Body prayers are common spiritual practices throughout the world. Seekers walk labyrinths and make pilgrimages to holy sites. Believers bow their heads, kneel, sway, prostrate themselves, genuflect, make signs of the cross, touch mezuzahs. These days, Quakers are not known for body prayer, but back in the early days, Friends used to quake with the overwhelming inrush of Spirit during worship and prayer. Now we sit in stillness until, sometimes, feeling a frisson of Spirit, we stand to speak our vocal ministry.
In their 2013 guidebook, Body Prayer, pastor Doug Pagett and poet Kathryn Brill explain, “Involving our body in worship, service, and prayer is more than empty ritual or mundane necessity. Engaging the body in acts of being present with God . . . opens us up to God in new ways. People of faith in ancient times understood that such physical acts and practices . . . were of great value to their faith and life.”
For me, daily body prayer helps me stay aware of my spiritual embodiment. Spiritual embodiment is the way I hold myself within the Light, the way I live inside the bodyheartmindsoul envelope re-created by Spirit every day. Similarly, Pagitt and Brill explain, “These moments of physicality . . . give us permission to trust that God really is present in the mundane, physical acts of our own lives.” In A Testament of Devotion (1941), Thomas Kelly put it like this, “Yet what is sought is . . . worship undergirding every moment, living prayer, the continuous current and background of all moments of life.”
I have arthritis, and my doctor encourages me to stretch about five minutes every morning when I wake up and periodically throughout the day. According to her, stretching improves my flexibility, blood flow, and range of motion, so that I can perform daily tasks more easily. It warms up my muscles and loosens stiff joints, so I am less likely to fall. It relieves the pain from sleeping in one position for a long time and even gives me an endorphin rush.
So, it has not been “a stretch” for me to combine the advice of my doctor with the advice of Pagett and Brill. As soon as I get out of bed every day, I perform a three-part body prayer:
I stand up straight, stretch arms as wide as I can, and think, “I am thankful for another day.”
I stretch my arms straight up toward the ceiling and do a little backbend (if my back permits it that day), and I think, “I welcome whatever life brings me today.”
I fold forward at the waist as far as I can, and think, “I consent to the action of the Divine within me today.”
Sometimes, if I’m feeling especially drowsy, I only think, “Thank you,” “Welcome,” and “Consent,” as I go through the movements. When I am feeling more energetic, I rotate my body and do the body prayer as quickly as possible in each of the four cardinal directions. When I am feeling stable and strong, I hold each pose for one minute, mentally embellishing each phrase with examples, plans, or thoughts of others. Sometimes I walk out on my deck and do the body prayer outside.
Then, refreshed in bodyheartmindsoul, I go downstairs to make coffee and get going with my day.
Barbara Birch is a member of Strawberry Creek Meeting in Berkeley, CA (PacYM). Her interests include the embodied spirituality of early Friends and its relevance to Quakers today.