Decolonizing Prayer: Healing Faith, Body, And Belonging

The Body Is Where God Speaks. For centuries, prayer was shaped by systems of domination — religions that demanded obedience, erased Indigenous and ancestral practices, and taught that the Divine could only be reached through worthiness or submission.
To decolonize prayer is to reclaim it: to bring the sacred back into the body, the land, and the breath.

Transcript

Welcome to Exile in Rising.

I'm Anna Mael.

Many of you asked what decolonizing prayer means based on my previous prayers,

Somatic prayers.

To decolonize prayer means to liberate the act of prayer from the structures of dominance and hierarchy and control that have historically shaped how we were taught to speak to the divine,

Particularly under colonial,

Patriarchal,

And religious systems.

And it's about reclaiming prayer as a direct,

Embodied,

Somatic,

Relational practice,

Rather than a performance of obedience or worthiness.

And when you're looking at historical context,

Under colonialism,

Religion,

Especially Christianity,

Was used as a tool of domination,

Right?

And prayer was redefined as one,

As a transaction.

If you obey,

God blesses you.

As a hierarchy,

God is above and you're below.

As a moral control system,

Defining who was pure,

Who was saved,

Or worthy.

And as a deep cultural erasure,

Indigenous,

African,

And Eastern spiritualities were suppressed or labeled pagan and primitive.

And in this framework,

Prayer became a weapon of assimilation,

Used to silence other ways of knowing,

Body wisdom,

Intuition,

Ancestral reverence,

And nature-based rituals.

And it was absolutely used as a system of oppression in patriarchal systems,

Right?

So by decolonizing prayer,

Means returning to relationship.

Decolonizing prayer reclaims prayer as intimate conversation,

Not submission.

It's a very intimate,

Sacred space.

And it says,

The divine,

The God,

Or spirit,

Is not a distant ruler,

Someone above me.

It just simply,

It's not working.

It's not working.

And what it means is,

It's alive within me,

Around me,

And through my ancestors.

And this is what I'm conveying in my prayers.

And simply,

And the reason why it just worked for me,

The way how I survived dark nights of the souls,

Years in bomb shelters,

In the war,

Was by embodying a spirit,

God,

In relationship space inside of me.

As equal,

And not as someone above me,

But someone who is with me.

When I say one of the prayers,

I will have the prayer at the end of episode,

When I say,

Move through me,

Speak through me,

Rest in me.

I want to dismantle this colonial architecture of prayer as obedience,

Guilt,

Distance,

And replacing it with mutuality,

Intimacy,

And somatic embodiment.

And if we decolonize this framework,

Prayer becomes a dialogue,

Not a demand,

Remembering,

Not a performance,

And returning to this sacred space in body,

To the earth,

To the community.

So we need to reshape nowadays,

Right,

How we connect with the divine,

And how we pray,

Because we need to reclaim the body as a sacred site.

And colonial spirituality often thought that holiness requires separation from the body,

Especially if you are a woman,

Queer,

Or racialized body,

Right?

We know that punishment,

We know how that was weaponized by church.

So decolonizing prayer reverses that the body is the altar,

It is,

It's a sacred space we live in.

And movement,

Movement,

Somatic movement,

Talking this as a somatic experiencing therapist for PTSD and trauma recovery,

I work with movement and touch.

Movement is the liturgy,

It is.

In a movement of body,

Something is very ritualistic and cyclical,

And that's space of healing,

When we connect with the divine,

With God,

With ancestors.

So when I am praying,

Walk through me,

Heal through me,

Rest in me,

I am reclaiming prayer as a somatic act of belonging,

Where the body becomes a home for the divine again,

Again.

This is nothing new.

This was always ancient.

Always.

The importance of including the ancestors and the earth.

Because colonial religion,

Slash patriarchy,

Often severed us from our ancestors,

From our lineages,

And the land,

And replacing them with institutions.

So we need to restore this connection.

Beloved ancestors,

Graceful God,

I want to place ancestors beside me and inside me,

Not beneath.

No,

Because it's in us,

Right?

We know that.

We know our DNA memories.

We can invoke memory between 7 and 14 generations inside of our bodies,

Right?

We know that.

Epigenetics.

So it's about returning to this relational cosmology,

If you will,

Where healing is not individual,

It's communal.

And it's ancestral.

So also our prayers need to include our ancestors.

And think about the narrative.

Narrative is very,

Very important.

And we need to honor narrative,

But also we need to change narrative,

Reshape narrative.

Because colonial prayer language is often full of authority.

It's like man is above us,

Who demands something,

Right?

Requires.

And there is always this sense of I'm not worthy enough.

And then you're using that language of forgive me,

Make me worthy,

Save me.

It's a deep place of submission and compliance.

And let's replace the narrative of our prayers as rest in me,

Let me lean on you,

Move through me.

It's a deep relational respect and safety.

This is how we heal in relational space of safety.

But if in your prayers,

You're using language of forgive me,

Save me,

Make me,

That's a language of power over you.

And it cannot be a place of safety and healing for your nervous system.

It simply cannot.

So we need to make that shift where we recenter prayer as a partnership,

As a co-creation,

Not subservience.

So in practice,

What decolonized prayer looks like,

It might include the body,

Movement,

Breath,

Stillness.

Use personal or ancestral names for the divine.

It can be spoken in one's own language,

Not just inherited,

What's passed down.

You can also honor nature as participant.

We need to honor,

We need to go back to our land,

Water,

Fire,

Earth,

Air.

We cannot deny that.

And it can be center justice,

How?

Healing the systems that perpetuates harm is part of devotion.

Right?

So let's reclaim this spiritual language from dogma.

It's a time,

And we can also merge somatic healing with ancestral reverence and yet with divine intimacy.

And we need to start teaching that God or spirit,

Light,

Life is not above you.

It's within you.

It's behind you.

It's breathing as you.

And still to respect tradition of religion,

To respect still,

But not to have this respect of demanding authority than authority is placed above you.

There you need to fear authority simply because it will not place your nervous system in relational field of safety.

And prayer will not work for you.

So when I'm saying divine spirit,

Angels of light,

Beloved ancestors,

Graceful God,

Rest in me,

Move through me.

I want to restore a horizontal embodied spirituality where divinity is co-present.

There is no hierarchy.

There is no hierarchy.

I'm not below,

And God is not above.

There is no submission,

But there is a devotion.

Let me repeat this.

There is no submission,

But there is devotion.

So decolonizing prayer,

To summarize,

Means reclaiming the right to speak to the divine without permission.

Returning prayer to the body,

To the land,

To the ancestors,

Transforming obedience into relationship,

Into relational field of safety.

And honoring all lineages and restoring belonging through the sacred.

And this is when healing becomes holy.

It truly does.

And the sacred becomes somatic again as it was before colonizing,

Before patriarchal systems.

So sacred becomes embodied inside of us again with full respect of religion.

It is not submission.

It is devotion in safe relational field.

And this is the prayer for the dark night of the soul.

Divine spirit,

Angels of light,

Beloved ancestors,

Graceful God,

Move through me.

Speak through me.

Walk through me.

Heal through me.

Rest in me.

And stay with me.

So I may lean on you,

Be held by you,

Be supported by you,

Be guided by you in this dark night.

Divine spirit,

Angels of light,

Beloved ancestors,

Graceful God,

Stand behind my back when I don't have strength.

Breathe in my chest when I forget.

Root in my feet when I want to give up.

Speak through me.

Walk with me.

Guide through me.

Heal through me.

Sit in solitude with me.

And allow me to rest.

Allow me to be.

Allow me to gain strength.

In your quiet embrace.

Divine spirit,

Angels of light,

Beloved ancestors,

Graceful God,

Rest in me.

Live in my bones.

Expand in my heart.

Move through my breath.

Love through my eyes.

Speak through my mouth.

Rise with me in the day.

Rest with me in the night.

Let my back feel your hand on my heart.

As I rest in this dark night,

Let my heart find the light in your embrace.

Let my head leans onto you and let my soul recovers in your love and let it always be you and your path.