Lord's Prayer Breathing

Lord's Prayer breathing ... for the body and the soul

First How:

This is easy, and below I explain why and when to use this invaluable expression of our knowing that we need more of God.

As you detect tension, stress, pressure or any other fear-laden symptom, pause.

Take only a quick inhale and on the exhale begin speaking the Lord's prayer:
Take three inhales for the entire prayer on the words,

"Our Father ..."
"Give us..."
and "Lead us..."

Prolonging the exhale as you speak the endings to each of the sections is the exact reason that this helps us physically.

Repeating four Lord's prayers this way takes one minute.  That gives us 12 breaths a minute.  Perhaps the optimal normal rate for adults.

Because I've practiced this for many years, I find I am getting just a bit closer to praying without ceasing.  And you can too.


And now Why do this  : (taken from an earlier post on this blog)

Breathing - I just took a cleansing breath. I didn’t plan on it. It just came. I was reading along what I wrote yesterday morning. I came to the part about "squandering so much energy providing for my own comfort" and then remembered eating out last night. Or I should say overeating out.  And there came this deep breath - the kind that signals regret.  A damaging behavior, a bad choice, hurting someone, hurting myself.  I resolve again to avoid going to my favorite restaurant more than once a ... month. Well, maybe two weeks.  And to avoid going when tired and starving. I ask God's forgiveness as I limp toward real change. Again.

Cleansing Breaths vs. Real Cleansing

You hear yoga coaches talk about filling our lungs deeply, slowly and very fully and then exhaling slowly - and they call that a cleansing breath. But is that a breath taken from the body telling the brain what it needs?  Not in my opinion.  I suspect it is from the soul telling the body what it needs.  And who informed the soul to do that?

What if the body is running along well and doesn't really need an arbitrarily timed "cleansing" breath. What if the metabolic balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide, acid and base,and body temperature are all just fine. What if by taking exaggerated breaths you lose a bit too much CO2 and encourage a respiratory alkalosis? I know that sounds technical, but it’s the truth.

How will the body compensate?  The kidneys help.  They can lose bicarbonate and save acid. Yes, metabolic balance is a good thing. However, that compensatory acidity from the kidneys lasts a bit longer than the alkalosis produced by excess breathing.  Is there help for that?  Well, guess what the bones do. They buffer excess acidity from the kidneys - which stops once we stop telling our lungs to breathe excessively. Or when we go to sleep. And let our body go on auto-pilot. And maybe the bones recover. Thank God the body gets to go on auto-pilot.

The body loves the chance to be on auto-pilot.  Dreams aside, sleep is somewhat like that: a living body without conscious thought, driven only by the force of the desire to live, the need for rest, the need to just be.  And then we wake up.  We open our eyes and conflicting desires are lined up at the starting line. Kind of reminds me of luxurious time spent gazing at the kids while they were asleep. And then dealing with their needs and desires once they'd wake up. My soul is like that, full of desires that have to be sorted out. Thankfully, our body can usually run on auto-pilot while the pilot sleeps.

Assume the soul thinks it is the pilot, flying solo.  Let us call that "the human condition." And there's a crash. And another crash. And another.  Still alive to see the wreckage, somewhere along the way, the offer of forgiveness and a new life of grace sounded amazingly good.   And the soul accepted it needs a life with Christ - and mysteriously fused with Jesus. The soul got the Message.  Christians have accepted the fact that, sadly, it's the most natural thing in the world to need to get clean.  My cleansing breath this morning came from there.  My need to get clean.  The new pilot, the true pilot, is saying once again, "Take a deep breath. You need Me.”

And that's what I see in myself, and in the office, "Air Hunger."

For the body

I believe God designed us to not have to be scarcely aware of our breathing.  But if you can identify the telltale tug to take a true cleansing breath, then becoming aware of breathing is actually very helpful.  A normal respiratory rate is about 12-14 times a minute.  When abnormal, especially if it is too fast or too deep, we take notice.  This very subtle abnormal pattern is one I call "air hunger."

Air hunger looks like needing to take too deep of a breath.  Like we need just a little bit more air. It comes into a breathing pattern that is slightly rapid, like 18-20 shallow breaths a minute. I first felt this in myself after my first panic attack, after I'd had three kiddos. I was going through an identity crisis of the mounting collision of who I thought I was, a doctor, and who I apparently needed to become, a mother. And a believing mother, at that.  

Helping patients identify air hunger has been so beneficial.  It usually precedes the feeling of panic by days, so if identified, the question can become, "What is the low grade stress in me?" Instead of, "Am I dying?" or "Do I need to go to the ER?"  

So, using Lord's Prayer breathing to "slow" the soul down, to be able to take a step back, or go back to sleep has been invaluable to me personally, and to many of my patients and retreat attendees.