There is something that happens in a PraiseMoves class that I have noticed for over two decades. When students speak Scripture aloud, standing in a posture, breathing deeply, their voice filling the room, something shifts. Not just spiritually. Something in the person changes.
I always attributed it to the power of the Word of God, which is absolutely true. "For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword." (Hebrews 4:12, NKJV)
But recently I came across research that reveals an additional benefit, with measurable proof behind this ancient, Holy Spirit-led practice. What I learned absolutely thrilled me.
Researchers Discovered What You Already Know
Scientists studying memory and cognition have documented what they call the "production effect." The finding is straightforward: words that you read aloud are remembered 15 to 20 percent better than words read silently. This holds true when tested immediately, tested days later, and across every age group studied.
Fifteen to twenty percent. On every word. Simply by speaking it aloud. But the reason why is where it gets extraordinary.
Three Systems Instead of OneWhen you read silently, your brain processes the text through a single channel: your visual system. Your eyes decode the words, your brain grasps the meaning, and that is the complete circuit. Everything else stays quiet.
When you read aloud, three systems engage simultaneously.
First, your visual system, decoding the words on the page.
Second, your motor system. Over 100 muscles in your diaphragm, throat, tongue, lips, and jaw coordinate to produce each syllable. Researchers describe speech as one of the most complex motor sequences the human body performs. Faster than fingers on a keyboard. Faster than running. Faster than any athletic movement. Your brain is not just reading words. It is performing them.
Third, your auditory system processes the result. And here is where it becomes remarkable.
Your Own Voice Is Different
Your brain processes your own voice differently from any other voice in the world.
When you speak, sound reaches your ears two ways: through the air, like any other sound, and through the bones of your skull directly to your inner ear.
The bone pathway transmits lower frequencies more richly. That is why your voice sounds fuller and deeper to you than it does to anyone else, and why a recording of yourself always sounds thinner than you expect.
Your brain receives this richer signal and processes it with greater engagement than any other voice.
When you speak the Word of God aloud, your brain encodes it through the richest auditory signal available to it — through a pathway that no one else's voice can access.
And because you are simultaneously the speaker and the listener, your comprehension is checked twice: once when your eyes read the text, and once when your ears process what your voice has spoken.
The auditory system catches errors that the visual system passes right over.
You've experienced this. You were reading aloud and stopped mid-sentence because something did not sound right. You went back. That is your built-in comprehension system at work.
Three memory traces are created. Three retrieval pathways. Silently-read words blend into the background of millions of other visual memories, indistinguishable from one another.
Words spoken aloud are stored distinctively, with texture, sound, and the motor memory of producing them.
Your memory system only needs to find one of the three traces to bring the entire memory back.
For Those of Us Over 45
I want to speak directly to something that concerns many in our PraiseMoves family.
If you have noticed word-finding getting harder, names slipping away, verbal recall not what it once was, you may not be experiencing cognitive decline.
You may be experiencing something far more addressable: understimulated speech circuits. The circuits that produce complex speech require regular activation at sufficient complexity to stay sharp.
Consider what a typical day actually provides: silent reading (speech circuits dormant), television (speech circuits dormant), texting (speech circuits dormant). Even conversation, as valuable as it is, operates at reduced complexity: familiar vocabulary, short sentences, and rehearsed phrases.
Speaking the Word of God aloud, as we do in PraiseMoves, helps activate these underused circuits.
Reading aloud, even five minutes daily, changes this, too. The circuits activate. The pathways that rapid word retrieval depends on strengthen through use.
The word that slips in conversation is there because you spoke it aloud from a page that morning.
This is not about concentration or effort. It is simple and available to every one of us, every single day.
Nothing New Under the Sun
Before the year 400 AD, nearly all reading was spoken aloud. Texts were written to be heard. Libraries were not quiet. Saint Augustine wrote with wonder about watching his mentor read silently. It was so unusual that he documented it.
I've often said, "The Word of God was spoken (by God to man) so it could be written. And it was written so that it could be spoken (spoken back to God, full of faith, "So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, But it shall accomplish what I please, And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it," Isaiah 55:11).
Christian Meditation is meant to be audible, not silent. This hearkens back to the Hebrew word for meditation, haghah, which means to mutter, to speak under the breath—just loud enough so you can hear it. "So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God" (Romans 10:17).
For three thousand years of written language, readers were speakers. The shift to silent reading brought convenience. But the cost was invisible, because silent reading feels complete. It took 1,500 years for researchers to measure what it subtracted, what's been missing.
The Word of God was never meant to be read silently.
It was proclaimed. Sung. Declared. Memorized on the lips, not just in the mind.
As Scripture says about the one who is in right-standing with our Heavenly Father: "But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night" (Psalm 1:2).
The Hebrew word translated "meditate" carries the understanding that our lips are moving, our voices are engaged. The Lord designed us for exactly this practice. The ancient way was also the neurologically optimal way.
This Is What PraiseMoves Has Been Doing All Along
In every PraiseMoves class, students speak Scripture aloud. Every posture carries its Scripture, spoken and meditated upon while in the stretching/strengthening posture.
We breathe with the movement. The WWW (Walkin' Wisdom Warm-ups) our two-to-five minute warm-up and personalized Scriptural affirmation segment, places this practice at the beginning of every class after the instructor offers an opening prayer.
What we did not know, twenty-plus years ago, was that we were simultaneously engaging three neural processing systems at once. We didn't realized that we were creating triple-encoded memory traces of God's Word!
That's why so many have told us over the years that they could never memorize Scripture before PraiseMoves. This is BEYOND memorization! Students leave a PraiseMoves class carrying Scripture they had never memorized before.
They're experiencing this triple production effect in addition to an enhanced experience with the Lord through the Word of the Living God. That's why we've said for over 20 years, "Transform Your Workouts into Worship with PraiseMoves!"
The Lord knows what He is doing when He prompts us to speak His Word aloud, not merely read it.
Try It TodayYou do not need a PraiseMoves class to begin. Pick up your Bible and read five minutes aloud. To an empty room. To a loved one. To a pet. Read it back to the Lord.
The circuits do not require an audience. They require your voice, your ears, and your eyes on the text at the same time.
If you have not read aloud in years, the first minute may feel strange. Your voice may stumble on words your eyes would have glided over silently. That stumbling is not a problem. That stumbling is the mechanism working: a motor pathway reactivating, a connection beginning to strengthen again.
By the second week, your voice will have changed slightly. The fluency, the rhythm, the confidence of it. And the Word of God, spoken aloud in your own voice, in your own home, at the start of your day, will be encoded in your memory the way it was always meant to be.
"This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success" (Joshua 1:8).
Your own voice. Your own ears. His Word.
That is the combination the Lord designed for His people, and now we know the brain agrees.
If you would like to experience PraiseMoves for yourself, you can explore videos and resources at the PraiseMoves Shop, join a class in person or online at praisemoves.com/classes, or, if the Lord is stirring something deeper, learn about becoming a Certified PraiseMoves Instructor at praisemoves.com/training.
With love, rejoicing, Dr. Laurette Willis, Th.D., CBT
Founder, PraiseMoves — The Christian Alternative to Yoga® praisemoves.com
P.S. The Fullness Women's Retreat — Tulsa, Oklahoma. If the Lord is stirring something in you, I hope you will join us. 
0 Comments