Guided Breath Practice

In this guided breath practice led by Ajahn, 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 and relax into a deep state of presence in the current moment.

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 an un-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,

You know,

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,

You know,

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,

A sense of presence,

Call it that,

You know,

Felt,

It's felt as a sense of presence,

And you can sense,

Yeah,

There is a,

There are 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,

And the rhythmic experience of breathing in and breathing out.

So that's why you meditate almost as if you're kind of,

Almost asleep awake,

It's a 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 is that going to grow straight?

It's not a metal rod,

It's an organic thing,

How do you plant it?

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.

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,

Bone-ness,

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?

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,

Or there's the center,

There's the center,

There's the balancing sense.

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 you sense even just subtle inflections.

Stay with it,

You know,

Get it.

You can't assume it's there,

You've got to 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 relaxes,

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,

And just be with the rhythmic quality.

First 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 doing this,

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,

And you want to go down,

Down,

Down to the involuntary.

You feel that swelling subsiding,

And a 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 comes like a resonance after that,

Like a half,

Very slight ripple,

Or you 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,

Can sometimes travel down the legs and so on,

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.

It's like 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.

Sigh is in quality.

This can waft up through the body.

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

Behind the forehead.

That can spread across the forehead,

Across the face.

Fire,

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.

It also dispels strong agitation,

Restless driving qualities,

Cooling,

Soothing.

The pleasure of it begins to dispel sense desire,

Because it's a pleasant,

Gently pleasant,

Even tender quality to 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 can half retain in our mind of this visual thing can begin to subside,

And it's just a 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 we experience 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.

Thank you.

And in this process is directed,

There is a directedness,

Basically directing of attention,

It's not necessarily when I say points,

I don't mean pinpoints,

But themes such as rhythm,

Areas of the body,

Elemental properties,

Just 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.

Then it's deep,

It's enjoyable.

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,

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.

Calming,

Spreading through the entire experience of body.

Reviews

Thank you for your Wisdom

Wonderful 🙏🏻

Wonderful. I came to my cushion in pain after a COVID booster and you gently guided through it and I actually “felt” better. I know that feeling better is not really the point but it is nice when I appears!

These meditation instructions about energies in the body are so helpful! I will listen many times.

Profoundly calming invigorating and reflective practice

Loved this a feeling of space and loosening boundaries.

Just what I needed, lovely guided practice

I appreciate the fine detail of getting to know the breath in my body through this guided meditation.

Earth, hips like feet, vertical axis, balance, rhythm breath, cohesion, down release, up vitality, enjoying, not theory

Clear, supportive, lighthearted — fantastic teacher — thank you 🙏🏽

Really interesting way to explain things. More a lecture than a meditation but it do brings some clarity 🙏🙏🙏

Nice mediation focusing on releasing the will. I got lost somewhere in the middle but still a good session.

Detail description to attain mindful breathing; thanks 🙏 it was a great exercise.