Spiritually is physicality, and physicality is spirituality. Our Christian tradition is an incarnational faith in which our bodies are meant to be holy offerings to God. Indeed, God chose to come in a body to express the fullness of love.
And yet when it comes to prayer, we often forget about our bodies. We live as a disembodied people. The fact is, God gifted you with a body and you have been bringing the gift of your body to prayer all along. Your blood, your bones and indeed your entire body are the permanent residence of your prayers. You cannot do anything separate from your body. Nothing happens without movement.
And so, I invite you to bring your body out of exile and into deeper dialogue with God —to enlarge what you have already been doing your entire life and to experience your whole life as an embodied prayer. To explore the everyday gestures of walking, of eating a simple supper, of shaking someone’s hand and hugging someone’s neck as opportunities to honor the holy that is within you and all around you.
Whether the phrase “movement as prayer” makes you freeze up or it feels like the freedom you’ve been searching for, let us look to the Scriptures for encouragement and exemplars of embodied prayer before exploring ways we might consciously pray through movement.
A theology of embodied prayer
The Old Testament is a text rich in embodiment, packed with moving postures of prayer. God walked in the garden (Genesis 3:8). Solomon spread out his hands toward Heaven (1 Kings 8:22). Miriam danced — along with all the other Israelite women (Exodus 15:20)! Abraham fell prostrate (Genesis 17:3). David, too, danced (2 Samuel 6:14). Hands lifted. Arms outstretched. Heads and entire bodies, bowed. Kneeling. Walking. Rolling. Dancing. Our ancestors of the Old Testament are a moving people.
The first time I became aware that I was praying with my entire body was on my yoga mat. This is not to say the first time I got on a yoga mat I encountered God. Hardly! But once the practice felt natural, felt playful, it was there that I noticed the dualism of my head and heart being transformed. I was transformed into a deeper knowing of myself as an embodied child of God. It was there, in my rising up and rooting down, in my bowing and bending, twisting and melting that I understood — finally — that God is with me… always. And that movement and prayer cannot be pulled apart.
Noticing the connection between movement and prayer began to transform my life. I was bringing more of me to God. And in bringing more of me to God, I let more of God in, which helped me hear God more clearly. In fact, it helped me discern my call to teach people how to have a body! To guide my sisters and brothers in Christ to coming home to the Holy Spirit in their bodies so that they could optimize their health and thus be more capable of living out their own calls.
I wonder how it is with you. At what level of your body do the lyrics “God is with me, this I know” live? Is it at the intellectual level? Or have you risked letting God into your physicality?
Every Sunday, I stand among my sisters and brothers in the sanctuary at North Decatur Presbyterian Church in Georgia. We gather in a circle to pray and break bread together. I look around the circle and see some with heads bowed, some with palms turned up, others with arms lifted, or eyes closed. Some sway, my daughter dances and one woman always stands with bare feet. I see her bare feet and am reminded of Moses, whose movement wasn’t in bowing or kneeling or dancing or flowing through yoga poses, but in removing his sandals and standing. I smile at her offering to God, her gesture of love, because it reminds me of how prayer plays out through our bodies in every simple movement of our day.
The New Testament also offers a model for including our whole body in our relationship with the Beloved in our prayer. “Lift up holy hands,” instructs Paul (1 Timothy 2:8). In Ephesians 3:14 we find him kneeling in prayer. Jesus himself, put his face in a place where too many of us only feel with our feet, the ground, and prayed (Matthew 26:39).
In fact, Christ’s every move feels like prayer. In his walking and touching, washing and kneeling, in his gathering of children with his arms and breaking of bread with his hands, Jesus teaches us the embodied way of being. He, God incarnate, demystifies movement as prayer.
Practicing embodied prayer
Clearly, Scripture is full of references to the body and Scripture calls us to wholeness. And so, consider this is a call to action! In your own walk with God, start to go beyond demonstrating your spiritual life through the Word written, the Word read and the Word proclaimed, and bring intention to the Word becoming your flesh. In your private homes and church families, teach our Christian tradition in a manner that deliberately engages not only minds, but arms, legs, torsos and toes in motion.
Start simple. Begin with cultivating embodied prayer by moving your body and speaking your prayer simultaneously.
Later, let the words fall away and experience your moving body as a sacred space for communicating with the divine.
Again, start small. Turning a doorknob or turning a corner, bringing a glass of water to your lips or a plate of food to your child, let it all be a moving prayer.
And when you’re ready, play with the practices of moving prayer practices.
Practice: Stationary Trinity salutations
Begin standing tall, grounding down through the feet, growing up through the crown of the head, hands gently pressing together at heart center.
Inhale: Sweep arms straight up and overhead.
Exhale: Fold forward from the hips, knees soft, let the head hang heavy.
Inhale: Rise up halfway, hands to shins, lengthening the spine.
Exhale: Fold forward from the hips, knees soft, let the head hang heavy.
Inhale: Sweep arms straight up and overhead.
Exhale: Standing tall, hands gently pressing together at heart center.
I practice three rounds of this flowing sequence every day as part of my moving morning prayer. For me, there is the experience of deep connection with God when standing with arms raised, deep connection with Christ in the forward fold, my face near the earth, and deep connection with the Holy Spirit when I inhale and lift halfway up, reaching through the crown of my head.
Practice: Praying the Scriptures
Choose a passage of Scripture and read it slowly. Psalms are a wonderful place to start. As you read, notice metaphor. Once you have read a specific passage through a few times, then from either a standing, sitting, kneeling or prostrate position, begin to put movement to metaphor. Try not to choreograph or think at all about matching your movement to the metaphors ahead of time. Be curious and simply allow your body to move you through the Scripture. Your movement might be minimal or it might feel as though every muscle in your body is in motion.
Perhaps you explore with different parts of your body the terms “sinking” and “rising” or “opening” and “closing” as metaphor for your journey with God. You might hold one or more postures that symbolize lament to you: loneliness, exhaustion, anger, betrayal. Or you might play in the motion of skipping, remembering what it means for the truth to set you free (John 8:32).
Make the movement yours. Move until your gestures and postures become your prayer. And then keep moving.
Practice: Partner prayer
In groups of two, one person verbally shares a need for their partner to pray for. Without taking time to choreograph or think about translating the verbal prayer into bodily movement, the partner begins to move. Going with whatever gestures come in the moment, no matter how big or small, the partner brings the prayer to God with the language of the body, instead of the spoken word. When the time is right the partners switch roles.
Practice: Group prayer
My favorite group prayer practice (which also works really well with pairs of two) is “potter and clay.” One person is the “potter” and everyone else acts as the “clay.” Whether working with a single verse, a story or a passage such as the Lord’s Prayer, the “potter” molds the “clay” into a visual representation of the Scripture by literally moving people into different positions. Ideally, each person in the community has an opportunity to experience being the potter and part of the clay. With passages such as the Lord’s Prayer, a different potter may reshape the clay for each sentence.
Afterwards, take time for members of the group to share about their experience of being both the potter and the clay. You might explore the ease or difficulty of moving other people, of having someone else move your body and what this means for your relationship with God.
May you delight in your movement as dialogue with the one who created the physical as spiritual.
Michel Le Gribble-Dates is the author of “Story & Stretch: A Guide to Teaching Kids Yoga Using Seasonal Stories.” She is also a trained labyrinth facilitator and mindfulness educator. Michel lives with her husband, CJ, and two children, Jayden and Joy, on the campus of Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia. Connect with Michel through her website beombrella.com.
