The famous British writer CS Lewis, famous for having created the literary universe of Narnia, is credited with a phrase that describes very well what prayer means to many.
“I pray because I can’t help it, I pray because I am heartbroken, I pray because the need to do so flows out of me all the time, awake or asleep. (Pray) It doesn’t change God. “It changes me,” the author once said.
Hilary, a listener to the BBC science programme, feels something similar. Crowdsciencewhen she prays sitting on a log or when she goes for a walk: “When I pray, I feel a connection with God, but prayer has many variations. It can happen in the calm of a moment and it can be without words, and sometimes it can be a group prayer at church.”
But lately, when you sit down to pray, a question comes to mind: “How does prayer affect the brain and mental well-being?”
The Crowdscience team consulted with experts to try to understand what happens in the brains of people who pray and to find out if this mechanism is necessarily related to religious beliefs, or if it could perhaps be present in those who meditate or those who lead a creative life.
Brain
Neuroscientist Andrew Newberg, director of research at the Marcus Institute of Integrative Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University, has dedicated himself to studying the effects of prayer and other religious practices on the mental well-being of his patients.
Using MRIs, his team has been able to see the areas of the brain that are activated in a person who is praying.
“A common way of praying is when a person repeats a specific prayer over and over again as part of their practice. And when you perform such an action, one of the areas of the brain that is activated is the frontal lobe,” the expert explained to the BBC.
This is not surprising, since the frontal lobe of the brain is the one that tends to activate when we concentrate deeply on an activity. What surprises Newberg is what happens when people enter into what they feel is “deep prayer.”
“When the person feels that prayer is almost taking over, so to speak, the activity of the frontal lobe actually drops. This occurs when the individual reports feeling that they are not the ones generating the experience, but rather that it is a foreign experience that is happening to them,” said the researcher.
Deep prayer, Newberg has found, also causes a reduction in activity in the parietal lobe, further back in the brain. This area receives sensory information from the body and creates a visual representation of it for us.
Newberg says that a reduction in activity in the parietal lobe could explain the feelings of transcendence reported by those who pray deeply: “As activity in this area decreases, we lose the sense of individual self and we get that sense of unity, of Connection”.
Faith issue?
For Hilary, Newberg’s explanation makes sense, and she relates it to what she feels when she prays: “I suppose that feeling of losing the sense of individual self has to do with that connection I feel with God when I am in contemplative prayer.”
But prayer is an immensely personal experience: if for Hilary it can happen while sitting on a log or walking in nature, for others, it can be a loud dialogue with God, through absolute silence or song.
Could practices similar to prayer, but without any religious foundation, produce the same effects felt by those with deep beliefs?
For Tessa Watt, an expert in meditation and mindfulness practices (mindfulness, (in English) who has worked with hundreds of clients, this state can be achieved by focusing attention on the present and the sensations we experience.
“I believe that both prayer and mindfulness They help calm a person, so that they have more time for themselves and also activate the parasympathetic nervous system,” explains Watt.
The nervous system is composed of two distinct autonomic systems that control most of the body’s automatic responses.
On the one hand, the sympathetic system regulates what is known as “fight or flight” responses, those that require rapid reactions from the body to a threat. On the other hand, tasks related to “rest and digestion” of the body are carried out by the parasympathetic system.
“This means that by practicing mindfulness you learn to calm the fight or flight response, making you more efficient at controlling your emotions,” says Watt.
Relationship with God
For some people who grow up in strongly religious environments, the relationship with a god can reflect the emotional relationships they have with other people around them, researcher Blake Victor Kent, a sociologist at Westmont College in California, told the BBC.
“Prayer can be beneficial, but you have to take into account different factors, particularly how you connect with God emotionally.”
Blake was a pastor, and now he is dedicated to studying the impact that religion has on people’s lives.
“If you come from an environment where you have difficulty trusting others, praying will surely be more difficult for you.”
In order to understand what he says about Blake, we have to talk about attachment theory in psychology: it is the idea that the relationship that human beings have with their early caregivers defines the type of relationships they have in the future.
The theory goes that if you had a present, trustworthy caregiver as a child, you are likely to form “secure” attachments as an adult, while if you had an inconsistent caregiver like Blake, it will be difficult to develop trust as you grow up – trust, of course, is critical to the development of faith. This can make developing an intimate relationship with God very difficult for some and, if they live in a very religious environment, they may feel guilty for not being able to develop it.
“For me,” Blake says, “praying feels empty, risky, uncertain.”
Blake describes himself as a person with anxious attachment and who suffered greatly during his career as a pastor because he felt that there was something he was not doing right when he prayed.
“And I think the same thing happens to a lot of people in religious congregations and it makes them feel like they’re doing something wrong or that God is upset with them,” when they pray and see that they’re not getting the same results as others around them.
While having an insecure attachment relationship with God could be harmful, Blake says that understanding where that insecurity comes from can help. Additionally, attachments can be changed through psychotherapy, which can be beneficial for overall mental health.
The creation
Neuroscientist Andrew Newberg told the BBC that his research reveals there are other types of moments when MRI brain images look uncannily like deep prayer.
“There have been very interesting studies of very well-trained musicians who, when they start improvising, slow down the activity of their frontal lobes, and it is almost as if the music comes to them in the same way that certain people feel that God comes to them” said the scientist.
“Creativity can be a deeply spiritual practice for many people, whether they have a religious life or not. And I think they are related, because the brain doesn’t have an area designated just for religion.”
Newberg explains that the emotional centers of our brain are stimulated through transcendental experiences, whether talking to God or listening to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
“And of course, with religious and spiritual practices it is more than proven that they work, if you consider the enormous amount of time that humans have been using them and how they persist beyond political changes or cultural traditions.”
After listening to the experts, Hillary told the BBC she could better understand her experiences, and how they relate to each other.
“I can recognize that I have a similar but different experience through all these different activities. So when I pray I have a connection with God, but when I sing and experience a similar feeling, it is a connection with music.”
“I can say that both when I talk to God and when I sing with the choir, it feels spiritual.”
This is an adaptation of the BBC program Crowdscience, hosted by Caroline Steel and produced by Jo Glanville. You can find the original episode (in English) here.
Keep reading:
* Reduce fear, anxiety and other psychological benefits of praying
* What is the best time to meditate?
* The power of mantras
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