Guided Meditation on Breathing

Get the body grounded, set the spine, sense the balance. Trace the rhythm of breathing, apply some tuning, let its energy spread through the body. Enjoy.

Transcript

So when you're training yourself with framing up breathing,

Mindfulness of breathing,

So just to acknowledge this phrase is not watching the breath,

Which is not the,

It's not distanced.

You know,

It's not you're up here looking down watching a single object or a static thing,

You're actually framing up the experience of breathing,

How you know you're breathing,

How you know it's happening.

So I've suggested,

You know,

That maybe we approach that first of all from the ground,

From the sense of settledness,

The relaxation of the will,

Preparing the ground,

So relaxing the will to be,

To do,

To have,

To understand,

To make,

To release,

To change,

To become,

To develop,

To meditate,

I mean just sensing what's here,

What's the here-ness of here,

As it express itself or reveal itself in a kind of emotional sense,

You could say,

Mental sense,

Sense of just,

Here it is,

Unconditional acceptance,

You could say.

And also in a more bodily sense,

I don't necessarily mean physical body,

But a sense of something,

An embodiment,

Which means you feel you have a location that's safe,

That doesn't have to be held onto,

You know,

The sense of presence,

Call it that.

The felt,

It's felt as a sense of presence,

And you can sense,

Yeah,

There is some tactile,

Energetic quality there,

Right in the centre of that,

That I call my body,

You know,

Particular feeling,

Warmth,

And it's quite elemental,

Warmth,

A sense of earthiness or pressure,

You know,

Kind of solidity to it,

Warmth or caloricity to it,

You know,

And there's this rhythmic experience of arising within that as those become to be established,

The rhythmic experience of breathing in and breathing out.

So in this way you meditate almost as if you're kind of,

Almost asleep awake,

It's the relaxation of the will,

But not completely asleep,

Asleep awake,

And the awakeness is just what it takes to hold the spine,

As if you're planting a tree into the ground,

How does that grow straight?

It's not a metal rod,

It's an organic thing,

How do you plant it?

Can you feel that in your lumbar region,

In your hips,

In your pelvis,

How's that?

Can you do that?

Just get down there,

You know.

At this point you don't have to have your eyes open or closed,

But one or the other,

Yes,

We'll do it,

So one eye open,

One eye closed also,

If you like options.

But essentially what you want to do is stay awake in a kind of very relaxed way,

So just enough wakefulness to feel relaxed,

And you start to sharpen up the wakefulness around planting the spine into the ground,

And how's that?

We're getting a bit of a frame there,

A bit of a bone structure,

Earth,

Firmness,

And kind of penciling in this bodily experience that we kind of know but often don't really know,

The spine,

Often hardly sensed at all,

But there it is,

Holding,

There's a curve in the lower back,

And then coming up through the back,

And now the head sits,

The cranium sits on top of that.

So you want to have it so that the skull is balancing on the top of the spine,

And the weight of the body carried through the pelvic floor,

The pelvis and the thighs.

So rather like standing on your feet,

This is like standing up while sitting down,

You're finding balance,

Instead of using your feet,

Using your thighs and your tail,

Swinging forwards,

Sideways,

Lateral,

Forwards,

Backwards,

Where's the balance in that?

So you get that.

And then you begin to experience something like the sense of how,

You know,

Just even by gently flexing your body in those ways,

You see how tiny,

Tiny little movements of half an inch or two,

Everything senses it.

It's called cohesive water element.

So you're using that axis of the spine as a balancing center,

And when you plant that,

Then you can just even lightly tilt,

You know,

One side to the other,

Just to sense,

Oh yeah,

And there's the center,

Or backwards and forwards,

Oh there's the center,

There's the center,

There's the balancing sense,

And you realize there's a lot there,

And it helps you to get intelligent about your spine and the muscles that support it.

You know,

If you tilt one side,

The other side,

You notice which muscles support it.

Same if you go forward and back,

You notice,

Oh,

And how is it when they're just kind of nicely balanced so there's not a strain?

So experience something like when you tilt,

Slightly you feel your shoulders,

You know,

Coming over,

Even sense in your head,

As the body is all connected,

And it most readily feels connected when there's a central balance,

Because then everything else can loosen up,

And then even subtle inflections can be felt.

So this is the cohesive,

Everything knows everything else.

When it's all tightened up,

You know,

You could drop a brick on your head and your knees wouldn't know about it.

As it's so locked,

You want to have it so that the body can unlock,

And it unlocks through a sensing balance and ground.

I don't have to keep holding it,

Therefore it starts to soften and widen,

Loosen,

And in a sense even just subtle inflections play with it.

Get it.

You can't assume it's there,

You get it.

And how does it get to feel that you do the least as possible?

That's what balance is about,

It means the least I have to do,

The least I have to hold.

So we do less and less,

Ideally,

And then how does it get more comfortable?

Your face relax,

Soft tissues soften,

Feel a little more warm and comfortable.

And you know,

As this is coming together,

You're going to sense this rhythmic process,

Just be with the rhythmic quality.

This sign of breathing in and out is this,

As it's explained in the Sutta over and over again,

Nose in,

Breathing,

Nose out,

Breathing,

Nose through,

Breathing in,

Breathing out.

It doesn't mention a point at all,

It mentions a rhythm.

Mindfully breathing in,

Mindfully breathing out.

It does no point,

It's the cycle.

And you can sense particularly if that breath begins to,

You know,

Lengthen itself so it's no longer so tight or diaphragm focused,

Pushed through the diaphragm,

But actually abdominally swelling.

We call this the natural breath,

Which is not diaphragm pushed,

It's abdominal swell,

Swell and subside.

Then it feels involuntary.

Voluntary stuff happens from the solar plexus up,

Where we start to go up and up and up and up to our heads.

You want to go down,

Down,

Down to the involuntary and feel that swelling subsiding and the kind of energy that shimmers around that.

Particularly notice that when the end of the in-breath is recognized,

What I'm suggesting,

You get the sensations of breathing out,

You get perhaps a slight sense of descending or firmness in the lower belly,

And that's the end of the in-breath,

But not quite.

That's the end of the sensation.

And you know,

With that there comes like a resonance after that,

Like a half,

Very slight ripple.

Or we could see it glowing in those terms or a subtleness of releasing energy.

It's the energy of releasing.

It's the end of the sigh.

And that just spreads across the lower abdomen,

Sometimes travel down the legs,

But just don't worry about that.

Just get the sense of there is something other than sensation.

And when that energy has subsided,

And then there's a kind of gathering,

And sensations begin,

The breath becomes pulled in through the abdomen,

Slight swelling,

Expanding.

You can stay right there,

Feeling at the end of the in-breath,

Again,

As the sensation subsides as a kind of after effect,

Rising quality.

Sense can waft through the body.

With some practice,

Some attentiveness,

You can track that process as a column.

Rising,

Since the chest expanding,

Behind the chest,

Throat,

Back of the nose,

When the sensation tingles in the nose,

You'll also perhaps notice a kind of glowing after effect behind the eyes,

Behind the forehead.

That can spread across the forehead,

Across the face.

A fire,

A gentle light.

If we cultivate this,

It does help to dispel any of those,

Just getting an axis,

Getting the ground,

Getting the spine,

Dispels low energy,

Stagnation,

Which gives rise to drowsiness.

Also dispels strong agitation,

Restless driving qualities,

Cooling,

Soothing.

Pleasure of it begins to dispel sense desire,

Because it's a pleasant,

Gently pleasant,

Even tender quality to it,

It moves through you.

It dispels the tightness,

The unsettledness in which you will restlessness arise.

It settles as it kind of finds its place,

As it feels comfortable in the body,

As the body accepts that and is no longer held,

But it's almost as if the breath is holding,

The breathing is holding the body.

Even the images that we half retain in our mind of this visual thing can begin to subside,

And there's just this sense of a column or a felt energy of breathing in and out,

Like an energy there,

That's our presence,

That's our body,

Rather than the visual impression.

And the boundaries can lighten,

Feel quite expansive,

Breath tends to go quieter,

And the mind settles,

And experiences a kind of a suffusing of energy.

And this can be finding a place where that is experienced,

Inflecting upwards,

Downwards,

In all directions,

Just helping to loosen and soften areas that feel tight or stagnant.

Other photos?

And this process is directed,

There is a directedness,

It's redirecting our attention.

Utaka,

Pointing,

Some of these qualities,

Points,

They're not necessarily,

When I say points,

I don't mean pinpoints,

But themes,

Such as rhythm,

Areas of the body,

Elemental properties,

Just,

Is that there?

Got it?

How's that?

Any of that?

That helps to give this embodied experience some real texture to it.

It's no longer a theory,

It's no longer an idea in our mind or the body,

But a real texture that's got some vitality and flow,

Natural quality to it.

And then it's deep,

It's enjoyable.

And this is really important.

So you point,

You touch in,

And you sample,

And you experience,

And the vichara,

How is this?

How does it feel?

Soft,

Bright,

Moving.

Yeah,

You know,

How does it feel?

And this gives rise to subtle enjoyment.

We're touching a texture that is quite beautiful and balanced and flowing.

We're touching a beautiful aspect of nature.

And then something beautiful arises,

Called buoyant,

Uplifted quality.

Forming,

Spreading through the entire experience of body.

Reviews

Embodied instructions offered with tenderness 💕

Thank you.

Beautiful, love the sensation of the column of breath

A prolific teacher with such depth of experience. About the Metta GM - it’s from ‘88. It would be helpful if one was added where the sound quality of the recording was higher

Very helpful as I have lost my way slightly, so helped me to go back to basics. Sat for a further 20 minutes when it had finished as so relaxed and calm.

Very helpful. Thank you.

This was a profound experience for me, so simple in a way, yet so profound. Thank you 🙏🏽💗

What a wonderful expierience - thank you so much - will come back to this source of mine 🙏🏽💖🙏🏽

The more I sit with this meditation the deeper the meaning. Excellent 🙇‍♂️

This meditation is so conducive to deep connectedness to breathing and the experience of being alive.

After repeated hearings, I know where the end of the twenty minutes is. Initially, I meditated for about ten minutes more before I realized it had ended. :)

I approached this recording as an experiential teaching rather than guided meditation and listened for instructions I can take into my practice.
Really good instructions! Thank-you :)

This is one of them, right here...

Offers a fresh perspective.

Sitting at the feet of the master – skillful, loving completely embodied guidance. Excellent

Excellent meditation by a student of the famous Thai Forest Meditation master Ajahn Chaa

Very enjoyable. I loved his humor in the begging and the breathing part was helpful.

Thank you for meditating with me NAMASTE

Lovely, insightful explanation, thank you🌈