How does Human Intent Affect Health?

How does Human Intent Affect Health?

Intention affects everything we do in our lives. Without intention we would likely accomplish little. I would drink coffee till noon and listen to the birds if I did not set an intention for my day. Sports teams would lounge on the field. Workers would wander away from their posts leaving production at a stand still. Soldiers would wander from the battlefields to pick flowers from the creek beds, (which wouldn’t be such a bad thing). Without intention we would not achieve goals. If intention is core to even the smallest of goals it seems ridiculous to think that intention would not be important to medicine of all things. I would certainly not want a medical practitioner caring for me who did not have the intention of seeing me well. 

How much does intention effect the outcome? I suppose it depends. There are those who work very hard and never become successful and there are those who are successful no matter how little they try. There are people with fatal illnesses who want nothing more than to live and do everything in their power to generate wellness and they still die. There are also those who give up on life, but somehow keep on ticking away until a ripe old age. Yet studies suggest that people with fatal illnesses who have the will to survive do in fact live longer and have higher chances of survival. Studies do in fact suggest that prayer has an effect on wellness even if we cannot explain why. 

Perhaps intention is not really about how hard we try or our determination to achieve an end. Sometimes we are most effective when we let go of our intention and open ourselves to something beyond. Maybe it is more about listening and being“in tune” or in balance. When we are surrounded by balance we often feel more internally balanced. We are all effected by our surroundings. Children who live in a home with parents who constantly argue tend to be less well adjusted or “balanced.” Staying for years in a bad marriage or in an abusive relationship clearly makes us feel less internal harmony. A lover who touches us with loving intention certainly feels different than an unwelcome lover or a lover whose touch is purely selfish. Perhaps it is a matter of being in harmony with our environment and our nature more than about setting an intention that most contributes to wellness. 

If a practitioner is an example of harmony and balance between inner and outer world, maybe it wears off on our patients the same way hearing the sound of the ocean can be calming. Of course intention matters as it matters to everything we do, but it is obviously not all that matters. Our actions exert an effect, but we are not in control of the universe. So some of our patients will die, no matter how hard we try and no matter how much harmony we and our patients cultivate. At the same time, to say intention matters not is utterly ridiculous.