Talking Away Those Brain-Stress Blues

A man, middle-aged, reasonably healthy, walks into his living room. He’s a cleared an area in front of his gas-fireplace, and sits down, crossing his legs. He sits with god posture, eyes closed, arms loose in his lap. He takes a long deep breath, lets it out slowly. Another deep breath, another soothing exhalation. The man appears relaxed, at ease, content.

Blood flow in his cerebral prefontal cortices slowly decreases. He takes another breath, opens his mouth, and says “womba.”

He exhales. Breathes in. “womba choo dee latta.”

His posture straightens just slightly. He inhales. “womba choo dee matta fen, fenno chum de ganafed. Arrana sanipe. Arrana sanipe dee matta fen, womba choo dee matta fen ro sanipe, sanipe dreepa, sanipe dreepa saaaaaa….” He inhales, exhales, his lips murmuring more nonsense syllables.

None of the words come from any known language. He does this for an hour.

~~~

Glossolalia is the technical term for speaking tongues, a phenomena seemingly reserved for Pentecostal church meetings and Haitian voodoo rituals. Actually, glossolalia occurs all over the world in a diversity of cultures, including Japan, Egypt, and India. Adherents claim to be speaking a divine or lost language, either by channeling a holy spirituality or as the result of a gift from a god or ancestor.

But there’s more glossolalia than just nonsense syllables and church devotion. In 2006 a group of scientists studied the brains of those who could, at will, speak in tongues, and found that brain activity was different than for a control group. Another study, performed in 2010, found that people who spoke in tongues had lowers levels of the so-called “stress” hormone cortisol. This evidence suggests glossolalia is not merely a psychology phenomenon, but a biological one.

The scientific case for meditation as a means to reduce stress is well established. But glossolalia is not meditation. Andrew Newberg of the 2006 study, speaking to Dick Hanson and the DANA Foundation for an article on glossolalia, points out that as far as the biology of the brain is concerned, “In some sense, [glossolalia] is the opposite of the concentrative process of meditation.”

While it’s easy to dismiss the subject of speaking in tongues as nothing more than pseudo-scientific gibberish, the results of these studies suggest there’s more here than meets the ear. We live in a hectic, non-stop, information-overloading world, so any technique that one discovers to reduce stress and increase relaxation has to be worth taking the time to explore.

(But maybe try this one alone.)