“Religion is for people who are scared to go to hell.
Spirituality is for people who have already been there.”
– Bonnie Raitt
These days, although some still maintain a connection with their religious backgrounds, many more have found formal religion to be irrelevant to their lives. In the last few decades, however, interest in spirituality has Increasingly gained ground in a variety of forms. As the chaos of disturbing global phenomena mounts – (the list is too long to detail but just for starters: the pandemic, climate change, gun violence, a refugee crisis, aggressive right wing governments), many have sought to transcend our world disorder with a personal search for meaning.
In her easy-to-read yet well-researched book The Awakened Brain: The New Science of Spirituality and Our Quest For an Inspired Life, Dr. Lisa Miller explains the human spiritual capacity as an innate feature of our physiology. She makes clear that we have the neural circuitry to see the world more fully, to live through awareness of love, interconnection, and appreciation of life.
From the standpoint of mental health, the implications of the research cited are profound.
The studies raise the question of how spirituality impacts one’s risk for depression and substance abuse or dependence. In looking at Risk vs. Resilience, for example, teens with strong personal spirituality were 35-75% less likely to experience depression, 40-80% less likely to develop substance abuse or dependence.
From the research: A Yale study of kids between the ages of 12-24 found that the rate of spirituality was significantly lower in affluent youth. At age 26, those with strong personal spirituality were 2.5 times more likely to have been depressed in the past, yet they were 75% protected against a recurrence of major depression. Those who were highly spiritual were found to have a 90% protection against major depression. The”protective benefits of spirituality were incontrovertible” the study found.
The physiologic foundations for depression were studied in labs by examining brain structures with neuro-imaging techniques. Those with a family history of depression were compared with others at low risk. Subjects whose parents and grandparents had depression showed significant,(up to 28%) relative thinness in the brain’s right cortex, the area of processing emotional stimuli.
MRI scans of people with high and low risk for depression were studied to compare and contrast those who reported a strong personal spirituality with those who did not. Those for whom religion or spirituality was highly important had healthier neural structures, with spirituality serving as a buffer against the neurological structures of depression. Cortical thickness was protective not just for severe depression but for every day subtle depressive symptoms. Highly spiritual people at high family risk of depression had greater cortical thickness than highly spiritual people at a low risk of depressions. High risk brains were found to be more sensitive to the impact of spirituality
What actually constitutes “Spirituality?” In her book The Awakened Brain, Miller outlines the universal dimensions of spirituality. She based her findings on a cross-cultural study in India, China, and the United States with 5500 participants, representing different world religious traditions as well as the category of nonreligious, secular, or spiritual-but-non-religious. Across the varied expressions, rituals, and sacred practices, five common “spiritual phenotypes” emerged:
- Altruism
- Love of Neighbor as Self
- Sense of Oneness
- Practice of Sacred Transcendence
- Adherence to Moral Code
The neurologic basis of spirituality: These spiritual experiences as described in narratives were also mapped with fMRI’s that measure blood flow in the brain to detect changes in neuronal activity.
Four clear patterns emerged:
- A powering down of the DMN, the Default Mode Network which can be considered the site of rumination.
- Activation of the ventral attention network (as opposed to the dorsal network which inhibits awareness) to allow for unanticipated perceptions outside of our immediate conscious awareness
- Activation of the frontotemporal network which promotes bondedness and relational intimacy and subcortical engagement to process positive emotions such as love and bliss and
- Reduced activation in the inferior parietal lobe (which causes the perception of separation between self and others) and increased activation of the posterior cingulate cortex (which is involved in emotion formation and processing, learning, and memory).
Spirituality is a muscle we can strengthen or let atrophy. Science demonstrates that our brains can allow for a reorientation of attention, a sense of love or bonding, and a sense of self that is transcendent and part of a greater whole. Spiritual awakening is a choice, a connection to a higher form of intelligence or consciousness for which all our brains are wired. It is up to us how we choose to exercise it – whether spending time in nature, meditation, yoga,12-step programs, therapy, art, altruistic acts of kindness and compassion, religious practice, or any other means. Ultimately, research confirms what many of us already knew – that a spiritual brain is a healthier brain.