Mental Healing
How prayer and meditation provides physical and mental healing. Do you believe in the power of prayer for mental healing? When people feel despair or sorrow and need mental healing, some turn to prayer in hope it will ease their stress or grief. Many feel a prayer as a mental healing tool that makes them calm and soothes their spirits, as they have something to hold on to. Some have a deep religious faith, hoping prayer will miraculously rescue them in time of hardship or difficulty. Most people believe that prayer, in one way or another, will heal them spiritually and mentally. Prayer along with meditation can effectively improve one’s health. But prayer has many more benefits for mental healing indeed. Prayer can actually improve your physical health. The reason is nothing supernatural, but a scientific fact. Prayer is a kind of meditation, and meditation of any sort can be an invaluable aid in keeping one mentally and physically grounded.
Since 1930, scientists have studied the impact of prayer on the heart and brainwaves. In the past 20 years, there have been many studies on those who practiced meditation in different religious cultures, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Zen and Taoism. It was found that most people who had meditated for years would experience a state of physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing.
Meditation is a religious psychology, a relaxation technique, and a mind-body medicine which has an effect on the human's psychoneuroimmunology. Many researchers suggest that the control and training of the five senses - sight, sound, smell, touch and taste - along with body movement, have certain effects on the functions of the central nervous system, peripheral nervous system, autonomic nervous system, immune system, cardiovascular system, and limbic system which control human emotions and behavior.
Experts have found that when our body and mind work in perfect harmony, it results in the balance of our body and nerve cells. When praying, the chanted mantra serves as an external object to be focused on. Actually, this object can be a word or phrase, relaxing music, a peaceful scene or image, a candle or a set of prayer beads. It acts as a bridge to inner stillness and moves one deeper into the next phase of meditation.
How prayer works to improve your health
Since words or phrases from a mantra are the object you have to focus on, remember that the right way to pray is to do it out loud. Prayer can trigger two changes in the nervous system, depending on the speed of praying. If you pray at a fast speed, it will accelerate the function of the sympathetic nervous system which works to speed up the heart. The result of fast prayer will be like that of running, jogging or aerobic exercises. What you'll get is a substance called beta-endorphin, which promotes a feeling of happiness, but it won't lead to calmness because in the process, your metabolism is also high.
The most effective method of praying is to do it in a slow rhythm so the nerve signals will register at the right part of the brain. Apart from beta-endorphin that creates a sense of happiness, slow praying will relax the central nervous system. When you pray slowly and repeatedly, the process will reduce glutamate acid, which is a workhorse neurotransmitter of the brain, while increasing "Gaba" (Gamma Amino Butyric Acid) that helps to control the sensory perception of what's going on around us. When Gaba increases, your sensory perceptions will be better controlled, and the brain will begin to relax. Frustrated people will calm down, and their aggression will weaken. This occurs after you continue praying for 10 minutes. After 15 minutes of praying, the brain will send signals to the body, making cells begin to relax. People will feel their worries are eased. At the same time, the parasympathetic nervous system, which initiates responses associated with rest and energy conservation, will function better.
This allows the hypothalamus, which is responsible for maintaining a regulation of blood pressure, heart rate and temperature, to function efficiently. It makes a person calmer while stimulating the secretion of several neurotransmitters and pituitary hormones. These include serotonin which works to ease stress and acetylcholine that boosts short-term memory, thus causing a person to have good consciousness. Serotonin is a precursor to melatonin, a miracle hormone that works like an elixir. It helps human cells live longer and induces a fair, glowing complexion.
How the illnesses are healed
The hypothalamus will also inhibit the production of a hormone called dopamine which helps for the healing of Parkinson's disease and arginine vasopressin that regulates the kidneys' function. At the same time, it reduces the production of the stress hormone cortisol, thus boosting a person's immunity, and decreases the production of adrenalin and noradrenalin, helping to slow the cardiac function. As a result, cardiac patients will have relaxed muscles and become less tired. When you continue praying for 20-30 minutes, free-radicals will also be excreted from cell membranes. If you pray with the right method, your muscles will relax, you will breathe slowly and your heart beat will slow. The waste in your body cells will be released.
Praying for healing, however, is different from praying for religious faith. In religious prayer, you chant several long mantras for the worship of a god or the sacred deities. But to pray for healing, the mantra should be cut short and recited repeatedly. The chanting mantra can be compared to music therapy in a way that they carry short and repeated phrases. Yet music therapy works slower than praying, because the signal that gets into your ear will work more slowly than the one registered through your speech. Also, note that not every prayer will get all those beneficial substances and hormones. If you are interrupted in the middle of the prayer, you can't obtain the full benefit.
Prayer and the moving meditation
Prayer is a kind of still meditation, yet moving meditation gives better result. When we pray, it involves three functions - the mouth when we chant, ear as we hear the chanting, and eyes are closed. But in moving meditation, we have to control more of our functions. The more we can control them, the better we can balance our mind and body. There are various methods of moving meditation, such as walking meditation, and sitting stretching meditation. She suggested one can integrate prayer into moving meditation by moving parts of the body, such as tapping your fingers while praying.
The effects on patients
Applying various kinds of meditation practices with different groups of patients - those with diabetes, cancer, HIV/Aids, showed positive results. Those with diabetes have lower levels of blood sugar after months of moving meditation practices. Meditation is also helpful for patients with high blood pressure, and cardiovascular disease. In cancer patients, it resulted in the decrease of white blood cells and cancer cells. Patients with psychosomatic disorders also improved through laughing meditation. Yoga meditation was found helpful for street children and prison inmates. It helped them to reduce the use of drugs, by healing their insomnia, increasing their appetite, and lessening their worries. For patients who suffered from burns, meditation helps them sleep better, boost their spirits, and ease their physical and mental wounds. One patient who had leukemia since 1976 is still alive today. Though the disease remains, she hasn't developed any complications and can survive with it.
How to pray properly?
1 Pray a short mantra repeatedly and slowly. If you’re familiar with a long chanting mantra, pick only a short phrase for praying.
2 Pray it out loud. When you chant and pronounce the words, your tongue will touch the palate and that will send the signals to your brain nerve.
3 Close your eyes so you won’t be distracted. Then listen to your own chanting. You will breathe slowly, your heart beats slowly, and the wastes within the cells will be released.
4 Keep praying for at least 15-20 minutes. Stay in a comfortable posture. You may even lay down when you pray, if that makes you feel relaxed.
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