http://deanradin.blogspot.com/2008/07/compassionate-intention-paper-
published.html

Monday, July 07, 2008

Compassionate Intention paper published

In EXPLORE July/August 2008, Vol. 4, No. 4 235

COMPASSIONATE INTENTION AS A THERAPEUTIC INTERVENTION BY PARTNERS OF
CANCER PATIENTS: EFFECTS OF DISTANT INTENTION ON THE PATIENTS'
AUTONOMIC NERVOUS SYSTEM


Dean Radin, Jerome Stone, Ellen Levine, Shahram Eskandarnejad,
Marilyn Schlitz, Leila Kozak, Dorothy Mandel and Gail Hayssen


Objective: This double-blind study investigated the effects of
intention on the autonomic nervous system of a human "sender" and
distant "receiver" of those intentions, and it explored the roles
that motivation and training might have in modulating these effects.

Design: Skin conductance level was measured in each member of a
couple, both of whom were asked to feel the presence of the other.
While the receiving person relaxed in a distant shielded room for 30
minutes, the sending person directed intention toward the receiver
during repeated 10-second epochs separated by random interepoch
periods. Thirty-six couples participated in 38 test sessions. In 22
couples, one of the pair was a cancer patient. In 12 of those
couples, the healthy person was trained to direct intention toward
the patient and asked to practice that intention daily for three
months prior to the experiment (trained group). In the other 10
couples, the pair was tested before the partner was trained (wait
group). Fourteen healthy couples received no training (control group).

Outcome measures: Using nonparametric bootstrap procedures,
normalized skin conductance means recorded during the intention
epochs were compared with the same measures recorded during randomly
selected interepoch periods, used as controls. The preplanned
difference examined the intention versus control means at the end of
the intention epoch.

Results: Overall, receivers' skin conductance increased during the
intention epochs (z = 3.9; p < 0.00009, two-tailed). Planned
differences in skin conductance among the three groups were not
significant, but a post hoc analysis showed that peak deviations were
largest and most sustained in the trained group, followed by more
moderate effects in the wait group, and still smaller effects in the
control group.

Conclusions: Directing intention toward a distant person is
correlated with activation of that person's autonomic nervous system.
Strong motivation to heal and to be healed, and training on how to
cultivate and direct compassionate intention, may further enhance
this effect.