Meditation: What happens to your brain when you pray or meditate

The famous British writer CS Lewis, famous for having created the literary universe of Narnia, is credited with a phrase that very well describes 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 program, feels something similar. Crowdscience, when 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 wordless, and there are times it can be a group prayer in church.”

But lately, when he sits down to pray, a doubt 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.

Neuroscientist Andrew Newberg, research director at the Marcus Institute of Integrative Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University in the US, 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 one carries out an action like this, 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 are deeply focused 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 them, so to speak, the activity of the frontal lobe actually decreases.“This occurs when the individual reports feeling that it is not them who are 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 leads to a reduction in activity in the parietal lobe, further toward the back of the brain. This area receives sensory information from the body and creates a visual representation of it.

Newberg says 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 our sense of individual self and get that feeling of oneness, of connection.”

For Hilary, Newberg’s explanation makes sense, and she relates it to what she feels when she prays: “I guess 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 occur while sitting on a log or walking in nature, for others, it can be a loud dialogue with God, through absolute silence or chanting.

?Practices similar to prayer, but without any religious foundation, could 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 down, so they have more time for themselves and also activates 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 the “fight or flight” responses, which require rapid reactions from the body to a threat. On the other hand, the body’s “rest and digest” tasks are handled 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.

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 there are several factors to consider, particularly how you connect with God emotionally.”

Blake was a pastor, and now he studies the impact that religion has on people’s lives.

“If you come from an environment where you have difficulty trusting others, praying safely will 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 reliable and present caregiver as a child, you will likely form “secure” attachments as an adult, whereas if you had an inconsistent caregiver like Blake, it will be difficult to develop trust as you get older—trust, of course, is critical to the development of faith. This can make it very difficult for some to develop an intimate relationship with God, and if they live in a very religious environment, they may feel guilty about not being able to develop one.

“For me,” says Blake, “praying feels empty, risky, uncertain.”.

Blake describes himself as an anxiously attached person who suffered greatly during his pastoral career because he felt that there was something he was not doing right when he prayed.

“And I think a lot of people in religious congregations feel the same way, 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 modified through psychotherapysomething that can be beneficial for overall mental health.

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 highly trained musicians who, when they start to improvise, slow down the activity of their frontal lobes, and it is almost as if the music reaches them in the same way that certain people feel that God reaches 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 does not 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 are more than proven to 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 was able to 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, I feel it as something spiritual.”

Beam click here to read more stories from BBC News Mundo.

And remember that you can receive notifications in our app. Download the latest version and activate them.