Definition: Spiritual Healing Prayer

Practitioners of Healing Touch Spiritual Ministry, Healing Touch and Reiki know that there is power in prayer when they do healing work. Humans have always prayed, looking outside themselves to some Supreme Being for protection, help, guidance, or blessing. We have prayed to appease an angry or a punishing God, we have petitioned God to strike down our enemies. We have prayed to a compassionate God to intercede on our behalf, blessing us with good harvests, fair weather, and healthy children. Prayer is something we have learned to do as part of our human activity. Prayer is a reflection of our emotions-fear and love and devotion. Ron Roth, mystic and healer teaches that the power of prayer is not in the prayer itself but in God which is released in our communion with God. The importance is not in the form our prayer takes but where is our communion with God coming from-our heart or our mind. Wayne Dyer says begin all prayer with "make me an instrument of...then add 'love,' 'peace,' 'joy,' 'kindness,' 'abundance,' 'well-being,' or any other quality that you know in your heart defines the essence of the Holy Spirit."

Prayer simply put is energy. It is a connection or attunement to the Divine. This energy gets released when we are in communion with God. Our role as healers is to pray, to connect, to love and show compassion for others. God does the rest. Prayer is communication with the "Breath," the "Life Force" of all creation, and it is an expression of the love between the created and the Creator. Jesus taught his disciples not to worry about what to say when they prayed. "The Spirit will speak through you," Jesus said.

Prayer is much more than what we have to say to God; it is what God has to say to us or through us, which, as Roth says, can come in many forms-guidance, prophecy, wisdom, clairvoyance, or even a simple hunch or gut feeling. To hear the many voices of God requires an openness that is truly an attitude of the heart. All of our conscious thinking is in essence a part of prayer. As healers move their hands or hold them still when doing energy healing work, they pray with their whole being for the good of the individual, without putting conditions on God's healing. The prayer of petition and affirmation may provide words for our minds that serve as an anchor. It is the prayer of the heart, though, that lifts us beyond words into that simple resting in the Spirit.

Agnes Sanford, a famous hand-on healer in the 1940's said "pray, and believe that God's power is coming into use and then accept it by faith." She told us to then "observe the workings of God in life." For Sanford, God's will for us is not pain or suffering but wholeness. God has given us to each other to love, support, comfort, and heal one another. It is an art to and a skill to include prayer in one's healing work with others.