Retrain Your Brain for a Fit Soul

I was antsy and feeling more irritable by the minute. I’d risen early, made my coffee like I did every morning, and was nestled on the couch under a cozy blanket—with my Bible and journal and soft worship music wafting from my iPhone. This had all the makings of a meaningful time with God, but for the life of me, I could not connect with Him or focus on His Word.   

This wasn’t the first morning I’d felt that way. I’d spent decades pressing into the discipline of morning devotions and had come to love the reality that the God of the universe wanted to spend time with me. But my attempts to pray had become increasingly haphazard and disjointed, and my ability to be attentive to God’s still, small voice or connect with Scripture was sorely lacking. The worst part was that these feelings of angst continued throughout my day, and I found myself in a permanent state of distraction.

I wasn’t alone. It seems that everywhere I go, people feel frazzled, plagued with incessant busyness and minds in perpetual motion. As a digital immigrant, one who wasn’t born into a life dominated by technology, I am keenly aware of a huge shift over the course of my lifetime in our way of being in this world, but I had no idea how this had affected the health of our souls.  

Then I read a book called The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains, and it all began to make sense. Author Nicholas G. Carr writes: “The distractions in our lives have been proliferating for a long time, but never has there been a medium that, like the Net, has been programmed to so widely scatter our attention and to do it so insistently.”

Before long I was immersed in research on how our brains are being rewired by smartphones, computers, tablets, e-readers, etc. In short, I learned that our brains have a property called “plasticity,” which means that they are always changing based on the things we do repeatedly over time. My quiet time struggles began to make sense—as I spent more and more time with my eyes glued to a screen, my brain had become a network of neural pathways that produced fast-paced, surface-level, ever-shifting mental activity. As unsettling as all this is, there is a silver lining, summarized by a slogan neuro scientists often cite: What has been wired in can be wired out.  

If you’ve struggled with focus, or found it impossible to sit quietly in God’s presence or connect meaningfully with the people whose paths you cross each day, you can do something about it.

In fact, the activities that secular scientists, psychologists, educators, and sociologists recommend to help rewire our brains and counteract technology’s negative effects are also found in ancient practices of the Christian faith. This was the impetus for my book, The Wired Soul: Finding Spiritual Balance in a Hyper-connected Age, in which I not only explore the science behind our digital dysfunction but offer a way out that can bring life to our spirits and health to our souls. Let me share three of the practices the book unfolds.

3 STEPS TO RETRAIN YOUR BRAIN FOR A HEALTHIER SOUL

1.  God-Focused Deep Breathing

One of the world’s leading neuro scientists, Dr. Andrew Newberg, has devoted his life to the study of prayer and meditation’s effect on the brain. While he is not a believer himself, Newberg summarizes his most important findings in a book called How God Changes Your Brain.  Newberg concluded that engaging in three things at the same time could literally rewire the brain over time. These include deep, diaphragmatic breathing, simple movement, and vocal sound. To that end, I created this simple, scientifically supported practice anyone can do:  

1. Sit quietly with your hands folded in a prayer posture.
2. Inhale with a deep breath in which your lungs expand with air.
3. Exhale slowly while doing two things. First, gently tap the fingers of your hands together as you continue to hold them in a prayer posture. Second, as you do this, speak or sing softly. You can recite Scripture such as the Lord’s Prayer, sing lines of hymns, or voice biblical affirmations about God. The key is to do this as you exhale and tap your fingers.

This practice might feel a bit odd at first, but it can renew your ability to focus in prayer faster than anything else I know. Beyond that, research shows that it reduces anxiety and depression, and increases your ability to pay attention throughout the day. Newberg suggests that doing this for 12 minutes a day will rewire your brain in about two months. 

2.  A New Take on Scripture Memory

Science shows that any kind of memory-enhancing program strengthens the neural pathways in our brains that increase our attention span, our ability to process information and solve problems, and possibly even our intelligence. Hiding God’s Word in our hearts through Scripture memory not only produces incredible spiritual growth but simultaneously rewires our brains for mental focus and acuity. What I’ve discovered is that memorizing random verses is really more difficult than taking large chunks, even entire chapters, to heart. Here are a few pointers to memorizing Scripture:

• Set a specific goal to memorize a section of Scripture within a certain time limit. Estimate one verse per day with one day off per week. I like to recommend Psalm 145 because of its richness in describing God’s character and ways.
• Set a specific time every day to both learn your new verse and practice the previous ones. This can be during morning devotions, lunch breaks, or afternoon walks or before bed.
• Review your verses when possible throughout the day—when waiting in lines, as you fall asleep at night, or when you wake up in the morning.

Dallas Willard once said, “While I always struggled with memorizing verses here and there, this past year I have memorized the books of Ephesians, James, and Philippians, and it has changed my life.” 

3.  Slow Reading

While living in a digital world has produced profound advantages in every area of our lives, we have also lost some of the most important capacities human beings have been blessed with. One of these is that of reading deeply—both for pleasure and growth. Because the Internet promotes surface thinking and continual movement, we find it difficult to sit quietly with a book in hand, taking in the wonders of the printed word. Science suggests that reading fosters deep thinking, a critical capacity we are in danger of losing as we surf the Web, continually distracted from the words we read by an ad here or a message there. Slow reading is a great antidote to surface thinking. Here are a few suggestions:

• Decide what book you will spend the next several weeks or months reading, and set aside a time to do so. It may be once a week or once a day, but make sure you have at least 30 minutes each time.
• Take a few minutes to calm and quiet your soul before you begin, remembering that reading is a pleasure and a gift.
• Read a paragraph at a time, pausing to ponder the words you read. Ask yourself questions from various points of view.
• Keep a journal, and jot down thoughts or quotes that are meaningful. Before you begin a new reading session, review those notes.

We can take control and use technology to our advantage, conquering that sense of angst by rewiring our brains as we bring health to our souls.

I have a love-hate relationship with technology. I do love all the things it enables me to do—from Skyping with my missionary sister in Lithuania, to shopping or paying my bills online, to keeping up with my grandkids’ sports events. But the reality is we are paying a high price as it chips away at the health of our souls and our spiritual journeys. Yet, our brains are so fearfully and wonderfully made that we don't have to remain victims of the digital revolution. So take control and use technology to your advantage and bring health to your soul.

~ By Tricia McCary Rhodes