Review by Booklist Review
Dossey's Healing Words (1993) is one of the most successful recent books--147,000 copies sold--on spirituality and health. It reported the experimental evidence, gathered by completely proper medical researchers, that demonstrates the beneficial effects of prayer on health. This companion to it is a looser book, "a heart-to-heart talk," Dossey says, on prayer and healing. It consists of various thoughts and responses to questions, others' and his own, that Dossey has had about prayer. Dossey sorts the little essays into four sections: "The Evidence," on prayer's apparent effects; "The Controversy," which addresses fundamentalist Christians' as well as atheist scientists' objections to research on prayer; "What Is Prayer?" in which, among other things, Dossey revives literary romanticism's view of the child; and "How to Pray." Unfortunately, Dossey repeats some points too often for so short a book; yet his present popularity as a speaker on healing--not to mention a 10-city tour, radio spots, and major market advertising--guarantees high reader interest in this comforting, sometimes eye-opening little book. --Ray Olson
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Unlike medical practitioners in the East, many physicians in the West argue that the healing power of science is far superior to, and often incompatible with, the healing power of prayer. Yet, physician Dossey, attentive to the ways in which spiritual health affects bodily health, demonstrated in his Healing Words that the capacity of prayer to heal, combined with the capacity of science to heal, is far greater than the healing power of medicine alone. Using evidence from scientific studies regarding the beneficial effects of prayer on health, Dossey has here fashioned a kind of how-to manual for incorporating prayer into the process of healing. After first defining prayer as an attitude of the heart whose content is neither shaped by nor limited to a single religious tradition, Dossey then proceeds to explore the infinite variety of forms that prayer may take. Dossey's holistic vision challenges narrow religious views of prayer as well as conventional medical method of healing. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
