This is a short meditation to help you focus on your breathing in order to elicit a relaxation response from your body.
So to start out,
Find a comfortable position,
Whether it's sitting,
Standing,
Lying down.
And if it's comfortable for you,
Go ahead and close your eyes.
And with your body comfortable and your eyes closed,
Just start to draw your awareness inside your body.
And particularly start to notice what's happening with your breath.
If it's helpful,
You can place one hand on your heart,
One hand on your belly,
And just feel the movement of your body as you breathe.
Often as soon as we start to pay attention to the breath,
The breath automatically starts to slow down,
Which is a good thing.
And as you allow the breath to slow down,
You can pay particular attention to the timing of your breath.
Some people like to count.
How long does it take to inhale?
And how long does it take to exhale?
And as you start with that practice,
Maybe trying to spend a little more time on your exhalations.
So if you're inhaling for a count of say three or four,
What would happen if you exhaled for a count of say six or maybe even eight?
As we shift the breath to have these long exhalations,
It's going to trigger our body's natural relaxation response,
Taking us a little bit out of that fight or flight and bringing us into a more calm and present state.
Noticing too where the breath is happening in your body.
And particularly if you feel a lot of movement happening at your chest or your shoulders,
See what would happen if you allowed your inhales to drop deeper and lower into your belly.
So that as you breathe in,
You get a little bit of expansion of the belly.
As you exhale,
The belly softens back in.
So we're slowing down the breath,
Particularly slowing down the exhalations.
And we're dropping the breath a little deeper in our body,
Getting it out of those tense areas of the neck,
The shoulders,
The chest,
And allowing those muscles,
Those stress muscles to just take a little break and relax,
Soften,
And feel that expansion and contraction through the belly.
And we get our breath really dropping down into the belly,
Really using our diaphragm muscle a little more efficiently.
Not only does it trigger this relaxation response in the body,
But it also helps to draw our air a little deeper into our lungs,
Allowing for more efficient and more relaxed breathing patterns.
And if it's helpful for you,
You can even imagine breathing in something that you would like to cultivate in your life.
Some people think breathe in calm,
Breathe in peace,
Breathe in compassion.
And with every exhale,
You can think of something that you would like to let go of in your life.
Exhale stress.
Exhale negativity.
Exhale judgment.
And the beauty of this breathing practice is that you can do it pretty much anytime,
Anywhere.
And it's such a powerful yet brief way of bringing the body into a more connected state with what's happening in our mind and our emotions,
And using our awareness of that internal state to help calm our stress response.
