Speaker B moved from New Age spirituality to Christianity and discovered that practices like breathwork and gratitude aren't new. Genesis describes the Spirit's breath creating order, Jesus breathed on his resurrected disciples, and Philippians 4:6 commands gratitude. What felt modern and secular, B realized, has biblical roots.
I was like, this woman is saying everything I'm trying to say. You just, you are speaking the truth. And so I'm really excited to share this with everybody today. Okay, so let's dive in. I would love to know, how did you even get into this work?
Yeah, well, there's, there's a roundabout story and then a really clear kind of moment. And so roundabout story was, I, before I really knew Jesus, I kind of knew who he was, but hadn't really committed my life to him, um, I was kind of spiritual and open, you know, that kind of classic, I'm a spiritual person. And, um, I found myself finding, um, some real interest in New Age practices and things like that. And then when I met Jesus, I was really clear on what I was saying yes to and saying no to. So I really cut off a lot of those things. But actually, the more I read scripture, the more I found that actually a lot of things— like, let's take breathwork for example can easily be seen as a New Age practice. But actually, as I read Scripture, right, I get even Genesis 1, and I'm looking at the Spirit of God, the Ruach of God, the breath of God hovering over the deep. I'm like, wow, God's always used breath to create order out of chaos. And then I look at how Jesus used breath to breathe on— he breathes on people after his crucifixion and resurrection. And just the powerful tool of breath. Obviously, when Jesus breathed on people, he was breathing the Holy Spirit on them. Um, And so that's utterly, utterly different than just, just breathwork. But I just found that there were these little, um, intersections. Even things like gratitude and the power of gratitude can kind of be seen as kind of maybe pop psychology and, you know, don't be anxious but be grateful. And I'm learning this stuff and I have an awareness of it, and then I read Philippians 4:8— no, sorry, Philippians 4:6— and think, Hold on, don't be anxious about anything. Instead, through prayer, supplication, and gratitude or thanksgiving, make your request known to God, and then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus. And so there's, there's that kind of reclamation of stuff back from pop psychology and from even from New Age. And again, just finding so much of what I would read in Scripture would really intersect with what I was learning in the world of Um, counseling, therapy, neuroscience. And so it's just led me to the conclusion it's all God's idea. It's all his glorious design.
