This is a very brief meditative exercise showing how paying attention to several different sensations of the breathing can really help to radically quiet the mind.
So let's set ourselves up in the usual way,
Establishing an open,
Dignified,
Upright,
And yet relaxed posture.
Just spending a few moments becoming aware of the world around us.
Senses that we fully acknowledge and fully accept before beginning to turn our attention more toward the body.
Several sensations arising in the body,
Particularly noticing sensations of the breathing.
And very often when I suggest to people that they become aware of the breathing,
They focus on just one area of the body.
So they might,
For example,
Pay attention to the sensations of air flowing through the airways in the head.
Or they might mostly notice the movements of the abdomen or of the chest.
I'm going to suggest three quite different parts of the body.
These are chosen more or less randomly.
You don't have to use these.
Let's begin by noticing the upper back.
Notice how the upper back moves as you breathe in and as you breathe out.
It rises as you breathe in.
It relaxes and moves downward as you breathe out.
Try adding to that now the sensations of the belly moving in and out.
And in particular,
The sensations that the contact of the skin on your belly is making with your clothing.
So your belly is expanding forward as you're breathing in and it relaxes back into toward the midline of the body as you breathe out.
So you're noticing both of those sensations at the same time.
And perhaps already your mind is becoming a bit quieter than normal.
And let's try adding a third group of sensations.
The air flowing through the passive ways of the head.
So you may find you need to relax your mind a little in order to pay attention to all three groups of sensations at the same time.
If you have a narrowly focused mind,
You'll find that you have to move the focal point of your attention around the body like a flashlight searching out these three different sensations.
And that becomes quite exhausting.
So instead of your attention being like a flashlight,
Think of it as being more like a lamp.
You can see that the light is coming from all directions at once.
You can notice how these three groups of sensations are related to each other.
They're all part of the same process of breathing.
They interact in a kind of dance.
And if you're really noticing all three of these sensations at the same time,
You'll probably find that it's not difficult to sustain attention.
You might find that there's very little thinking going on.
And that when you do have thoughts arising,
It's quite easy to let go of them.
In fact,
When thoughts do arise,
You can regard them as mindfulness bells.
They've arisen in order to remind you that you've let go of this fuller experience of the breathing.
So your thoughts are now actually helping you.
Helping you to be mindful.
So you can just continue like this for a while to get the hang of this experience.
This is something that you can bring into your regular meditation practice.
