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still the predominant model practiced by Western medicine today.
Era II, which began in the middle of the twentieth century, began
to realize that thoughts, emotions, attitudes, and beliefs infl uence
our health and healing; it became known as mind - body medicine.
Dr. Dossey described how Era III, unlike the fi rst two eras, has
been able to scientifi cally prove that our thoughts, intentions, and
prayers affect others, at any distance measured, whether or not
the receiver is conscious of the mental and spiritual effort that is
being expended. Dr. Dossey ’ s Healing Words beautifully summa-
rized the wealth of research on a wide range of plants and animals
and showed that positive intentions and prayers inspire incred-
ibly signifi cant improvements in healing. He also reported on
Dr. Randolph Byrd ’ s research that revealed the strong infl uence of
distant prayer on the recovery of heart patients in a coronary care
unit. It, like numerous studies since, showed that prayer works,
whether or not the subjects receiving the prayer know that they are
being prayed for. This Era III research has been growing quickly for
the last couple of decades and has produced the distance healing
evidence, now referred to as nonlocal medicine. All of these eras
have gifts to offer us on our healing journeys. Let ’ s take a look at a
well - documented research effort that exemplifi es the potential for
nonlocal healing.
One such type of nonlocal healing has been studied in regard
to Transcendental Meditation (TM). Research has now repeat-
edly shown how TM practice and the coherence - creating group
response this produces can dramatically reduce violent crime in
a community. Four thousand participants in the TM and TM - Sidhi
programs of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi assembled in Washington, D.C.,
from June 7 to July 30, 1993. Consistent with previous research
fi ndings, levels of homicides, rapes, and assaults (HRA crimes)
dropped 23.3 percent during this time period!
Furthermore, calculation of the steady state gain based on the
time series model predicted that a permanent group of four thou-
sand coherence - creating experts in D.C. would have a long - term
effect of reducing HRA crimes by 48 percent! Given the high crime
history of this and many other U.S. cities, meditation seems to be