Hey, it's Ben Greenfield. Welcome to Fit Soul chapter 12. I am recording each week for you a brand new chapter from my book, Fit Soul, which you can also get for free at Fit Soulbook.com.

There's a digital version there. There's also a print copy that you can order to your house. It's relatively inexpensive. All you pay for is the shipping and handling. It's all at Fit Soulbook.com. But let's jump into today's topic.

Chapter 12. Prayer. Prayer has been on my mind quite a bit lately.

I suppose my desire to explore prayer and focus more on tapping into the power of prayer in my own life was partially sparked when I was writing chapter 19 of this book about union with God.

In that chapter, I alluded to the fact that it is simultaneously breathtaking and humbling to be able to speak daily with an actual deity or creator.

Since writing that chapter and discovering the deep meaning and fulfillment I've derived from the daily scripture reading practice outlined in the previous chapter, chapter 10.

While continuing to focus on building my union with God, I've continued to study prayer, pondering questions like, how can I practically implement prayer into my own life more often without it seeming like a formal, dry or intellectual affair, which it often seems to be for me?

What happens to my psychology and mood when I pray? How did great leaders and inspirational figures from history pray?

And so on. And I think I've found some pretty good answers to these questions. So in this chapter, I want to share those answers about prayer with you. The power of prayer.

Before delving into the practical aspects of how we can and should pray, it's important to understand how powerful prayer really can be.

In his thought provoking book, The Way of the Heart, connecting with God through prayer, wisdom and silence. Henry Núven writes, prayer is standing in the presence of God with the mind in the heart.

That is, at the point of our being where there are no divisions or distinctions and we are totally one.

Their God's spirit dwells and they're the great encounter takes place. Their heart speaks to heart because there we stand before the face of the Lord all seeing within us.

Thomas Meriton, a 20th century American trappist monk and social activist, was known as a great thinker, philosopher and development of God.

One of Meriton's most notable accomplishments was sharing his views of the transformative experience of what he described as a mystical union with God.

Meriton considered prayer to be the most worthy of all activities in which a human can engage with rewards that are twofold.

One, contact with God. And two, the attainment of the most elevated expression and highest actualization of one's own self.

I fully agree with Núven and Meriton. There's something very special that happens during prayer.

Something that goes beyond just reading the Bible, meditating, journaling, singing or any of the other spiritual disciplines I discuss elsewhere in this book.

Perhaps part of the power of prayer is related to what actually occurs on a biological level when we pray.

In the book Miracles Every Day, the story of one physician's inspiring faith and the healing power of prayer, you can read about a new field of science and faith study called neuro theology, which blends the existing fields of biology, neurology, psychology and theology.

At the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Andrew Newberg directs the Center for Spirituality in the Mind, where he's conducted studies of people who meditate or pray for long periods of time over the course of numerous years.

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