Body work in prayer

In my last but one blog I promised to say something about the importance of the body in contemplative prayer.

My daily practice owes much to three sources:
1. Cynthia Bourgeault has given me ‘Centering Prayer', a way of meditating taught by Fr. Thomas Keating, which recommends a prayer word as a symbol of one’s intention to be available to the eternal presence deep within. From her I have learnt the way of ‘kenosis’ (a New Testament Greek word for self emptying) so beautifully expressed in Paul’s great hymn in his letter to the Philippians:

Though his state was that of God,
yet he did not claim equality with God
something he should cling to.
Rather he emptied himself,
and assuming the state of a slave,
he was born in human likeness.
He, being known as one of us,
Humbled himself obedient unto death,
Even death on a cross.

2. Jon Kabat-Zinn who developed a sequence of simple yoga postures and the art of ‘body scanning’ to help people attending his clinic for those with chronic pain. From him I have learnt the importance of the body both as the inescapable reality of our human life (including its spiritual aspect) and as indispensible aid to meditation.
3. Donna Malcomson, a teacher of therapeutic yoga at Morley College in south London who has helped me to see the importance of moments and movements of transition; for example between one posture and the next and between the period of formal practice and one’s everyday life. She helped me to experience each body movement in minute detail and thus to stay with it rather than start anticipating the next posture.