30-minute Body Centered Prayer Practices

1-2 minutes: Breath Prayer 

• Relax and take a deep breath. Take several minutes to quiet your mind with a breath prayer like, “I am here, You are with me.” Or “I am a human being, not a human doing.” Or “Be still, and know I am God.” Or create your own. Whisper or think the first half of the phrase on your inhale, the second half on the exhale.

10-15 minutes: Action-oriented Centering (choose one)

• Sing and or dance to worship music as you get your body centered and focused on time with God.

• Go for a brisk walk/run while asking God to reveal himself to you in the setting you are in.

• Listen to 1 or 2 chapters from scripture read out loud from an online app (Bible Gateway, YouVersion of the Bible). Color, doodle, or illustrate the scripture you are listening to. 

10-15 minutes: Visual Prayer or Morning Examen (choose one); to keep yourself from being distracted by time, consider setting a timer.

• Choose one of the Visual Prayer practices, Coffee with God or Visual Processing with God, to engage with him on a visceral, embodied level of communion. These practices will help you center your time with God deep within yourself and give you tools to enrich your relationship with him.

• The Morning Examen helps you approach the day with an intentional expectancy of God’s presence in both the joys and the challenges. The more you practice it, the more aware you become of God’s presence in the details of your day.

2-3 minutes: Notes/Journal

• As you leave your time with God, write a few sentences about the experience. Describe what you feel, sense, taste, smell, see or words or verses that God has communicated to you. If you sensed a shift inside you, record that. It’s always nice to have a record of what God is doing, but even more so, the practice of writing your experience cements it in your consciousness.