This article talks about a research work that looked into how two very different spiritual practices—Buddhist jhāna meditation and Christian Pentecostal speaking in tongues—may actually share similar inner experiences and brain processes.

The researchers, who focus on brain science and spirituality, interviewed 116 practitioners from both traditions to understand how these practices feel from the inside, not just what they look like from outside.

Even though jhāna meditation is usually very calm, silent, and controlled, while speaking in tongues is expressive, emotional, and involves vocal sounds and body movement, the study found surprising similarities in how practitioners describe their experiences.

In both cases, people report a gradual process where attention becomes deeply focused, emotions and bodily sensations increase, and then there is a kind of release where personal control reduces or disappears.

For meditators, this feels like letting go into deep absorption, sometimes described as a peaceful “falling upward” where effort reduces and awareness becomes stable and pleasant.

For those who speak in tongues, it may feel like a powerful spiritual flow where they believe the experience is not self-produced but guided by a higher power, often leading to emotional release like crying, shaking, or joy.The researchers suggest that both practices may operate through a similar brain process they describe as an “attention–arousal–release loop.

” In this model, focusing attention increases emotional intensity, and that intensity in turn strengthens attention, eventually leading to a state where effort drops and the experience feels automatic or self-sustaining.

They also link this idea to modern neuroscience theories like predictive processing, which explains how the brain constantly builds expectations to interpret reality.

According to the researchers, both practices may use this same brain system to create states of deep transformation, calm, or spiritual connection, even though the cultural expressions are very different.The study is still ongoing, and researchers are now trying to measure bodily and brain activity to confirm these findings.