The presence that heals

In the universe of things, we humans are always looking for connections. A bee would not be if there were no flowers to pollinate; a spoon would not make sense if there were no liquid nourishment to scoop; and a boat would be a puzzling kind of architecture without the sea. To be conscious of, to understand and make meaningful connections are far more important than knowing isolated facts. To realize the connections between elements of Nature and the tools that we humans have come up with to live with Nature requires careful attention but it is not difficult to do.

But what about how we feel? How do we humans forge connections with each other – with what happens in each of our inner lives in terms of how we feel? By sheer depth and flow of life, we are all aware that we weave connections between how we feel and this sits right at the core of what makes us feel alive. This speaks of the intimate relationships we have with our children, parents, and partners. It also speaks of the kinship we have with close friends and members of the community. When we express how we feel about certain things and they resonate with someone else’s feelings, strangers or not, we feel that the windows of our crossing lifetimes opened and meaningfully connected, even for just a moment.

"Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit," Max Ehrmann’s Desiderata counsels us all. It is intuition as well as an observed fact that being around happy people makes it easier and much more likely to make one happy, and the reverse seems to be true. Mystics have always spoken of "energy" as it flows from a person’s well of being and how this travels from one person to another. Do the counsel of Ehrmann and the mystics extend to the times of our lives when we need that "energy" to cross the boundary from making us feel good about life to actually healing us from physical illnesses?

Science may seem as an uninvited guest to some, in the world of prayer, but the Templeton Foundation, an organization that continually seeks a dialogue between religion and science, commissioned a study on the effect of prayer on the healing of patients. The team was composed of a psychologist, clergy and doctors from six institutions, including Harvard Medical School and the Mayo Clinic, and the results of their study were published in the April 2006 issue of the American Heart Journal. It examined 1,802 patients undergoing heart-bypass surgery. On the eve of surgery, different church groups began two weeks of praying for one set of patients. Each recipient had a praying contingent of about 70; none of them knew the patient personally. The other set of patients did NOT have a prayer group set up by the research team for them. The study found NO differences in survival or complication rates of the two groups. In fact, those who were prayed for and knew it had a higher rate of "postsurgical heart arrhythmias" (59 percent versus 52 percent of unaware subjects), or in short, they fared worse.

The study showed that you have a better chance affecting the lives of strangers with Bluetooth or infrared technology than sheer impersonal prayers. While community prayer may give the members of the prayer group a sense of fellowship with each other, the study did not show that this extends to the health of the stranger being prayed for. In fact, it showed that if the patient knows he is being prayed for by strangers, it could even worsen his condition.

To those who are stuck and limited in their belief that traditional prayer is the only way to touch the lives and health of strangers, I would not be surprised if you cross out this column in red or draw fangs and horns on my column photo. For those who do, I will try my best to ensure you get extra points in your personal heavens for that. But for those who are more open and sincere about how to be a real healing presence to others, the answer may lie, not in impersonal recitations but on how you are when you actually reach out to the ailing.

Last Oct. 10, The New York Times featured an article by Daniel Goleman entitled "Friends for Life: An Emerging Biology of Emotional Healing." It spoke of mirror neurons and how, since their discovery, scientists think that they have begun to understand how one’s emotional state can affect another. Mirror neurons are called that because they do just that – they "mirror" that state observed in another person through sensing – tone of voice, grace of movement, touch of hand, taste of edible gifts, and the comforting aromas that speak of one’s own family and friendships and the meaning intended by those expressions. By experience, we also know that the summary of what we sense is more than the sum of the spark of each of the five senses. The scientists think that this mirroring may be influencing the physiological processes of our bodies, which may help us heal or even live longer. He cited studies of women giving off anxiety hormones when awaiting an "electric shock" alone but was calm when their partners were present to hold their hands. The patient still revealed anxiety hormones when her hand was held by a stranger.

Goleman also cited studies by John T. Cacioppo, director of the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience at the University of Chicago, who proposed that the "emotional status of our main relationships has a significant impact on our overall pattern of cardiovascular and neuroendocrine activity" and by psychologists Lisa M. Diamond and Lisa G. Aspinwall, University of Utah, who even gave it a term – "a mutually regulating psychobiological unit" – to describe the fusing of two discrete emotional states. Whatever scientists call it, I call it the high-five moment when two souls bridge each other’s lives, giving access to each other and to a life larger than it was before. The opposite could be true as well, when people who need to cuss, kick and hate to feel alive could drain our loves and passions and if the scientists are right, our health as well. So to be a real healing presence, you have to be healed yourself and make a personal connection with the ailing. You do not get off that easy saying you have hired a whole barangay to say prayers. You probably will get points providing temporary livelihood but you get zero in terms of healing the sick. You need to do something so that the sick will know you care. You do not even have to say something, according to the scientists, a silent visit that speaks of a sincere effort on your part to know that this stranger’s recovery personally mattered to you, is what counts.

Science could never tell you to stop praying to heal sick strangers because it cannot tell you what to do with your personal liberties. But it can tell you whether what you think works, does or does not, within measures that have been clearly defined. Besides, while praying may not be effective in healing the sick stranger, I think it is good for the one who is praying. I think it is because prayer serves like a half-open curtain in their own lives where they are dosed a lesson in humility, being reminded that their own lifetimes run simultaneously with billions of other lives that matter as much. If it takes a prayer to remind one of that fact, so be it.

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