[00:00:00] Sandhya Oaks: And so we collectively inhale, Humble and Gentle One. Exhale. You are rest for my soul. Inhale. Nothing can separate me, exhale, from the love of God. Inhale. Be still. Exhale, and know you are God.

[00:00:34] Chealsia: Welcome to the Created For podcast, a space where our everyday lives intersect with God’s redemptive story. I’m your host, Chealsia Smedley, and that was ministry leader and spiritual director Sandhya Oaks, sharing an invitation into breath prayer. Breath prayer is a grounding spiritual practice that’s helped Sandhya stay connected to the abundant life of Jesus as she moves through both the joy and the pain of her own stories, as well as the stories of others and the overarching story of God.

Today she teaches us about this practice while helping us to be brave and experience deeper joy as we move through our own stories as well. Today we have the joy of speaking with Sandhya Oaks. Sandhya is a story coach, ministry leader, and spiritual director with more than 14 years of experience in both campus and church ministry.

Sandhya, thank you so much for being here today.

[00:01:36] Sandhya Oaks: Thank you so much for having me. Such a joy.

[00:01:38] Chealsia: Yeah, I’m excited to talk more about all of the things. I know I just introduced you. but when someone meets you for the first time or is first introduced to you and your work, what is something that you want them to know?

[00:01:50] Sandhya Oaks: I want them to know that I love having fun. I am an adventurous spirit. I, uh, am an adoptee. I work currently in the adoption realm. Uh, getting to sit with adoptees, college age, post-college age. I love gathering around tables. It’s one of my biggest passions right now, and hosting dinners. And I also do spiritual formation care.

[00:02:18] Chealsia: yeah, spiritual formation is the theme of the season of the podcast. And so I would love to just hear from you, like when you think about spiritual formation, what comes to mind? What does that mean to you?

[00:02:28] Sandhya Oaks: I mean it’s pretty, it is broad and it’s also very old. It’s nothing new. but it’s become something that a lot of people are talking about these days, and it’s the idea of understanding how does God form us. What are we formed by? We are actually formed by many different things, in this world by people, relationships, even by seasons.

But the idea of spiritual formation is coming back to the presence of God and listening, bringing ourselves to Him, experiencing Him. It’s, uh, knowing where are we at in this time and place? What does God want to reveal to us about where we’ve been, where we are, and then where we’re going?

[00:03:14] Chealsia: Hmm. Yeah. I know that you do a lot of also story work. you talk a lot about your own story. How have you seen God at work in helping you discover where you’ve been, where you are, and where you’re going?

[00:03:29] Sandhya Oaks: Yeah, I love that question. So my journey of story work started like five, six years ago. I, uh, sat with a story work specialist and, he had me write one story in my life and that uncovered a multitude of stories. And really the story was circled around, a childhood memory of just, what should have been a celebration, actually held quite a bit of pain and he brought attunement, he brought care. He brought kindness and curiosity, and this allowed me to not feel so alone in my story and invited me into possibility of where was God in the midst of the pain? Where was God, um trying to offer me the abundant life? But also what was the enemy after? What was he looking to steal, kill, and destroy?

And as we worked through this story, my heart essentially became more alive, more alive to the grief, and then more alive to the joy of what the celebration actually held. And I, I felt a sense of more freedom. And that’s a huge word for me. I, I love that word and I love what it embodies. And it’s continuously a fight to be able to experience freedom.

But that first taste of story work is what then launched me into getting training, through The Allender Center and understanding more of like my own story. And one of the theories of The Allender Center is you can only lead people as far as you are willing to go, as far as you’ve been. And so, in the training, they focus a lot on your own story first, and then they give you the skills and the tools.

But really, like I just told somebody recently, it’s not even about the skills and the tools. It’s far more about the presence that you can bring to someone and bear witness to their story. And this unfolds in a lot of what I do, when I sit with, uh, people, when I sit with, other ministry staff and ministry leaders and adoptees, um, because the gospel is so embedded in story and we are so embedded in story that there’s this, cohesion of story gospel, of what is Jesus up to and how do we actually live into the fullness of who God has made us to be?

And what has tried to threaten that? What has tried to steal that? Where have we gotten stuck?

[00:06:03] Chealsia: I really like how you even talked about this ability to say, okay, how can I connect the things that I’ve experienced, be them good or bad, or in between, you know, it’s not, no, not everything is just good and bad,

and connect that to how Jesus is at work.  What does that look like when you sit down with someone for the first time? Like how do you help them kind of go there?

[00:06:28] Sandhya Oaks: When people sit down, they’re usually looking for care and they’re usually looking for a sense of someone to sit with them and be with them. And I think when I think about Jesus, that’s what he embodied.

Like he sat with people. He sat with the woman at the well, he sat with his disciples. So that’s what I try to bring in is that presence of with-ness, that care, and I usually just start with, some sort of grounding, to be able to help create a sense of hospitality and a safe place.

Although the thing about safe places is I don’t get to actually say it’s safe. So I actually tend to say brave spaces. I try to make it a space where they feel a sense of I can be brave here, um, because I can’t control someone else’s safety in those spaces. And we all have a different degree of what feels safe for us.

So to honor that and to honor them, I create an atmosphere where if they don’t know me yet, I introduce myself. I do a little bit of grounding with them, and then, we either do some spiritual formation, some spiritual direction where I listen and I, I listen to them, I listen to the Lord, I ask a lot of questions.

So I would say a lot of my role in this season, is presence, asking questions and not just like, well, why did you do that? Or, what do you wanna do in your life? It’s more, do you have a sense of, of where God is at right now, where He’s, is he near? Do you have a sense of his distance? Do you have a sense of what he’s revealing to you?

[00:08:05] Chealsia: Mm-hmm.

[00:08:05] Sandhya Oaks: And it’s bringing them back to the face of God, the heart of God, and then throughout my time with them, it’s also bringing a sense of kindness. We are way harder on ourselves than than we even know. And what does it look like for someone who’s able to bring a sense of kindness to places where we’re easily holding contempt or shame or wanting to steer away from a place because it’s too hard. If there’s an invitation of kindness on my face, in my voice, in my language, that is an invitation to disrupt shame. And also, it is a fruit of the spirit. And so may that be manifested in me and in our conversation and in the work I’m doing with them.

[00:08:54] Chealsia: Hmm. Yeah. Thanks. I think that’s, really beautiful, the kindness of being able to have kindness for someone else, but then that even helps them to have kindness towards their own story and the things that they’ve gone through.

I’m trying to think of someone who might be listening to this and they’re saying this is new to me. The idea of story work is new to me. The idea of spiritual formation is new to me. Why are these things that I should start to explore?

[00:09:21] Sandhya Oaks: Yeah, that’s a great question. I would say there’s always more than what we even know. There’s more to ourselves. There’s more to the world. There’s more to God’s heart, and that’s how I view life. That, life is like a journey and it’s meant to be discovered. Our heart is meant to come alive.

And there’s so many things that go against our heart, that go against, um, the aliveness in us. We live in a broken world where shalom has been shattered both individually and collectively. And by doing this, your heart will come alive and there’s a sense of wouldn’t you rather live with a heart that is far, fully more alive and live into who all of who God has formed you and made you to be, than live with a sense of being stuck or living the mediocre or living, um, with a half open heart. Um, I know that this work, both spiritual direction, spiritual formation, and story work allows us to be more connected to God, ourselves and others, and that would be the hope.

I’d love to give an example of actually what that would look like. Um, I was on a plane, uh, years ago and I met this guy and we got to talking and eventually he actually asked me too, what is story work? What is this? And I had told him an example and I gave him an example of, you meet somebody.

They’re in their thirties. They want to quit smoking. Um, they just don’t see the benefits anymore and they’re trying really hard. So they try, they quit, they throw their cigarettes away, and soon after, uh, they get really sad. They get really, really sad and just kind of have a, like a essence of depression with them and they maybe go to a doctor and they tell the doctor like, here’s what’s wrong. I really wanna quit smoking. The doctor says, okay, get a patch. Um, like one of those nicotine patches. Get a self-help book and join a club. Do something good for yourself, and maybe go exercise as well. And so those, those aren’t all inherently wrong or bad, but there’s something missing.

So this person goes and does all those things. And it doesn’t work. So then he hears about story work and he goes and sits with somebody who does story work, and this person asks him, so when did you start smoking? And the man says, well, I was in like seventh grade and I started smoking um, yeah, on the playground.

And someone who asks him then what was going on for you in seventh grade? What were some of the circumstances? And he’s like, well, my parents were getting a divorce. I was an only child, and I don’t know. And the story work person says, well, what, what did you feel around that time? And the man’s eyes well up with tears and says, well, I felt really alone and I felt really scared.

And on the playground, I saw people together and they were smoking, and I asked if I could have one, and that kind of connected us. And so the story work person says, can you see that you connected to people at such a lonely time around the cigarette? So fast forward to taking the cigarette out of the equation ,a lot of those same feelings, emotions, um, that was being kind of covered up, uh, come back to the surface and the guy on the plane says to me, are you kidding me? He says, that’s actually my story right now.

[00:13:26] Chealsia: No! What?

[00:13:27] Sandhya Oaks: yes. True fact. And I, and I, looked at him, and this is the crazy part. He’s like, I literally have been trying to figure out how to quit smoking.

I’ve been sad. I’ve tried all these things. I started smoking when I was in seventh grade because my parents were getting a divorce. And I mean, I’ve never met this man in my life and I had no idea. And then, we start talking a little more about this on the plane, and he gets a little quiet and he says to me, can I tell you something?

And I said, yeah, absolutely. And he’s like, I, I don’t know, um, where you’re at or anything, but he says to me, but I just wanna tell you like I walked away from God years ago, and I don’t know what it is about this conversation, but there’s something that’s making me curious to go back to him and, and to, to check him out again.

And the cool part is I had not shared anything about what I do or, um, about my faith background at that point. And so I said, you know, I think that’s a really good thing to check out and to go back to and. Yeah, so that’s just an example, a real life example, of giving words to what does this look like or what can it look like?

There’s always a deeper story and there’s always a more truer story, and when we can disrupt the shame with a sense of kindness and curiosity and a sense of presence and with-ness, that is when we get to come home back to ourselves, back to the Lord, and live into the fullness of who He made us to be.

[00:14:53] Chealsia: Hmm. beautiful. Yeah. That’s so cool.

Musical break

[00:15:12] Chealsia: One thing I’ve heard you bring up in other, interviews is this kind of quote. That the degree to which you experience grief is the degree that you can experience joy. Can you talk about that and the role that that plays in your life?

[00:15:29] Sandhya Oaks: Yeah. Yeah. I have a lot of grief in my story and um, and I did not get near that grief for many, many years until my, like early mid-twenties is when I started to move towards it. I was afraid if I stepped into it that it would take me out and that I would drown, and I was afraid that if I stepped towards grief, then I would become a sad person, and that I was afraid that people wouldn’t wanna be around a sad person.

And as I’ve done this work and as I continue to do this work in my own story and with others, I’ve realized and I’ve come to learn that, yeah, when you cut off an emotion like grief, you don’t just cut off grief, you cut off other emotions. And when you engage grief, when you engage your anger, when you engage your emotions, and what that, what I mean by engage is when you allow yourself to step into them and feel them, in a sense of community, in the presence of others, that is when a hope and a joy and the goodness can be restored and to the degree that you feel the depths of, I always say the depths of Sheol, the depths of pain. That is also where you’ll, be led to then feel the other parts, the joy and the goodness, and the delight of the healing. And, often we don’t give ourselves space. To be able to experience and step in and we just kind of move through life.

We put it away. And I’ve learned that putting it away or steering away from it is just as much work, if not double work, than just getting near it in the first place. And I honor that I didn’t go to it earlier in life. I didn’t have the capacity, the connections with people, the community to go to it.I think it, it probably would have taken me out and I, I’m glad that I had those survival skills. But those skills only took me so far and I needed to go to the places because there’s was so much in my heart that wasn’t alive and wasn’t the true joy of what God has put in me and made me, that I wasn’t feeling and experiencing.

And so, this work will lead you into both the grief and the immense joy.

[00:17:59] Chealsia: Hmm. Yeah. the fears? I was like, ugh. the fears that I feel ,you just said them all. As someone who is pain averse or like my go-to is reject, don’t get overwhelmed. Don’t get overtaken, you know, on that side of things. I’m curious, what does it look like for you to experience the other side, the joy after you’ve come through the grief?

[00:18:23] Sandhya Oaks: There’s this phrase like the unspeakable joy, like there’s such a joy that my friends name and see in me, and I think earlier in life. there was some joy and there was, uh, more the happiness and more of I found more joy in outward things than necessarily inward.

And so I ran to things that brought a sense of elation or, excitement rather than it coming out from within me. And, I think that’s how I coped. And now there is a joy that wells up in me when I, yeah, still when I see something like a sunset or water, whenever I’m near or on water or whenever there’s a really good feast with people, um, now there’s a sense of I get to delight in this.

It’s not something to cover up my pain, it’s something that is just good and just joyful.

[00:19:20] Chealsia: Hmm. Sandhya, that is so powerful and redemptive this vision that you’ve given us of how we can view our pain in, in engaging those hard parts of our lives, like not as something that we have to do just to be healthy, but an avenue to a place that is even more, like, deeply and purely joyful. Um, and that, that is just so beautiful.

So, what is a spiritual practice that has helped you as you’ve dug into these hard parts of your story or even have dealt with the grief, that we’re talking about?

[00:20:03] Sandhya Oaks: Yeah. One of the current practices that I’ve been really pressing into are breath prayers. And, a breath prayer is an ancient form of prayer that’s really easily adaptable for anyone. and it’s just choosing one or two lines and it’s praying through them and using it, as an inhale and an exhale. And, I usually start my spiritual direction times with breath prayers and throughout the day as I need to remember that breath is good and to slow down, I’ll even go through my own breath prayers just throughout a day.

[00:20:42] Chealsia: How do breath prayers help you as you go about your day and deal with the difficulties of life in the world?

[00:20:50] Sandhya Oaks: It grounds not only my, my heart and my mind and my soul, but it also breath does something in our own bodies. It slows us down. It brings us back to an integration. I need a steadiness just for me, period. Not for the world, not for those who I sit with, but also just for me. It’s very kind for me to offer that to myself. And I think coming out of a story that holds a lot, a childhood story, that holds quite a bit of

disruption and chaos, um, I need to continue to bring my body to a sense of stability, of slowness, of, of, a rhythm of that holds kindness. And then, secondly, when I sit with people, I need to also offer that to them in order for them to have a place to be able to,uh, share to be able to dive into their stories.

There’s a phrase called settled bodies, settle bodies. And I think that phrase really is, is profound of you can’t actually be a space, container and hold for others if you are not settled first.

[00:22:07] Chealsia: And it’s about not just a settled mind, right? A body. Like we are fully embodied people. Yeah.

[00:22:14] Sandhya Oaks: Amen. Yes.

[00:22:16] Chealsia: Can you give us an example or lead us through a breath prayer?

[00:22:20] Sandhya Oaks: Yeah, absolutely. Yes. So what I will do is I will say inhale and I will say, um, some words after that. And would you take a good inhale right where you’re at? Take a good breath in through your nose, and then when I say exhale, you can blow that out through your mouth and may you do this slowly. That’s our intention through this practice.

So I’ll read a couple here:and so we collectively inhale, humble and Gentle One. Exhale. You are rest for my soul. Inhale, nothing can separate me, exhale, from the love of God. Inhale, be still. Exhale, and know you are God.

Musical Break

[00:23:38] Chealsia: It’s powerful to slow down and to say, I’m gonna, I’m gonna breathe in and breathe out, and I’m just curious why do that versus just saying, God, be with me, you know?

[00:23:51] Sandhya Oaks: Yes, I know for like outta my own personal story and my own personal body, breath goes out the window when I am nervous, when I am anxious, when I am going so fast. And what I mean by goes out the window is I forget to breathe. Thank God my body does what it needs to do, but I use breath as a means of slowing down and coming back into my body and noticing. And so I might put my hand on my chest or on my heart and actually feel the inhale and feel the exhale and breath will also just bring me back to a posture of that slowness, that steadiness, that rhythm that lives within me.

I can’t tell myself to just slow down and, and to take it easy. I need to actually physically embody it, and be with my body, be with myself.

[00:24:49] Chealsia: I’m just like thinking even personally of times of being anxious or feeling like overwhelmed with emotion and you’re like, okay, I know that I need God in this moment, but what do I do? How do we incorporate this into our lives?

[00:25:05] Sandhya Oaks: There’s some great breath prayers out there. Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh, she has a bunch that she posts almost daily on her Instagram and I love reading her so much. And then there’s others online, um, also you can write your own, and that’s become a practice that I’ve introduced some of those that I sit with to be able to write something that actually embodies where they’re at.

[00:25:31] Chealsia: Hmm. Do you have any advice for people who would want to write their own breath prayer? Like do you begin with scripture? Where do you begin?

[00:25:39] Sandhya Oaks: Yes. The ones I read they came outta scripture, but also it doesn’t have to be. Breath prayers can also be creative and can have a sense of creativity. They came from a book that I use, it’s called A Collection of Meditations for Renewal. And the book is called A Rhythm of Prayer. and it’s actually a collection, of women from all over, who wrote different devotions and different poems and it’s stunning. This was gifted to me by another, um, dear friend of mine.

And so I keep this near for when I meet with, with other staff members or other people, to go through uh, spiritual grounding.

Um, one of the ones that I’ve written recently was, inhale, the kingdom is here and near and exhale, the kingdom is not yet. And I think that helps me remember both the longings and the but wait the longings and wait and, that’s been helpful for me to remember.

[00:26:46] Chealsia: It reminds me of that verse about praying without ceasing.

Like you hear that and you’re like, how do I, how do I even begin to do that, but this feels like a okay, I’m in my day. Like, let me just refocus. Recenter. Experience the presence of God.

Is there anything you wanna leave our audience with as they start to explore breath prayer?

[00:27:08] Sandhya Oaks: Yeah, I think as I think about the breath prayer, may you not overthink it. May you not be bound to, it has to sound well or it has to make sense. I think we get too caught up in those things. Let it just be what it needs to be. And if you want to write many great, if you want to write one for your life and use that ongoingly, then that as well.

Do not overthink it, and it might feel a little funny at first, but your good, good body deserves good, good care just as much as your emotional,spiritual, mental, all of that combined, that integration is all held within your body. And so, may you find the creativity for it and the freedom to let it be what it is.

[00:27:57] Chealsia: Ever since this conversation with Sandhya, I’ve been repeating the breath prayer she wrote to myself. Whether I’m in the middle of a stressful day or experience something disappointing, it’s an act of grounding and aligning myself with the fullness of God’s story, both in the world at large and in my own personal world.

It’s a way for me to feel both the longing for more and the reality of his goodness.

And so to close, I invite you into this breath prayer from Sandhya. Collectively, we inhale, the kingdom of God is here and near. Exhale. The kingdom of God is not yet.

Thanks for listening to the Created For podcast. For more ways to continue journeying with us, hit subscribe in your favorite podcast app. Check out the show notes for any links we mentioned, and go to cru.org/createdfor for a guided reflection based on this episode.