Research Shows Rituals Spell Anxiety Relief

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Familiar Rituals

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Familiar routines are very important tools for minimizing tension, according to brand-new research study by UConn’s Dimitris Xygalatas. Credit: Dimitris Xygalatas

With graduation events, wedding events, funeral service, yearly parades, and numerous other events aborted in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, it appears that our lives are going to lack familiar routines – simply when we require them most.

UConn Assistant Professor of Anthropology Dimitris Xygalatas research studies routines and how they affect our health. In brand-new research study released in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Xygalatas and partners from Masaryk University, Czech Republic, consisting of previous UConn trainee Martin Lang, take a look at the essential functions routines play in minimizing our stress and anxiety levels.

“In the current context of the pandemic, if you were a completely rational being — perhaps an extraterrestrial who’s never met any actual humans — you would expect that given the current situation people wouldn’t bother doing things that do not seem crucial to their survival. Maybe they wouldn’t care so much about art, sports, or ritual, and they would focus on other things,” states Xygalatas. “If you were to think that, it would show you didn’t know much about human nature, because humans care deeply about those things.”

Further, Xygalatas states, routines play an essential function in individuals’s lives, assisting them deal with stress and anxiety and working as systems of strength.

This research study began years earlier, states Xygalatas. He describes that to study something as complex as human habits, it is essential to approach the concern from several angles to gather assembling proof. First, in a lab research study, they discovered that causing stress and anxiety made individuals’s habits more ritualized; that is, more recurring and structured. So the next action was to take this research study out to real-life circumstances, where they analyzed whether carrying out cultural routines in their natural context certainly assists specialists deal with stress and anxiety.

Ritual in Mauritius

The function of routine behaviour in stress and anxiety decrease: an examination of Marathi spiritual practices in Mauritius. Credit: Dimitris Xygalatas

“This approach also goes to show the limitations of any study. One study can only tell us a tiny bit about anything, but by using a variety of methods like my team and I are doing, and by going between the highly controlled space of the lab and the culturally relevant place that is real life we are able to get a more holistic perspective,” he states.

The experiment reported in their existing publication happened in Mauritius, where the scientists caused stress and anxiety by asking individuals to prepare a prepare for handling a natural catastrophe that would be examined by federal government professionals. This was difficult, as floods and cyclones are really essential hazards because context. Following this stress-inducing job, one half of the group carried out a familiar spiritual routine at the regional temple while the other half were asked to sit and unwind in a non-religious area.

The scientists discovered that the speech achieved success in causing tension for both groups however those who carried out the spiritual routine experienced a higher decrease in both mental and physiological tension, which was examined by utilizing wearable innovation to determine heart rate irregularity.

Stress itself is essential, states Xygalatas: “Stress acts as a motivation that helps us focus on our goals and rise to meet our challenges, whether those involve studying for an exam, flying a fighter jet, or scoring that game-winning goal. The problem is that beyond a certain threshold, stress ceases to be useful. In fact, it can even be dangerous. Over time, its effects can add up and take a toll on your health, impairing cognitive function, weakening the immune system, and leading to hypertension or cardiovascular disease. This type of stress can be devastating to our normal functioning, health, and well-being.”

This is where Xygalatas and his group think routine plays an essential function in handling tension.

“The mechanism that we think is operating here is that ritual helps reduce anxiety by providing the brain with a sense of structure, regularity, and predictability,” he states.

Xygalatas describes that in current years we have actually started to understand the brain is not a passive computer system however an active predictive device, signing up details and making forecasts to assist us make it through.

“We come to expect certain things — our brain fills in the missing information for the blind spot in our vision, and prompts us to anticipate the next word in a sentence — all of these things are due to this effect because our brain makes active predictions about the state of the world.”

Well-practiced routines, like the one consisted of in the research study, are recurring and foreseeable and for that reason the scientists think they provide our brains the sense of control and structure that we yearn for, and those sensations assist ease tension. This tension minimizing effect of routines might be a method to deal with persistent stress and anxiety.

In today’s difficult context, we see routine taking various types, from individuals collecting to praise health care employees, to virtual choirs singing throughout the web. Xygalatas likewise keeps in mind a current research study that tracked the boost in individuals typing the word “prayer” in Google searches. In this unforeseeable time, individuals are continuing to discover relief in routine.

“One thing I like to tell my students is that we as human beings are not as smart as we’d like to think. But thankfully, we are at least smart enough to be able to outsmart ourselves. We have many ways of doing this; for instance, when we look at ourselves in the mirror before an interview and tell ourselves, ‘OK, I can do this.’ Or when we take deep breaths to calm down. We have all of these hacks that we can use on our very brain. We could rationalize it and tell ourselves ‘OK, I’m going to lower my heartbeat now.’ Well, that doesn’t work. Ritual is one of those mental technologies that we can use to trick ourselves into doing that. That is what these rituals do — they act like life hacks for us.”

Going forward, Xygalatas mentions that he and his associates mean to do more deal with the specific systems underlying these results of routine.

“Of course it is a combination of factors, and that is why ritual is so powerful: because it combines a number of mechanisms that have to do both with the behavior itself, the physical movements, and with the cultural context, the symbolism, and the expectations that go into that behavior,” he states. “To be able to disentangle those things is what we are trying to do next: we are examining these factors one at a time. Those rituals have gone through a process of cultural selection and they are still with us because they fulfil specific functions. They are life hacks that have been with and have served us well since the dawn of our kind.”

Reference: “The role of ritual behaviour in anxiety reduction: an investigation of Marathi religious practices in Mauritius” by M. Lang, J. Krátký and D. Xygalatas, 29 June 2020, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.
DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2019.0431