Breathwork

breath prayers

Breath prayers are simple ways to focus on a word or phrase while pairing it with the breath. It is a way to pray that doesn’t require a lot of words, time, or energy. It is a way to connect with the Holy, yourself, and the needs of the moment. 

I talk about breath prayers at the end of the first chapter of Hopeful Lament:

“One of my favorite practices to engage myself and share with those I host in spiritual direction is breath prayers. They are wonderful ways to ‘pray without ceasing’ in practice (I Thessalonians 5:17). The idea is to choose a word or phrase to silently repeat as you breathe in and out. Conscious breathing is a wonderful way to calm and ground the body. Breath prayers add a simple yet powerful layer of articulating a prayer, bringing intentionality to the natural breath with all its centrality to life.

Breath prayers are also extremely versatile. For a set-apart time of meditation, find a comfortable seat and engage a single breath prayer repeatedly, allowing your mind to drop into your heart and listening for the still small voice of the Spirit as well as your own soul. For a moving meditation, especially helpful in times of processing anxiety or grief, you can engage a breath prayer while walking outside. Breath prayers are great on the fly during repetitious tasks that don’t require much mental engagement such as folding laundry, answering emails, or paying bills. They’re also a wonderful way to focus and invite the presence of the Holy before you log onto a Zoom meeting, begin a project, or respond to someone who has hurt or frustrated you.

To practice breath prayer, choose a word or phrase that expresses what you need or what you know. It could be a verse (breathe in ‘Be Still,’ breathe out ‘and know that I am God’), inspired by a line of a poem (breathe in ‘speaking to sorrow’ breathe out ‘awakening to kindness’), a name of God (breathing in ‘Yah,’ breathing out ‘Wey’), etc. I encourage you to try the following breath prayer.”

(from Hopeful Lament, p.14-15).

You could try this breath prayer:

Breathe In: God is with me.

Breath Out: I am loved.

Or this one:

Breathe In: Here I am.

Breathe Out: Healer, meet me here.

(Note: Feel free to substitute your favorite name or title for God such as Holy One or Shepherd as you try either of the above breath prayers.)

I love blowing bubbles as a way of praying with children and for people of all ages. There are more suggested tools like these for prayer, hope, and grieving on the DIY Duelo Box Page.

centering prayer

Centering Prayer is a way of quieting racing thoughts and focusing on God popularized by Thomas Keating and others. Keating taught many simple methods of contemplative prayer over his life and started Contemplative Outreach before his passing in 2018 at 95. (You can watch him describe centering prayer here.)

Centering prayer can be practiced alone or with a small group of others. Start by choosing a sacred word to focus on. It could be peace, love, mercy, hope, or anything else you need more of in the moment. Some people like to stay with the same word whenever they engage in centering prayer.

In Seasons of Wonder, Bonnie Smith Whitehouse offers these simple instructions for practicing centering prayer:

1. Find a place to sit comfortably so you’ll be alert but relaxed.

2. Set a timer for twenty minutes. I use Insight Timer, an app on my phone.

3. Close your eyes and rest in silence.

4. Open your heart to an awareness of the divine presence. 

5. Whenever you find your thoughts wandering--and please kindly accept without judging yourself that they will--return to your sacred word.

6. At the end of the twenty minutes, you might stretch a little bit, or reflect on the day’s psalm (which you can easily find using an app like The Daily Office), or say a short prayer of thanksgiving before you go on with your day.

From Seasons of Wonder: Making the Ordinary Sacred Through Projects, Prayers, Reflections, and Rituals (p. 55). 

If you’d like to try slow and quiet prayer with children, consider exploring a copy of Mary Terese Donze’s In My Heart Room (best for kids six and older) or Katie Warner’s Listening for God (for children between ages four and seven (or even younger!) .

Listening for God tells the story of Elijah’s discouragement and going away to wait to hear from God and ultimately hearing him, not in the wind, fire, or earthquake but in quiet and stillness. Warner invites children to know that God wants to talk to them too and guides them to swirl like wind, stomp like an earthquake, and roar like fire. After that, she invites them to be still and quiet. Warner writes, “Sometimes being silent can be hard, but it is so important to practice it. When we practice being silent, we ready ourselves to hear God speaking to us in our lives. In the silence, we wait for him to show us his adventurous plans for us.”

One of my favorite prayers Donze offers is a prayer for hands. She describes guiding children to pay attention to their hands in three movements. In a time of concentration, she encourages children to notice things like how they move, the lines and creases on their fingers, and their fingernails. She says that by the time kids turn ten, they will have grown thirty inches of fingernail on every finger (!) and reminds them that each hand has twenty-seven bones.

To meditate, she invites children to cross their hands on their chests and consider all the helpful things their hands can do, like holding a fork, petting a dog, or buttoning a shirt. How hands of others work and offer help. I love her invitation for them to tell their hands, “Keep on being good hands. Don’t ever hurt anyone. Don’t do anything that is wrong or bad.” (p. 30).

To contemplate, she encourages children to imagine standing with Jesus, asking him to bless their hands and seeing his that are marked by the cross, and thanking him for giving them good hands before returning their attention to their breath and the room they are in.