What is Body Prayer?

Spiritual Practice

Oct 12

Everyone’s deconstruction and reconstruction—which is to say, everyone’s faith journey—is different. So my questions, doubts, hang-ups, lessons, and joys may well be different from yours. But it seems like many people on this post-evangelical journey are pressing the reset button on prayer.

When so many other beliefs and practices are in flux, it doesn’t make sense to keep on praying in the same ways, about the same things, that we did before. So where does that leave us with prayer? It’s not so easy to simply cast it aside, since for many of us it has served as a vital connection point with God (albeit a different conception of God from the one we may now hold).

Communication or Communion?

I was fortunate. When these questions began to loom for me, seminary (and specifically the class Spiritual Formation) was right on time. There we learned not one or two, but many prayer practices I had never heard of before. Yes, that’s right—multiple forms of prayer that I had never encountered a single time in 11 years of full-time evangelical ministry.

Today I only want to introduce one of those prayer practices to you, but first it might be helpful to explain how all these new prayers differed from the types I was very accustomed to in evangelical contexts. The distinction, as explained by PC(USA) pastor and spiritual director Marjorie J. Thompson, is between prayer as communication and prayer as communion.

Prayer as communication involves a conversation between us and God. So this includes intercession, confession, “listening to God,” and nearly all other verbalized prayers. If the main point is to express something to God or hear something from God, it is a prayer of communication. Prayer as communion, on the other hand, explores “the dimension of relationship that goes beyond words, images, or actions.” While the primary modes of communication prayer are speaking and listening, the primary mode of communion prayer is contemplation. These prayers are focused less on sending a message and more on resting, dwelling, thinking, and simply being (in God’s presence).

As an evangelical, I had gained a wide breadth of experience praying for the sake of communication. But I had almost no experience with other, more contemplative prayer practices.

Body prayer

Honestly, body prayer doesn’t fit neatly into either category above. Nonetheless, it’s a form of prayer I learned in Spiritual Formation class that was brand new to me. It has become a staple of my spiritual life, something I do every morning just after I wake up (well, just after my chair yoga!, another practice I picked up in that class).

So what is body prayer?

It’s pretty simple: you use your body when you pray. And you might be thinking, quite sarcastically, “How revolutionary.” But think about the ways we usually pray. Heads bowed, eyes closed, hands locked in a static position. No movement. No sensory input. We often do our best to make it a brain-only, disembodied experience.

This shouldn’t be how we pray, says UCC pastor and spiritual director Jane E. Vennard: “In addition to inviting us to bring all of our emotions into our relationship, God wants us to come into relationship fully embodied. It is unbelievable to me that God, who came to us in human form, in a human body, would want us to deny our bodies. We use our bodies to pray as we sing, kneel, and work for justice in the world. We may walk our prayers, dance, swim, or paint our prayers. Our bodies are capable of expressing great love for our creator.”

And while I’m sure painting and swimming can count as prayer, the practice of body prayer is typically a series of intentional body movements that have some meaning. In this sense (that the movements hold specific meanings), body prayer is like a prayer of communication. But in another sense—the sense that as your whole body engages in the prayer, you experience God’s presence within your entire self—it’s like a prayer of communion.

But now, the part you’ve been waiting for: my Microsoft Paint doodle of the body prayer I do each morning.