Is “breathwork” demonic?
The most effective lie is the one that looks the most like truth - the “wolf in sheep’s clothing” looks exactly like the thing that it could never be. Deception without discernment is the death of reality.
New Age spiritualism isn’t just for the East, anymore. Disguised as “self-love” and with the allure of sensual enlightenment, eastern mysticism has crept into practically every aspect of culture today - even the church. Both the subtle and the overt populate modern language as varying expressions of the law of attraction, power of manifestation, chakra alignment, out of body experiences, astral projection, meditation, psychic power, tantric sexuality, crystals, tarot reading… and breath work.
But if none of this is “real,” why does it seem to be so effective? Is it real, after all?
In fact, it’s not that these aren’t available options to our free will. It’s not that it’s all “woo-woo” and “hippy-dippy” or a figment of imagination or a fragment of the psyche - in fact, it’s the very allure and shared common experience that seems to demonstrate that alternative experiences to modern, Western construct are, in fact, available to the human experience and they are gaining in popularity. And who could blame anyone, looking at the surface of our world?
So the question comes down to: what is really the truth of what is happening in the New Age and how should one consider their participation… or not? To be more precise, what is the sanctified perspective of a follower of Jesus Christ?
“Breath work” is a common, underlying theme to New Age practices and in some views, the “gateway drug” to transcendental, perhaps demonic, experiences. This opinion is not wrong.
Breath work is deeply tied to the New Age practice of astral projection, a dissociative experience in which a person often experiences out-of-body encounters with aliens, spirit guides, ancestors and/or ascended masters (a quick Google search will show you anecdotal experiences with remarkably similar themes). Formal research studies recognize voluntary out-of-body experiences as being linked to real changes of multisensory and cognitive processing in the brain that go beyond a measure of hallucinogenic experience. The Central Intelligence Agency of the United State of America itself has even released its own documents on military research into altered states of consciousness, warning that the military must "be intellectually prepared to react to possible encounters with intelligent, non-corporeal energy forms when time-space boundaries are exceeded” as reported by US Army Lieutenant Colonel Wayne M. McDonnell.
It seems that from both mystical and scientific perspective, there are, in fact, other legitimate experiences beyond our physical reality.
Biblically, we’ve seen this before. Around 50AD, the Apostle Paul wrote (seemingly in the third-person of himself), “I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know — God knows. And I know that this man — whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows — was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell.” (2 Corinthians 12:2-4). At multiple other points in scripture do we see a reference to “layers” of heaven.
The clear difference between what we’re seeing in New Age spiritualism versus the revelation of Paul is the prompter, or initiator, of that experience and the purpose that it serves. In the case of transcendental meditation or astral projection taught in the New Age, it’s the self (you and I) who are taught “how” to accomplish this as an enlightened practice of self-divinity. In biblical context, it’s an invitation by YHWH to serve the glory and greater revelation of God and the ultimate divine. What we see as the fruit of Paul’s experience is his continued ministry to share the original gospel message of Jesus Christ. What we see in the New Age is that the self is a consciousness of Christ.
So, in fact, it does appear that breath work can have spiritually harmful consequences to the Christian believer, but is there a flip side? Can this be the correct opinion and could there be more beyond the veil of the New Age, science and even military tactic? If we must breathe to survive and if we believe that God created us for at least a blip of this human experience, surely breath itself cannot be the problem. So what does God say about the breath? Does he say anything at all?
You wouldn’t know it unless you’re reading it in the original Greek or Hebrew, but you can’t read the Bible without reading about the connection between the characteristics of God and his relationship to man associated to the breath nearly 800 times between the Old and New Testament. Where in English we have translated the verbiage to “Holy Spirit” are the words “ruach” (Hebrew in the Old Testament) or “pneuma” (Greek in the New Testament) which in literal translation mean “wind, spirit, breath and movement of air,” in particularly “of God” when paired with one of the names of God.
Let’s look at just a few passages to consider how breath might help us better understand the vague Western sense of “Holy Spirit” and our relationship to God:
Genesis 1:1-2
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God [Ruach Elohim] was hovering over the waters.”
In the very first two verses of the Bible, we learn about “ruach” before anything else. There was life before “life” as we think of it today as existing in plants, animals and humans. When there was nothing else, God was already there in the form of “the breath of our Lord”. This pre-existence that supersedes all other creation initiates an awareness that we are not the source or start of life or therefore in complete isolation as humanity, alone. In this way, the essence of breath itself supersedes a human body.
Genesis 2:7
“Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life [nismat hayim], and the man became a living being [naphesh].”
In this passage, we learn that the Creator begets creation. In this instance of the creation of man, man receives an appointment or annointment upon humankind by receiving life itself, enacted by the breath. Life demands an inverse reaction - because I breathe, I can “do” and act and “be” with purpose - the first of which was or Adam to inhale (through the nose nonetheless).
Ezekiel 37
In this passage of the “Valley of Dry Bones,” the prophet Ezekiel receives a vision in which there was a lack of breath [ruach] (verse 8) in a pile of bones. He is commanded by God to speak and encourage the breath [ruach] (verse 9) itself, upon which the bones come back to life (verse 10). This revival, or healing of a dead thing, demonstrates that the Holy Spirit brings an actualization of hope when all may seem lost. Even from death and despair, a new reality of life can be born.
Luke 3:21-22
“When all the people were baptized, it came to pass that Jesus also was baptized; and while He prayed, the heaven was opened. And the Holy Spirit [pneuma] descended in bodily form like a dove upon Him, and a voice came from heaven which said, ‘You are My beloved Son; in You I am well pleased.’”
In the Greek New Testament, the use of ruach is translated to the word pneuma, although the same meaning and impression is carried through translation. Although artistic impressions of this scene are often depicted as an actual dove descending from a heavenly “portal” in the sky, it’s important to note that pneuma, here, is merely described “like” a dove and not, in fact, as a dove. This articulates that pneuma, this breath or wind of God, has actual substance - that it was seen with real form, although it lacked existing language to describe it as something aside from “like” a dove. This appearance demanded the attention of all who were in witness of this event so that we have a record some two-thousand years later. What would it feel like to see something you have no words to describe?
Do Jesus or the apostles every explicitly prescribe “breath work” in scripture as we know it? No. But can we conclude from the text that there is something inherently intertwined about our awareness, action, actualization and attention of or in response to a personal relationship between God and man that is deeply tied to the breath? It certainly seems that way.
When you layer together what we know scientifically about the breath as it pertains to regulation of the nervous system with a biblical context such as this (and hundreds of other possible references), there suddenly emerges an evident truth - that intimacy with the Holy Spirit breeds deep peace, joy and satisfaction that results in the glory of a sovereign God and the revelation of Jesus Christ as the ultimate salvation from any reality. What the New Age is selling isn’t untrue or fake, it simply misses the mark on just how beautiful that surrender to the cross can be.
