|
Scientists have just launched a five-year study,
funded by the National Institutes of Health, to determine if prayer intervention
can improve the health of cancer patients.
The project was centered on African-American women
in the early stages of breast cancer, since they "have a higher propensity
to use spiritual healing than white women," according to the report
in Research News.
One task of the research project is to learn if a
statement from the Epistle of James can be "scientifically validated,"
the journal said. It reads:
Is any among you sick? Let him
call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him
(James 5:14)
The study is being conducted by Dr. Diane Becker
of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md. and Dr. Harold G. Koenig
of Duke University in Durham, N.C. Koenig, an associate professor of medicine
and psychiatry, has been studying the effects of religion on health for
15 years.
-
Researchers are randomly recruiting 40 patients
with early breast cancer that has not spread or metastasized to other
organs or areas around the breast. The study will begin one or two
months after surgery and radiation treatment.
-
The participants would then meet a "comfort
leader" who is a cancer survivor with strong religious convictions
and has been specially trained in working with women recovering from
breast cancer.
- The "comfort leader" will help the patients
to organize and run a prayer group that may include five to eight friends
or members of her church. For 24 weeks they were to follow a special
prayer guide containing messages from the Bible. This type of prayer
was practiced in the Medieval Church and then almost forgotten until
three Trappist monks in Spencer, Mass., rediscovered it in the 1970s.
The patient and her group will then pursue an ancient
Judeo-Christian way of communicating with the Divine. It is called Centering
Prayer.
-
At any given time, participants of a Centering
Prayer session choose only one sacred word from Scripture. This word
(e.g., grace, love, mercy, or Jesus) would serve as a symbol of the
supplicant's consent to God's presence and action.
-
Patients and their groups are to meet twice a
day at a quiet place for at least 20 minutes.
- They are to close their eyes and silently think
the Scriptural word they had previously agreed upon.
The idea is that they would be resting in God. Should
their thoughts drift, however, they would return to their chosen word
to focus once again on the Divine.
The method differs from the ritualized and conversational
prayers of traditional Christianity and also meditation as practiced by
eastern religions. In Centering Prayer sessions, participants "avoid
analyzing their experience, harboring expectations or aiming at some specific
goal such as repeating the sacred words continuously, having no thoughts,
making the mind a blank, feeling peaceful, consoled, or achieving a spiritual
presence," Research News writes.
"Those who guide centered prayer groups warn
that often a person will feel tingling as the body relaxes," the
paper reported. "This is just tension slowly oozing away. "
Another attribute of "deep spiritual attentiveness" is that
one's extremities feel heavy.
Dr. Koenig hopes that the findings from this study
"will give women and their religious communities a powerful tool
for combating breast cancer." He said he believed that "getting
the patients' minds off their disease makes a big difference."
In addition, the Centering Prayer sessions can battle
stress caused by cancer, by giving the patients "a sense of hope,
social and psychological support, a positive belief system, and a sense
of personal control through prayer" the report states. Researchers
hope that if their study shows positive results, prayer may be able to
help people with other diseases influenced by immune system activity,
including AIDS.
Research
News - November, 2000
| 