Breath Prayer

A Breath prayer is short. It is composed of two halves. The first is recited as you inhale, and the second as you exhale. This requires the prayer to have a natural conceptual break. These two halves are easily memorable and repeatable. Each should let you pray with a slow rhythm, and intentional breathing.

It is most common for a breath prayer to be repeated over several minutes. There may be an initial power to the insightfulness or reality of the prayer. When we meditate upon the words through repetition, that power begins to take hold. No matter where you are, you are invited to slow your breath. To swirl around the words in meditation. To pause between remembrances for moments of contemplation with God. Listening and paying attention to the fullness of your body and your experience. This type of prayer can be quietly spoken or repeated in your mind.

Between the two halves of this prayer, take a brief pause. Allow yourself to rest in the world between. This space is a space of the present, the past, and the yet to be. A space of possibility and longing. The space between the halves is one of hope. Hope that the space between myself, our world, and our God may decrease. As one half of a breath follows the other, the realities in our prayer would follow one another.

What is prayed will change. Nearly every breath prayer includes an honest reality about your life, paired with a related divine truth. This truth may be an excerpt from scripture, something you believe about God, or an expression to God. If you are new to breath prayers, we encourage you to start with a couple verses in one of the gospels or a stanza from a psalm.

These prayers can be topical or created as needed for your context. Breath prayers are used to bring our focus back to Jesus. They can be prayed to express a deep need, as Bartimaeus did. They can be prayed to realign our hearts and minds on things of Christ. They can affirm and remind ourselves of the character of God in our life. They can free us from lies about ourselves and our situation. You can pray scripture back to God. You can declare what you’re experiencing with a response from scripture. Or, you can simply welcome God into your day and circumstances.

Breath Prayer is a very flexible way to pray. It can easily adjust to the time you have. You can pray it in the calm of your home, on a busy metro, or walking through your city. The simplicity and repetition make it an ever present invitation to pray.

Step 1: Set aside time to pray.

Have a sense of the time you have to pray. It is helpful know beforehand the time you need to finish your time of prayer. We should try to conclude our prayers with time before what is next in our day. This makes it easier to bring calm and peace with us into the rest of our day. Checking in with yourself, your calendar, and the rest of your day helps you stay present while praying.

Step 2: Select or Create your Prayer.

There is no such thing as a perfect prayer. We encourage you to not spend too long searching or creating your prayer. If you would like, the Jesus Prayer is here for you to use.

Inhale: Jesus Christ, Son of God,
Exhale: have mercy on me, a sinner.

Step 3: Set aside the distractions you can.

What distractions can you set aside? Do you need it to be quiet? Are you in a place where you can light a candle as a symbolic way of welcoming God into your time of prayer?

Step 4: Enter into your first breath.

Intentionally accentuate each half of your first breath. With practice, this prompting will inform your body and mind it is time for breath prayer.

Repeated Step: Breathe between each Prayer.

It is normal for your repetition of the breath prayer to be more frequent as you start. As the breaths pass by try letting more breaths pass before you repeat the prayer. Repeat the breath prayer when you find your mind wandering away. This is a gentle, tender, and loving way to return your focus to prayer. It happens to us all, and that is okay.

The moments between repeating your breath prayer are opportunities for reflection, meditation, and contemplation. What are you feeling, thinking, and experiencing in your body? Embrace what you are realizing and let yourself dwell with it. You can thank God for this realization. At this point it can be helpful to repeat the prayer.

Final Step: Take your final breath.

It is time to conclude your prayer. Take a deep breath. Repeat your breath prayer one more time. Simply add an “Amen.” If you make the sign of the cross when you pray, this can be nice time to mark the conclusion of this sanctified time.

A breath prayer is short and is prayed in two halves. These are the two markers of a breath prayer: it is brief, and has two halves with a break. We should give each part attention when writing our own prayers. When written out, they are often spread across two lines to help indicate where the shift from inhale to exhale takes place. They may also include verbs for breathing as shorthand to indicate it is a breath prayer.

– I wait on you Jesus,
Follow that with a truth you know about God in response to your prayer.
– You are always with me.

Inhale: I wait on you Jesus,
Exhale: You are always with me.

The point of these prayers is to help us meet and deeply reflect on reality. This is a meditative prayer practice that should assist and guide us into a posture of meditation or contemplation. Most of the time, the content of the prayer will include a divine reality, and a lived reality. You can also focus exclusively on one of these. If you only focus on lived reality, then phrase and position it towards light and not darkness.

There is much more to writing breath prayer than expressed here. There is no wrong way to pray. These are guidelines and suggestions to help you discover this wonderful way to pray.

A prayer encapsulated within a single full breath imposes its brevity on our prayer. Not only does this limit the length of the prayer itself, but it also imposes a conceptual limit. How many thoughts can play and dance together in the span of a breath? At least one, but not a lot.

This requires us to be specific and focused. Let us prayerfully consider ideas that build, challenge, and cooperate with one another. Let our focus help us to center and refocus ourselves. To be present with a part of ourselves, our reality, and our God.

There is much more to writing breath prayer than expressed here. There is no wrong way to pray. These are guidelines and suggestions to help you discover this wonderful way to pray.

There is a natural pause, turn, or break in every breath. Let us be mindful of this as we are writing our prayers. It creates two halves with a distinct break. There are many creative ways to write into this structure. The turn from the first to the second half could restate, build upon, draw our focus, or make an unexpected connection.

You can play with the balance between each half. They could match one another, or you could do something asymmetrical. There is no right or wrong way to do this. As you write and explore, you’ll discover different ways of structuring a breath prayer that can shift your experience praying it. Below are some examples of what was mentioned above.

Restate

Inhale: Our Lord is eternal,
Exhale: forever and ever.

Build Upon

Inhale: In this silence, I’ll wait
Exhale: to hear God’s voice.

Draw our Focus

Inhale: Jesus sees me with His love.
Exhale: Reveal your love to me today.

Unexpected Connection

Inhale: Holy Spirit dwells in me.
Exhale: Within God, I live and breathe.

Matching Halves

Inhale: Jesus chose death for us.
Exhale: He chose the cross for us.

Asymmetrical

Inhale: The sun will rise tomorrow.
Exhale: I will, too.

Any point of inspiration can be a starting point for writing breath prayers. If you are feeling stuck, here are three starting points that may help.

Scripture
There are so many parts of scripture that work well as breath prayers. Both halves could come from a passage, or you could write something to pair with it. The book of psalms, the prophets, the gospels, the words of Jesus, and the epistles are good places to look. Things that are more narrative will have lines in them that lend themselves to a breath prayer. You will have to do more searching through the other genres in the scriptures.

Psalm 69

Inhale: God, come to my assistance;
Exhale: Lord, make haste to help me.

Jeremiah 17

Inhale: Save me Lord,
Exhale: and I will be saved.

2 Corinthians

Inhale: Our Father comforts us
Exhale: amidst our every trouble.

Isaiah 55

Inhale: For I will go out in joy
Exhale: and be led in peace!

Divine Truths
These can be things that we think about God, or that we believe are true about how God sees reality. A statement like ‘God is Love’ is a truth, and so is ‘Rest is Sacred.’ If you start from a divine truth, it helps to make it focused.

Inhale: Everyone is loved by God.
Exhale: I am worthy of love.

Inhale: God chose to love me.
Exhale: I can love myself.

Lived Reality
Life is a lot. Every day, we meet ourselves, our situations, and our world. The full range of life meets us through our days. Breath prayer can help us to see and experience God more deeply and presently in our life. You can write these from a posture of praise, of truth-telling, or inviting God into your pain. When you have chosen the reality for your prayer, pair it with a divine truth that dances with it.

Inhale: The world tries to erase me.
Exhale: The Eternal knows my name.

The same idea can be expressed in different ways. These different ways change how the prayer moves through us. As an example, a prayer from above could be written in two short sentences.

Inhale: God, You are holy,
Exhale: and here with me.

Inhale: God, You are holy.
Exhale: God, You are here.

This is conceptually identical but different in practice. Give attention to the way you craft the phrases in your prayer. There is no right or wrong way to write these. As you craft these prayers you will find language and structures that help your mind and body enter into a meditative and contemplative posture.