The idea that God can heal your heart is deep-rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition.
In the mid-1980s, just after Dr. Dean Ornish graduated from Harvard Medical School in Boston, he and his colleagues tried to get funding for their research on curing heart disease without surgery and drugs. Most people thought their proposals were "heresy." "Why don't you do something more conventional?" they said.
Today, however, things are different. With some 20 years of clinical research to his credit—all demonstrating that heart disease can be reversed in patients who are willing to change their lifestyle and "open" their hearts spiritually—Ornish finds that his ideas are becoming almost mainstream in cardiovascular research. There's a growing consensus that, as Dr. William C. Roberts, editor in chief of the American Journal of Cardiology, puts it, "Dr. Ornish is on the right road, and we need to get on it also." Ornish, Dean, Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease (New York: Ivy Books, 1996), pp. 15, iii .
