Words are physical breathing shaped by our intellectual consciousness into emotional communication.
So for me, what we do when we pray or study Torah or share words of compassion is that we are breathing our selves into the Breath of Life. The process, not the aimer or the bull's eye. What makes prayer distinctive is that we are not only using our breaths to join the Breath, but in the very same breath are using our breaths to praise the Breath. So prayer is certainly aimed partly at our own breathing selves, as part of the Breath of Life. AND it is also aimed at all that breathes, kol nishmat chayyim, AND even beyond that at what unites each separate breath into a unity of breathing, a con-spiracy of life.