The Unexpected Mind Hack Found in Buddhist Meditation and Christian Speaking in Tongues
Wednesday, February 19, 2025.
Here’s one for you. Two spiritual practices walk into a neuroscience lab. One, Tenzin Kunga a Buddhist monk, radiating calm, his mind locked in deep, undisturbed jhāna meditation.
The other, Bobby Joe Buford, a charismatic Christian, eyes closed, hands lifted, speaking in tongues with fervent abandon.
At first glance, they couldn’t be more different—one the epitome of stillness, the other of ecstatic movement.
But according to a study in the American Journal of Human Biology, they might just be running the same cognitive software.
Welcome to the “Attention, Arousal, and Release Spiral,” the latest brain hack hiding in plain sight across religious traditions.
Neuroscientists have uncovered that Buddhist meditation and glossolalia (the fancy term for speaking in tongues) trigger a similar feedback loop in the brain, leading to deep states of joy and surrender.
This suggests that despite their stylistic differences—monks doing their best impression of a human statue while Pentecostals go full rock concert—both traditions may have independently cracked the code on how to hack the mind into peak spiritual experience.
The Odd Couple: Stillness and Ecstasy
Let’s start with Buddhist jhāna meditation.
Rooted in ancient tradition, this practice involves laser-focused attention, usually on the breath or a mental image (nimitta).
Over time, the meditator enters an altered state characterized by profound tranquility and an undeniable sense of joy—think less “stressed-out office worker” and more “cosmically serene Jedi.”
Detailed step-by-step instructions have been passed down through the centuries to help practitioners achieve these blissful states.
Now, on the other end of the spectrum, we have speaking in tongues.
If you’ve ever stepped into a charismatic church service, you’ve likely seen this phenomenon—devotees suddenly uttering what seems to be an indecipherable mix of syllables, their bodies often trembling, laughing, or even weeping.
Unlike Buddhist meditation, which has a well-documented roadmap, glossolalia operates with a “trust the process” ethos.
There are no formal guidelines—just spontaneous, Spirit-driven speech passed down through lived experience and religious tradition. Yet, despite these differences, both practices induce states of extreme focus, joy, and an eventual letting-go of control.
What’s Happening Under the Hood?
To probe these similarities, Michael Lifshitz at McGill University and his colleagues conducted a study comparing jhāna meditators and Pentecostal Christians.
They interviewed folks fresh off a ten-day jhāna retreat (presumably still blissed out) and analyzed data from 40 charismatic Christians from the Mind and Spirit Project, along with 66 subjects from a neurophenomenology study on prayer.
The team sought to decode the mental mechanics underlying these states.
Using a research approach called neurophenomenology (which is just as cool as it sounds), they combined first-person accounts with neuroscience data, mapping out the cognitive sequence at play.
What they found was a shared neural dance—both groups described cycling through the same pattern: focus, arousal, joy, and surrender.
The Attention, Arousal, and Release Spiral
Here’s how the cycle works in both practices:
Attention: Practitioners intensely focus—Buddhists on their breath, Christians on God.
Arousal: As focus sharpens, emotions and physiological responses ramp up—meditators feel tingles of joy; tongue-speakers describe an inner fire.
Release: The crescendo leads to a cognitive shift where control is relinquished, allowing for deeper immersion—meditators “let go” into jhāna, tongue-speakers surrender to the Holy Spirit.
This cycle creates a reinforcing feedback loop: heightened focus amplifies joy, which in turn makes it easier to sustain attention, deepening the experience.
Neuroscientists have observed similar feedback loops in monotropic flow states, psychedelic experiences, and even elite athletic performance (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990; Carhart-Harris et al., 2014).
The Neuroscience of Ecstasy (Religious and Otherwise)
Both jhāna meditation and glossolalia activate similar neural pathways:
Prefrontal Cortex: Initially engaged to focus attention, it eventually deactivates during deep states of surrender (Newberg et al., 2006).
Limbic System: The emotional powerhouse of the brain, responsible for the joy and arousal described in both practices (Davidson & Lutz, 2008).
Default Mode Network (DMN): This self-referential part of the brain, linked to ego and mind-wandering, shows decreased activity in deep meditation and intense spiritual states (Brewer et al., 2011).
Notably, brain scans of glossolalia practitioners have shown reduced activity in the language-producing areas (Broca’s region), strongly suggesting that their speech isn’t consciously controlled (Newberg et al., 2006).
Meanwhile, fMRI studies of jhāna meditators indicate increased activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, a region associated with deep focus and emotional regulation (Hölzel et al., 2011).
The Skeptics Weigh In
Not everyone is convinced.
Some researchers argue that glossolalia is primarily a learned behavior driven by social reinforcement rather than an innate neurological process (Spanos & Hewitt, 1979).
Similarly, skeptics of jhāna meditation suggest that its supposed states of absorption might just be extreme relaxation, nothing more mystical than a really effective nap (Lutz et al., 2004).
Yet, the existence of parallel neurological effects across these vastly different traditions makes it difficult to dismiss outright.
The question is not whether these states are “real” (because, phenomenologically speaking, they sure as sh*t are), but whether they share an evolutionary function—perhaps as a way to temporarily suspend the constant, grinding noise of self-conscious thought.
A Common Thread in the Human Experience
So what’s the takeaway?
Despite theological and cultural differences, Buddhist monks and Pentecostal Christians might just be unwitting allies in the quest to unlock higher states of consciousness.
And perhaps, lurking beneath all spiritual practices is a universal mechanism—a neurobiological lever that, when pulled, ushers humans into profound states of transcendence, connection, and meaning.
As Lifshitz puts it: “Understanding these processes better might help people cultivate deeper states of well-being. And maybe, just maybe, help us see that beyond dogma and ritual, we’re all wired for wonder.”
Seems we are to appreciating the power of awe once more. Does it get any better than this?
Be Well, stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
Brewer, J. A., Worhunsky, P. D., Gray, J. R., Tang, Y. Y., Weber, J., & Kober, H. (2011). Meditation experience is associated with differences in default mode network activity and connectivity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(50), 20254-20259.
Carhart-Harris, R. L., Erritzoe, D., Williams, T., Stone, J. M., Reed, L. J., Colasanti, A., ... & Nutt, D. J. (2014). Neural correlates of the psychedelic state as determined by fMRI studies with psilocybin. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(23), 8463-8468.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. Harper & Row.
Davidson, R. J., & Lutz, A. (2008). Buddha’s brain: Neuroplasticity and meditation. IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, 25(1), 176-174.
Hölzel, B. K., Lazar, S. W., Gard, T., Schuman-Olivier, Z., Vago, D. R., & Ott, U. (2011). How does mindfulness meditation work? Proposing mechanisms of action from a conceptual and neural perspective. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6(6), 537-559.
Newberg, A., Wintering, N., Morgan, D., & Waldman, M. R. (2006). The measurement of regional cerebral blood flow during glossolalia: A preliminary SPECT study. Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, 148(1), 67-71.