What if your body is not a distraction from your spiritual life?
The flesh and bones of it all
Why Your Body Matters in Your Spiritual Life
Often in faith spaces we are treated as if were merely heads on a stick- that what we believe, give intellectual assent to in our spiritual life is what matters most. Can we affirm this or that faith statement? Do we agree with this theology? Our gathering often center around didactic training as a way to form our souls.
It’s easy to internalize the idea that our thoughts and brains are really what matters most about us and our spiritual experience. Descartes did the world no favors with his famous argument “I think, therefore I am.”
Some refer to this as the Cartesian fallacy. I call it the Cartesian wound, because it created an injury and schism in the human experience. It allowed us to conceive of our bodies as separate from the equation and elevated the intellect as the source of our true being, the ground of our essence. It created a false binary where there should be a holistic expression. We have been cut off from our bodies and their wisdom since The Enlightenment.
We think our way through belief.
We pray with words.
We analyze doubt.
And yet the body is always there. Holding tension. Fatigue. Longing. Wisdom. Our body is the place we experience it all.
Ignoring the body does not make it go away.
Bodies are messy, weird, unpredictable, mutable, wonderful. They can be fragile and resilient, strong and soft. They can give and receive great harm, great passion, great care and love and attention. They can be a place of longing, desire, joy, trauma and delight all at once. And they are holy.
What if your body is not a distraction from spiritual life?
What if your body is meant to be a part of your spiritual life?
What if your very flesh is one of the places you were meant to encounter the Divine?
For years, I treated my body as something to manage. Something to push through so I could focus on the “real” spiritual work. More discipline. Getting up earlier. Reading my Bible. Praying with words and according to a specific but unspoken formula.
But my body kept speaking. Through tightness. Exhaustion. Restlessness. The flutter of anxiety I would feel when I ignored what I really needed or wanted. The heaviness I felt saying yes to one more church obligation because I felt a pressure to serve in a way that didn’t align with my gifts. The persistent feeling that my body wanted to express what my soul was trying to communicate, that my body could be the prayer.
When I finally began to listen, prayer changed.
It became so much more expansive and restful. The pressure and guilt I had felt for so long started to quiet. And instead I felt a deep invitation to rest in God’s presence, and to become aware of the ways my good body, my God-designed body and nervous system were a part of my spiritual experience. My delight and pleasure became maps for how God was leading me forward. My resistance and disregulation became information about wounds or fears under the surface, places I needed God’s attention and healing.
Embodied spiritual practices invite you to notice sensation as information. Tight shoulders may be grief or disappointment. Shallow breath may be fear. Warmth may be comfort and safety.
The body knows things the mind cannot articulate. The body is the home where we live, the place out of which all our love is both given and received.
The truth of the matter is, God meets us right where we are, and we can’t be elsewhere than our bodies.
As I dive deeper into learning about nervous systems, attachment and imagination as part of our connection to God, I feel so passionate about sharing and leading others into a deeper experience of their own embodiment and how God wants to meet us in the flesh and bone of our lives.
Here is a simple embodied prayer you can try. It will only take a few minutes. Notice what you notice.
Stand with your feet grounded.
Notice where your feet touch the floor.
Imagine a string pulling your head upward, as all your joints stack directly over each other.
Take a slow breath in through your nose.
Let it fall out through your mouth.
Scan your body gently.
Where do you feel ease?
Where do you feel tension?
No fixing. No interpretation.
Lean to one side - notice all the muscles that engage to keep you from falling. Breathe here. Notice muscles, how it feels to be off center.
Return to center. Breathe here. Noticing the difference.
Lean to other side - notice muscles that engage, take a deep breath and exhale.
Return to center. Keeping feet still or seat connected to the chair. Notice how much you can move here in the center - Bend at the waist, hunch spine, bend knees, twist… feel feet stay planted. To feel feet better, pick up toes or heels and place back down. Squeeze the floor with your toes. Feel the groundedness of connecting to the floor.
Notice the difference between still feet and a moving body.
Return to stillness, feel the length of your body and the firmness of grounding, the life within you, the stretch to the top of your head.
Last deep breath. Last stretch or two.
This kind of prayer practice invites your body back into your faith. It allows God to meet you as you actually are, not as you think you should be.
When body and spirit reconnect, prayer takes on a whole new dimension. This is one of the foundations of contemplative and creative spiritual practice. Faith that includes the whole self.
If you enjoyed this experience, watch for the release of my 21 day self-paced course with even more embodied and creative prayer practices.
I leave you with this gorgeous poem to meditate on.
by Symeon the New Theologian (949-1022), Byzantine Christian monk and poet
English version by Stephen Mitchell
We awaken in Christ’s body
as Christ awakens our bodies,
and my poor hand is Christ, He enters
my foot, and is infinitely me.
I move my hand, and wonderfully
my hand becomes Christ, becomes all of Him
(for God is indivisibly
whole, seamless in His Godhood).
I move my foot, and at once
He appears like a flash of lightning.
Do my words seem blasphemous? — Then
open your heart to Him
and let yourself receive the one
who is opening to you so deeply.
For if we genuinely love Him,
we wake up inside Christ’s body
where all our body, all over,
every most hidden part of it,
is realized in joy as Him,
and He makes us, utterly, real,
and everything that is hurt, everything
that seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful,
maimed, ugly, irreparably
damaged, is in Him transformed
and recognized as whole, as lovely,
and radiant in His light
he awakens as the Beloved
in every last part of our body.
