April 16, 2025 • 14 mins
Spill your ReligiosiTea directly with the show host! Let us know your reactions, stories, and more!
In this episode of ReligiosiTea, host Adren dives into the complex relationship between prayer, cognitive processes, and health outcomes. From its mental benefits to the potential for stress reduction, prayer can shape how we process emotions and handle challenges—even in clinical settings. Adren also explores the intersection of religion and science, discussing how biases can influence the research around prayer and health. Plus, we take a closer look at the practice of praying for others and how that might impact well-being too. Join us for an enlightening conversation on the spiritual and mental health benefits of prayer—whether you’re religious or not!
Key Takeaways:
- Prayer can have mental health benefits, including stress reduction and improved cognitive function.
- The relationship between prayer and health is complex, with biases influencing research findings.
- Praying for others may have unique effects on both the person praying and the person being prayed for.
- Positive social networks in religious contexts can improve overall well-being.
Resources Mentioned:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2802370/#sec1-6
Follow me on Instagram and Threads: @ReligiosiTea
You can use the link at the top of the show notes or email me at religiositea@gmail.com to share your stories, thoughts, insights, reactions, and much more! I'm waiting for you to spill your ReligiosiTea!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
We're spilling tea on religion and health, where
intersections of faith andhealing combine.
On religiosity, as this podcastdiscusses religious beliefs,
religious experiences, personaltestimonies and mental and
(00:22):
physical health, some of thecontent may be uncomfortable or
triggering for some listeners.
This is your host, adrian.
I've got a question for you.
What is prayer?
When you sit down and actuallythink about what prayer is, how
(00:56):
do you describe it to yourself?
Is it asking a higher power orthe universe for something like
healing, a promotion at work, aresolution to some problem you
have?
Is it enhancing your connectionwith the divine?
Is it a meditation to help youclear your mind through a
(01:19):
conversation with somethinggreater than yourself?
Today, we're spilling the teaon how prayer might be shaping
your mind and health, whetheryou're religious or not.
I wanted to talk about prayer,since I've been talking to
people specifically about theirrelationship with prayer in my
(01:39):
last two episodes.
These prayers have been underChristian and Catholic
frameworks, but prayer is by nomeans exclusive to the Abrahamic
faiths.
According to some research fromthe National Institutes of
Health and others, prayer is acognitive experience, meaning it
(02:01):
is part of a mental process andhas mental outcomes.
As a result, prayer can besocial or personal, and prayer
shapes the way you think.
These thoughts associated withprayer include creating the
frameworks with which youapproach life.
This includes the way you seeor think about yourself, the way
(02:25):
you think about yourself inrelation to others, the way you
see yourself in relation to thegrand scheme of life and how you
think others ought to behave.
Prayer, especially prayerguided by religious framework,
really emphasizes the way youthink about everything.
Some research says prayer canbe colloquial, petitional,
(02:53):
ritual or meditative, and Ithink a lot of what guides which
prayer you engage with isrelated to any particular brand
of faith or spirituality yousubscribe to.
Colloquial here meansnon-formal.
Think about my conversationwith my friend Lucy and the way
she describes her informal butpowerful relationship with God.
Ritual prayer is prayer that isguided and part of a larger
(03:17):
system or order of doing things.
Think here about Catholicmasses which are very procedural
and systematic in theirapproach to communicating with
the divine Petitional prayerswhen you ask for something.
And meditative prayer can bewhen you sit and reflect on a
particular theme or issue, tryto find peace or clear your mind
(03:41):
.
An interesting study I foundfrom Adams et al out of Georgia
State University, et al meansand others for my non-academic
folks shows that prayer helpedpreserve cognitive resources or
the ability to use mentalfunctioning to complete a task,
(04:02):
for participants in a researchstudy who had quicker mental
recovery times between tasks.
An interesting caveat is thatthis was only significant in the
participants who scored higheron a religiosity assessment.
Remember, religiosity is ameasure of religious strength or
(04:23):
religious engagement.
So it appears that prayer forthose with strongly held
religious beliefs worked well toimprove mental resources.
This can include the reductionof anxiety associated with
completing a task.
I'm extrapolating here, but itappears, based on this research,
(04:43):
that those who are stronglyaffiliated with a particular
faith can use prayer as a copingmechanism to deal with mental
health outcomes like anxiety.
It appears to have a protectivefactor for people who hold
strong religious convictions.
This doesn't mean that prayeris useless for people who do not
(05:05):
have a strongly held religiousbelief.
It just means that, throughthis one psychological
experiment, the ones who heldstrong religious strength in
their chosen belief system wereable to use prayer to perform
better on tasks than a controlgroup who did not use prayer.
The study also found that mostparticipants who prayed prayed
to God or a higher power, ratherthan praying in a more
(05:29):
meditative or self-reflectiveway.
This also doesn't includeritualized group prayer like one
might find in a mass.
It's important to remember thatin any psychological experiment
, the environments arecontrolled for as many things as
possible, so there's still roomto explore the role prayer
(05:50):
plays in mental health oroverall health outcomes.
So the tea is prayer isn't justabout faith.
It's actively shaping howpeople think and process stress.
Now let's explore what thismeans for broader health
concerns.
In clinical trials, a study Ifound by Adrade and
(06:14):
Radhakrishnan out of Bangalore,india, highlights the dubious
nature of researching theutility of prayer in health
outcomes in the first place.
So really, what am I doing here?
I still believe there areimportant caveats and features
of religion that are worthstudying in relation to health
outcomes, especially behavioraland mental health outcomes.
(06:37):
However, they have compiled adecent review of all of the
findings of prayer and health,including positive results,
non-results and negative resultsfrom prayer in improving health
.
As these authors rightfullypoint out, prayer has been
associated with healing acrosstime and space for as long as
religion has been a part of thehuman experience.
(07:01):
This study frames prayer as aform of meditation and relates
prayer to the health benefitsthat can be expected from
meditation.
These benefits include reducedheart rate, reduced blood
pressure and hormonal benefitslike the production of melatonin
and serotonin and thesuppression of cortisol,
improved immune systems and aslew of positive mental health
(07:22):
outcomes, including reducedanxiety and higher self-esteem.
There was also a higherrelationship between these
positive results and higherlevels of spirituality versus
secular meditations.
Don't worry, I'll do a deepdive on meditation someday.
When we think about cognitiveprocesses in health, prayer and
(07:44):
religious strength may actuallyshape how people view their
health, potentially creating aplacebo effect that leads to
real improvements.
In clinical trials, this can besignificant.
If the placebo effect isstronger than expected, it can
challenge the effectiveness of atreatment like a blood pressure
medication.
That doesn't mean we shouldabandon modern medicine in favor
(08:08):
of prayer and positive thinking, though concerns about the
medical-industrial complex arevalid.
Instead, it highlights thatprayer can have tangible
benefits, especially in reducingstress and improving mental
health.
At the same time, there's oftentension between religious
belief and science.
Biases both for and againstreligious practices like prayer
(08:33):
can influence how studies aredesigned, interpreted and even
how results are reported.
This doesn't mean therelationship between religion
and health can't be studiedobjectively, but it does mean
we're still waiting for cleareranswers from the scientific
process.
While that tea is still brewing,let's consider another aspect
(08:56):
of prayer.
It's not always about prayingfor yourself.
Remember those petitionalprayers I mentioned earlier.
This study also looked atdistance healing or, in the
context of this episode, prayingfor the healing or welfare of
others.
Praying for the healing orwelfare of others.
They do also touch on someother forms that I would love to
(09:19):
explore in the future, likeReiki healing, but let's stay
focused here.
The articles they examinedshowed mixed results and a lot
of methodological problems inassociating prayer for others in
any improved health outcomes.
Sometimes the experimentalconditions were not good to
really say there was arelationship.
(09:40):
Other times participantsdropped out of studies and
skewed the data.
Either way.
Scientifically, this is an areathat needs to be explored more.
Again, don't stop praying foryour friends if you feel called
to do that.
At the very least it'llprobably help you feel better
(10:05):
and put you in a better mentalspace to help be there for the
people you care about.
Also, if that is your cup ofreligiosity, if you're not a
prayer, you don't have to startnow.
Remember, I'm Buddhist, so I'mnot out here necessarily praying
for the world either.
Just know that.
If you do subscribe to thesepractices, they can benefit your
(10:26):
mental well-being, even if itis for other people, and it can
fill your cup so you aren'tpouring from an empty one.
This discussion on praying forothers did drive me a little
further down the rabbit hole.
Praying for others indicates asocial aspect to religious
participation and we know thatreligion and spirituality often
(10:50):
are social for people.
We're also social by nature,most of us anyway so there must
be some kind of social benefitto engaging in religious space,
collective prayer and prayingfor others.
Right, this is heading intosocial network theory, basically
(11:11):
the idea that people yousurround yourself with influence
your behaviors and your health.
One study I found from Chattersit All again, it all means and
others I will help youunderstand academic jargon when
needed out of Michiganhighlighted a lot of social
benefits from church supportnetworks.
(11:33):
They found that participatingin church networks improves
mental health outcomes foranxiety and depression.
But the quality of thosenetworks matters.
If someone has a lot ofnegative interactions with their
church members, then thebenefits of participation flip
and it can create worse outcomesfor depression and
psychological distress.
(11:54):
This makes sense, right?
Positive interactions help youfeel better about yourself,
while negative interactions makeyou feel worse.
The positive interactions inchurch also showed improvement
in eating healthy foods andusing healthcare.
The ways our positive networkscan influence us, even in
(12:14):
religious settings, isastounding.
So what does engaging with achurch look like?
This study didn't expound onwhat the positive interactions
were, but I can conjecture alittle bit, since this is a
podcast.
Apart from just creating anetwork of people to lean on for
support in more physical ordirect emotional support, like
(12:38):
feeding each other when one islacking, giving someone a ride,
finding lifelong friends withwhom you develop deep emotional
connections and can go to foranything also known as a ride or
die People who engage in achurch community can also feel
connected to something largerthan themselves through
participating in groupactivities or knowing that
(13:00):
someone out there is looking outfor them.
This can include through prayer.
There might be more researchabout this out there, and I
might do more research like thismyself in my own academic work,
but for now at least, we knowthat positive social groups
associated with religion arebeneficial, much like any other
positive network of connectedindividuals.
(13:22):
Negative interactions in socialgroups can and will harm your
mental health.
So what are the key takeaways?
The tea is still brewing onwhether or not prayer has direct
health impacts, but there ispromising evidence showing that,
for people who are religious ordeeply spiritual, prayer can
help ease a lot of mental healthconcerns.
(13:44):
The participation in religioussocial networks can be positive
or negative, but some researchat least shows that positive
church engagement can helpimprove people's health, both
mentally and through accessingthe care they need.
This is exciting stuff.
I'm excited to keep diving moreinto these themes and
(14:04):
discussions with you all.
Want to spill your tea?
Hit the link in the show notesto share your stories, questions
or ideas for future episodes.
You can also follow me onInstagram or threads at
religiosity and that's thereligiosity.
Thank you for joining me today.
(14:26):
May you be happy, healthy andwell.
We're spilling tea on religion and health, where
intersections of faith andhealing combine.
On religiosity, as this podcastdiscusses religious beliefs,
religious experiences, personaltestimonies and mental and
(00:22):
physical health, some of thecontent may be uncomfortable or
triggering for some listeners.
This is your host, adrian.
I've got a question for you.
What is prayer?
When you sit down and actuallythink about what prayer is, how
(00:56):
do you describe it to yourself?
Is it asking a higher power orthe universe for something like
healing, a promotion at work, aresolution to some problem you
have?
Is it enhancing your connectionwith the divine?
Is it a meditation to help youclear your mind through a
(01:19):
conversation with somethinggreater than yourself?
Today, we're spilling the teaon how prayer might be shaping
your mind and health, whetheryou're religious or not.
I wanted to talk about prayer,since I've been talking to
people specifically about theirrelationship with prayer in my
(01:39):
last two episodes.
These prayers have been underChristian and Catholic
frameworks, but prayer is by nomeans exclusive to the Abrahamic
faiths.
According to some research fromthe National Institutes of
Health and others, prayer is acognitive experience, meaning it
(02:01):
is part of a mental process andhas mental outcomes.
As a result, prayer can besocial or personal, and prayer
shapes the way you think.
These thoughts associated withprayer include creating the
frameworks with which youapproach life.
This includes the way you seeor think about yourself, the way
(02:25):
you think about yourself inrelation to others, the way you
see yourself in relation to thegrand scheme of life and how you
think others ought to behave.
Prayer, especially prayerguided by religious framework,
really emphasizes the way youthink about everything.
Some research says prayer canbe colloquial, petitional,
(02:53):
ritual or meditative, and Ithink a lot of what guides which
prayer you engage with isrelated to any particular brand
of faith or spirituality yousubscribe to.
Colloquial here meansnon-formal.
Think about my conversationwith my friend Lucy and the way
she describes her informal butpowerful relationship with God.
Ritual prayer is prayer that isguided and part of a larger
(03:17):
system or order of doing things.
Think here about Catholicmasses which are very procedural
and systematic in theirapproach to communicating with
the divine Petitional prayerswhen you ask for something.
And meditative prayer can bewhen you sit and reflect on a
particular theme or issue, tryto find peace or clear your mind
(03:41):
.
An interesting study I foundfrom Adams et al out of Georgia
State University, et al meansand others for my non-academic
folks shows that prayer helpedpreserve cognitive resources or
the ability to use mentalfunctioning to complete a task,
(04:02):
for participants in a researchstudy who had quicker mental
recovery times between tasks.
An interesting caveat is thatthis was only significant in the
participants who scored higheron a religiosity assessment.
Remember, religiosity is ameasure of religious strength or
(04:23):
religious engagement.
So it appears that prayer forthose with strongly held
religious beliefs worked well toimprove mental resources.
This can include the reductionof anxiety associated with
completing a task.
I'm extrapolating here, but itappears, based on this research,
(04:43):
that those who are stronglyaffiliated with a particular
faith can use prayer as a copingmechanism to deal with mental
health outcomes like anxiety.
It appears to have a protectivefactor for people who hold
strong religious convictions.
This doesn't mean that prayeris useless for people who do not
(05:05):
have a strongly held religiousbelief.
It just means that, throughthis one psychological
experiment, the ones who heldstrong religious strength in
their chosen belief system wereable to use prayer to perform
better on tasks than a controlgroup who did not use prayer.
The study also found that mostparticipants who prayed prayed
to God or a higher power, ratherthan praying in a more
(05:29):
meditative or self-reflectiveway.
This also doesn't includeritualized group prayer like one
might find in a mass.
It's important to remember thatin any psychological experiment
, the environments arecontrolled for as many things as
possible, so there's still roomto explore the role prayer
(05:50):
plays in mental health oroverall health outcomes.
So the tea is prayer isn't justabout faith.
It's actively shaping howpeople think and process stress.
Now let's explore what thismeans for broader health
concerns.
In clinical trials, a study Ifound by Adrade and
(06:14):
Radhakrishnan out of Bangalore,india, highlights the dubious
nature of researching theutility of prayer in health
outcomes in the first place.
So really, what am I doing here?
I still believe there areimportant caveats and features
of religion that are worthstudying in relation to health
outcomes, especially behavioraland mental health outcomes.
(06:37):
However, they have compiled adecent review of all of the
findings of prayer and health,including positive results,
non-results and negative resultsfrom prayer in improving health
.
As these authors rightfullypoint out, prayer has been
associated with healing acrosstime and space for as long as
religion has been a part of thehuman experience.
(07:01):
This study frames prayer as aform of meditation and relates
prayer to the health benefitsthat can be expected from
meditation.
These benefits include reducedheart rate, reduced blood
pressure and hormonal benefitslike the production of melatonin
and serotonin and thesuppression of cortisol,
improved immune systems and aslew of positive mental health
(07:22):
outcomes, including reducedanxiety and higher self-esteem.
There was also a higherrelationship between these
positive results and higherlevels of spirituality versus
secular meditations.
Don't worry, I'll do a deepdive on meditation someday.
When we think about cognitiveprocesses in health, prayer and
(07:44):
religious strength may actuallyshape how people view their
health, potentially creating aplacebo effect that leads to
real improvements.
In clinical trials, this can besignificant.
If the placebo effect isstronger than expected, it can
challenge the effectiveness of atreatment like a blood pressure
medication.
That doesn't mean we shouldabandon modern medicine in favor
(08:08):
of prayer and positive thinking, though concerns about the
medical-industrial complex arevalid.
Instead, it highlights thatprayer can have tangible
benefits, especially in reducingstress and improving mental
health.
At the same time, there's oftentension between religious
belief and science.
Biases both for and againstreligious practices like prayer
(08:33):
can influence how studies aredesigned, interpreted and even
how results are reported.
This doesn't mean therelationship between religion
and health can't be studiedobjectively, but it does mean
we're still waiting for cleareranswers from the scientific
process.
While that tea is still brewing,let's consider another aspect
(08:56):
of prayer.
It's not always about prayingfor yourself.
Remember those petitionalprayers I mentioned earlier.
This study also looked atdistance healing or, in the
context of this episode, prayingfor the healing or welfare of
others.
Praying for the healing orwelfare of others.
They do also touch on someother forms that I would love to
(09:19):
explore in the future, likeReiki healing, but let's stay
focused here.
The articles they examinedshowed mixed results and a lot
of methodological problems inassociating prayer for others in
any improved health outcomes.
Sometimes the experimentalconditions were not good to
really say there was arelationship.
(09:40):
Other times participantsdropped out of studies and
skewed the data.
Either way.
Scientifically, this is an areathat needs to be explored more.
Again, don't stop praying foryour friends if you feel called
to do that.
At the very least it'llprobably help you feel better
(10:05):
and put you in a better mentalspace to help be there for the
people you care about.
Also, if that is your cup ofreligiosity, if you're not a
prayer, you don't have to startnow.
Remember, I'm Buddhist, so I'mnot out here necessarily praying
for the world either.
Just know that.
If you do subscribe to thesepractices, they can benefit your
(10:26):
mental well-being, even if itis for other people, and it can
fill your cup so you aren'tpouring from an empty one.
This discussion on praying forothers did drive me a little
further down the rabbit hole.
Praying for others indicates asocial aspect to religious
participation and we know thatreligion and spirituality often
(10:50):
are social for people.
We're also social by nature,most of us anyway so there must
be some kind of social benefitto engaging in religious space,
collective prayer and prayingfor others.
Right, this is heading intosocial network theory, basically
(11:11):
the idea that people yousurround yourself with influence
your behaviors and your health.
One study I found from Chattersit All again, it all means and
others I will help youunderstand academic jargon when
needed out of Michiganhighlighted a lot of social
benefits from church supportnetworks.
(11:33):
They found that participatingin church networks improves
mental health outcomes foranxiety and depression.
But the quality of thosenetworks matters.
If someone has a lot ofnegative interactions with their
church members, then thebenefits of participation flip
and it can create worse outcomesfor depression and
psychological distress.
(11:54):
This makes sense, right?
Positive interactions help youfeel better about yourself,
while negative interactions makeyou feel worse.
The positive interactions inchurch also showed improvement
in eating healthy foods andusing healthcare.
The ways our positive networkscan influence us, even in
(12:14):
religious settings, isastounding.
So what does engaging with achurch look like?
This study didn't expound onwhat the positive interactions
were, but I can conjecture alittle bit, since this is a
podcast.
Apart from just creating anetwork of people to lean on for
support in more physical ordirect emotional support, like
(12:38):
feeding each other when one islacking, giving someone a ride,
finding lifelong friends withwhom you develop deep emotional
connections and can go to foranything also known as a ride or
die People who engage in achurch community can also feel
connected to something largerthan themselves through
participating in groupactivities or knowing that
(13:00):
someone out there is looking outfor them.
This can include through prayer.
There might be more researchabout this out there, and I
might do more research like thismyself in my own academic work,
but for now at least, we knowthat positive social groups
associated with religion arebeneficial, much like any other
positive network of connectedindividuals.
(13:22):
Negative interactions in socialgroups can and will harm your
mental health.
So what are the key takeaways?
The tea is still brewing onwhether or not prayer has direct
health impacts, but there ispromising evidence showing that,
for people who are religious ordeeply spiritual, prayer can
help ease a lot of mental healthconcerns.
(13:44):
The participation in religioussocial networks can be positive
or negative, but some researchat least shows that positive
church engagement can helpimprove people's health, both
mentally and through accessingthe care they need.
This is exciting stuff.
I'm excited to keep diving moreinto these themes and
(14:04):
discussions with you all.
Want to spill your tea?
Hit the link in the show notesto share your stories, questions
or ideas for future episodes.
You can also follow me onInstagram or threads at
religiosity and that's thereligiosity.
Thank you for joining me today.
(14:26):
May you be happy, healthy andwell.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce
Football’s funniest family duo — Jason Kelce of the Philadelphia Eagles and Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs — team up to provide next-level access to life in the league as it unfolds. The two brothers and Super Bowl champions drop weekly insights about the weekly slate of games and share their INSIDE perspectives on trending NFL news and sports headlines. They also endlessly rag on each other as brothers do, chat the latest in pop culture and welcome some very popular and well-known friends to chat with them. Check out new episodes every Wednesday. Follow New Heights on the Wondery App, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes early and ad-free, and get exclusive content on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And join our new membership for a unique fan experience by going to the New Heights YouTube channel now!
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.