Breath as Prayer: Calm Your Anxiety, Focus Your Mind, and Renew Your Soul

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Breath prayer is an effective and easy method of prayer that brings us closer to God, making us aware of his presence. She coaches individuals and non-profit leaders, applying the insights of neuroscience and epigenetics with her clients. Not so much for the virus itself as the personal sacrifices and inconveniences that might follow… This isn’t just a test of clinical resources but a test too, in some ways, of [our] willingness to put ourselves out for others.

We’re halfway through our 40 Days to Pray contemplative prayer series and nearly halfway through the season of Lent. That’s like the Holy Spirit is somehow connected with our spirit as a person, that we’re spiritual beings. And so here’s the gift: Paul says that when we ask, God’s Spirit will fill us with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. With the scientific knowledge we have today on mindfulness and the effectiveness of deep breathing on the body, mind, and soul, it’s no wonder that this form of prayer gently but surely transformed those who practiced it.

And that’s the thing that’s shifted everything for me is realizing that difference there, turning how I perceived how the Bible talked about anxiety. She is doing her thinking aloud One of the first things that her therapist told us was the importance of the breath and how slowing her breathing could help calm her anxiety. For example, I might take a very long inhale but a shorter exhale, or vice versa, but try to make all the inhales the same and all the exhales the same. Unsurprisingly, a book I wrote about life not going as planned has also seen renewed interest lately.

The air we breathe is a good metaphor to help us understand and experience God’s presence around us and in us. Stephen Porges in “The Polyvagal Theory: New Insights into Adaptive Reactions of the Autonomic Nervous System,” in Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine 76, Suppl 2 (April 2009): S86–S90, and The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotion, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation, (New York, NY: W. Breathe in deeply through your nose as you focus your thoughts on the words: Lord, You are my shepherd. Breath as Prayer invites you to the crossroads of Christian contemplative practice, Scripture, psychology, and science to deepen your faith, bring peace to your body, and discover a new reliance on Christ.So, my story of dealing with anxiety and depression is a whole lot of not dealing with my anxiety and depression. If you’re enjoying the content on Breaking Bread Theology or find it helpful, please consider supporting this work with a donation.

God really is all around us and even in us, just like air, and we are safe, loved, and protected by his wonderful presence. But it captivated me from the get-go because it incorporates and ties into your breath, which I already knew was significant in helping me manage my anxiety. Of course, breath prayers are not the only kind of prayers we pray, but they can be the doorway to an even deeper more robust prayer life as you intentionally take a few minutes to be still and turn your soul toward Christ and the truths in His Word.But I think they are missing the point of the book, I believe it is a teaching tool to model how breathing for calming anxiety, focusing, and bringing calm and peace to your inner self, fits naturally as a form of prayer. Do your days ever get so busy and fast-paced that you feel like you’re almost running out of breath?

Give it a try: print these pages, grab some crayons or colored pencils, hit play on the “b-r-e-a-t-h-e” playlist below, and breathe deep as you color in the pages. I love how you shared how that one verse is one that you’ve clung to so much and is one you’ve memorized. I was terrified; I didn’t know how the following days would go, let alone the next few months ahead. com/special-reports/neurobiology-and-neurophysiology-breath-practices-psychiatric-care (accessed January 28, 2019).And so one way we can calm the amygdala down and calm the sympathetic nervous system down is through deep breathing because our breath connects to the vagus nerve, which connects to all of our organs, our major organs in our body. While various sciences measure the health markers related to breathing, ancient Christian Breath Prayer involves belief in God, in whose name Jesus healed. I like what you said about masking your anxiety as other things, such as perfectionism, as the person who’s the high achiever, the go-getter.