Medicine Health

Breathing as a Spiritual Practice

Experiencing the Presence of God

by Will Johnson Review by Gunnel Minett, August 2019

Published: 2019
Publisher: Inner Traditions
Format: Paperback
Pages: 160
ISBN: 9781620556887

Publisher’s description

A guide to meditative breathing practices in Western religions and how these practices provide a direct experience of God • Reveals how Western spiritual traditions, such as the Book of Genesis, the Jewish teachings of ruach, and the poetry of Rumi, contain hidden instruction for meditative breathing practices • Explains how breathing practices can bring all of us, including Christians, Muslims, and Jews, closer to a direct experience of the palpable presence of God • Provides guidelines and best practices for meditative breathing through a personal journal of the author’s own meditative retreat Surprised by the number of attendees from Western spiritual traditions at his Buddhist retreats, Will Johnson wanted to understand what drew them to this type of spiritual experience. He found many devoted Christians were in search of a more direct experience of God beyond faith alone, so he began exploring what breathing practices could be found in the sacred texts of Western monotheistic religions. Johnson discovered that, like their Eastern counterparts, Western traditions speak of gaining direct access to God via the breath. After experimenting with these teachings during a 10-day retreat at a desert monastery, he discovered that each of us has the potential to open up to the presence of spirit in every breath. In this book, the author offers a close look at the importance of breath in each major Western religion, including the Jewish teachings of ruach as life-giving spirit in the form of breath and the Islamic poetry of Rumi, which describes breath as essential for cleansing the soul. He then ties each breathing tradition to the Book of Genesis, sacred to Christians, Muslims, and Jews alike: “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being.” Just as God blew life into Adam, every breath we take--if we follow the breathing practice of surrendering completely to inhalation--can open us up to the presence of God. Through his own contemplative journey, Johnson shares his experience of striving to surrender to the fullest presence of God through each breath. As he takes the reader step-by-step through his own breathing practice, the author explains his physical and mental techniques for meditating successfully through breath and provides helpful guidelines to get the most out of meditative retreats. Johnson also offers deep reflections on how these shared practices of experiencing God through the breath transcend religious differences.

This book can be described as a daily journal written by someone on a spiritual retreat in a monastery. The author is not part of the monastery, only a visitor. The focus of his retreat is to pay attention to his breathing. Just that. To focus on every breath he takes, all day, every day for as long as he stays there. No more, no less. Coming from a Buddhist background, he wants to follow Buddha's instructions on the awakening of the awareness of breath; " as you breathe in, breathe in through the whole body; as you breathe out, breathe out through the whole body."

This simple activity turns out to lead to a big inner change. By simply paying attention to the breathing, breath by breath, his awareness starts to expand. What Buddha was referring to was not just to breathe in air, he also pointed to a spiritual aspect of breathing: it can expand your consciousness and become a spiritual path to a higher potential.

As a journal of someone on a spiritual path, the book is beautifully written with several poems and suggestions as to how to pursue the experience of expanding the breathing. But personally I think the book would have benefited from a physiological explanation of breathing: understanding the central role breathing has in the body would have added to an understanding of the spiritual dimension. To make us see that breathing is not just vital for our survival and physical wellbeing, but also a powerful way to deepen our understanding of ourselves and how it can make us expand our consciousness and inner wellbeing.

I have been using breathing as a tool for expanding inner wellbeing since 1980 and have experienced how people have started an inner journey, similar to the one described in this book. It does not matter in what context a person starts to become aware of the potential of the breath. When the person starts to be aware of their breathing, either through altering their breathing pattern or simply by observing the breathing, they tend to start an inner journey.

If this type of comparison had been added to the book, it would have added a new dimension to the personal journey described. Nevertheless, the book offers a very interesting insight to the powerful tool which our breathing can be.

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