Bodily Forgiveness

 “Loose the cords of mistakes binding us, as we release the strands we hold of others’ guilt.”  Neil Douglas-Klotz, Prayers of the Cosmos

“There is a vitalizing action between muscles and mind, which creates space in the body for the seer to look within and enter the body without obstructions.” BKS Iyengar, Core of the Yoga Sutras

Breath is forgiveness, forgiveness is prayer.

Forgiveness is a cornerstone of the Christian tradition. The first words that Jesus spoke in three of the four Gospels was “Repent” while in some of his last he forgave those who persecuted him. When he visited his disciples after the resurrection, he told them there work now was to go out and forgive people.

In his Aramaic translation of the Lord’s prayer, Neil Douglas-Klotz sheds new insights on how Jesus understood and practiced forgiveness and why it is essential to his teaching and our experience of God. Aramaic is the language that Jesus and the people of his time spoke.  Exploring what Jesus spoke in this language brings us closer to what he wanted to teach us about God and love. Forgiveness given and received is a central theme in the “Our Father”, the prayer Jesus gave to his students when they asked him, “How should we pray?”  

In the Aramaic translation, forgiveness becomes a bodily act.  “The sounds of this line in the Aramaic – ‘Forgive us our trespasses’ - returns us to the feeling of heart and blood-washing, flowing, asking that we release anything unwanted in the same way that our blood carries refuse from every part of the body to the lungs to be released with each breath. Klotz calls this bodily forgiveness.  

It reminds me of the way that BKS Iyengar writes about pranayama (breath work), “In the true sadhana (study), one soaks the flesh in the stream of blood, rubs the mind with each cell and brushes the intelligence to burn the defective seeds to that prana flows smoothly, invigorating the very core of being.” Core of the Yoga Sutras.  Forgiveness in this bodily sense does not come solely from the thinking mind but rather is an ongoing process of purification interwoven into the very structure of our breath, heartbeat, and blood. Bodily forgiveness comes from the movement of renewing pranic energy through the blood into the heart.  In this purification process, toxins like guilt and shame are pulled from the fabric of the body. Through the exchange of breath, the inhalations, the exhalations, we are clarified, renewed, scrubbed clean. As Douglas-Klotz writes, “Forgiveness is here, now not outside somewhere.”

I am intrigued to consider what this kind of bodily forgiveness can this teach us about forgiveness and mercy in relationships?  In the Aramaic, Douglas-Klotz writes that in all relationship “some mending or restoration is needed.” Just as the body needs continual restoration through the circulation of blood, our relationships also require attention to mending and repair. 

In this way, forgiveness is the foundation of relationship.  We will never be able to fully meet the expectations of others just as our expectations of others will never be able to completely fulfill us.  We are only human, unknowingly selfish and self-centered, longing for belonging, acceptance, rarely capable of more than conditional and transactional loving. Our attempts at reaching others will always fall short.  Forgiveness then becomes a necessary exchange in any lasting relationship like the flow of blood through the heart providing the necessary renewal and and purification.