Coaching practices for Sacred Word Centering Prayer
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Sacred Word Centering Prayer, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I want to sit silently with God, but the second I try, my mind grabs onto a thought and runs
- I love sitting with scripture and I love silent prayer, but I do them as two separate things and they feel a little disconnected
- I find a real stillness in my prayer time and then snap right back into the same reactive, defended person the moment I get up
- Since I started sitting in silence, old buried feelings and memories keep welling up during and after, and it unnerves me
- When I try to pray in silence my mind floods with thoughts, and I end up grabbing the "holy" ones and fighting off the distracting ones
Practices that may help
- Choosing and using a sacred word
Select one simple word as your symbol of consent to God’s presence and action within.
Centering Prayer: The Method of Thomas Keating - Centering Prayer: The Method of Thomas Keating
Centering Prayer is a contemporary Christian contemplative practice developed by Thomas Keating, William Meninger, and Basil Pennington in the 1970s, drawing on The Cloud of Unknowing and the Desert Father tradition. The method is simple: sit in silence for 20 minutes, use a sacred word as a gentle intention to consent to God’s presence, and release all thoughts as they arise. It is a devotional practice; some components parallel studied meditation mechanisms, but centering prayer as a whole has not been evaluated in controlled trials. - Combining lectio divina with centering prayer
Use a brief lectio as preparation that deepens the consent you bring to centering prayer.
Centering Prayer: The Method of Thomas Keating - Carrying contemplative consent into daily activity
Let the quality of openness and consent from the sit carry into how you move through the day.
Centering Prayer: The Method of Thomas Keating - Allowing the "divine therapy" — psychological healing through practice
Expect that regular centering prayer surfaces buried emotional material, and allow it.
Centering Prayer: The Method of Thomas Keating - Releasing all thoughts without judgment
Let every thought — pleasant or unpleasant, trivial or profound — pass without engaging it.
Centering Prayer: The Method of Thomas Keating - Sitting for twenty minutes, twice daily
Commit to 20 minutes, twice a day — the practice period Keating recommends for transformation to occur.
Centering Prayer: The Method of Thomas Keating - Using a short word in prayer
Choose a single syllable word — "God" or "love" — and use it like a dart of longing.
The Cloud of Unknowing: Contemplation Beyond Concepts - Oratio: praying in response to what arose
Let what the text touched in you become a prayer — honest, spontaneous, personal.
Lectio Divina: Sacred Reading - Moving from reading into wordless presence
Let sacred reading gradually release into silence rather than remaining an intellectual activity.
Contemplative Prayer: The Inner Journey
Related concerns
- Centering Prayer And Healing
Expect that regular centering prayer surfaces buried emotional material, and allow it.
Allowing the "divine therapy" — psychological healing through practice
- Centering Prayer Duration
Centering Prayer is a contemporary Christian contemplative practice developed by Thomas Keating, William Meninger, and Basil Pennington in the 1970s, drawing on The Cloud of Unknowing and the Desert Father tradition. The method is simple: sit in silence for 20 minutes, use a sacred word as a gentle intention to consent to God’s presence, and release all thoughts as they arise. It is a devotional practice; some components parallel studied meditation mechanisms, but centering prayer as a whole has not been evaluated in controlled trials.
- Centering Prayer Fruits
Let the quality of openness and consent from the sit carry into how you move through the day.
Carrying contemplative consent into daily activity
- Centering Prayer The Method Of Thomas Keating Before Bed
Centering Prayer is a contemporary Christian contemplative practice developed by Thomas Keating, William Meninger, and Basil Pennington in the 1970s, drawing on The Cloud of Unknowing and the Desert Father tradition. The method is simple: sit in silence for 20 minutes, use a sacred word as a gentle intention to consent to God’s presence, and release all thoughts as they arise. It is a devotional practice; some components parallel studied meditation mechanisms, but centering prayer as a whole has not been evaluated in controlled trials.
- Centering Prayer The Method Of Thomas Keating With My Partner
Centering Prayer is a contemporary Christian contemplative practice developed by Thomas Keating, William Meninger, and Basil Pennington in the 1970s, drawing on The Cloud of Unknowing and the Desert Father tradition. The method is simple: sit in silence for 20 minutes, use a sacred word as a gentle intention to consent to God’s presence, and release all thoughts as they arise. It is a devotional practice; some components parallel studied meditation mechanisms, but centering prayer as a whole has not been evaluated in controlled trials.
- How To Practice Centering Prayer
Centering Prayer is a contemporary Christian contemplative practice developed by Thomas Keating, William Meninger, and Basil Pennington in the 1970s, drawing on The Cloud of Unknowing and the Desert Father tradition. The method is simple: sit in silence for 20 minutes, use a sacred word as a gentle intention to consent to God’s presence, and release all thoughts as they arise. It is a devotional practice; some components parallel studied meditation mechanisms, but centering prayer as a whole has not been evaluated in controlled trials.
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