In this article we will try to begin to consider the monastic literature of Eastern Christian, namely Egyptian (Nitrian), Sinai, Syrian and Byzantine (Athos) monasticism, and then - the available literary works of Russian monks, with the purpose of highlighting what these authors told us about breathing (in connection with the ascetic practice of hesychasm) - and then subjecting their approaches to breathing to psychological examination. The earliest authors are Egyptian (Nitrian) monks. Evagrius of Pontus and Isaiah of Nitria One of the prominent representatives of Egyptian monasticism of the 4th century is Evagrius of Pontus (349-399) [1]. He became a monk from 383 in the Nitrian and then in the Kellyan desert in Egypt: “1. There are five deeds through which God's favor is gained. The first is pure prayer...the fifth is handicraft. 2. If you want to serve God in your body, like the incorporeal, try to constantly have prayer hidden in your heart... 3. Just as our body, after the removal of the soul, becomes dead and stinking, so the soul in which prayer does not work is dead and stinking. stinks...God must be remembered more often than breathing. 4. To every inspiration attach a sober invocation of the name of Jesus and the thought of death with humility.” Evagrius is considered the first exponent of the ascetic prayer practice of hesychasm. The words “You need to pray more often than you breathe” are attributed to the teacher Evagrius Gregory the Theologian (325-390). In Evagrius, instead of “pray” - “remember God”, which does not contradict the verbal formula of the hesychast prayer (“Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner”). Evagrius speaks about the participation of the heart, soul, mind (attention, i.e. sobriety) and body during prayer. The meaning of prayer is a choice in favor of life, in saving the soul for eternal life. By “pure prayer”, in addition to “sinlessness”, one can specifically understand prayer “without-image”; it is about the need for un-image prayer that Evagrius also speaks elsewhere Evagrius resorts to the method of analogy - a body without a soul is dead, and a soul without prayer is dead. The meaning of the analogy provides the basis for a symbolic (allegorical) interpretation of bodily breath[2] as the Spirit: the body is dead not only without a soul, but also without bodily breath; similarly, the soul dies without prayer (with the mind in the heart) as its breath (spirit). Prayer, according to Evagrius, combined, and thereby identified with bodily breathing and the memory of Jesus, as well as breathing combined with “pure prayer acting in the heart” - implies in Evagrius a personal Pentecost as the descent of the Holy Spirit into the soul of the person praying, similar to Pentecost after the prayers of the apostles for 9 days after the Ascension, when they could not see the ascended Jesus (symbol of the Non-Image Prayer) and were locked in the house. Just as air can be outside the body, but be introduced into the body with the breath, so the praying mind must be enclosed in the words of prayer, and the mind and prayer must be inside the heart. The action of love as human passion or Divine grace is usually identified with the heart, and not with the mind or other components of the human personality, therefore the mind and prayer must reach the heart. If bodily breathing is not combined with prayer, with the memory of God and death, then breathing is limited to the life of the body, finding in this the only meaning (for the mind) and the only joy (for the heart), then there is no acquisition of the Holy Spirit in the soul and heart. Evagrius poses the problem of the action of the mind through prayer (the action of “mental prayer”) in the heart, which later Byzantine monks of the 13th-14th centuries would discuss as the problem of “bringing the mind into the heart.” Subsequent monastic tradition absorbed the image of Evagrius’s prayer as breathing, and actively used it in his writings. Isaiah, Abba of Nitria (died c. 370), the senior predecessor of Evagrius of Pontus in the Nitrian desert, spoke about prayer: “5... he who is in silence must have such a fear of meeting God that it forestalls his breath, for until sin attracts his heart, fear has not yet taken hold in him, and he is still far from.