There is growing interest today in the relationship between prayer and healing. More than 200 medical studies have measured the positive impact of religious factors on health. Not surprisingly, there is a renewed interest in Mary Baker Eddy's ideas and in her system of healing. Select an interview to hear how Eddy's ideas have touched the lives of a nurse, a psychotherapist, and others.

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Listen: 'Incurable' glandular condition healed
"I worked in the mental health field for many years, and was trained, actually, as a political health social worker, went to graduate school in New York, and worked in a psychiatric clinic and a family service agency counseling families, couples, individuals with different types of personal problems. When I first read Mary Baker Eddy's writings they introduced me to the idea of being just innately spiritual, and what that meant for me personally as a woman, and then also for my patients, was a whole new view of how I looked at myself and how I looked at the people coming to see me. And Eddy's ideas also had an impact on my health; I had been diagnosed with a glandular condition called goiter by an endocrinologist and was treated for that for a number of years with daily medication. And had been told that that was something I would have to do forever; that the doctors couldn't cure it, you know, but they could treat it and it had to be that I would need this medication for the rest of my life. And as I started to really understand the ideas she was putting forth in Science and Health and her other writings, I realized that I didn't have to accept that. And sure enough, I was completely healed of the problem. And it's just completely normal."
G.P. - Connecticut

Listen: Epilepsy healed
"Eight years ago I found that I seemed to develop seizures. I was becoming unconscious and feeling very groggy and I was diagnosed with epilepsy - epilepsy is not considered a healable condition. And while they gave me medication which helped me not to have as many seizures, I was still asleep for about 12 hours a day. I was not able to work. I could barely take care of myself and was not able to have a functional life. From what I'd understood in reading Mrs. Eddy's accounts of healing that she and her students had all done, I just knew it was possible to not have to live like that. And that was part of the commitment to work it out in prayer. As I read Mary Baker Eddy's writings, I began to get a more spiritual view of myself. I was learning more about how she healed and how she taught people to heal. I found the section on prayer extremely useful about knowing how to pray. And so, by my studying it, I learned how to rethink things. And that was very key to my being healed. I returned to work full time, I take classes at night, I helped co-found and run a volunteer group and I do many activities, I've gone skydiving, whitewater rafting - so not only was I returned to full health, but I actually have a sense of freeness and scope of activity that I didn't have before the challenge arose. So, I would say, not only was there a physical healing but probably an emotional and psychological healing too - for which I'm very grateful."
L.L. - Boston

Listen: Recovery from cancer
"I was trained as a registered nurse at the University of Arkansas, and began my practice of nursing in Little Rock. Pretty early on in my nursing career I starting having severe pain and, at times, it was debilitating. Finally, it go so bad that I went to a doctor and I was diagnosed with cervical cancer and went through the required surgery followed by a long course of chemotherapy - which had numerous side-effects - and, along with this, I was given a pretty dim prognosis for ever having a normal life. Even after all of the surgery and treatment, I was looking at having very limited activity and maybe never even working again. And, it was a deeply, deeply troubling time for me. I got the phone book and I called an individual who practices the system of healing as taught by Mary Baker Eddy. I went to visit the practitioner the next day. About two weeks later, I knew I was healed. I felt entirely different; I had energy, I didn't have any pain, I was no longer depressed - I was happy, I was sleeping normally, I had an appetite again, I wanted to be up and out and doing things, and I wanted to go back to work. But to do this, I had to have a doctor's release stating that I was in good health. So, I returned to the doctor who made the original diagnosis. He confirmed that the condition was no longer there; he could find no evidence of cancer. And he was very happy, he really shared with me just a moment of gratitude and said that there was no reason in the world why I couldn't go back to work, and we just acknowledged together that it was God's love that had brought this about."
R.M.A. - Boston

Listen: Teenage mom finds support
"I grew up in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in a working class neighborhood. I was a teenage mother. I had my daughter when I was 13 years old. And I think people or statistics or labels would have made me think that life was over then. But the ideas in Mary Baker Eddy's book really just gave me a whole other outlook, which I believe was life-altering, if they didn't save my life all together. The idea that we have this source of goodness that's available equally to everyone, and we don't have to look to socio-economic status to tell us what we are going to be and what we're going to amount to - that there is this source of goodness. That there are no limits. That no matter what's going on out here or humanly what other people might think of you, that that's not where the control comes from. So many things changed in my life as I continued to read Mary Baker Eddy's writings; and that included being able to provide a home for my daughter, providing a good education for her, furthering my education; you know, I'd go to a wonderful school and be able to work full time and go to school part time and provide all these things. I attribute all of that to the ideas - reading Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy.
P.L. - Roxbury

Listen: Severe neck injury healed
"I'm a whitewater river guide, a professional whitewater river guide in Colorado, Guatemala, Arizona - various places. At work, actually while I was lifting rafts, with a partner, we were lifting it over our heads and it fell. It fell right on my head - it came crashing down and snapped my neck sideways. I was just in immediate pain and, more than anything, scared. Later on, the pain had grown so much that I was just immobilized. I literally couldn't move and I couldn't sit or turn my head - there was no relief - I couldn't rest even. So the next step that happened was, I needed to go to the doctor because this had happened at work, and get it diagnosed, and they did a lot of tests, and X-rays. Basically, after having this expert look at me, what came up from a couple different doctors, was they couldn't help me. They prescribed a whole bunch of heavy painkillers and said that I could do long-term therapy and hope that it would get better and probably would have to deal with this for the rest of my life; that there would be pain, that I definitely wouldn't be able to be a professional river guide, definitely wouldn't be able to do the kayaking activities that I do and would be limited, wouldn't sleep well. And I actually took the painkillers for a few days. And what actually pushed it even further was that after they wore off, things were exactly the same - nothing had changed - in fact, I was hurting more.

"I started to remember a time when I was a teenager and I had had a very significant healing. A friend had given me a book called Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, and I was very ill at the time, and read it, and was immediately healed. And I just started thinking about that as something I could rest upon, as something that maybe I could use again in my life, and the ideas that I had learned at the time. The book really talked about laws of good, about laws that apply to all of us, that would apply to me right then and right there, of protection and safety and healing. And I started thinking about that, and really studying with that again. About a week later, I was totally free physically, could move every direction, completely free - no pain. So I needed to go back to the doctor because I had followed procedures for compensation through work and I needed to tell them to stop that compensation, that I was better. I went back and was looked at. They actually did more thorough testing, more X-rays, CSCAN; and he came back and said he couldn't find a single thing wrong with my body - not just my back and spine - but my body; nothing wrong with it. And I said, 'Yeah, I know, thanks.'"
H.B. - Colorado