It calms me, and helps me feel less anxious about things. I pray for many things, but most often, it’s for the health and safety of all my loved ones. When I pray for us to be watched over, right before I go to sleep, it gives me a sense of peace and I fall asleep easier.

For someone with severe anxiety, that sense of peace is very nice.

I have always believed in the power of prayer. It calms me and gives me someone to talk to when I’m afraid or needing help for myself or for others.

I just know it can calm my mind, for sure.It gives us faith and hope for our future.By praying we develop a relationship with God. I don’t believe in praying for material benefits and am sure such prayers won’t be heard. Pray with all your heart and it will definitely be heard!

I was once a true believer too, long, long ago. One of the reasons I couldn’t continue to be was that I never, ever saw anything happen that I could attribute to prayer, not even when I was surrounded by faithful believers and was too young and innocent myself to be very cynical.

However, I have seen that those who did believe appeared to derive benefit from their actual belief in itself, if not from the activity.

I’ve experienced the calming, mind-clearing benefits of meditation, and I’ll grant the same for prayer if that’s how it works for someone, but that’s something we do for ourselves and not something that is conferred by another being upon petition.

I can tell you I have had a major fall out with not doing prayer as in, I have developed anxiety, and less level headed, more hot headed on the road, more defensive, very skeptical and blunt in peoples faces now.

Come to think of it, I felt more like a hippie when I would hand the burden of my life over to God. I was more carefree. Thanks for reminding me I should pray/meditate talk to God/The Universe/Myself more.

The only thing that’s ever felt like prayer to me is chanting the Maha Mantra. It makes me feel calm and happy, and when I get to chant it en masse it’s kind of a rush.

I was one of the crazy Pentecostal types, so I spent many days after church unable to speak due to what we called the ‘apostolic croupe’.

From about 10 to 19, prayer was exciting, and comforting. I was often scared as a teenager, and spent a lot of time talking to god about the second coming. My church was convinced God was coming back before 2000. I was 14, and not done with Earth. I used to spend hours in my tree fort begging God to at least let me turn 16 before the Rapture.

As an adult, I started feeling doubt, and as a result guilt. Most of my daily prayer sessions were repentent, asking God to forgive me for not trusting him enough, and begging for guidance to help me get back to him. The lack of change felt a lot like rejection at the time.

Seek, did you speak in tongues? I’m not entirely sure what that is.

Yes, I did. Strangely, it sounded a lot like Japanese. I’m sure it had nothing to do with the hours of anime I watched every day.

My husband’s sounded like a mixture of Egyptian and Ron Pearlman in Quest for Fire.

I chalk it up to psychisomatics these days, but it was totally real to me then.

I started praying about 10 years ago, after not really having done it at all since I was young and went to church with my family. I didn’t really understand it at that age, so it was just saying words. As an adult I had a time when I was completely unsure which way to go, I asked for some guidance and felt like I got it.

I’m not religious at all, and I think praying is highly personal so don’t mention it to just about anyone. I guess if I’m 100% truthful I’m a little embarrassed by it, because I can’t explain it, so it should need more justification if I’m going to give it power over my life. But when I do it, it feels right, and I don’t want to argue the details with anyone because I don’t have them.

I’m not sure if the answers come from inside or out, from some omnipotent kid playing a video game, or some yet undiscovered physical law that thoughts affect something around us. Maybe it’s simply me answering me. But when I pray the hair on my neck stands up, and it feels like something is happening. Like if you walk into a huge open field and absolutely no one is around. It’s odd and powerful.

In the end I decided it doesn’t really matter how it works or who’s answering. Wherever the guidance comes from it helps me make a decision, and gets me moving, which is usually what I need. If it’s just clearing my mind enough for the answer to surface, that’s enough. If it happens to be someone or something with a better perspective lending guidance, that’s even better.

@Seek_Kolinahr What did you think you were saying?

I generally don’t believe in religion. But I believe there’s some kind of God that does exist. As a result, sometimes when I’m in distress, I pray and hope that God can hear me. After that I feel very relieved, as if my problems have been solved. The belief that the God will help me somehow itself is comfortable enough.

@Rarebear – in the church in which I grew up, it was taught that there were two types of speaking in tongues.

The gift of tongues and interpretation was when someone spoke a language they did not know, and someone else (who also didn’t speak it) translated the words to the congregation. It was supposed to be the closest we could get to God speaking directly with us as a group. I’ve never participated in this gift

The other version of tongues is evidence of being filled with the Holy Ghost, which is one of the requirements for salvation according to the book of Acts. It is a person speaking a language they do not know by influence of God. It is not interpreted, because it is God edifying himself through the speaker.

So I never knew what I was supposed to be saying. It was between God and himself.

Basically the same as most of the other answers. Gives me a feeling of calm, a connectedness with my Source hopefully and the feeling that all will be well. I am also extremely touched when a friend asks her church for prayer for one of my loved ones and I feel close to that nice person. When my little granddaughter stood up in church and asked them to pray for my husband I thought my heart would burst and I wasn’t even there!

What a lovely question to ask @Rarebear! Thank you!

I will go along with the rest- peace and calm- but also joy! There was a time when I was living under extreme stress and abuse. My husband and the people in my church were quite abusive at that time.Then I discovered if I concentrated only on the things God said I was and to praise God in every and all situations, the more mental and emotional freedom I achieved.

I remember one morning waking up to my husband trying to pick a fight with me, but under the covers I was in deep peace, and even joy. I knew if he saw me smiling he’d think I was making fun of him, so I sneaked out of the bedroom and made breakfast for the family. I went on to have an awesome day. I lived like that for a whole year, simply reveling in the peace and joy, feeling as if I were wrapped in cotton because absolutely nothing anyone said or did could destroy this gift I had.

By the way, one day I realized I was enabling my husband, and that God would not only judge him but me as well for allowing him to treat me the way he did, and that not only that, my kids were growing up to think it was OK for a man to treat a woman badly.

Then I told my husband it was divorce or counseling but he had to choose quickly or he wouldn’t have a chance. Eventually he came to me weeping, asking- begging me to forgive him. Now he tells people that God sort of picked him up and shook him like a dog shakes a rag. I told him I would forgive him, but that there was NO room for backsliding, and if he did, he’d be gone.

He promised, and he changed over night. We no longer go to that church. That was about 10 years ago.

I still have that sense of peace and joy, but it was most intense that year of persecution.

God and prayer are basically my spiritual ties to my religion since I no longer believe much in the altruism and safe atmosphere of churches.

I’ve had real life manifestations of prayers being answered, one is my choice of husband as I’ve explained here before, my life was saved as a child after mom’s prayer in a miraculous way, there’s just too many to list really.

Praying makes me feel happy. It makes me feel safe and calm.

The power of prayer is what positive psychologist call the power of mindfulness and introspection.