Spontaneous Movement and Other Suspect Spiritual Practices

Do I have to sit still when I pray and meditate?

My journey with trembling for joy

Those of us who grew up in a traditional church were taught to sit still and be quiet in church. However, at one point in my journey in the 1960s, I learned from the charismatic movement there were other ways to worship God, especially when singing glorious hymns and lively songs.

One Sunday morning in the church where I pastored, we were singing “Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee” accompanied by our thundering pipe organ and beautiful orchestra. I had, along with many others, raised my hands in open praise. When we finished and began sitting down, a little boy in front of me who had turned around and was watching me, asked, “Why are you doing that with your hands?” Without thinking, I said, “Because we’re in church!

For many years, as I prayed for others, touching them lightly on their arms or shoulders, my hands would tremble. I could concentrate and get my trembling to stop, but then I couldn’t focus on praying. So, I decided not to worry about it.

Then, twenty years ago, under the influence of my Buddhist friend, Ken Wilber, I graduated to meditative prayer. I was again instructed to sit still and be quiet. So, I did and found deep and rich experiences in subtle and causal consciousness. But, once again, my body started up again. I noticed whenever I was reading or listening to someone offering spiritual truth that touched me, I would experience a rush of energy that would erupt as a tremor or twitch in my shoulders. This wasn’t a problem since it was barely noticeable — at first.

Then it began to get more pronounced. When I was alone and would turn my attention to the presence of Abba God or Jesus, I would often shake ferociously. This was getting really strange. So, as a good academic, I did what I always did upon embarking on a new line of thought or action — I researched the heck out of it.

Quakers and Quaking

Since what I was experiencing could be called “quaking,” I started with the respectable Christians called Quakers. Quaker faith was actually named for their tendencies toward ecstasy — “quaking” or trembling in the throes of elevated states of consciousness. It was originally meant as a pejorative term.

Perhaps the most tangible legacy of the Quakers today are the fifteen historic colleges and universities with Quaker origins such as Johns Hopkins and Cornel. I found that Quakers stopped quaking because they were persecuted, even imprisoned, for their wild ecstatic experiences in the 1660s.  Well, I didn’t want to be persecuted, so I moved my research to other sources.

Spontaneous qigong

I turned to qigong (pronounced ‘Ch’i Gong’), a mind-body practice developed around 5000 years ago in China. It utilizes physical movements, breathing exercises, and meditation to harmonize the mind, body, and spirit in terms of qi or ch’i.

Qi, in traditional Chinse medicine, is all the various manifestations of energy, from the most material aspects of energy (such as the earth beneath your feet, your computer, and flesh and blood) to the most immaterial elements (light, movement, heat, nerve impulses, thought, and emotion).

Spontaneous qigong is a branch of qigong where one surrenders to the qi, allowing it to spontaneously move through him or her — unlike traditional qi gong, where one tries to move the qi. This practice can manifest itself in spontaneous movements – the arms or legs may move dramatically; the torso may swing. The movements can be erratic, or they can be refined and dance-like.

Spontaneous qigong seems to be a kind of primordial healing. It is the body acting to heal itself by allowing the body’s vital or life energy to move through and clear its blockages. This was interesting because it was the first time that I found a description that resonated with what seemed like was happening with me.

Spontaneous yoga

Next, I looked at Kriya Yoga. Kriya is a Sanskrit term that means “to move.” This ancient tradition has been revived in the last hundred years. Some believe yoga itself originated from spontaneous movements happening to experienced meditators. In other words, the yoga poses came afterward as a technique for awakening.

Spontaneous yoga is an ancient practice connected to what are called kriyas. Igor Anvar Kufayev, Russian British yogi and spiritual teacher says that with kriyas, “The body can shake and tremble and sway and jump and hop and contort. The body can perform various forms of known and unknown yoga asanas [yoga postures], mudras [symbolic gestures usually performed with the hands and fingers], various bandhas [muscle contractions to block energy flow], spontaneous vocalization or glossolalia [spontaneous sounding of syllables while in an altered state]. Kriyas here are not something that we do, but something that simply happens to us when life force begins to release from its seat. Kriyas are signposts of progressive freeing of the system from all that information which contracts our awareness away from what we are, the wonder of being at once human and divine.”

Here was another description I identified with. So, I was not being weird – I was just being ancient!

Tremoring today

In Shaking Medicine, Bradford Keeney, university professor and researcher, writes, “Shaking bodies and vibrating touch have been known throughout the world as powerful forms of healing expression. Yet the value of trembling, vibrating, quaking, and shaking as a medicine for the body, mind, and soul has been all but lost in recent times, particularly among the more literate and technologically developed cultures.”

Trembling has such negative connotations that Keeney says that the “negation of the shaking body constitutes the last great taboo of our time.” In contrast, there appear to be people around the world who often tremble with joy. Anthropologist Barbara Tedlock describes trembling among a wide range of cultural groups as a practice to use “vital energy” to facilitate healing.

The oldest medicine on earth

Keeney calls the vibrations of shaking, “the oldest medicine on earth.” He refers to shaking as “home to the shamans, Quakers, Gnostics, Taoists, yoginis, anarchists, American Indians, alchemists, Bushmen, Shakers, Sufis, Teilhard de Chardin Catholics, biologists, Druids, Zen Buddhists, and Tibetans, among other ecologically enlightened traditions. It is a world and spirituality that hasn’t been reduced to psychological metaphor and explanation. Rather, it maintains a deep respect and awe of the mysteries that are greater than our capacity to understand.”

Now I was part of a world-wide healing culture! Still, I kept researching.

TRE®

TRE® ( Tension & Trauma Release Exercise) is a recent development (1990s) of a series of exercises that assist the body in releasing deep muscular patterns of stress, tension, and trauma. The exercises activate the body’s natural, therapeutic shaking response and restore a sense of well-being. This, again, was encouraging to me. And I get to the “shaking response” without having to go through the exercises. That’s a relief!

Church shakers

Today’s church “shakers” can be found in traditional African American churches where there may be spontaneous dance and being “slain in the spirit.” In Pentecostal and Charismatic churches, worshippers’ hands and arms may shake along with other body movements while in altered states of consciousness. Praying with glossolalia” (spontaneous syllables and sounds not recognized as a known language to the believer) is standard.

Truth Tremors

All in all, my research led me to take off my inhibitions and reservations about spontaneous body movements in meditative prayer and other times. My tremors seem to be what I call “truth tremors.”  When my body recognizes profound truth, even before my mind does, I shake.

In turning my attention to the profound spiritual truth found in the presence of Abba God or Jesus, almost always, my shoulders and chest shake, my abdomen shakes, and sometimes my legs and feet shake. The shaking may last a few seconds as a passing tremor, or minutes of pronounced shaking, always followed by absolute stillness. The stillness takes on a new presence after shaking.  The pattern of shaking and stillness is critical. Both are needed and complete the other. The degree to which you move should be followed by the same degree with which you are still.

Sometimes it seems like I am like a garden hose that has been turned on, and water (sacred emotion) is trying the flow through. There’s some stuff in the hose and it’s kinked here and there, but the more the hose runs, and the more the kinks smooth out and the unwanted stuff passes through. The water eventually flows smoothly. I then experience an uninterrupted flow of love and bliss.

I also tone and make spontaneous sounds as well as other movements such as holding out or raising my hands in Integral Prayer. A spontaneous movement that I find especially filled with meaning—because it affirms our divinity—is found in Hafiz’ words, “When no one is looking, and I want to kiss God, I just lift my own hand to my mouth.”

My invitation to you

I am not suggesting you should  practice ecstatic body movement or make spontaneous sounds in meditative prayer. Instead, I am inviting you to know about them — and even be open to them if you are so inclined. One way to experiment with movement is to be utterly spastic for a moment, vigorously move all the parts of your body. Shake your arms and legs, shake your waist, bounce up and down, twist your head from side to side, move any part of you that can be moved. When you max out or hit a peak with these movements, come to an immediate stop and feel your body start to have a tiny movement on its own. Wait for any natural rhythm and vibration to come forth.  

At first, it may seem exotic and unnatural. Movements such as shaking have been seen as unhealthy, pathological, or the result of disease. But this is not that. This is sacred movement that comes from deep within your healthy self. When you experience vibrating in its natural form, you will feel that it was always a part of you, an old friend formerly lost -- the leadership of your own body.

Keeney says, “When we shake ourselves to the fullest height of ecstatic expression and then fall into the deepest state of quiet, we set the stage for powerful realignment and evolution of our whole being.” 

Once we allow ourselves the freedom to let our body move, the body can spontaneously tremble, vibrate, shake, and move whenever sacred presence, truth, and ecstasy are felt. This is not just any kind of body shifting; it is ultimately a form of movement and practice that welcomes spiritual energy to flow into our embodied incarnation as physical beings. It can be a somatic opening in our practice, one that is inspired and triggered by our deep, embodied divinity.