By Michaela Gordoni
The news is out — prayer can physically alter your brain chemistry.
“The more you focus on something — whether that’s math or auto racing or football or God — the more that becomes your reality, the more it becomes written into the neural connections of your brain,” said Dr. Andrew Newberg, a neuroscientist who performed brain scans on religious leaders.
“There’s evidence to show that by doing these practices (prayer and meditation), you can cause a lot of different changes all the way throughout the body, which could have a healing effect,” he said.
While someone prays, particularly when there are meditative or repetitive factors, blood flow increases in the prefrontal cortex, which is linked to decision-making. Blood flow also increases in the anterior cingulate cortex, which is linked to emotion and empathy. Simultaneously, the amygdala, which is linked to fear, slows down, Evie Magazine reported Monday.
“You can sculpt your brain just as you’d sculpt your muscles if you went to the gym,” said neuroscientist Richard Davidson. “Our brains are continuously being sculpted, whether you like it or not, wittingly or unwittingly.”
Prayer is also known to lower anxiety and give emotional balance. Rhythmic breathing during prayer helps regulate serotonin and helps relaxation.
Newberg says there is still more to study.
Related: Did You Know Prayer Can Make Your Brain Stronger?
“What we need to do is study those moments where people feel that they’re getting beyond their brain and understanding what’s happening in the brain from a scientific perspective, what’s happening in the brain from their spiritual perspective,” he said.
Those who pray regularly report that they have lower stress and feel peace and well-being. Studies show that prayer turns your focus outward, which leads to stronger feelings of compassion.
“As far as we know, it is not a cure for cancer,” said Newberg. “It is not going to cure somebody of heart disease. We can’t tell people to pray in order to get better — that doesn’t really make sense. The reason that it works is because it is part of the person’s belief system.”
He noticed that meditative prayer causes the sense of self to kind of “shut down.”
“You become connected to God,” Newberg said. “You become connected to the world. Your self sort of goes away.”
The Bible tells believers to communicate with God through prayer. The concept of prayer is pretty neat in itself, but the fact that prayer has this heap of other benefits is pretty remarkable, too.
Read Next: 5 Hollywood Celebrities Who Talk About the Power of Prayer
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