Talking to God seems like it should be as easy as falling off a log. But often it can feel more like climbing a cliff.

Even the most spiritually gifted can find their prayer dry, as we know from the sometimes despairing accounts of spiritual heroes such as Mother Teresa.

But many obstacles to easy prayer have to do with the variety and flux of religious identity in American life. Some of us come from congregations that didn’t leave us with a sense of ease about personal prayer. Others grew up being told exactly how to pray, but the formulas have failed to keep up with our experiences and development.

How to solve these problems of the free religious market? We could try to get everyone to belong to the same tradition of faith and stick with the same form of worship . Then we’d all know how to pray — although most of us would probably be praying for more freedom of religion.

But there is another possibility. The medieval meditation and prayer disciplines can ease our path to prayer.

A modern interest in such practices has grown as more people discover that they are useful and remarkably applicable.

Here are four forms:

Labyrinths

Labyrinths have existed almost as long as humanity; but it was during the 12th to 14th centuries that they found their Christian place — often built into the floors of great cathedrals including Our Lady of Chartres. In the centuries since, they became prayerful ways to experience a spiritual version of pilgrimage.

Today, thanks to a decades-long revival, labyrinths can be found in many places, from believers’ yards to some megachurches. Walking a maze can unmoor us from daily concerns just enough to make room for spiritual ones.

Fixed-hour prayer

This may appeal to more liturgically minded believers, but it also is becoming popular in other kinds of churches. Derived from the Liturgy of the Hours standardized by Benedictine monks starting in the 6th century, it schedules specific sets of prayers at specific times of day — with names such as lauds, prime, terce, etc. Especially in the “Divine Hours” adaptations by the late Phyllis Tickle, fixed-hour praying can be unexpectedly freeing. As you read the assigned texts, you feel other, more private prayers welling up in you.

Lectio Divina (Sacred reading)

Lectio is a slow reading of a short scripture — not as text, but as an experience of the divine. The monks used it to complement their liturgical reading of Psalms and group prayers. Drawing on biblical texts, Lectio today is a rewarding way to free the mind and heart for solo prayer and also attain closeness to God.

The prayer wheel

The prayer wheel is made up of four concentric circles surrounding the word “God” at the center. It looks a little like a target. Each band of the target contains a profound prayer (The outermost is the Lord’s Prayer, or “Our Father ...”). The wheel provides an ingenious method to compare and combine these and the fundamental Christian ideas they contain, forming seven additional prayer paths that run like spokes, to the divine bull’s eye. It is both orthodox and inventive, as playful as a board game and as serious as “Thy will be done.”

Each method has the potential to make prayer more natural, more accessible and more inviting.