The Power of Prayer

There is so much we can do beyond medicine for our health and well-being. Don’t get us wrong when we say “beyond medicine”. It does not mean replacing medicines. Let medicines do their work, but there are plenty of other tools that exist beyond the sphere of medicine, and with increasing cases of lifestyle-related diseases and people dying from it, it is about time we start adopting and making use of these tools to improve our quality of life.

One such tool is “prayer”, provided it is done the right way.

Neither do you have to be a religious person nor do you need to visit a religious place to pray. This is about honest spirituality and true prayer is free from all of this.

How do prayers work?

Everything is energy. The food you eat, the water you drink, and the air you breathe. We ourselves are a bundle of energy! We can create good or bad energy. Prayer said with a clean heart and the right intentions help generate good energy and/or changes bad energy into good energy. Imagine the amount of good energy you can create by praying and how this can be channelized for healing purposes.

Prayers can affect us at a genetic level:

Prayers have the ability to awaken certain emotions in our system that has the ability to turn on and turn off certain genes. Every gene has activation or deactivation switch, and our lifestyles have a huge role to play here. While clean lifestyle habits can turn on genes that have the ability to repair and heal you, unhealthy lifestyle habits can also turn on genes that can bring about sickness and diseases. This is called Epigenetics, where “epi” stands for the environment (both internal and external) and how it can control the functionality of a certain gene in the body.

For e.g.: Watching a 30 minute clip of a funny video or movie, or a good laugh with friends can turn on over 700 genes that are related to our immune system. A drag, anxious and angry lifestyle can also turn off those same 700 genes, thereby dampening your immunity.

Prayers work in a similar way, by evoking positive emotions in us that have the capacity to activate the good genes. In fact, a study found that women with metastatic breast cancer who highly valued spiritual expression had significantly increased immune function (increased white cell counts and lymphocytes). It has also been observed that prayers and spiritual practices induce a relaxation response that minimises anxiety for individuals who regularly practice it.

Take it a step forward and offer a group prayer:

An even more powerful practice is to offer a group prayer. When people come together and pray for a particular cause – it could be for someone’s good health, success, peace, well-being or safety, the energy thereby emitted is all the more powerful. People for whom the prayers have been offered immediately report an improvement in their health and relief, like certain surgical procedures going well and so on.

Why do most patients who have gone through their journey of cancer turn to spirituality? There are some who have never prayed in their life, but have now come down to praying heavily. What changes their mindset? Well, as the mysteries of life unfold and the journey gets challenging, most individuals tend to go through intense emotions of love, lost love, relationships issues, unforgiveness, anger, and they automatically move and shift their focus towards spirituality and prayer asking for their safety and recovery.

It happens with most of us. As kids and teens, visiting holy places tend to disinterest us, but as we grow older, we gradually move to reading holy books and spending time chanting. Some people experience this transition early in life and some later. Nevertheless, this is the cycle of life.

So, if prayer is built into our daily mechanism and cycle of life, then why can’t we use this tool every single day?

If you struggle to pray for yourself, at least pray for someone else. This too helps in making us feel good. It is a form of giving back, and here, it is giving back good energy. Giving back does not always have to be material things.

The essentials to pray:

We go wrong when spirituality is practised as a fad and we add more complexity to it. Prayers are not any other to-do list activity in your day. If you pray, let those prayers and its teachings slip into your daily life.

The 3 most essentials when it comes to prayers is Faith, Belief and Surrendering. A prayer without any faith and belief is of no use. So many of us pray fervently almost daily, visit different religious places, but are still anxious and worried about the very problems they prayed for. Fear takes away the goodness of every single spiritual path and this kind of prayer holds no value. Even religion teaches us about surrendering. Instead, pray with utmost faith and belief and just surrender the outcome. Above all, keep practising your prayers till you build so much faith that there isn’t any room for fear anymore.

The simplest prayer:

The simplest one could be to offer gratitude and count your blessings. It does not have to be a prayer to God. Remember, prayer in any form, if done with faith and belief counts.

For e.g.: “Thank you for blessing the air we breathe, the food we eat and the water we drink.”

Just because the results of prayers are not immediate, does not mean it is not powerful. Use the power of prayer, because it is immense and free, we must not take for granted what is free. Sometimes when life hits us through any challenge, be it financial, emotional, physical, all we need to do is step back, pray and ask for help. Teach this to your kids too. And, trust me, prayer works wonders in our life.