Beyond studies of just the general effect of religiosity, prayer and meditation are two specific religious practices that have been shown to have positive effects.

Prayer has a beneficial effect on the person who prays: it increases gratitude and has a strong relationship with hope and adult attachment.1 Praying for one’s partner also decreases infidelity in the person who prays (both unfaithful acts and thoughts) by increasing the perception that the relationship is sacred.2 Praying with and for one’s partner or for a friend increases trust and unity with that person. In one study, the participants were instructed to pray together, while control groups were told to engage in daily positive thoughts about their partner, or to engage in a neutral activity. Those in the prayer group were given a sample non-denominational prayer as a starting point in which the person praying addressed God and petitioned for help for the friend. Subsequent self-reported measures and observations by objective observers indicated that the couples in the prayer groups had stronger relationships.3

Studies on intercessory prayers (prayers said with the intent to benefit someone else) indicate that such prayers have no effect, or perhaps only a small effect on the other person.4 Intercessory prayers are “neither significantly beneficial nor harmful for those who are sick. . . . [A]lthough some of the results of individual studies suggest a positive effect of intercessory prayer, the majority do not and the evidence does not support a recommendation either in favour or against the use of intercessory prayer.”5 Praying for another person seems to provide little or no benefit for that person—the collective evidence seems to show that the benefits of prayer come primarily to the person or persons doing the praying.

There is also meditation, which can mean a lot of different things, from following rigid techniques and reciting specific mantras all the way to quietly thinking. My discussion of meditation is focused on the form with which I am most familiar: stilling one’s thoughts and emptying one’s mind. The National Institutes of Health provides an excellent description:

In meditation, a person learns to focus his attention and suspend the stream of thoughts that normally occupy the mind. This practice is believed to result in a state of greater physical relaxation, mental calmness, and psychological balance. Practicing meditation can change how a person relates to the flow of emotions and thoughts in the mind.6

This type of stillness meditation has tremendous benefits. Randomized controlled trials into meditation techniques that focus on stilling one’s thoughts and achieving mental silence show significant effects (greater than other common stress management techniques) on work-related stress and depressive feelings.7 Beyond effects on stress and mental health, meditation actually causes physiological changes in practitioners’ brains and bodies.8 Meditation improves physical and mental well-being for people suffering from a variety of physical and mental ailments.9 Meditation is associated with lower blood pressure, lower cholesterol, lower stress hormone levels, and better health outcomes.10 Other related practices are also beneficial: praying the rosary and saying mantras both have a positive effect on cardiovascular health, and transcendental meditation (which also involves saying mantras) modestly reduces blood pressure.11 Even just cultivating sacred moments has positive effects on subjective well-being, psychological well-being, and on stress reduction.12

The research strongly suggests that prayer and meditation have real beneficial effects on mental, physical, and relationship health. Why? How? We do not know exactly. It may be only because it helps us reduce stress and break out of harmful thought processes. I think it may also be because it helps us connect to God and the divine, but regardless of the exact mechanism of action for prayer and meditation, and regardless of whether the mechanism of action is natural or supernatural, the fact is that the research shows they work.

Given how easy and simple it is, it makes sense to learn how to effectively pray and meditate and regularly practice them. The studies I cite above generally allowed participants to define the meaning of prayer for themselves, or encouraged them to use generic non-denominational prayers addressed to God. I address my prayers to God, then express gratitude, express my hopes for the current situation and the future, and then end by saying “Amen”. I use formal language and archaic pronouns for God, because that helps it feel more sacred.

My limited expertise in meditation is based on a free class on meditation I took at Harvard when I was there as a law student. But what I learned has worked well for me. I find a quiet place where I can sit comfortably. I close my eyes, take deep breaths, and clear my mind of thoughts. To help me clear my thoughts, I sometimes use visualizations I learned at a meditation class. The most effective one for me (and that I still often use) is to imagine (while continuing to breathe deeply) that my mind is a stormy sea and that my thoughts are violent stormy waves undulating across my mind. Then, I imagine the sun rising over the sea of my mind, gradually burning off the storm clouds and slowing and stilling the winds. I think about the waves of thoughts in my mind slowly weakening and subsiding. I continue to breathe deeply and imagine my mind becoming the glassy smooth surface of a perfectly calm sea. Other times, instead of the sea visualization, or together with it, I recite in my mind a simple mantra as I breathe in and out—usually I will think the word “stillness” as I breathe in and then think the word “peace” as I breathe out. Whatever method I use, once my thoughts have been stilled, I continue to breathe deeply and enjoy the serenity of a still mind, I imagine a window in my heart opening and drawing in heat and love, which induces feelings of elevation to add to the serenity. When I have been more regularly practicing meditation, I find I need to use the visualizations less frequently—I can more easily just sit and start to breathe deeply and gradually switch my mind over into “meditation mode”. Another technique we used in the class that I liked was to begin our meditations by breathing deeply while staring at a candle’s flame.

I recommend taking a class on meditation to get more ideas and to find something that works for you.

Conclusion

Just because a lot of people engage in a religious practice, does not by itself mean the practice is optimal or worth following. Path dependency can mean that useless or harmful religious practices become widespread because they are part of a “religious package” that a lot of people have come to accept, often because other aspects of a religion do bring real benefits, or because the religion has become widespread because of macro socio-political forces or even because of random chance.

But it is likely that many, if not most, religious practices become widespread because they bring real benefit. It is worth learning about and examining the religious practices of others to evaluate whether those practices are worth following, especially when different, unrelated religions have ended up adopting similar practices. For prayer and meditation, the evidence that they are worth adopting is strong, as is the evidence for religion and belief in God in general.