What is Embodied Prayer?
Embodied Prayer is using your body to pray and worship.
Who is it for?
This often done individually but a small group may benefit from it.
Background
Have you ever found yourself wanting to move in worship, to sway to the music, raise your hands, hold your hands open as if to receive? If so, you have discovered quite naturally what we read throughout scripture… people use their bodies to worship God.
Lamentations 3:41, ESV
Let us lift up our hearts and hands to God in heaven
Ezra 9:5, ESV
And at the evening sacrifice I rose from my fasting, with my garment and my cloak torn, and fell upon my knees and spread out my hands to the Lord my God,
1 Timothy 2:8, NCV
I want the men everywhere to pray, lifting up their hands in a holy manner, without anger and arguments…
2 Samuel 6:14-16, NLT
And David danced before the Lord with all his might, wearing a priestly garment. So David and all the people of Israel brought up the Ark of the Lord with shouts of joy and the blowing of rams’ horns.
Exodus 15:20-21, NLT
Then Miriam the prophet, Aaron’s sister, took a tambourine and led all the women as they played their tambourines and danced. And Miriam sang this song:
“Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously;
he has hurled both horse and rider into the sea.”
This is something that happens quite naturally in children but as we grow older many different constraints like self-consciousness or not wanting to be different tend to creep in and we become less free. Yet there is something very special about bringing all of ourselves into worship. Using prayer gestures, moving to music, even dancing can have a profound effect on us as we move beyond constraints to experience the expansiveness and freedom of movement in prayer and worship.
Method:
Where can we begin – postures – prayerful meditation moving to music?
Select a worship song, maybe it will help you to have the words printed out at first. Just listen to it! How does it make you feel? Does it stir emotion in you? Can you feel yourself moving to the rhythm of the melody?
These web sites might give you more of an insight into Embodied Prayer.