During prayer, the person praying noticeably decreases oxygen consumption - by about 20%.
The power and effectiveness of prayer is an undeniable reality for a believer of any denomination and denomination. It is an anchor that grounds mystical forces and balances consciousness. And, despite the scientific skepticism in matters of religion and faith, scientists are increasingly turning to the study of this phenomenon of faith.
Studies of prayer and meditative states have been carried out in many countries of the world on representatives of various ages and professions. In all cases, the results were quite interesting.
"Prayer wakefulness" is recognized by neurophysiologists as the fourth state of the brain, along with the three main ones - wakefulness, slow and fast sleep, differing from each other in the nature of electrical impulses in the cerebral cortex.
Specialists of the Laboratory of Psychophysiology of the St. Ankylosing spondylitis at the end of the last century conducted a global study in order to find out whether the work of the brain changes during prayer.
The experiment was led by Doctor of Biological Sciences Valery Slezin *, who has already carried out more than two hundred measurements of electroencephalograms of the brain of people belonging to different confessions and having different social status. Having studied the data obtained, Slezin came to the conclusion: during deep prayer, the cerebral cortex seems to be turned off. The perception of information by a person goes bypassing the thought processes.
When measuring the electrical activity of the brain, it looks like this:
during wakefulness, the cerebral cortex of an adult generates alpha (a state of complete relaxation of both the body and consciousness) and beta rhythms (a state of active wakefulness) of biocurrents with a frequency of 8 to 30 Hertz.
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When the subjects were immersed in prayer ecstasy, the rhythm of biocurrents slowed down to a frequency of 3 Hertz. The preserved biopotentials had such a small amplitude that they practically approached a straight line.
These slow rhythms are called delta rhythms (a state of deep sleep or unconsciousness) and are observed only in infants up to three to four months.
Slezin faced a paradoxical phenomenon from the point of view of human physiology - the encephalogram of the praying brain corresponded to a coma.
Similar neurophysiological processes occur in the same way, regardless of what kind of prayer a person reads.
In addition, it should be noted that during prayer, the person praying noticeably decreases oxygen consumption - by about 20%, while during sleep - by only 8%. This suggests that prayer, like meditation, leads to better normalization of functioning and restoration of the body than even sleep. Another remarkable result of the practice of meditation is the process of synchronization of the cerebral hemispheres, that is, the elimination of the prevalence of one cerebral hemisphere over the other occurs. It is known that usually one of the cerebral hemispheres dominates over the other. This determines the person's tendency to figurative (intuitive) or logical (analytical) thinking.
As a result of prayer practice for some time - from 2-4 weeks to several months, the “weak” hemisphere is pulled up and reaches the level of the leader, and the electrical rhythms of both hemispheres are synchronized. This makes a person more intellectually healthy, energetic, protected from stress, able to show talent and intuition.
The influence of prayer on the human biofield should also be noted. Within two to three months, there is an intensive increase in the biofield with a color change towards light tones (dark shades in the biofield usually indicate significant changes in the human psyche, metabolic disorders), and the disharmony of the biofield is also eliminated.
In 2001, the New York publishing house published the book "Why does God never disappear?" **. This book is the result of research by scientists at the University of Pennsylvania: radiologist and neuroscientist Andrew Newberg and professor of psychiatry Eugene D'Aquili. They argue that "God will never disappear into human consciousness because the religious impulse is rooted in the biology of the brain."
Brain scans performed during meditation and prayer show strikingly low activity in the posterior superior parietal lobe. Scientists call the bundle of neurons located there "the area associated with orientation" because the main function of these neurons is to orient the body in physical space. People with an affliction in this area have difficulty finding their way even in the vicinity of their own home. When this area is in a state of normal calm activity, a person clearly feels the difference between his own person and everything around him. When she is in a passive, "sleeping" state - in particular, during deep meditation and prayer, this distinction is lost and, consequently, the boundaries between the personality and the world blur. Is this not what happens to those praying who feel the presence of God, or to meditators,who suddenly begin to feel their unity with the Universe?
To conduct the experiments, the researchers, with the help of their Tibetan Buddhist colleagues, selected eight monks who had experience in meditation and agreed to brain scans.
The purpose of the experiment was to fix the moment when a person's sense of himself or his “I” begins to dissolve and he begins to feel himself merged with the image chosen for meditation mentally.
It turned out that during meditation, the frontal lobes, which are responsible for abstract thinking, are very active. They always work harder when they focus on a specific task. However, the parietal region, responsible for orientation, froze.
“Observing people during meditation shows that they really turn off their perception of the outside world. They are no longer bothered by the images and sounds coming from outside. Therefore, their parietal lobe may not be receiving any more input,”Newberg says. Deprived of its normal "nutrition", the area associated with orientation ceases to function normally, and the person feels the blurred boundaries between himself and the world around him. And since the spatial and temporal "context" disappears for him, he is embraced by the feeling of infinite space and eternity.
Recent studies in this area have also revealed that people who practice meditation for a long time have significantly more workable gray matter in the brain. In addition, age-related changes in the brain in such people are practically not observed and the adhesion of nerve fibers is much stronger. This means the ability of brain cells to more efficiently transmit electrical impulses, which means faster processing of information.
* Changes in the functional state of the brain during Christian prayer V. B. Slezin, N. I. Muzalevskaya, V. M. Uritskiy, I. Ya. Rybina
** Andrew Newberg, Eugene D'Aquili, "Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief" New York 2001