For 18 months I have been running international experiments involving thousands of participants focused on targets in well designed scientific experiments. But I’ve also been running informal weekly experiments, using the power of the group to heal people with physical and emotional challenges.

These small experiments started in March 2007, when a US Army veteran named Don wrote in to the website forum, offering to be our first human intention experiment. In 1981, he had been diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis and his spine was fused, making it impossible for him to move from side to side. He suffered constant pain. As he had a wealth of x-rays and other medical test reports, he could produce a full record of his medical history by which to measure any change.

Don’s blog prompted our other readers to set twice-weekly periods during which they would send intention to Don, and he in turn began to keep a diary of his condition.

After a few weeks, he wrote in to say that he was feeling better; six months later, he was virtually pain free and able to move his chest for the first time in years.

Don’s experience wasn’t scientific in any sense, but it sparked an idea. Perhaps we could run regular, informal experiments for people like Don – an Intention of the Week. Before long I was receiving hundreds of requests: people with cancer, children with brain damage or birth defects, estranged family members, wounded pets.

Our site turned into the cyber equivalent of a weekly prayer group.

While in Dallas recently, I met Daniel, who is one of our readers and a member of the Intention Experiment community. He and a batch of other readers have their own subgroup and they have been sending intention to each other. Suddenly, with Daniel, they had a real-life target.

Daniel was recently in a horrific gas accident at work, and his hands were badly burned. Doctors assured him he was going to need skin grafts and would require weeks in intensive care.

His wife wrote to the other members of his group about Daniel’s plight, and they began sending him their daily intentions, following the Powering Up protocol I have written in my book, The Intention Experiment.

A medical miracle

Five days later, Daniel left the hospital. His doctors called him a medical miracle and wished to study him because he healed so remarkably – weeks earlier than normal. He confounded all expectations by not needing skin grafts.

By way of comparison, an associate of Daniel’s, who sustained similar injuries, but stuck to orthodox healing methods, remained in intensive care for another two weeks. He went on to get skin grafts.

Then I heard from the mother of John, a young man in a motorcycle accident who sustained a serious injury to his neck and several vertebrae of his spine. There were questions about whether he’d be able to move in the future.

After our group intention, his mother recently wrote: “He is experiencing an amazing recovery and we are sure that it is partially due to the energy, intentions, prayers that were coming at him.’

“He is probably about 85 per cent back to normal - which doctors thought would take him 6 months to a year - not six weeks!”

The most unusual success was helping to reunite a teenaged runaway with her mother.

We sent an intention for the daughter and her mother to communicate more honestly. After several weeks I received an effusive note from her mother. Her daughter had come home three weeks after the intentions started and they’d begun having honest, heartfelt talks. She also changed her MySpace pages, which had been very dark and defiant, to powder pink.

In my workshops, we also have been experimenting with the power of intention in small groups, by sending intention to those with health challenges.

The participants return after the first day with extraordinary stories to tell. One of the women, who has suffered wakefulness for years with night sweats, enjoyed her first good night’s sleep. Another woman with severe leg pain whose pain increased initially reported that the pain had diminished so much by midday that it was the best she could remember for nine years. A migraine sufferer woke up and her headache was gone.

Many people ask us: are all these healing successes just a placebo effect? Or is it the power of group intention?

The evidence would suggest that it’s a combination of the two.

It’s a placebo effect in the sense that the person receives the group’s permission to mobilize his own powers of self healing. But this process appears to be enhanced by the power of the group.

Recently, my publishing company did a study of stress. One of the greatest causes of bodily illness, we discovered, is a feeling of isolation – from others, from our family, from our God.

Consequently a potent healer of stress-related illness is re-establishing a connection. In one study, a sample of Americans of the lowest strong religious belief, or who pray or attend church regularly have virtually no stress – even though they were within the US’s lower income brackets. Clearly, even when engaged in a daily struggle to survive, they can manage so long as they don’t it alone.

Numerous cultures don’t perceive themselves as separate and consequently view intention as a communal act. Their intention is concentrated, focused and most of all selfless.

Sending intention communally group counters our biggest 21 st century disease – the disease of separation.

When you do, your solitary voice transmutes into a thunderous symphony.

Lynne McTaggart, author of The Field and The Intention Experiment, is holding a series of special Living with Intention workshops in California, Portland and Boston to teach people how to use intention to heal their lives and others. For more information or to book your place, click here.