Most people admit to needing the occasional “attitude adjustment” after having received negative news, or feel they need a lift on a “bad hair day.” Much has been printed and said about the power of positive thinking and how even one’s medical condition can be totally altered, positively or negatively, by the content of one’s thoughts. Patch Adams has taught us that laughter can send a hopeless case onto the road to recovery, and clinical studies have shown the effects of happiness and depression on health.
But what about the thoughts of others? When we pray for someone, are they really affected by our prayers? Or does it make us feel better, and does prayer merely give us the feeling that we can affect a situation that may seem out of our reach?
As always, science catches up with what we have known all along in tradition and Torah, as in the case of the study proving that, yes, chicken soup really is good for you! In one hospital, seriously ill people were divided into two groups. The first group was assigned people to pray for its members, while the second group was not prayed for. The “prayer” group saw 35% more recoveries than the group that received no prayers. The patients did not know that people were praying for them, and the improvement in their condition cannot be attributed to communication between the people who prayed and the patients, but seems to have depended on the thoughts and feelings of those who were saying the prayers.
In a crime-ridden city, a group of citizens decided to get together one day and meditate in collectively on the reduction of the city’s crime rate. Police initially scoffed at the idea. After all, they were walking around with guns and could not solve the problem. How would sitting and thinking help? As a result of the collective concentration on a more peaceful city, the crime rate that day dropped unaccountably by 25%.
So who says “Don’t sit there, just do something?” Maybe sitting, thinking the right thoughts and saying prayers is doing something!