Physical and Mental Benefits of Meditating on the Rosary

Most everyone has probably heard of the spiritual benefits of saying the rosary, but not a lot of people have even thought about the physical and mental benefits of saying the rosary. A lot of people mistakenly think that saying the Rosary is just rattling off Hail Marys as fast as can be. For a lot of people, that seems to be exactly what is happening but that isn’t the way the rosary is properly said. The rosary is a set of twenty meditations on twenty events in the Bible. To meditate on these biblical events means to deliberate about their spiritual meaning while saying the Hail Marys out loud.

Personalize your Meditation

One method to personalize this meditation is to put yourself in the event, next to Mary and Jesus. For instance, it helps me to think about Jesus looking right at me from the cross (the mystery here is the crucifixion), next to Mary, John, and Mary Magdalene,  and telling me how much he loves me and forgives me, in spite of my many mortal sins. By personalizing the mysteries of sacred scripture, it helps to create a mindset of improving our life spiritually, eliminating sin, and desiring additional grace through the sacraments that we never seem to have had before. It’s important to remember that the very first words of salvation in the New Testament were “Hail, Full of Grace.” By repeating those salvific words over and over again, we not only drive the devil crazy, but we are asking Mary and her spouse, the Holy Spirit, to take over our lives, for Jesus.

Two Things at Once

Some people find it hard to say a Hail Mary and then simultaneously think about a bible mystery. It is sometimes difficult to think about one thing while saying another, but just think about how often this happens in our daily lives. Most of us have run across someone who flatters us with their speech, at the same time they’re thinking about how they are going to trap us into giving them our money (saleswomen!).  Politicians often say that they are going to help us, at the same time that they are thinking about how they are going to personally benefit from our vote for them. Husbands also say “Yes, Dear,” at the same time they are thinking, “Please, Lord,  let Dallas make that field goal!” So it’s not uncommon to say one thing while thinking about another. So now, let’s delve into some of the physical AND mental benefits of rosary meditations.

Caveat Emptor

Nothing in this article should preclude anyone from first getting medical attention from a doctor.  Sirach 38 goes into great detail about how God made physicians, medicines from the earth, and pharmacists for the good of mankind. In my opinion, meditating on the Rosary and seeking medical attention is the best solution. St. Luke was a physician, and in all probability used medicine and prayer in his practice. We should all do the same.

An Enhanced Immune System

By meditating properly on the twenty bible events, your immune system is enhanced! According to Harvard University, stress has a very negative impact on the immune system, but meditation, if done correctly, always reduces stress.  Why? Here is a quote from their website:

Stress is immunosuppressive. Research into this pernicious relationship between stress and disease has piqued interest in the ways that contemplative practices might positively influence the immune system. According to a large body of evidence, meditation appears to have profound effects on immune function in health and disease because of its ability to reduce stress. Two main facets of mindfulness meditation are equanimity (being calm and even tempered) and focused attention. Equanimity towards one’s thoughts decreases reactivity to stressful stimuli, and focused attention helps reduce the tendency towards the type of ruminative thinking (being thoughtful) that can activate the stress pathway.

 I’m certainly no medical doctor, but I do know, from personal experience, that after meditation, I always feel more relaxed. What I didn’t know is that reducing stress also enhances the immune system. In this era of Covid 19, who doesn’t want an improved immune system! When you throw in the added benefit of meditating on the Word of God, that is like turbocharging your meditation, because reading and meditating on scripture always drives the devil away from your imagination, which is where he first attacks us in order to get us to sin.

Reduced Blood Pressure

Again, according to Harvard University, meditation reduces one’s blood pressure. According to their website:

In one study, elderly people with hard-to-treat isolated systolic hypertension who underwent relaxation response training were more likely to be able to control their blood pressure to the point whereby some could reduce and even eliminate their blood pressure medications. Further research revealed that when blood pressure falls during the relaxation response, inflammation and blood vessel constriction become less active and blood vessels widen.

Reduced blood pressure is indeed a wonderful thing, and this medical fact will definitely help me when I meditate on the crucifixion of Jesus when he lost every drop of his precious blood (a blood pressure of 0/0) to atone for my sins.

Improved Memory

Yes, meditation does improve your ability to recall past events. As we get older, this gets harder and harder to do. But if we meditate, we fight back against this degeneration. According to Mindworks.org, meditation increases the blood flow to the brain, which strengthens the blood vessels in the cerebral cortex, thus improving your memory! I do not know if this somehow will prevent the onset of Alzheimer’s in the future (again, I’m not a doctor), but I do know that it certainly can’t hurt to improve our memory through meditation as we age. And as previously mentioned, because we are meditating on the life of Christ through the rosary, our meditation is truly enhanced by God over all other kinds of meditation.

Overcoming Depression and Anxiety

These are two very common maladies in today’s society. Depression is when one is overwhelmed with sadness about past events, and anxiety is when one is overly worried about the future. I think that everyone, sooner or later, will go through some portion of both of these. In the rosary mystery of the “Agony in the Garden,” Jesus sweat blood in anxiety, not only over the physical pain of His Passion that was soon to come but also because of the betrayal of one of his apostles, Judas. Sister Catherine Emmerich, a visionary, also relates that Jesus was overwhelmed with sadness about the millions of people in the future who would not take advantage of His Passion to save themselves, preferring the temporary things of this world over heavenly things, which only leads to hell.

According to Harvard University:

Meditation has been found to change certain brain regions that are specifically linked with depression. For instance, scientists have shown that the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) becomes hyperactive in depressed people. The mPFC is often called the “me center” because this is where you process information about yourself, such as worrying about the future and ruminating about the past. When people get stressed about life, the mPFC goes into overdrive.

Another brain region associated with depression is the amygdala, or “fear center.” This is the part of the brain responsible for the fight-or-flight response, which triggers the adrenal glands to release the stress hormone cortisol in response to fear and perceived danger.

These two brain regions work off each other to cause depression. The “me center” gets worked up reacting to stress and anxiety, and the fear center response leads to a spike in cortisol levels to fight a danger that’s only in your mind. Research has found that meditation helps break the connection between these two brain regions. “When you meditate, you are better able to ignore the negative sensations of stress and anxiety, which explains, in part, why stress levels fall when you meditate,” says Dr. Denninger.

Another way meditation helps the brain is by protecting the hippocampus (a brain area involved in memory). One study discovered that people who meditated for 30 minutes a day for eight weeks increased the volume of gray matter in their hippocampus, and other research has shown that people who suffer from recurrent depression tend to have a smaller hippocampus.

Well, all of the above can be summarized by saying that meditation reduces stress in your brain, thus reducing depression and anxiety!

Better Sleep

Who doesn’t toss and turn in bed, worrying about that big presentation to the boss tomorrow, or worrying if his crops will get enough rain to grow before harvest, or worrying about a personal relationship? I certainly do. But meditation can help with this because as previously mentioned, it reduces stress and anxiety. Just try saying a rosary before bedtime. It always works!

Reduced Pain

According to ecoinstitute.org, people who meditated had a 57% reduction in their pain level. Why? Meditation rewires the brain’s pain circuitry, so that the stimulus for pain, that is, our expectation of it, is significantly reduced. According to their website:

Neuronal pathways within the brain get programmed every time you expect pain to occur — in time, less and less stimulus is needed to trigger the pain reflex. Eventually, the simple thought of pain becomes the true source, not necessarily the ailment itself. Thinking of pain creates more pain, put simply.

Meditation has been proven to healthily and naturally release “feel good” endorphins, which are up to 100 times more powerful than modern medicine’s best painkiller, morphine. Plus, mother nature’s pain reliever has no side effects. No need to fill a pain prescription at the pharmacy, meditation allows you to tap into endorphins’ massive healing power any time you want.

Additional Benefits

There are other benefits as well, like increased attention span, increased willpower, and more compassion for others, which I can’t delve into here, due to the length of this article. But just know that meditation, ESPECIALLY on the twenty mysteries of the Bible, will drastically change your mental health, your physical health, and your spiritual health.

How to Meditate

Some people have trouble with getting started on meditating on the rosary, mainly because they are so used to having to do something to make something happen. This is just the opposite. It helps me to find a comfortable chair (yes, kneeling is probably better, but I’m old and have trouble with that), close my eyes, and go perfectly limp in my entire body. I breathe in thinking “JE,” and then I breathe out deeply, thinking “SUS” or “Jesus.” I do this over and over again until I am 100% perfectly relaxed, with no tension in any part of my body. For some, meditation music with running water in the background may help. Yes, the rosary can be said in your car going to work, and I also do that. But it is a lot harder to relax then, with everybody else on the freeway zooming in and out of your space.

Just One More Thing

One additional thing I would add. Meditation on Christ, which is when our mind initiates thoughts and images of the bible mysteries, can lead to infused contemplation, which is when God implants thoughts and images into our minds. This is what happened to a lot of saints. Personal meditation on Christ and Mary led to Jesus implanting holy and wonderful thoughts and images of heaven into their minds, which, I think, is the ultimate good here on earth.

For sure, do not meditate on Yoga, which invokes the names of Hindu “gods,” who are really demons.

In the words of St. John Paul II in his encyclical ROSARIUM VIRGINIS MARIAE : “Why not try it?”  One great benefit is that your secret sin that you repeatedly confess in the confessional will slowly but surely go away, due to Mary’s intercession to Jesus for your salvation!