Marcus in his Alameda, California healing center.
The Wikipedia article on Faith Healing begins as follows:
“Faith healing is healing through spiritual means. Believers assert that the healing of a person can be brought about by religious faith through prayer and/or rituals that, according to adherents, stimulate a divine presence and power toward correcting disease and disability. Belief in divine intervention in illness or healing is related to religious belief. In common usage, faith healing refers to notably overt and ritualistic practices of communal prayer and gestures (such as laying on of hands) that are claimed to solicit divine intervention in initiating spiritual and literal healing.
Claims that prayer, divine intervention, or the ministrations of an individual healer can cure illness have been popular throughout history. Miraculous recoveries have been attributed to many techniques commonly lumped together as “faith healing”. It can involve prayer, a visit to a religious shrine, or simply a strong belief in a supreme being.
The term is best known in connection with Christianity. Some people interpret the Bible, especially the New Testament, as teaching belief in, and practice of, faith healing. There have been claims that faith can cure blindness, deafness, cancer, AIDS, developmental disorders, anemia, arthritis, corns, defective speech, multiple sclerosis, skin rashes, total body paralysis, and various injuries.
Unlike faith healing, advocates of spiritual healing make no attempt to seek divine intervention, instead believing in divine energy.”
Wikipedia redirects a search for “spiritual healing” to an Energy Medicine article which begins as follows:
“Energy medicine, energy therapy or energy healing, a branch of complementary and alternative medicine, holds the belief that a healer can channel healing energy into the person seeking help by different methods: hands-on, hands-off, and distant (or absent) where the patient and healer are in different locations. There are various schools of energy healing. It is known as biofield energy healing, spiritual healing, contact healing, distant healing, therapeutic touch, Reiki or Qigong.Spiiritual healing is largely non-denominational: practitioners do not see traditional religious faith as a prerequiste for effecting a cure. Faith healing, by contrast, takes place within a religious context.”
It was a great honor to be included in the National Geographic the Healing Power of Faith December 2016 cover story, online edition:
Follow Us On: