Breathing

 Breathing is a really, truly important aspect of meditation, and that's true across all traditions, not just Christian, but in every other religious form of meditation and even in mindfulness. Breathing is the central piece of how we start to quiet ourselves and center ourselves, which is of course the goal of meditation.

When you think about it, how often do we hear the expression, “okay, just breathe”? Sometimes the person saying that to you means it literally, and sometimes they mean it figuratively. But in both cases, it communicates to you that something is really important here. It helps you from a physiological point of view to simply center yourself and calm yourself down.

But there's also a much deeper spiritual reason why we want to really engage in intentional breathing. And the reason for that goes all the way back to the very beginning of the Hebrew scriptures and the creation of the universe. There is a word in Hebrew “ruach”. Ruach is spelled R-U-A-H or R-U-A-C-H.

Ruach means wind and it means breath, and it means spirit in ancient Hebrew. And the reason that word is so important to us is because it was intentionally created, if you will, to mean all three of those things at the same time.

We see in the book of Genesis, the very first two chapters, that Ruach is used to describe the word that we translate into English as wind to separate the earth from the water. And to start, to begin to create the entire universe.

That's in the first chapter of Genesis. In the second chapter of Genesis, when we see that God breathes into Adam's nostrils to give him life, that word Ruach is used again. And what it says is that God creates Adam out of the clay of the land. That God then breathes into Adam's nostrils, thus giving him life. It's not when Adam's heart starts, it's not when the brainwaves start going. It's when God gives humanity breath.

And then, finally, spirit. At the end of John's gospel, when Jesus has been resurrected from the dead, and he comes through the door and meets the terrified 10 apostles that are there. Jesus breathes his spirit onto them. Spirit is the Greek word now, because the New Testament is written in Greek, “Pneuma”, it's the same thing. It means wind and breath and spirit.

And so when we are quieting ourselves down, sitting in an intentional position, and we just begin by breathing, what we are trying to do is be in touch with the wind that's all around us, the breath that's within us, and the spirit that lives in our heart.

That's why breathing is so important.