The document discusses the benefits of prayer on psychological, physiological, and socio-cultural levels. Prayer is found to reduce stress and anxiety, increase positive mental states, and promote better health outcomes through mechanisms like placebo effects, self-fulfilling prophecies, and self-hypnosis. Research studies show prayer can alleviate depression and anxiety following surgery and increase cardiovascular benefits through rhythmic breathing during prayer recitation. Prayer also provides social benefits like belongingness and community support.

1. Nishma.vm
MS.c Applied Psychology

2.  The word prayer or prārthanā (in Sanskrit) is derived from two
words ‘pra’ and ‘artha’ meaning pleading fervently. In other
words, it is asking God for something with intense yearning.
 Prayer includes respect, love, pleading and faith. Through a prayer
a devotee expresses his helplessness and endows the doership of
the task to God. Giving the doership to God means that we
acknowledge that God is helping us and getting the task done.
Prayer is an important tool of spiritual practice in the generic
spiritual path of Devotion.

3.  Many who said they pray about health also
told survey-takers they're using prayer as a
supplement to their medical treatment,
apparently hoping for the best of both
worlds.

4.  Action: All actions that are preceded by prayer for spiritual
benefit are performed with spiritual emotion; hence fewer errors
are committed. Thus by praying, various actions in one’s spiritual
practice occur as per the way God or guru (The Guiding principle
of God) would like them to happen.
 Thought: Useless thoughts also cause wastage of energy. Prayer
is an extremely useful tool to prevent this waste. Prayer reduces
worry and enhances contemplation.
 Attitude: A prayer done with spiritual emotion initiates the
process of contemplation within a seeker, and this assists him in
becoming introverted.

5.  Enhances the potency of chanting the Name of God
repeated prayers about being graced with quality chanting, along
with chanting the Name of God, helps in generation of spiritual
emotion and makes our chanting reach God.
Divine help in spiritual practice: When a seeker sincerely prays to
God to get a particular action/thought/attitude pertaining to his
spiritual practice, done through him (the seeker), a seemingly
impossible task is easily accomplished by the Guru’s grace.
Receiving forgiveness for mistakes: Having committed a mistake,
if one makes a prayer and surrenders unto God or the Guru, then
God or Guru forgives one for the mistake. However the prayer
and surrender have to be commensurate in intensity with the
mistake committed

6.  Reducing the ego: While praying we plead before God; it is therefore the
place where pride is abandoned and we humbly admit our need/human
frailty as well as our dependence upon God. It therefore helps to reduce
the ego faster.
 Protection from negative energy:
Prayer is a powerful tool that helps protect one from negative energy and
creates an armour around oneself.
 Increase in faith: When a prayer gets answered, faith in God or the Guru
increases. Faith is the only currency on our spiritual journey.

8.  Psychological
 Physiological
 Socio-cultural

9. Placebo effect:-
a beneficial effect, produced by a placebo
drug or treatment, that cannot be attributed
to the properties of the placebo itself, and
must therefore be due to the patient's belief
in that treatment.
 Introspection

10.  Self-fulfilling proffecy:-
Predictions that, in a sence make themselves come true
Eg; When a seeker sincerely prays to God to get a particular
action/thought/attitude pertaining to his spiritual practice, done through him
(the seeker), a seemingly impossible task is easily accomplished by the Guru’s
grace.
self-hypnosis:-
It is a naturally occurring state of mind which can be defined as a heightened
state of focused concentration. With it, you can change your thinking, kick bad
habits, and take control of the person you are -- along with relaxation and
destressing from everyday life. It's similar to meditation, but results in a better
you.

11.  The research suggests that the average man
and woman, through their everyday
experiences with prayer and health shows
improvement in their mental state, in other
words, can promoted health.

13.  Worthington Jr. et,al in 1996
A decade of research on religion and counseling,
consisting of 148 empirical articles, was reviewed.
Methodological sophistication, poor a decade ago, has
approached current secular standards, except in
outcome research. Religious people cannot be
assumed to be mentally unhealthy. Nonreligious and
religious counselors share most counseling-relevant
values but differ in the value they place on religion.
Those religious differences affect clinical judgment
and behavior, especially with religious clients.

14.  C.Paterson et.al at University of Pittsburgh
(May 20, 2010).
short-term negative outcomes (depression and
anxiety) among older adults following open
heart surgery are partially alleviated when
patients employ prayer as part of their coping
strategy.

15. Luciano Bernardy et, al (2001 December 22) in
Europe
 Result:
Both prayer and mantra caused striking, powerful,
and synchronous increases in existing cardiovascular
rhythms when recited six times a minute. Baroreflex
sensitivity also increased significantly, from 9.5 (SD
4.6) to 11.5 (4.9) ms/mm Hg, P<0.05.
 conclusion:
Rhythm formulas that involve breathing at six breaths
per minute induce favourable psychological and
possibly physiological effects.

16.  Belongingness
 Cohesiveness
 Entiativity
 Supportive system

17.  Meditation:
moksha , internal pease
 Silent preyer
Not necessory to maintain a posture
 Mass preyer
Sound waves
religious thought
vibration

18.  What ever may be the way and objective of
the prayer, it tend to induce a level of
positive mental state in the individual and
better health condition become as a
byproduct of those prayer practices.

19.  http://www.wikihow.com/Perform-Self-
Hypnosis