Works by
Larry Dossey, M.D.
(Writer)

Audio

• Science, Spirit, and Soul (1998)
  Audio cassette
  
  Join Dr. Larry Dossey (author of the national bestseller Healing Words) for a voyage to the very edge of spirituality and science as he challenges conventional medicine to create a new model for healing. Science, Spirit, and Soul is a revelation about the interconnectedness of all life, with implications that reach far beyond the world of medicine. For too long, Dossey says, we have failed to equate consciousness, soul, and spirit with the biological functions of the brain. Dr. Dossey offers a bold new model for healing based on the concept of non-locality: a ground-breaking paradigm that views the mind and spirit as unbound by time or space.

• Medicine, Meaning, and Prayer (1997) with Michael Toms
  Audio cassette.
  
  Dr. Dossey discusses and evaluates the evidence regarding prayer, and explores its implications for both medical practice and individual healing.

Books

• The Extraordinary Healing Power of Ordinary Things: Fourteen Natural Steps to Health and Happiness  (2006)
  Every day modern medicine announces the arrival of yet another “wonder drug” or “miracle procedure” to a world increasingly wary of expensive high-tech cures. Drugs, transplants, and surgery don’t work for 90 percent of our aches and pains and, while we are grateful for life-saving developments, we know that most come with risks that we ignore at our peril.
  
  Long hailed as one of the founding fathers of mind-body medicine, Larry Dossey directs our attention to simple sources of healing that have been available for centuries—treasures often hidden in plain sight—from the power of optimism and of tears to speed recovery to the surprising usefulness of dirt and bugs in curing disease and infection to the benefits of doing nothing.
  
  Exploring the medical research that validates these simple remedies, Dossey encourages us to align ourselves with the wisdom of nature and allow true healing to take place. The Extraordinary Healing Power of Ordinary Things can transform our view of what health is all about, whether our concern is cancer or the common cold.

• Healing Beyond the Body: Medicine and the Infinite Reach of the Mind (2001)
  If medicine is truly to be a healing art, it must address not only our bodies, but our minds and spirit as well; it must deal not only with the mechanisms of illness, but with its meanings; and it must recognize that our power to heal and be healed extends beyond our physical bodies.

• Reinventing Medicine: Beyond Mind-Body to a New Era of Healing (1999)
  Dr. Larry Dossey created a sensation in 1993 with his groundbreaking book, Healing Words, in which he presented solid scientific evidence that prayer can figure prominently in healing illness. Now, in Reinventing Medicine: Beyond Mind-Body to a New Era of Healing, Dr. Dossey again surveys the future: We are on the brink of a new era of medical care, an era that considers and implements our growing knowledge of the power of nonlocal mind in healing and life.

  Dr. Dossey defines the major periods in the history of medicine: Era I medicine (mechanical medicine), Era II medicine (psychosomatic medicine), and Era III medicine (nonlocal medicine). Era III medicine incorporates all the benefits and warnings we have gleaned from intensified understanding of the effects of prayer and intention.

  Dr. Dossey lays out a compelling argument for merging awareness of consciousness into the practice of modern medicine. By perceiving the boundlessness of the nonlocal mind, Dr. Dossey argues, we discern our own interconnectedness - with extraordinarily practical implications. We are further able to reevaluate our concept of mortality even as we are increasingly guided by the Golden Rule of Era III: "Do good unto others because they are you!"

• Be Careful What You Pray For...You Just Might Get It (1997)
  In this frank and challenging book, Dr. Dossey sets out to understand the "neglected shadow side" of prayer. Having established the benefits of prayer in Prayer is Good Medicine and Healing Words, Dossey flips the coin and asks "Can prayer harm?" The resulting inquiry takes us through the history of negative prayer. Dr. Dossey looks at the various forms that prayer's "shadow" can take, whether it be hexing, the death wish, the evil eye, or merely harboring a bad attitude. Assessing negative prayer from the perspective of evolutionary biology, Dossey considers how we can protect ourselves from the negative thoughts of others. By acknowledging the potential harm of each negative thought, it becomes possible to manifest the positive in its stead. Dr. Dossey's stirring discussion is at once a cautionary tale and a declaration of confidence in our ability to reshape our most private thoughts for the ultimate benefit of humanity.

• Prayer Is Good Medicine: How to Reap the Healing Benefits of Prayer (1996)
  Prayer research is sparking an unsettling, yet potentially reformative, energy within the medical establishment. Encompassing the data as well as the controversies, Dr. Dossey delves into such questions as why doesn't prayer always work; is it blasphemy to test prayer in the laboratory; does prayer simply create a "false hope"; is a physician's decision not to recommend prayer akin to medical malpractice?
  
  Dossey compares prayer to traditional therapies and observes that, when used in tandem with other orthodox and alternative measures, prayer is indeed powerful medicine. Dr. Dossey further affirms that prayer is remarkably democratic: Research confirms that no particular religion holds a monopoly on prayer's efficacy; and one does not need to be religious, per se, to pray effectively or to benefit medically from prayer.

• Healing Words: The Power of Prayer and the Practice of Medicine (1993, 1997)
  In this New York Times bestseller, Dr. Dossey restores the spiritual art of healing to the science of medicine. Healing Words points the way toward "a medicine that is both effective and more humane, a medicine that works better and feels better."
  
  Like many who believe they must choose between the intellectual and the emotional, the analytical and the spiritual, Dr. Dossey graduated from medical school with the belief that prayer was little more than superstition. After practicing medicine for many years, he was stunned to come across scientific evidence of prayer's healing power. His "white-coated, scientific" world view undermined, Dr. Dossey embarked on ten years of research into the relationship between prayer and healing.
  
  Citing compelling studies and case histories, Dr. Dossey breaks new ground in our understanding of how prayer complements good medicine. He describes how prayer manifests in laboratory experiments; he examines which methods of prayer show the greatest potential and how one's innate temperament and personality affect prayer style.
  
  As we recognize that the "empirical evidence for prayer's power is indirect evidence for the soul," Dossey believes we will find ourselves praying more prayers of gratitude and fewer prayers of supplication. This, asserts Dossey, is "the proper response on realizing that the world, at heart, is more glorious, benevolent, and friendlier than we have recently supposed."

• Meaning and Medicine: A Doctor's Tales of Breakthrough and Healing (1991)
  Physician Larry Dossey investigates the extraordinary power of meaning to affect mind-body interactions. Through fascinating clinical stories, Dossey shows how thought and emotion influence the body -- and can make the difference between life and death. He describes the Black Monday Syndrome, the fact that more heart attacks occur on Monday mornings around 9:00 than at any other time. He shows how the heart can actually break from grief or stop from shame.
  
  Dr. Dossey offers a strong antidote to these negatives: Meaning also has the power to heal and change. He brings us the case of the Fishskin Boy, whose rare genetic skin disorder was healed through hypnosis, and of a fourteen-year-old computer whiz who "programmed" his own visualizations to utilize chemotherapy efficiently. He further explores how music, biofeedback, miracles, prayer, and the inner "controller" can contribute to the healing process. Dr. Dossey then takes us into the world of the hospital and gives specific instructions to help anyone survive a hospital stay.

• Recovering the Soul: A Scientific and Spiritual Search (1989)
  What is the soul? Can the soul be scientifically explained? In this thought-provoking book, Dr. Dossey provides an alternative view of human consciousness, one which asserts that an aspect of the human mind--the soul--exists independently of time, space, and matter.
  
  "Why speak of the soul in an age of science?" asks Dr. Dossey. "Why suggest that there is some aspect of the psyche that is not subject to the limitations of space and time, and which might precede the birth of the body and survive its death? The main reason is that something vital has been left out of almost all the modern efforts to understand our mental life-- something that accounts as a first principle, without which everything is bound to be incomplete and off base. This missing element is the mind's nonlocal nature: the soul." In Recovering the Soul, Dr. Dossey interweaves the wisdom of ancient texts with quantum physics, mysticism with scientific research, religion with Western medicine and triumphantly affirms our interconnectedness with the universe, and each other.

• Space, Time & Medicine (1982)
  Western medicine has long viewed the body as working mechanically, like clockwork: A breakdown of its parts causes illness. But modern physics says something new about the universe; its more holistic view includes the effects of consciousness on matter and the possibility of nonlinear time. Western medicine has not yet embraced these new ideas, and as a result physicians find themselves "with a set of guiding beliefs that are as antiquated as are body humors, leeching, and bleeding."
  
  Dr. Larry Dossey discusses our obsession with time and how the notion of time "flowing" may profoundly act upon our health. Those who are able to alter their concept of time flow, says Dr. Dossey, have been able to positively affect the course of their disease.

Other

• Healing Through Prayer: Health Practitioners Tell the Story (1999) by Herbert Benson, John Polkinghorne, Larry Dossey, and others
  Prayer really works! In this book doctors and patients quote scientific surveys and relate personal experiences of healing through prayer. They are convinced that prayer has had a profound effect in their lives. Although they do not try to explain how prayer works, many refer to a greater power - some say God - who enables the healing work of prayer. These interviews and stories will provide new conviction to people of all religious faiths, and will give new hope to those who seek healing for themselves, for others, and for the world.

• The Power of Meditation and Prayer (1997), Larry Dossey and Michael Toms, eds.
  Some of the most well-respected thinkers in the field of spiritual growth discuss the awesome power that meditation and prayer can play in our lives.  Includes pieces by Bede Griffiths, Gay Hendricks, Jack Kornfield, Jeanne Achterberg, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Marsha Sinetar, Neale Donald Walsch, Shinzen Young, and Sogyal Rinpoche.

• Mindfield: A Quarterly Source Journal for Consciousness (Vol. 1, No. 3) Fall 1992 (1992), James Mosher, ed.
  Articles by Chogyam Trungpa, Ernie Kurtz, Katherine Ketcham, Larry Dossey, Roger S. Jones, and Theodore Roszak

See also:

• The Journal of Science and Healing
  Since 2005, Dr. Dossey has served as executive editor of this prestigious peer-reviewed journal, which covers the fields of integrative medicine, environmental health, spirituality, and consciousness-related health issues.  See the website of The Journal of Science and Healing.