What is centering prayer?
Centering prayer is a form of meditative or contemplative prayer that has ancient Christian roots. Seeds of what would become known as contemplation were sown early in the Christian era. The first appearance of something echoing contemplative prayer appears in the 4th century writings John Cassian. He writes of a practice he learned from the Desert Fathers (specifically from Isaac). Cassian's writings remained influential until the medieval era, when monastic practice shifted from a mystical orientation to Scholasticism.
It can therefore be very safely argued that contemplation was one of the earliest devotional practices of Christian monasticism. During the enlightenment a shift in practice took place moving emphasis from the heart to the head and so contemplation.was supplanted in importance by scholastic theologians, with more of an interest in rational systematic approaches.
The primary expression of centering prayer in late Medieval Christianity is thr book The Cloud of Unknowing. Cloud was actually written in Middle English, not Latin. This indicates the primary audience was not solely meant to be priests and monks, but the common person. The heart of the 'cloud's" practice centers around experiencing God's presence in daily life.
Despite what you might hear from so-called “discernment ministries,” centering prayer and other contemplative practices are very much a part of Christianity's early DNA.