Inhaling and Exhaling Yahweh: The Ancient Christian Tradition of Breathing Meditation
Thomas Keating, a Trappist monk and a renowned teacher of contemplative spirituality, says that the heart of Christian meditation is our conscious consent to the will of God at the moment.
Have you noticed what happens to our body when we are overwhelmed by a strong negative emotion like fear, anger, or anxiety?
Our bodies tense up, and our breath gets short and shallow. We don’t breathe freely, as the strong emotion makes us shrink, contract, and breathe in rapid and short gasps.
Short breath is an indicator that we are not relying on God in the moment. We rely on ourselves. It’s a symptom of trying to control the situation. In fact, our fear is a sign that we feel a deep disconnection from God. Just as the apostle John said,
“There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear.” 1 John 4:18
There’s no fear in us when we experience the perfect love of God. Fear cannot come in because there’s no room for it. But when we start relying on ourselves and trusting in our ability to control the situation, fear drives out love.
Fear causes our bodies to contract. We cannot breathe freely because, according to Thomas Keating, our breath is God’s breath coursing through our bodies from the moment we are born until the moment we die. When we stop trusting God, God’s His natural breath is blocked in us.
When we trust ourselves instead of God, we block God’s life in us.
Genesis 2:7 says,
“Yahweh God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”
Since then, every time we inhale, we receive God into our bodies, and every time we exhale, we surrender, let go, and symbolically say, “Unless you fill me up with Your breath again, I will die.”
Thomas Keating points out that inhalation embodies the reception of divine presence, while exhalation represents our surrender to God. This rhythmic dance of breath mirrors the ebb and flow of the contemplative journey – a journey of receiving and releasing. Receiving God into ourselves and releasing human control are the two core aspects of contemplative spirituality.
“We rarely think of the air we breathe, yet it is in us and around us all the time. In a similar fashion, the presence of God penetrates us, is all around us, is always embracing us.” Thomas Keating
In Christian contemplative tradition, the breath is not merely a physiological function but a symbolic representation of the consent to the divine indwelling. For example, 14th-century Orthodox monks practiced the so-called “hesychasm” – a tradition of saying a short version of the Lord’s Prayer in combination with watching one’s breath.
Their goal was to attain inner stillness or silence (“hesychia” in Greek), without which it is impossible to know God properly. As David says in Psalm 46:10,
“Be still, and know that I am God.”
If to know God means to be still – both in body and mind – how do you attain such a state? The monks noticed that repeating the cycles of inhalation (receiving God’s breath) and exhalation (releasing human control) while saying a short prayer effectively stills the mind. In the silence of the heart (hesychia), one can hear God speak clearly.
The Foundations of Breathing Meditation
At the core of Thomas Keating’s teachings is the concept of consent. To experience God, we must consent to His will within and without. Resisting whatever is happening in the present moment creates tension and stress in the body, mind, and spirit. We block the breath of God in us and start breathing in short gasps, which indicates a desire to control.
As human beings, we can only exist in one of two states – consenting to God’s will or resisting God’s will. When we declare like Jesus, “Not as I will, but as you will,” we release control and become “poor in spirit.” Only in this state can one receive God’s blessings.
A Four-Step Process to Achieve the Stillness of the Mind
Thomas Keating captures the essence of breathing meditation in what he calls the “Four R’s” – Recognize, Release, Return, and Rest. These steps form a cyclical process that mirrors the natural rhythm of receiving God’s living breath (inhalation) and releasing all human control (exhalation).
- Recognize: The first step is to recognize when our mind starts wondering – when our thoughts or emotions take over and define our reality. There’s nothing judgmental about this recognition; it’s just an acknowledgment.
- Release: When we become aware of our wondering thoughts, we can release them and let go. We don’t hold on to them. As we let them go, they flow away. This act of release is the beginning of our consent, surrendering to God’s presence within us.
- Return: After releasing the thought or emotion, we return to our sacred word (a short prayer) and continue to observe our minds as we breathe in and out.
- Rest: The final step is to rest in God’s presence. This is not an intellectual or analytical rest but a state of consent and humble receptivity. It is the inner Sabbath, resting in God, inner stillness, and hearing of God within.
The Journey Into Inner Stillness
As we repeat the cycles of releasing control (exhalation) and receiving God’s blessing (inhalation), we gradually enter the sacred silence within. We enter God’s rest, God’s holy Sabbath.
This silence is not an absence of noise but the presence of the Divine. Releasing our thoughts and consenting to God’s will is impossible without releasing our breath. The breath is a doorway into this inner sanctuary, and each time we relax and release our breath, we plunge deeper into the vast expanse of the soul.
Keating compares contemplative prayer to diving into the ocean. The surface of the ocean is our mental chatter – the waves of thoughts and emotions. As we stop resisting those waves, we descend into the depths. Gradually, we feel more and more stillness surrounding us on every side.
Similarly, releasing our breath is a descent into the depths of our being. Gradually, the noise of the mind subsides and gives way to inner stillness.
Benefits of Breathing Meditation
According to many practitioners, this mental release of thoughts and physical release of breath is a physical embodiment of the inner gesture of letting go.
Every time we let go of a thought in meditation, we “consent to the presence and action of God within,” and the gesture is actually physically embodied. It’s not just a mental attitude, but something actually “drops and releases” in the solar plexus region of your body, a subtle but distinct form of interior relaxation that is one of the most powerful ways to get rid of stress.
One study used PET imaging to register the effects of meditation on people with coronary heart disease. The stunning results were published in the Journal of Nuclear Cardiology. Those who made meditation part of their rehab routine increased their cardiac blood flow by more than 20%.
Breathing meditation has a myriad of benefits, including:
- Stress Reduction: Stress builds up in the body over time. Accumulated stress is always the result of our disconnection from God. Without experiencing a vital connection to the Divine, we start controlling our surroundings and eventually burn out. We can’t be gods. We hit the bottom. To reduce the stress, we must release, let go of our burden, and turn it over to God. Breathing meditation helps us to embody the mental gesture of letting go.
- Inner Peace: As we descend into the ocean of inner silence, a profound sense of peace washes over us. This inner peace gradually grows in us and affects everything we do in life.
- Enhanced Awareness: Breathing meditation leads to a heightened awareness of the present moment. Jesus said, “Watch and pray, that you don’t enter into temptation.” Being watchful and aware of your inner state helps us to avoid sin.
- Spiritual Growth: Consistent practice of breathing meditation is transformative. It cleanses the heart of all the thoughts and emotions that produce sin. Those who are pure in heart are blessed because they will see God (Matthew 5:8). Gradually, we grow into the likeness of our Lord Jesus Christ.
- Integration of Body, Mind, and Spirit: Over time, we learn to see the world as a whole – not as disparate and unrelated fragments. We see God in all things, just as the apostle Paul said that God will be “all in all. As we release our inner tension and learn to entrust our whole being to God, we realize that God is present everywhere. We grow in compassion and understanding because we see God in everything.
The Inner Logic of Breathing Meditation
Why is our consent to God’s will central to breathing meditation (also called Centering Prayer)?
A long time ago, in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve made the choice to become little gods by distrusting the God Most High. They grasped for control, wishing to determine their own destiny. But the knowledge of good and evil didn’t bring them the results they craved.
By choosing self-reliance, they became control freaks. Immediately, they felt shame and fear. These two emotions have been haunting the human race ever since. We live in constant internal and external stress.
If we are honest with ourselves, we know what stories are playing in our minds day and night. There’s mental chatter going on in our brains 24/7 – an incessant and repetitive pattern of negative messaging from the past. They keep saying to us, “You are no good,” “You are ugly,” “You will always be alone,” “No one loves you.”
These narratives are our inheritance from Adam and Eve and generations of their descendants. If we are not aware of them, they form our reality and define who we are.
How do you stop this mental chatter? How do you still the mind?
We address this by reversing the sin of Adam on a personal level. In meditation, we:
- Recognize whatever is playing in our minds (the repetitive thoughts and emotions).
- Release them into God’s hand (we do not hold on to these narratives).
- Return to God by reciting our sacred word (or short prayer).
- Rest in God (enjoy several moments of the blessed poverty of the spirit).
Every time we release our thoughts and breath, we reverse Adam’s propensity to self-reliance. We feel the urge to control the situation, but we consciously choose to let go of any negative thoughts into God’s hands.
It feels scary – like jumping out of a plane without a parachute. But it’s a necessary leap of faith. After all, God promised,
“The eternal God is your dwelling place. Underneath are the everlasting arms.” Deuteronomy 33:27
He will pick us up. We are not alone.
Re-Alignment With God
The traditional Christian insight into the inner workings of our minds goes back to the biblical narrative of Adam and Eve. They chose self-determination, which led to shame and fear. These repetitive patterns playing in our minds are the result of this choice. We must recognize, release, and replace them with a sacred word or prayer.
Through this process, we uproot our addiction to control, choosing to trust God instead moment by moment and experience His everlasting arms. The Centering Prayer is focused on our consent to God’s will as we release our thoughts and embrace His presence. As a result, we develop a profound sense of divine connection.
Setbacks in Breathing Meditation
The narratives that play in our minds like a broken record are hard to break. Our brain circuits have been formed by thousands of years of conditioning. They will relapse to the old patterns of thinking no matter what we do. But it’s okay. It’s not something that we should fear.
Thomas Keating says that whenever you catch yourself thinking your old thoughts, just congratulate yourself on your level of awareness and use this opportunity to return to God. Every setback is a golden opportunity to return to God. If you have failed to still your mind 10,000 times, then you have 10,000 opportunities to return to God.
How do you return to God?
Don’t remember the former things, and don’t consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing. It springs out now. (Isaiah 43:18-19)
The prophet Isaiah admonishes us not to dwell on the past but to look to God, who is doing a new thing right now. We always have a choice: to latch on to a thought or let it go without offering any resistance.
If we don’t dwell on it, it floats away. It’s our attention that makes it grow. We can simply switch our attention to God at the moment – to our sacred word and breath.
It’s important to congratulate yourself on your setbacks. It helps us to relax into the practice instead of placing demands on ourselves. If we start consciously or unconsciously demanding something from ourselves, our bodies will tense up again. It will be hard for us to open ourselves to the presence of God.
However, if we celebrate our progress despite our setbacks, our bodies will relax and enjoy the process of retraining the mind.
Thomas Keating recommends starting with no more than 20 minutes of breathing meditation a day. Just sit in a quiet place and start watching your mind in silence. When you notice a thought, don’t resist it or push it away. Observe it arise in your consciousness and release it into God’s hands. Align each mental release with exhalation and each return to a short prayer with inhalation.
That way, you re-experience the act of creation in your body moment by moment. As the breath comes into your body, you are like Adam, who was awakened to life by the breath of God. As the breath goes out of your body, you are like Jesus, who released all power and turned Himself entirely to the care of the Father.
