Breathing Exercises

Kallis­tos (Ware) Bishop of Diok­leia

It is time to con­sider a con­tro­ver­sial topic, where the teach­ing of the Byzan­tine Hesy­chasts is often mis­in­ter­preted - the role of the body in prayer.

The heart, it has been said, is the pri­mary organ of our being, the point of con­ver­gence be­tween mind and mat­ter, the cen­tre alike of our phys­i­cal con­sti­tu­tion and our psy­chic and spir­i­tual struc­ture. Since the heart has this twofold as­pect, at once vis­i­ble and in­vis­i­ble, prayer of the heart is prayer of body as well as soul; only if it in­cludes the body can it be truly prayer of the whole per­son. A human being, in the bib­li­cal view, is a psy­cho­so­matic to­tal­ity - not a soul im­pris­oned in a body and seek­ing to es­cape, but an in­te­gral unity of the two. The body is not just an ob­sta­cle to be over­come, a lump of mat­ter to be ig­nored, but it has a pos­i­tive part to play in the spir­i­tual life and it is en­dowed with en­er­gies that can be har­nessed for the work of prayer.

If this is true of prayer in gen­eral, it is true in a more spe­cific way of the Jesus Prayer, since this is an in­vo­ca­tion ad­dressed pre­cisely to God In­car­nate, to the Word made flesh. Christ at his In­car­na­tion took not only a human mind and will but a human body, and so he has made the flesh into an in­ex­haustible source of sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion. How can this flesh, which the God-man has made Spirit-bear­ing, par­tic­i­pate in the In­vo­ca­tion of the Name and in the prayer of the in­tel­lect in the heart?

To as­sist such par­tic­i­pa­tion, and as an aid to con­cen­tra­tion, the Hesy­chasts evolved a "phys­i­cal tech­nique". Every psy­chic ac­tiv­ity, they re­al­ized, has reper­cus­sions on the phys­i­cal and bod­ily level; de­pend­ing on our inner state we grow hot or cold, we breathe faster or more slowly, the rhythm of our heart-beats quick­ens or de­cel­er­ates, and so on. Con­versely, each al­ter­ation in our phys­i­cal con­di­tion re­acts ad­versely or pos­i­tively on our psy­chic ac­tiv­ity. If, then, we can learn to con­trol and reg­u­late cer­tain of our phys­i­cal processes, this can be used to strengthen our inner con­cen­tra­tion in prayer. Such is the basic prin­ci­ple un­der­ly­ing the Hesy­chast "method". In de­tail, the phys­i­cal tech­nique has three main as­pects:

i) Ex­ter­nal pos­ture. St. Gre­gory of Sinai ad­vises sit­ting on a low stool, about nine inches high; the head and shoul­ders should be bowed, and the eyes fixed on the place of the heart. He rec­og­nizes that this will prove ex­ceed­ingly un­com­fort­able after a time. Some writ­ers rec­om­mend a yet more ex­act­ing pos­ture, with the head held be­tween the knees, fol­low­ing the ex­am­ple of Eli­jah on Mount Carmel.

ii) Con­trol of the breath­ing. The breath­ing is to be made slower and at the same time co-or­di­nated with the rhythm of the Prayer. Often the first part, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God", is said while draw­ing in the breath, and the sec­ond part, "have mercy on me a sin­ner", while breath­ing out. Other meth­ods are pos­si­ble. The recita­tion of the Prayer may also be syn­chro­nized with the beat­ing of the heart.

iii) In­ward ex­plo­ration. Just as the as­pi­rant in Yoga is taught to con­cen­trate his thought in spe­cific parts of his body, so the Hesy­chast con­cen­trates his thought in the car­diac cen­tre. While in­hal­ing through his nose and pro­pelling his breath down into his lungs, he makes his in­tel­lect "de­scend" with the breath and he "searches" in­wardly for the place of the heart. Exact in­struc­tions con­cern­ing this ex­er­cise are not com­mit­ted to writ­ing for fear they should be mis­un­der­stood; the de­tails of the process are so del­i­cate that the per­sonal guid­ance of an ex­pe­ri­enced mas­ter is in­dis­pens­able. The be­gin­ner who, in the ab­sence of such guid­ance, at­tempts to search for the car­diac cen­tre, is in dan­ger of di­rect­ing his thought un­awares into the area which lies im­me­di­ately below the heart - into the ab­domen, that is, and the en­trails. The ef­fect on his prayer is dis­as­trous, for this lower re­gion is the source of the car­nal thoughts and sen­sa­tions which pol­lute the mind and the heart.

For ob­vi­ous rea­sons the ut­most dis­cre­tion is nec­es­sary when in­ter­fer­ing with in­stinc­tive bod­ily ac­tiv­i­ties such as the draw­ing of breath or the beat­ing of the heart. Mis­use of the phys­i­cal tech­nique can dam­age some­one’s health and dis­turb his men­tal equi­lib­rium; hence the im­por­tance of a re­li­able mas­ter. If no such starets is avail­able, it is best for the be­gin­ner to re­strict him­self sim­ply to the ac­tual recita­tion of the Jesus Prayer, with­out trou­bling at all about the rhythm of his breath or his heart-beats. More often than not he will find that, with­out any con­scious ef­fort on his part, the words of the In­vo­ca­tion adapt them­selves spon­ta­neously to the move­ment of his breath­ing. If this does not in fact hap­pen, there is no cause for alarm; let him con­tinue qui­etly with the work of men­tal in­vo­ca­tion.

The phys­i­cal tech­niques are in any case no more than an ac­ces­sory, an aid which has proved help­ful to some but which is in no sense oblig­a­tory upon all. The Jesus Prayer can be prac­tised in its full­ness with­out any phys­i­cal meth­ods at all. St. Gre­gory Pala­mas (1296 - 1359), while re­gard­ing the use of phys­i­cal tech­niques as the­o­log­i­cally de­fen­si­ble, treated such meth­ods as some­thing sec­ondary and suited mainly for be­gin­ners. For him, as for all the Hesy­chast mas­ters, the es­sen­tial thing is not the ex­ter­nal con­trol of the breath­ing but the inner and se­cret In­vo­ca­tion of the Lord Jesus.

Or­tho­dox writ­ers in the last 150 years have in gen­eral laid lit­tle em­pha­sis upon the phys­i­cal tech­niques. The coun­sel given by Bishop Ig­natii Bri­an­chani­nov (1807 - 1867) is typ­i­cal:

We ad­vise our beloved brethren not to try to es­tab­lish this tech­nique within them, if it does not re­veal it­self of its own ac­cord. Many, wish­ing to learn it by ex­pe­ri­ence, have dam­aged their lungs and gained noth­ing. The essence of the mat­ter con­sists in the union of the mind with the heart dur­ing prayer, and this is achieved by the grace of God in its own time, de­ter­mined by God. The breath­ing tech­nique is fully re­placed by the un­hur­ried enun­ci­a­tion of the Prayer, by a short rest or pause at the end, each time it is said, by gen­tle and un­hur­ried breath­ing, and by the en­clo­sure of the mind in the words of the Prayer. By means of these aids we can eas­ily at­tain to a cer­tain de­gree of at­ten­tion.

As re­gards the speed of reciti­a­tion, Bishop Ig­natii sug­gests:

To say the Jesus Prayer a hun­dred time at­ten­tively and with­out haste, about half an hour is needed, but some as­cetics re­quire even longer. Do not say the prayers hur­riedly, one im­me­di­ately after an­other. Make a short pause after each prayer, and so help the mind to con­cen­trate. Say­ing the Prayer with­out pauses dis­tracts the mind. Breathe with care, gen­tly and slowly.

Be­gin­ners in the use of the Prayer will prob­a­bly pre­fer a some­what faster pace than is here pro­posed - per­haps twenty min­utes for a hun­dred prayers. In the Greek tra­di­tion there are teach­ers who rec­om­mend a far brisker rhythm; the very ra­pid­ity of the In­vo­ca­tion, so they main­tain, helps to hold the mind at­ten­tive.

Strik­ing par­al­lels exist be­tween the phys­i­cal tech­niques rec­om­mended by the Byzan­tine Hesy­chasts and those em­ployed in Hindu Yoga and in Su­fism. How far are the sim­i­lar­i­ties the re­sult of mere co­in­ci­dence, of an in­de­pen­dent though anal­o­gous de­vel­op­ment in two sep­a­rate tra­di­tions? If there is a di­rect re­la­tion be­tween Hesy­chasm and Su­fism - and some of the par­al­lels are so close that mere co­in­ci­dence seems ex­cluded - which side has been bor­row­ing from the other? Here is a fas­ci­nat­ing field for re­search, al­though the ev­i­dence is per­haps too frag­men­tary to per­mit any def­i­nite con­clu­sion. One point, how­ever, should not be for­got­ten. Be­sides sim­i­lar­i­ties, there are also dif­fer­ences. All pic­tures have frames, and all pic­ture-frames have cer­tain fea­tures in com­mon; yet the pic­tures within the frames may be ut­terly dif­fer­ent. What mat­ters is the pic­ture, not the frame. In the case of the Jesus Prayer, the phys­i­cal tech­niques are as it were the frame, while the men­tal in­vo­ca­tion of Christ is the pic­ture within the frame. The "frame" of the Jesus Prayer cer­tainly re­sem­bles var­i­ous non-Chris­t­ian "frames", but this should not make us in­sen­si­tive to the unique­ness of the pic­ture within, to the dis­tinc­tively Chris­t­ian con­tent of the Prayer. The es­sen­tial point in the Jesus Prayer is not the act of rep­e­ti­tion in it­self, not how we sit or breathe, but to whom we speak; and in this in­stance the words are ad­dressed un­am­bigu­ously to the In­car­nate Sav­iour Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of Mary.

The ex­is­tence of a phys­i­cal tech­nique in con­nec­tion with the Jesus Prayer should not blind us as to the Prayer’s true char­ac­ter. The Jesus Prayer is not just a de­vice to help us con­cen­trate or relax. It is not sim­ply a piece of "Chris­t­ian Yoga", a type of "Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion", or a "Chris­t­ian mantra", even though some have tried to in­ter­pret it in this way. It is, on the con­trary, an in­vo­ca­tion specif­i­cally ad­dressed to an­other per­son - to God made man, Jesus Christ, our per­sonal Sav­iour and Re­deemer. The Jesus Prayer, there­fore, is far more than an iso­lated method or tech­nique. It ex­ists within a cer­tain con­text, and if di­vorced from that con­text it loses its proper mean­ing.

The con­text of the Jesus Prayer is first of all one of faith. The In­vo­ca­tion of the Name pre­sup­poses that the one who says the Prayer be­lieves in Jesus Christ as Son of God and Sav­iour. Be­hind the rep­e­ti­tion of a form of words there must exist a liv­ing faith in the Lord Jesus - in who he is and in what he has done for me per­son­ally. Per­haps the faith in many of us is very un­cer­tain and fal­ter­ing; per­haps it co­ex­ists with doubt; per­haps we often find our­selves com­pelled to cry out in com­pany with the fa­ther of the lu­natic child, "Lord, I be­lieve: help my un­be­lief" (Мк. 9:24). But at least there should be some de­sire to be­lieve; at least there should be, amidst all the un­cer­tainty, a spark of love for the Jesus whom as yet we know so im­per­fectly.

Sec­ondly, the con­text of the Jesus Prayer is one of com­mu­nity. We do not in­voke the Name as sep­a­rate in­di­vid­u­als, re­ly­ing solely upon our own inner re­sources, but as mem­bers of the com­mu­nity of the Church. Writ­ers such as St. Barsanuphius, St. Gre­gory of Sinai or Bishop Theo­phan took it for granted that those to whom they com­mended the Jesus Prayer were bap­tized Chris­tians, reg­u­larly par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Church’s sacra­men­tal life through Con­fes­sion and Holy Com­mu­nion. Not for one mo­ment did they en­vis­age the In­vo­ca­tion of the Name as a sub­sti­tute for the sacra­ments, but they as­sumed that any­one using it would be a prac­tis­ing and com­mu­ni­cant mem­ber of the Church.

Yet today, in this pre­sent epoch of rest­less cu­rios­ity and ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal dis­in­te­gra­tion, there are in fact many who use the Jesus Prayer with­out be­long­ing to any Church, pos­si­bly with­out hav­ing a clear faith ei­ther in the Lord Jesus or in any­thing else. Are we to con­demn them? Are we to for­bid them the use of the Prayer? Surely not, so long as they are sin­cerely search­ing for the Foun­tain of Life. Jesus con­demned no one ex­cept hyp­ocrites. But, in all hu­mil­ity and acutely aware of our own faith­less­ness, we are bound to re­gard the sit­u­a­tion of such peo­ple as anom­alous, and to warn them of this fact.