Why is it called haZayin?

At first I referred to this movement practice as “Body Prayer”. A brief Google search on the term and I find that I’m not the first to conceive the phrase. There are a lot of types of body prayer that I tried to connect with, but something didn’t feel right in the presentation. I find that haZayin is not even prayer, per se. The emphasis is to try not to pray in the traditional sense of rattling off a laundry list of fears and needs and thanks and oh-by-the-way, praise for God’s glorious beauty and blessings.

It is meditation in the fact that it is focusing the body and mind on God alone, first through a series of physical preparatory steps and then through the Hebrew language as it inhabits our body. This is where this type of meditation, as well as meditation that is discussed in the Bible, is very different from Eastern forms; it is not an attempt to empty one’s mind, as though that were possible or even spiritually prudent. Rather, it is a Biblical exercise in taking every thought captive and submitting it to God, allowing the distractions or useless worries that are brought into His tent to be absorbed into His vast consciousness of all that is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy. (Phil. 4:8) And then, we listen. We move. We inhabit, and we welcome the Divine Resident – the Holy Spirit – into His home.

One day when I first started developing this form of meditation, I came to the letter, Zayin, and wrote it. When I say, “I wrote” what I mean is that I put my body in the form or shape of that letter. We are writing with our bodies in space and time, using our entire being to inscribe the Word of God onto the canvas of His creation. This is holy and powerful. I cannot emphasize this enough; this act is HOLY and POWERFUL.

The letter Zayin (ז) is the 7^th letter; that fact alone makes me smile when I write it. But it’s also the word for “sword” or “weapon” or “scythe”; a tool for the harvest. What’s not to love about that letter? Paul tells us in Ephesians 6:17 that “the sword of the Spirit is the Word of God”. So as we use our bodies to form actual words of God and with God, we are, in my opinion, literally wielding our sword with the breath of His Spirit and gracefully and joyfully engaging in warfare against darkness and evil. Do you see why I smile when I get to the Zayin? And incidentally, it feels so good in the body and is so easy to write. You certainly don’t have to be a gymnast to write it.  So it seemed right to call the entire form of meditation Zayin; Sword.

Furthermore, the Zayin is known as “The Crowned Man” because it is a Vav (ו); symbolizing man with his head bowed in submission with a crown on him. (The Vav is the 6^th letter – man was created on the 6^th day.) There is and always will be only One rightfully “Crowned Man.” This Man wore a crown of thorns when “He came to that which was his own” as Mashiach ben Yoseph, and He will wear many crowns when He comes again as Mashiach ben David. To meditate on this with one’s entire body is to honor Yeshua (Jesus) as the Servant King while taking up His Sword and trusting Him to use us to pierce darkness.

The “ha” before “Zayin” simply means “the”.