baby was born with a dangerous abdominal wall defect, even though he was unaware of their religious background. While he was able to make a religious connection with his patient’s parents, others may have seen it as crossing the line.

Prayer has to be approached on a personalized basis and in the right setting, in Newberg’s opinion. “If a patient seeks out an opportunity to pray with a healthcare provider, I think it would be detrimental to reject the patient or walk away from them,” he says. “People in the healthcare profession are not in the religion profession, and we have to be very careful about crossing over the line. Religion might not be the area where the healthcare professional needs to lead the way, especially if the patient isn’t comfortable with it.”

Some scientists, like Richard Sloan, PhD, professor in the department of psychiatry at the New York City-based Columbia University, believe that the healthcare field is playing with fire when steering patients toward spiritual practice and intermingling religion and medicine.

Seven years ago, Sloan wrote a paper in the The Lancet challenging the faith and healing studies on many levels to include weak methodologies and soft thinking. Sloan continues to speak out against studies claiming to demonstrate that religious activity promotes health.

Suki Tepperberg, MD, a family physician in Dorchester, Mass., says she isn’t concerned with the increasingly blurred lines between medicine and religion, unless a patient's faith interferes with their ability to make a competent decision when given appropriate medical information. She says the best prescription for this issue is balance. “I think that patients should try to achieve the best possible health status,” she says, “both physically and spiritually.”

Newberg says future research will paint a better picture of exactly when religious practices are beneficial, how beneficial they are and the potential for negative circumstances.

“If someone is severely depressed, schizophrenic or involved in very intense practices, the result can be an unusual experience,” Newberg explains. “There are cases where things can go wrong, and we really need to learn more about when it’s beneficial and when it’s not.”

But Newberg says, in general, there is a reasonable amount of evidence to suggest that religious practices can be beneficial, when done properly and in the right context. “If you’re talking to someone with a strong religious background,” Newberg says, “then encouraging a prayer or meditative practice – even if it’s just a way to cope with the issue – can be very, very valuable.”

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Amy Storer is the senior managing editor of Therapy Times. Questions or comments can be directed to editorial@TherapyTimes.com.