Calming Awareness Of Sounds And Breath Meditation

This simple yet powerful meditation is an easy way to get your mind to quiet down and focus on one point of awareness and draw yourself back into presence. In this meditation, we explore focusing on the subtle sounds around and inside us and our breath with some gentle breath counts.

Transcript

So allow your eyes to gently close.

That's not possible.

Maybe just a slight opening so the little light comes in.

And these first few moments,

Notice any sounds you're hearing.

The sound of my voice.

Sounds in the room that you're in.

Maybe even the sound of your own breathing or anything else that your mind and ears perceive.

And let all these sounds come to you.

As you relax into listening,

Let the sounds move towards you.

And bring your awareness into a more inert focus.

Imagining each sound landing in your awareness mind and helping to turn your gaze there.

As we sit here,

We might notice ourselves breathing.

Maybe that breath has a sound.

Now let's begin to lengthen our breath a little bit.

A slightly longer inhalation.

And a nice long slow exhalation.

Lengthened but not stressful.

Longer inhale and a longer exhale.

The next breath in,

Notice a pause after the in-breath.

So inhaling and pausing the breath for a moment.

And then a nice long slow exhale.

And notice a pause after the exhalation.

We'll take a few breaths like that.

Inhaling,

Pausing,

Exhaling,

And pausing.

The next time you exhale,

Pause the breath for as long as you can comfortably.

Whatever that is for you.

And when that feels complete,

Just let the breath come back to its natural rhythm.

And now notice any point within your body that your awareness naturally moves towards.

See where your awareness naturally wants to land.

We'll just let our mind's eye sit there for a few moments.

Quietly observing and feeling and listening.

Get distracted.

We can take another breath in and a long breath out.

Pause the breath for a moment and then see where our mind lands again.

Slowly and gently begin to deepen your breathing.

As you deepen the breath,

Notice where your awareness wants to go.

Let's stay with the breath.

Notice things inside or outside the body,

To your own heart.