How does prayer and meditation benefit health?

When you pray or meditate in a mindful state, your brain produces alpha and theta waves consistent with serenity and happiness, allowing your harried thoughts to have a reprieve. Prayer and meditation can cause a generalized reduction in multiple physiological and biochemical markers, resulting in decreased heart and respiration rate, decreased plasma cortisol (a major stress hormone), decreased pulse rate, and increased EEG (electroencephalogram). Ground breaking research is revealing that these disciplines can also literally reconfigure the brain biology, triggering biochemical and neurological changes that are therapeutic.  This reconfiguring can make a big difference in one’s health and well-being.  Just as scientists have found that positive beliefs can engender wellness (the placebo effect), they also have found that negative beliefs and influences can induce illness (the “nocebo” effect).