Circadian (12): Night time prayer

A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of talking to a colleague, a consultant anaesthetist, who walked a similar path to mine, except that he is in a different medical role. We had a five-hour conversation about all sorts of things, and, of course, there was no way I would leave out medical science. Being spiritual, he asked me a very important question that I don’t think is discussed enough in the community: Do nighttime prayer and meditation harm your circadian rhythm?

If you’ve been following my circadian series, you will think that circadian science has been fully uncovered. The body, as I hope I have been able to demonstrate, is a precise machine whose programme is tied to some external forces. In the case of our circadian biology, the programme is the body’s understanding of what to do when, and the external forces are the Earth’s rotation and the sun’s energy.

A dozen articles, however, are never going to teach you everything about the human body. I have omitted many other factors that directly influence our biology, mainly to maintain simplicity and digestibility. There is quite a bit more foundation we have to build before I can talk freely about how our circadian rhythm is affected by the ionosphere, magnetosphere, Schumann resonance, radiofrequency, and high-frequency EMF. You see, our journey in knowledge is much like going through the rooms in a super-complex labyrinth. You can open a door to one room and have the area fully examined, only to find yourself at square one again when you open the next door.

In that manner, I don’t believe that we can know everything about anything. It doesn’t stop me from exploring the rooms, mainly for some amusement. Look, life is pretty simple: you maintain good company, look after your faith, sleep well, eat well, and go out in the sun—you don’t need to know complex science to be optimal. But if, like me, you want some drama, you can explore what we know about how these things are good for us. It doesn’t mean that we should lose sight of the fact that the rooms we are examining are still part of an infinite maze. If you can understand this, then you will understand the following: knowledge should make us humble. If, instead, it fuels pride, it will backfire and we will have missed the purpose of attaining knowledge. A person walking around without purpose might have good biology, but, invariably, they cannot maintain a healthy soul.

This is my long-winded way of expressing my support for prayer and meditation, whatever time of the day you may want to perform them. The bucketload of information we discussed about our biology in the past dozen articles has not shed the slightest light on the other half of our programme that is probably written in our souls. Deep inside us, we all yearn for a higher authority. Some call this entity God; others are averse to this term and offer replacements which contain the same role: Universe, Cosmos, Mother Nature, Supreme Being, or Ether. Yet others put dependence on entities like establishments, governments, leaders, science, wealth, and prestige. We know we can’t do it alone. We all just want to be looked after.

This yearning from an innate template we all have lives not in the physical dimension. Its main nourishment, therefore, is going to be spiritual. Throughout time, even in the midst of material distractions, countless people have maintained the health and connection of their souls. They invariably do this with some form of prayer and meditation. They have been able to live a balanced life that fulfills their physical needs whilst not neglecting their metaphysical necessities.

I think we can do the same. In fact, we can use those gems we found whilst going through the rooms in the labyrinth to enhance our experience further. Take lux as an example. After learning about how it affects AANAT, we really want to keep our lux to the minimum if we want to meditate at night. That means no phone-glancing at any time. One day, after learning about EMF, you will probably agree that it is best to meditate with your phone and Wi-Fi turned off.

If you recall the stages of sleep we talked about some time ago, you may want to know that the stages are actually defined by our brainwaves. For simplicity, the dominant waves in our sleep stages are Theta and Delta. Serious prayer and meditation can often slow your brainwaves down to these frequencies such that researchers like Dr Bruce O’Hara are convinced that some meditative states are akin to sleep, if not better. It seems that nighttime meditative states provide melatonin enhancement, better cortisol regulation, an increase in metabolic waste disposal, and improvement in neuroplasticity without shifting the circadian timing. Bruce’s experiment in 2010 was interesting: he showed that his subjects’ cognitive performance was better after meditation, went back to baseline after one hour, and regressed after a 40-minute nap. What will shock you is this: his subjects had no prior experience in meditation.

The scientific community’s opinion changed in 2010 thanks to Dr O’Hara’s landmark study. Prior to that, the consensus was that sleep is non-negotiable, such that if you slept only five hours a night, your cognition must decline over time. That was the sort of thing I was told at medical school. Remember the rooms in the labyrinth example? Well, the scientists couldn’t see the labyrinth for the rooms. Neither could they see the forest for the trees. Knowledge made them haughty, as they forgot to exercise humility.

I repeat, science is an amusement—and I am the first to admit guilt for its indulgence. But remember, we don’t often get our wisdom from amusements.