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I often ask clients, "How
are you able to cope with your grief, stressful situations or
illness? What keeps you going despite the difficult
circumstances?" Clients would often tell me that it was
talking with God. Prayer. Clients have told me that prayer
changes how they view their illness or situations they are in. Talking
with God made them feel less angry, less lonely, less guilty, less
anxious and more hopeful and courageous. An added plus, is that
they could talk to God whenever they felt the need as opposed to relying
on family members or friends who were often unavailable. God was
always ready to listen and was always there.
Prayer can greatly interact with traditional medical treatments.
In fact, I have found that praying with my clients (when they desire
this) has been particularly helpful when asking for the presence of God
to minister in the midst of their grief, stress or pain.
Cardiologist Herbert Benson, stress researcher and author of Timeless Healing
found that repetitive
prayer, has the same relaxation-inducing effect as meditation.
Benson's initial interest in prayer stemmed from his frustration with
people giving up meditation. He thought that, if they meditated on
prayer, they might be more apt to stay with their relaxation
program.
Unless genetically inherited, many illnesses may not initially begin in the body.
They can begin in the
mind with repressed anger, unresolved grief from important
relationships, feelings of powerlessness in certain areas of life,
loneliness, stress, anxiety, bitterness, hatred, selfishness,
self-centeredness, lack of faith and forgiveness, a critical attitude,
unthoughtfulness. Scientific documentation of the human energy
system has proven time and again, the human body's physical effects from
mental and emotional patterns. For example, illnesses of the
heart, shoulders, diaphragm and upper esophagus can be an expression of
one's incapacity to feel fully and to outwardly communicate feelings
(joy, love, grief, forgiveness), have hardening of the heart and
inability to have true intimacy with loved ones. The probable
mental pattern of cancer is one's inability to resolve deep hurts,
longstanding resentments or deep grief accumulated over a lifetime.
It is God who can bring us to understand the problems in our mental
patterns that we must deal with in order to get well. Who else can
you turn to when your doctor tells you your blood tests indicate a life
threatening disease?
God WILL respond to your prayers. He WILL give you the courage to
face your unresolved issues. Often, it's difficult to face the
truths about ourselves. For example; Why do we hold on to grudges
or why do we hold certain loved ones at a distance in our lives? It's necessary to discover what needs to be changed in our spiritual
nature, in our attitudes and disposition, so healing of the mind and
body can take place. We must learn to submit to His guidance, to
walk in His will. Sometimes, for example, the person who is
causing your grief, may not want to or be able to communicate with you
in order to resolve longstanding resentments. That is when we have
no choice but to go to God, ask for His counsel and pour all your
feelings out to Him. God listens and He WILL respond to you.
Negative, obsessive thinking, critical, judgmental, anxious, stressed
people automatically decide that a situation is dangerous, difficult, or
painful and they feel they don't have the resources to cope. These
mental patterns cause the "fight or flight response" in which
a series of biochemical changes occur in different parts of the body to
prepare the individual for their perceived threat of danger. Any
problem, imagined or real, can cause the cerebral cortex (the thinking
part of the brain) to send an alarm to the hypothalamus. The
hypothalamus then stimulates the sympathetic nervous system to make a
series of changes in the body. Your heart rate, breathing rate,
muscle tension, metabolism, your extremities and your digestive system
are all involved in this process. You experience butterflies in
your stomach and your diaphragm locks, your adrenal glands secrete
corticoids which inhibit digestion, reproduction, growth, tissue repair
and your immune and inflammatory systems shut down.
Fortunately, the same belief system and physical mechanism that turns
the stress response on...can turn it off. This is called prayer
and/or relaxation. As soon as you pray, talk to God and give the
situation over to Him, your brain
stops sending emergency signals to your brain stem, which in turn ceases
to send panic messages to your nervous system. Three minutes after
you pray, the "fight or flight response" burns out!
I suggest you discipline yourself to pray, if you don't already.
Schedule time with God and/or talk to God all during the day,
while at work or play. Having a relationship with Him is our
decision and no one else can make it for us. God wants to speak to
you on a one-to-one basis every day. He wants to be involved in
even the smallest details of our lives.
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