Spirituality and Stress

Scientific research in recent years has shown that religious belief and spiritual practices may be associated with good health in general and in easing stress and its adverse effects in particular.

The connection between mind and body in stressful situations is clear. Stress has a dramatic effect on physiological functions, particularly the immune and cardiovascular systems.

However, is the reverse true? Can such things as spirituality and faith alleviate stress and improve health?

Throughout history, people have sought comfort and consolation through religion, particularly in times of sickness and loss. Scientific research in recent years has shown that religious belief and spiritual practices may be associated with good health in general and in easing stress and its adverse effects in particular.

Part of the beneficial effect of religious practice has to do with what is sometimes called the Relaxation Response or the Faith Factor. Simply put, meditation and prayer have a well-documented effect on the body, besides whatever they may do for the soul.

When we are under stress, we tend to breathe faster. Our heart pounds and our blood pressure rises. Meditation and prayer slow down those processes, easing the effects of stress. Italian researchers reported in the British Medical Journal that reciting prayers such as the Ave Maria or a yoga mantra enhances and synchronizes cardiovascular rhythms. It slows respiration to the same timing as the natural circulatory rhythm of the body.

Meditation is often considered a form of religious practice, and indeed, it owes its origin largely to Siddhartha Guatama, better known as the Buddha, who used it for enlightenment 2,500 years ago. There is a strong element of meditative practices going back millennia in mystic Judaism. The leading program of meditation instruction in the U.S. is Transcendental Meditation.

But meditation is a physical phenomenon that also can be divorced from religious practice.

More than 60 years ago, Harvard professor Herbert Benson claimed to have proved a mind-body connection through meditation and while the National Institutes of Health has yet to agree, the scientific evidence is solid, more than 70 mind-body courses are taught in the U.S., many at prominent medical schools. Most are based on a program developed at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Meditation also may help patients in pain at many pain centers, including the one at Johns Hopkins.

How meditation works is unknown, but recent research indicates that it activates specific regions of the brain that may influence heart and breathing rates. Imaging devices such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) show alterations in brain activity in people meditating. The mental state induced or enhanced by meditation seems to counter the normal flight-or-flight mechanism associated with stress.

Prayer and meditation work in patients with heart disease as well as healthy patients, affecting not only the heart, but also the lungs and blood pressure. their overall sense of well-being is improved.

Other researchers studying the effects of meditation and yoga have come to the same conclusion, even measuring changes in brain wave patterns during simple meditation.

You can easily practice meditation yourself

In most eastern forms of meditation, including Transcendental Meditation, meditation centers around repeating a word called a mantra and great importance is placed on which mantra a meditator uses. But it doesn't matter, and meditation can take place without a word at all. Here is one way to do it.

First, find a quiet place, somewhere where you will not be interrupted for 20 minutes to a half hour. Find a comfortable chair, preferably in subdued light.

Relax your muscles. Find an agreeable position. Breathe in and out slowly and be attentive to your breathing. If you decide to use a word, any simple word or sound will work as a mantra; the key is concentrating on repeating that word in your mind over and over, trying hard to think of nothing else. If your mind wanders, as it will, pull it back to the word. If you are interrupted, start again. You will find your breathing slows, and gradually the outside world fades from your attention. You will eventually learn to be in another place, inside yourself.

Some meditators skip the mantra and concentrate exclusively on breathing, paying attention to every inhalation and exhalation, gradually learning to take deeper, slower breaths.

Practice and a regular schedule are important to a beneficial experience with meditation. The more you do it, the better it usually will work. If nothing else, it is a healthy and pleasant way to spend some time.