What works for me… that traditional focus on the breathing… neither stopping it nor making it go, neither striving to deepen nor inhibiting that effort when it wants to happen. Counting breaths, breathing exercises– all these things are distractions from my distressingly automatic thinking, also potentially helpful ways to play with the breath and learn how many different things it can do–but after all that, from the recurring experience of seeing how much I need God’s ongoing help, last night I had to go back to just sitting, letting thoughts & breaths do as they would.

Focusing is interesting stuff, but I would recommend that the best way to approach worship is simply to keep doing it, and to do it more than one hour a week, as did early Friends. My wife gave some vocal ministry a few weeks ago concerning how we don’t teach a technique, we simply trust the spirit to guide us as in whatever manner we need to be guided at the time, and I have found that to be true.

I would suggest this, however. If you are feeling that worship seems inaccessible to you, just stay with that feeling for as long as it lasts. Don’t be too anxious to get away from it. That very sense of inaccessibility may itself be the key to entry.