Does prayer really work? This has been a question that has perplexed millions of people for thousands of years.
Prayer has been practiced by almost every religion known to mankind, whether it is Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and other religions.
Prayers have been offered up for two reasons, namely worldly benefits and spiritual growth.
For some people, a little prayer offered up before going to bed is sufficient to keep one on the straight path.
However, for some it is necessary to spend hours to pray for the benefit of other people and for the redemption of our souls.
Despite the teachings of churches and other religious institutions, does prayer actually work? Is there a place in modern society, and in particular, medicine for the power of prayer? Despite the increasingly secular world that we live in where material gain outranks spiritual health, prayer has still found a place with an increasing number of people.
For some, it is called prayer, while others call it meditation.
Either which were you call it, is it not all the same thing? Modern medicine has based its principles and science and has kept religion at arm's length.
One can understand this due to the heavy persecution that scientists faced at the hands of religion during the dark ages.
Anyone who believed differently from what was advocated by the Church, would be labeled a heretic and probably burnt at the stake.
People like Galileo were demonized by the church for simply stating that the earth was round, which was in contradiction to the Christian belief that the earth was flat.
Incidences like these are not forgotten very quickly, and nor should they, because what they taught us is that absolute power corrupts, even in the case of religion.
Does this mean that we have to discard everything that religion has taught us? No.
There are so many things in life that science cannot explain, no matter how hard it tries to.
However, there are some that it can.
The power of prayer for example can be attributed to the power of the mind.
Did you know that the mind is so powerful that it can affect physical changes in the human body? A person who is put under hypnosis and is made to believe that they are being injured in a particular way, for example, a hypnotized person is told that his hand is being burnt with a cigarette; the skin will show signs of damage.
In some cases, the damage can be the same as if a cigarette had genuinely been placed directly on the skin.
For most people, there will be a slight reddening on the skin surface.
Either way, the power of the mind has effected a physical change in the skin.
The act of praying takes a lot of concentration and belief.
If this belief is powerful enough and the concentration is focused enough, it is more than possible that the act of prayer could lead to a physical change especially when it comes to the practitioners own body.
So the question is, does prayer work? The answer is, yes.