A Christian Meditation on Interrupting Busyness with Silence from Psalm 62:5-7

<p>his is a time to get away from all the <em>mind</em> distractions — all the <em>focus</em> distractions — of your phone and scrolling through social media or email or the news. This is a quiet time to re-integrate and re-calibrate your soul (mind, body and spirit) with the life-giving presence of God’s Spirit. That’s the purpose of Christian meditation.&nbsp;</p><p><br></p><p><strong>If your podcast app is set to skip the silent sections, disable that for this podcast.</strong></p><p><br></p><p><strong>(Dr. Rachel Zoffness — MS, PhD, is faculty at the UCSF School of Medicine, where she teaches pain education for medical residents and interns, and serves on the steering committee of the American Association of Pain Psychology. She writes in <em>The Pain Management Workbook</em>):</strong></p><p>Relaxed diaphragmatic breathing uses your diaphragm and stomach muscles. When you belly breathe, you train your breath to go lower and slower. This increases your blood oxygen level, improves circulation to facilitate healing, lowers stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, turns off your SNS to calm your body, and helps reduce pain volume [if you deal with chronic pain]. Throughout your day you can check which type of breathing you’re doing—stressed versus relaxed—and catch yourself when your breathing gets stressed and shallow in your chest. The moment you notice that you’re chest breathing is the moment you can do a very quick short meditation to change your physiology, shut off your SNS stress response, and lower your anxiety dial by breathing lower and slower instead.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Psalms 62:5-7 (ESV)</strong></p><p>5 For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence,</p><p>for my hope is from him.</p><p>6 He only is my rock and my salvation,</p><p>my fortress; I shall not be shaken.</p><p>7 On God rests my salvation and my glory;</p><p>my mighty rock, my refuge is God.</p><p><br></p><p>This is a great example of the kind of meditation God’s people have been doing for thousands of years. It’s a typical psalm