RESOURCES FOR centering Prayer and the body workshop
June 13th, 2020
Here you will find materials to prepare for or reflect on during an online quiet day, including:
• a schedule;
• reflection questions;
• quotes that can be used for reflection or lectio divina;
• some notes on the practice of focusing;
• a list of books on themes of the body and spirituality;
• a small, optional reflection exercise;
• how to prepare for an online quiet day;
• instructions for centering prayer.
Schedule - Approximate
10:00 - 11:15 Introduction to the day
Brief Body-oriented Centering Prayer Refresher
Questions and Comments
11:15 - 12:00 Centering Prayer
12:00 - 1:00 Lunch in silence
Reflection, discernment, reading, journalling
1:00 - 1:15 Gentle movement
1:15 - 1:30 Focusing
1:30 - 2:15 Centering Prayer
2:15 - 2:30 Closing
Reflection Questions
• When have you experienced wholeness and connection with God? Can you use the memory of this time to make contact with the wise, connected, grounded part of yourself and spend some time with it, listening to it, attending to it, and nurturing it?
• What practices work best for you to encourage wholeness and connection? Examples: being in nature, listening to music, looking at or creating art, dancing, swimming, singing, chanting, playing a musical instrument, sitting quietly, taking a bath, spiritual practices such as worship, lectio divina, the daily office, centering prayer and other forms of meditation?
What is your practice and how can you make more time for it?
What role does your body play in your practices?
• What is your body trying to tell you? Is it trying to get your attention? Is there a left-out part of you that has been silenced or ignored that needs to speak up today? A memory coming up? A sense of dread or fear? What wants your attention today?
• Do you assign your body a lowly role in your life? Is there something you can do to offer your body more respect?
• What can your body teach you about how to be fully alive?
Our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit which is in us.
~ 1 Corinthians 6:19
It has always deeply disappointed me that the Christian religion was the only one that believed God became a human body, and yet we have had such deficient and frankly negative attitudes toward embodiment, the physical world, sexuality, emotions, animals, wonderful physical practices like yoga, and nature itself. We want to do spirituality all in the head. It often seems to me that Western Christianity has been much more formed by Plato (body and soul are at war) than by Jesus (body and soul are already one). For many of us, the body is more repressed and denied than even the mind or the heart. It makes both presence and healing quite difficult, because the body, not just our mind, holds our memories.
~ Richard Rohr, Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps
To keep our bodies less defended, to live in our body right now, to be present to others in a cellular way, is also the work of healing of past hurts and the many memories that seem to store themselves in the body. It is very telling that Jesus often physically touched people when he healed them; he knew where the memory and hurt was lodged, and it was in the body itself.
~ Richard Rohr, Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps
My Christian faith tells me the good news is only good if it is for everyone, otherwise it's just ideology. Sexual flourishing is for every type of body, every type of gender, every type of sex drive, every type of human. People who choose celibacy. Those who have one partner their whole lives. Those who don't conform to gender norms. Those who are divorced, single, dating, gay, straight, kink, vanilla. Those who have hurt me and those I have hurt. All are invited to the open table, to the fullness of grace, the fullness of their erotic selves, their sensual selves, their loving selves.
~ Nadia Bolz-Weber. Shameless: A Sexual Reformation
Without a willingness to be vulnerable, to be exposed, to be wounded, there can be no union. To be “known”, as Scripture so often describes the sexual encounter, is to be vulnerable, exposed, open. Sexuality is therefore a form of vulnerability and is to be valued as such. Sex, eros, passion are antidotes to the human sin of wanting to be in control or to have power over another.
~ Karen Lebacqz, “Appropriate Vulnerability: A Sexual Ethic for Singles” in Christian Perspectives on Sexuality and Gender
Opening the personality means opening the heart of a person so that he is capable of expressing and receiving love. This is not a metaphor but a physical reality. A heart is open when the feeling or excitation in the heart can flow freely into the arms or through the throat and into the mouth and lips or upward and into the eyes.
~ Alexander Lowen, Depression and the Body
Focusing
Focusing is a technique that we can use to check in with our bodies. We often let our minds dominate our decision making. Our bodies have a quiet wisdom that may have trouble being heard over the thoughts that are coming from our minds, but we may find it very helpful to stop and take a few minutes to get in touch with this body wisdom. The felt sense is a body sensation that is meaningful. It is usually felt in the middle of the body, in the abdomen, stomach, chest or throat. A felt sense is different from an emotion although it may contain an emotion.
Focusing Steps
1) Bring awareness into the body. Start with outer areas like hands and feet, then move inward to the middle of the body: throat, chest, stomach, abdomen.
2) Invite the felt sense to appear. There may already be a felt sense in your body. If the felt sense does not appear, ask your body a question or focus on a specific issue: “What wants my awareness now? or “How am I feeling about that issue?”
3) Greet the felt sense. Say hello to it.
4) Describe the felt sense, using adjectives or images.
5) Offer the description back to the felt sense for confirmation. Ask, “Did I understand you correctly?” “Is there anything else?”
6) Be with the felt sense. Spend time with it, with curiosity, patience, and listening. “Is it okay to just be with this right now?”
7) Shift to feel the felt sense’s point of view. How does it feel to be the felt sense? What is its mood?
8) Ask the felt sense gentle, open-ended questions. What would you like to know about it? What would help it express itself more fully?
9) Let the felt sense know it is heard.
10) Let the felt sense know you will be back.
Resources
Lenore Friedman and Susan Moon eds. Being Bodies: Buddhist Women on the Paradox of Embodiment
An anthology of essays by Buddhist women on what it means to be embodied. “In this book we wanted to address a tendency we've both observed for spiritual seekers to leave the body behind.”
James B. Nelson and Sandra P. Longfellow, eds. Sexuality and the Sacred: Sources for Theological Reflection
An anthology of essays by theologians about sexuality as a critical part of divine revelation. “Sexuality is intended by God to be neither incidental nor detrimental to our spirituality but a fully integrated and basic dimension of that spirituality.”
Adrian Thatcher and Elizabeth Stuart, eds. Christian Perspectives on Sexuality and Gender
Another good anthology. “There have always been those within Christianity who have realized the full implications of incarnational knowledge and use their bodies as sources of knowledge about God.”
Nadia Bolz-Weber. Shameless: A Sexual Reformation
A straight talking, humorous, and intelligent look at Christianity and sexuality by the tattooed Lutheran pastor. “It doesn't feel very difficult to draw a direct line between the messages many of us received from the church and the harm we've experienced in our bodies and spirits as a result. So my argument in this book is this: we should not be more loyal to an idea, a doctrine, or an interpretation of a Bible verse then we are to people. If the teachings of the church are harming the bodies and spirits of people, we should rethink those teachings.”
Ellen Bass and Laura Davis, The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse.
This classic book works to empower survivors as they work through the complex emotions that can be associated with abuse.
Wendy Palmer, The Intuitive Body: Aikido as a Clairsentient Practice
A fascinating book by an aikido master on how to use bodywork to develop the intuitive faculties.
A small, optional reflection exercise
Think of something that you could show us from inside the space where you will be spending the quiet day that helps you feel yourself inside your body. It could be a view out your window, a companion animal, a movement, an object, a piece of exercise equipment, a plant. Anything that helps you feel your own embodiment. If you choose, be prepared to show us what you have chosen at the end of our time together.