Reshaping the body with prayer
As I lay face up on the table a few weeks ago, my massage therapist interrupted my reverie.
She said, βDo you know that your right leg is listing outward.β
βNope, I had no idea really.β She was standing at my feet and gently adjusted my wayward right leg. βNow that you mention it . . . I notice what you are saying.β My left knee cap pointed straight toward the ceiling, but my right one was tilted outward.
βIt means that the muscles on the inside of your right leg are slightly longer than those on the outside of your leg.β
βHum.β I thought about it. βCould be because I sit cross-legged in my bed each morning to meditate for 20 minutes?β I wondered aloud.
βThat could do it,β she agreed. βSome of my clients have found that changing that posture is helpful.β
βWell, Iβve been doing it every morning for most of the last ten years. Except when I was pregnant.β I didnβt add that I sat for hours of a day in the early months of my daughterβs life in the very same position: cross legged on the bed or couch with her nursing or sleeping in my lap.
Seems prayer had been reshaping my body.
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After five minutes of silent practice of the βJesus Prayerβ (as presented by St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary) I rang the chime and invited the class to talk about their experience. We talked through the catalog of our internal responses to the prayer: our distractions, resistances, theological blockades, and our more mellow and peaceful responses. Finally we got to talking about some responses of our bodies.
I said, βOf course we are all familiar with the idea that prayer reshapes our minds.Β But I want to suggest to you that prayer also reshapes our bodies. In the last five minutes as we were all sitting in silence and praying Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, Iβm willing to wager that if we were to have our vital signs tracked we would have found our pulse rate going down, our breathing slowing, our muscles relaxing, and tension departing our bodies.β
Those around the circle nodded in agreement. Theyβd felt it. Centuries of practice confirm it.
Prayer is not just a mental practice. It is not only an emotional or relational practice. It reshapes our bodies as well as our minds and hearts. And none of these are separate discrete parts of ourselves. We are whole interconnected beings.
This weekβs Advent texts are full of bodies being shaped and reshaped by prayers of all kinds: conceiving, laboring, giving birth, leaping, longing, crying, feeding, laughing, offering and sacrificing. God does not just reshape our minds or call us to change our feelings, but cares for our very bodies and the well-being of our whole selves.
How is prayer reshaping your body? How is your body praying this season? What gifts of God’s presence are you receiving in your body as this Advent unfolds?
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