Mother's Name for a Refuah Sheleimah
The grandson of the Baal Shem Tov, Rabbi Moshe Chaim Ephraim of Sudilkov ("Degel Machaneh Ephraim"), explains that Moshe's prayer for his sister Miriam contains an allusion to the custom of mentioning a sick person's name together with his or her mother's name when praying for recovery.
The phrase רְפָא נָא - “Refa na” - (please heal her) from Moshe Rabbeinu's 11-letter prayer: אֵ֕ל נָ֛א רְפָ֥א נָ֖א לָֽהּ (El na Refa na lah) - has a gematria of 332 - “Refa” = 281, “na” = 51 = 332.
The names Miriam and Yocheved have exactly the same gematria: מרים = 290 and יוכבד = 42
("Degel Machaneh Ephraim" on Beha'alotcha; Rebbetzin Chana Bracha Siegelbaum)
Since the Creation of the World, all spiritual phenomena have been associated either with the masculine (right) side or with the feminine (left) side. There is also a “middle” line.
Even before a child is born, the development and formation of his or her soul takes place under the influence of the feminine aspect of the Higher Worlds, whose “conduit” is the mother's soul.
The feminine aspect of the World begins in the Vessel (that is, the sefirah) called Binah and continues to take shape in the other Vessels.
The word “Binah” itself conveys the primary function of this Vessel (sefirah); translated from Hebrew, it means “construction” or “formation.”
In essence, illness is the manifestation of some kind of damage that has occurred in a person's soul. In other words, it is “evidence” that a process opposed to formation and construction is taking place within the soul.
Therefore, when praying for a sick person's recovery, one seeks to awaken, so to speak, a sense of “connectedness” and “compassion” for the sick person specifically from the feminine aspect of the structure of the Higher Worlds. This is why the mother's name is mentioned together with the person's name. For example, Yosef ben Rachel or Dinah bat Leah.
In all other cases, the reason for mentioning names is different. At a Brit Milah and in Yizkor, a person's father's name is added to his or her name, because all of a person's activity in this world is, not least, the actualization of the father's spiritual energy transmitted to his son (or daughter).
Therefore, when the prayer is not for a person's recovery, he or she will be called, for example, Yosef ben Yaakov or Dinah bat Yaakov.
(Rabbi Eliyahu Essas)
The word "rachamim" (mercy) shares a root with the word "rechem" (womb) - that is, when we ask the Almighty for "rachamim" (mercy), we do so through the channel that is intrinsically connected to this word.
Moreover, following the letters of the word "rechem" רחם in the Hebrew alphabet are the letters of the word "satan" שטן - and the Ben Ish Chai teaches about the power of the first word to nullify the influence of the second.
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