Even medical professionals are using such therapies on themselves, and many hospitals are integrating CAM therapy into their normal medical or allopathic treatments. Surveys of medical students and medical schools (the future of medicine) show a growing awareness of the importance of such therapies for themselves and their patients.
Among the top ten CAM therapies used by adults in the U.S. is prayer. Many adults have found that there is a link between spiritually-uplifted consciousness and healthy bodies. Praying for oneself or a loved one is an alternative form of achieving and/or maintaining health and has been used since biblical times.
In a book titled God, Faith, and Health: Exploring the Spirituality-Healing Connection, scientist, religious scholar, and Jewish author Jeff Levin, whose research and writing beginning in the 1980s pioneered the study of religion, spirituality, and health, explores the latest compelling evidence of the connection between health and an array of spiritual beliefs and practices, including prayer.
In a section of the book titled “How and Why we Pray,” he concludes that there are four types of prayer: ritual prayer (reading from prayer books or reciting memorized prayers; conversational or colloquial prayer (informally talking with God); petitionary prayer (asking that spiritual or material needs be met by God); and meditative prayer (thinking about God or the divine, listening for God’s voice, or practicing the presence of God).
What all these types of prayer have in common, he says, is the seeking of “an inward communion with the divine, leading the pray-er into the presence of the ultimate mystery of God.” Dr. Levin goes on to conclude: “Keeping the lines of communication open with whatever or whomever we conceive God to be is among the healthiest things we can do.”
In fact, for more than six decades, I have found Christian prayer-based health care to be consistently reliable, always available, and extremely cost-effective for me and members of my family.
So, as we watch the technological evolution from physician care to online care to smartphone or iPad/tablet care, let’s not forget the kind of care that’s been around a lot longer and is still proving effective today. We might call it “prayer-care!”
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