[IslamCity] The psychological Wisdom of Prayers in Islam was proven in Science and Psychology:

Sun, 10 Jul 2005 05:46:37 -0700

The psychological Wisdom of Prayers in Islam was proven in Science and Psychology:

The sections of this article are:

1-  The psychological Wisdom of Prayers in Islam was proven in the Science of Psychology.
2-  The Psychological and Scientific Proofs.
3-  Conclusion.

The total number of minutes of the 5-daily Prayers in Islam are approximately 15 to 20 minutes, except for Friday, where the noon Prayer lasts for about 1/2 hour, because Muslims spend most of it listening to the Sheikh's (Minister) preaching.  The Friday prayer was really made to be a weekly meeting for the local Muslim community to get educated and to stay with the events that are effecting the Muslims.  The Preacher, or Sheikh, would choose a topic and talk about it for about 20 minutes, with providing Islamic quotes and references to help strengthen his points and argument.

Anyway, the Wisdom of Prayer in Islam is to

(1) Create a Spiritual connection between Allah Almighty and the person;

(2) To relief the person's mind completely from life's stress and issues, by taking a mental and physical break.

Please visit: Can we use other than the language of Arabic when we pray to Allah Almighty?, to see the Quranic Proof about the Wisdom of Prayer being for creating a spiritual connection between the Muslim and Allah Almighty.

Having said all of that, let us now look at what psychologists have to say about taking a daily 15 to 20 minute mental and physical break:

 

The Psychological and Scientific Proofs:

 

This article was taken from: http://www.selfsoulcenter.org/generic.html?pid=5

Stress Relief

Mindbody Medicine: Stress & Acute Stress Disorder, What you can do to help yourself! by Rod Birney MD

The Stress of Our Lives:
Even before the terrorist attack of September 11, most of us would say we already had stressful lives. The pace and demands of modern life can feel overwhelming and threatening. Stress is a normal physiologic response to help us meet threat or danger, real or perceived. The stress response sends blood away from our skin and digestive systems and to our muscles and brain mobilizing our energy to attack or move away.

One teacher gave me the example of the stress and relaxation response in a deer he observed. The deer smelled danger. His whole body tensed, respiration, heart rate, muscles all poised to flee. The danger passed and the deer began to have twitching in his muscles as he relaxed to resume grazing.

The Problem :
The stress response becomes problematic when it is chronic, when there is never a time or a place that feels safe for us to relax and resume the normal pattern of our lives. When our nervous and hormonal systems stay in a constant state of hyper vigilance to danger we begin to burn out.

Additionally when the stress involves witnessing or experiencing events that involve actual or threatened death, many people may initially experience fear, helplessness, or horror. A common pattern of symptoms may arise. This is called acute stress disorder.  

Symptoms of acute stress disorder may include: 
-Dissociative symptoms of numbing or detachment.
-Decreased awareness of surroundings, depersonalization, derealization, dissociative amnesia.
-The traumatic event may be re-experienced through recurrent images, thoughts, dreams, flashbacks, sense of reliving the experience, or distress upon exposure to reminders of the event.
-Avoidance of stimuli that arouse recollections of the trauma, ie thoughts, feelings, conversations, activities, places, people.
-Increased arousal, anxiety, difficulty sleeping,
-Irritability, poor concentration, hyper vigilance, exaggerated startle response, motor restlessness ( the fight or flight response).

When the perceived threat is life threatening, or there are multiple, continual stresses, the stress response is more intense.

Many people in our nation and the world today live in continual danger. In the inner city gang violence creates an environment where the danger is constant and real. Over 500 million people in the wold everyday are in the constant stresses of the danger of battle, imprisonment, torture, or starvation.

What To Do

Relaxation Response:
Humanity has known for thousands of years that there are certain techniques or skills that help us relax as human beings. It was not until the 70?s that more formal research was being done. Herbert Benson MD from Harvard who is a cardiologist and others started doing pioneering research on relaxation techniques including meditation, diaphragmatic breathing, imagery/visualization, yoga, progressive muscle relaxation, mindfulness repetitive christian prayer, autogenic training, repetitive exercise. He found all of them, if done over time had similar physiological responses, and reversed the effects of the stress response.

Note   The Muslims' total of 15 to 20 minutes 5-daily Prayers included repetitive physical exercise, meditation, and freeing of mind from the natural life and connecting with GOD Almighty.


Continuing with the article.....

Benefits included:
-Reduction of generalized anxiety. Also may reduce the frequency and severity of panic attacks, improve mild depression.
-Prevents stress from becoming cumulative. Unabated stress tends to build up over time. Doing the relaxation response once a day gives your body the chance to break the pattern of stress and recover from the effects. Even sleep may not do this if you have not given yourself the chance to be deeply relaxed while awake.
-Increased energy and productivity.
-Improved concentration and memory, keeps mind from racing.
-Reduction of insomnia and fatigue, sleep that is deeper and more sound.
-Prevention of disorders that can be increased by stress such as hypertension, migraines, asthma, and ulcers.
-Increased self-confidence and reduced self blame. For many, stress and self-criticism go hand in hand along with feelings of inadequacy. People perform better and feel better when relaxed.
-Increased availability of feelings, muscle tension is one of the chief impediments to an awareness of your feelings.

Relaxation Response as a Self Care Technique:
Dr. Benson found that the common characteristics of these interventions was a focus of attention on something of neutral or positive value, and the passive disregard for the normal thought that would arise. By training your internal attention to focus away from the mental and physical patterns of stress and move towards something of neutral or positive valued the pattern of the stress response was broken and a relaxation response would develop. Benson coined the term Relaxation Response to describe this self care technique.

To practice:
Choose a word, sound, phrase, prayer, image, or physical activity of neutral or positive value. Keep your attention on this focus; ie silently repeating the word peace, or going for a walk and saying right or left silently to yourself during your outing

Passively disregard your everyday thoughts when they occur during your relaxation practice, and bring yourself back to your focus. Do this 1-2 times daily for 10-20 minutes to break patterns of stress response on mental and biochemical levels.

Take a Break From the News:
Since the attacks many report themselves addicted to the news. When there is ongoing stress one strategy is to stop our exposure to stress. A common prescription in mindbody medicine for people feeling overwhelmed by the events of their lives and the world is to take a break from the news for a specific period of time. In our modern world we have to deal with images of danger from not only our lives, but all over the world. While it is important to stay informed?if you are overwhelmed, you will have difficulty managing your life and helping others.

Think of the news as food for your mind and be selective with the quantity and quality of what you take in. Otherwise you will feel bloated and sick. Take a break for a day or a week and notice how you are impacted. How can you stay informed in the least agitating manner? How informed do you need to be?

Self Recognition:
Since our mind is a survival mechanism, it naturally seems to focus on danger and problems, often to the exclusion of what is going well! This tendency is called negative selection in cognitive psychology.

Life brings us negative, neutral, and positive moments of experience. Our daily lives are a combination of these moments of experience, although they may feel to be mainly negative. By taking time to recognize positive moments of experience we can change the perception of our lives without the circumstances being different.

Since many of us are now focussing on fear and a lack of safety, it could be helpful to begin to recognize moments of happiness to counter this negative focus.

To Practice:
Before bedtime, record in a notebook three moments of happiness that occurred during your day. Remember to include the small things. Do this for one week. ( exercise from Self Recognition by Radha Conrad, M.A. ) .

Journaling:
This can be a wonderful self care practice to begin managing your emotions and struggles. Research by Dr. James Pennybaker shows that the most effective form of journaling is to take an area of worry or concern and journal about the facts and your feelings. His research showed that journaling about an area for 15 minutes a day for four days in a row could produce a positive impact on individuals for up to six months!

Physical Exercise:
Physical exercise can help prevent stress from becoming chronic or severe. It gives an outlet for the energy produced by the body in the stress response, and can also be a relaxation response. So remember to stay active and design an exercise program that honors your physical capacities and conditions.


Note    Again, the Muslims' total of 15 to 20 minutes 5-daily Prayers included repetitive physical exercise, meditation, and freeing of mind from the natural life and connecting with GOD Almighty.  It is an active exercise that honors the physical capacities and conditions.

By the way, in Islam, those who have physical limitations/problems such as handicap conditions, can perform their Prayers while sitting down on a chair.


Continuing with the article.....

Remember there is no one way that is best for everybody to manage the stress of living in our complex world. Search to find ways that are most effective for you. Take time each day to care for yourself. By caring for ourselves we naturally begin to care for others.

 






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{Invite (mankind, O Muhammad ) to the Way of your Lord (i.e. Islam) with wisdom (i.e. with the Divine Inspiration and the Qur'an) and fair preaching, and argue with them in a way that is better. Truly, your Lord knows best who has gone astray from His Path, and He is the Best Aware of those who are guided.}
(Holy Quran-16:125)

{And who is better in speech than he who [says: "My Lord is Allah (believes in His Oneness)," and then stands straight (acts upon His Order), and] invites (men) to Allah's (Islamic Monotheism), and does righteous deeds, and says: "I am one of the Muslims."} (Holy Quran-41:33)

The prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said: "By Allah, if Allah guides one person by you, it is better for you than the best types of camels." [al-Bukhaaree, Muslim]

The prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him)  also said, "Whoever calls to guidance will have a reward similar to the reward of the one who follows him, without the reward of either of them being lessened at all."
[Muslim, Ahmad, Aboo Daawood, an-Nasaa'ee, at-Tirmidhee, Ibn Maajah]
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