Types of Prayer, Heart Rate Variability, and Innate Healing

Abstract

Spiritual practices such as prayer have been shown to improve health and quality of life for those facing chronic or terminal illness. The early Christian healing tradition distinguished between types of prayer and their role in healing, placing great emphasis on the healing power of more integrated relational forms of prayer such as prayers of gratitude and contemplative prayer. Because autonomic tone is impaired in most disease states, autonomic homeostasis may provide insight into the healing effects of prayer. I report on observations in five volunteers engaging in five types of prayer. Using heart rate variability as a measure of autonomic tone and adaptability, I review the potential correlation of type of prayer with autonomic rebalance as measured specifically by psychophysiological coherence ratios. The five types-supplication, devotion, intercession, gratefulness, and contemplative prayer-elicited varying degrees of improvements in heart rate variability and corresponding psychophysiological coherence. These observations suggest a correlation of innate healing to prayer type that is consistent with teachings from the Christian healing tradition and with modern research. Further research is warranted to verify these hypotheses.

Heart Rate Variability: New Perspectives on Physiological Mechanisms, Assessment of Self-regulatory Capacity, and Health Risk

“…However, prayers of gratefulness and heart-felt love resulted in definitively higher coherence levels. 148 It has also been shown that tensing the large muscles in the legs in a rhythmical manner at a 10-second rhythm can induce a coherent heart rhythm. 150 …”

Cardiac coherence, self-regulation, autonomic stability, and psychosocial well-being

“…The authors ascribed the mechanisms for this finding as due to changes in their breathing patterns to a six cycles per minute rhythm and concluded that the rhythm of mantras and rosary prayers were intentionally designed to induce coherent heart rhythms by individuals who had an intuitive understanding of the benefits of this rhythm ( Bernardi et al, 2001 ). In a study of the effects of five different types of prayer on HRV, it was found that all types of prayer elicited increased cardiac coherence; however, prayers of gratefulness and prayers that focused on heart felt love resulted in definitively higher coherence levels ( Stanley, 2009 ). There are also many studies showing that the practice of breathing at 6 breaths per minute, supported by HRV biofeedback, induces the coherence rhythm and has a wide range of benefits ( Lehrer et al, 2003 , 2006 ; Siepmann et al, 2008 ; Hallman et al, 2011 ; Henriques et al, 2011 ; Ratanasiripong et al, 2012 ; Beckham et al, 2013 ; Li et al, 2013 ).…”

Cardiac autonomic modulation related to prayer may contribute to the reduced cardiovascular mortality associated with religiosity/spirituality

“…The personal prayer of patients has been shown to positively correlated with their physical and mental well-being [45,46]. Besides the fact that prayer may be a resource to positively transform the patient's experience of their illness, this spiritual practice has been linked with higher levels of cardiac autonomic control, a condition that in turn has been associated with a reduced risk of cardiac arrhythmias and cardiovascular mortality [47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54]. This may be explained because the heart autonomic nervous system (ANS) is a crucial component in the physiological function and pathological responses of the cardiovascular system.…”

“…Among the items tapping this form of religiosity, the strongest and most consistent findings were the frequency of prayer and fasting [7]. Few studies have investigated the effects of prayer in the cardiac autonomic system balance by the heart rate variability (HRV) [47,48]. The HRV analysis is a reliable reflection of the physiological factors modulating the normal heart rhythm [8].…”