A closer look
Before modern breathwork became a trendy wellness hack, fourteenth-century Byzantine monks were weaponizing oxygen deprivation to literally behold the divine. The hesychasts of Mount Athos developed a radically intense physical meditation technique—involving pinning their chins to their chests and radically slowing their breathing—to induce visions of the exact same divine light that supposedly illuminated Jesus on Mount Tabor. When rationalist philosophers mocked them as 'navel-gazers,' theologian Gregory Palamas stepped in to scientifically and spiritually defend them, arguing that human retinas could actually be upgraded through intense prayer to witness the uncreated energies of the cosmos.
