Find a comfortable upright seat.
And let your spine grow a little.
And allow your shoulders to have some ease,
Maybe letting them drop just about 2%.
And you can close your eyes or leave them open.
And make a small choice with your hands.
Palms up,
Palms down,
Resting somewhere natural.
And as you're settling in this morning,
Bring your attention to your breath.
We aren't forcing anything yet.
We're just noticing the air moving in.
Movie now.
We're sensing in the body where it's doing that.
Maybe at the nostrils.
Maybe inside the nose or at the back of the throat,
We can feel the temperature change or the sensation of air.
Maybe down in our diaphragm,
In our ribcage,
We can feel our expansion moving in a 360 degree direction.
Expanding in the front.
The sides and the back.
Letting our inhales be natural and our exhales do the same.
Now force that.
And now let's try to make maybe one small adjustment with the resting position of your mouth.
You can generally bring the tip of your tongue to rest against the roof of your mouth if it's not.
Right on the smooth ridge behind the upper front of your teeth.
Let your lips touch softly.
But allow your upper and lower teeth to separate and side by just a little bit.
Can you feel that gap between your molars?
Maybe you can stick your tongue in your cheek just to see their space.
Seeing that our jaw doesn't need to bite or hold or grip.
Or sensing into the ease and the effort that's already there.
And checking to see that we're not over-efforting in our draw.
And maybe by now our thoughts have started to come in,
Something to do later,
Something that's happened before.
We can let those move like our sensation.
While returning to our breath and our jaw.
Moving into our breath,
When you find your next inhale,
Let it come natural and easy,
Maybe through your nose.
And when you exhale,
See if you can let it extend a little longer.
Just a little less unhurried.
So we're inhaling quietly through our nose.
We're seeing that our lips are closed.
Our teeth are slightly apart.
And we're sensing that inhale come into our bodies,
Maybe down into our ribs.
And we're sensing it leave our bodies,
Maybe through the same channels.
Out through the throat,
Maybe out through the nose if possible.
We're extending that exhale,
Making it unhurried.
By extending our exhales,
We're signaling the brainstem to turn down the motor signals to your jaw.
And so you can continue this pattern on your own.
As you exhale,
You might imagine a volume dial turning down inside your brain.
Every long breath out.
The nerve signals firing into your masseter muscles fade.
And the space between your teeth.
Grows subtly wider.
And as you take your final breaths here.
Check and see.
Ease and effort.
And sense in.
Is there any unneeded effort happening in my job?
And if there is,
That's okay.
We're just noticing,
We're not fixing.
So you might take that information and check your shoulders again.
Check your hands.
See if they're in a different position from where they started.
And when you're ready,
You can gently open your eyes.
And see if you can keep that space between your teeth intact as you begin your day.
And if you found this helpful.
.
.
You might check out my other tracks on InsideTimer.
Using neuroscience and making it practical and useful in your daily life.
