A new morning devotional routine — One breath prayers

A few years ago, I backed a Kickstarter project called “Dwell”.

The premise was simple: We used to listen to scripture, now we only read it. We’ve lost something through that change and so we should listen to scripture more.

To boost, they promised background sounds and professional voice artists (plus a growing list of translations). I wrote a review at the time, backed the project, and have used it on an off ever since it was released.

Recently, Dwell has broadened its offerings and I’ve started using one of their new features in my morning devotional routine.

One breath prayers: the basics.

A one breath prayer is a repetitive prayer you can do in one breath (Yup, the name sums it up well).

The idea is that these are prayers you can turn to at any moment of the day (with or without a fancy app) but I have used them in my morning devotional time.

Here’s a super quick example

• When you breath in say (in your head) “The Lord in my Shepherd”
• When you breath out say (in your head) “I shall not want”.
• repeat

The idea is that these help focus our attention on a piece of scriptural truth, they help us to pray without ceasing and we can use them anywhere.

The Dwell app adds a few unique touches

Dwell’s one breath prayers

Dwell has about 10 one breath prayers with more coming it seems — it may be more by the time you read this.

Each one is narrated by a guide and has the same background music dwell is famous for. They introduce you to the section of scripture the prayer is from, then invite you to do the one breath prayer. This process repeats about three times and then ends, typically lasting about 10 minutes in total.

This has the benefit of hearing the context of the prayer and seeing where it resides in scripture. Plus the length of time is short, but enough to slow down.

I’ve found it’s the perfect way to start my day and set my mind on God. Plus, then I have a one breath prayer I can use during the day.

One breath prayers beyond Dwell

Dwell doesn’t own this practice and you don’t need the app to do it.

In fact, that’s something they are keen to stress during each guided prayer. Instead, these are things you can do anywhere, anytime, with any scripture.

The Jesus prayer is a classic example of this, but you could find a key line of scripture in your morning Bible read and use that as your one breath prayer for the day. It does help if each part is short though! Too long and I hope you have good lung capacity.

The one downside of my new morning routine...

I generally want to avoid my phone as much as possible in the morning. It’s too easy to find yourself down a social media rabbit hole over whatever the latest controversy is. And even good activities can easily replace the best or the ones that can only be done in the morning.

Using the phone risks that trap.

On occasions I’ve either complete my one breath prayer and then found myself sinking into the infinite feed. Or worse, I never even manage to start due to some notification I see on the screen.

Perhaps there’s a better way past this (like setting up a Siri shortcut to activate function on the phone without unlocking) but for now I just need to exercise willpower.

Or perhaps I’ll change my routine again.

If you’d like to shake up your morning devotional routine, I’d recommend giving dwell and one breath prayers a try.