Our breath tells us much about our body and our mind and its state of being.
Do you ever feel like you can't fully grasp onto your breath?
Like you can't take a full breath?
Like your breath is high up in your chest?
This type of breathing can be an indication of anxiety,
Stress,
Discomfort or disease in the body or the mind.
This practice today will assist you in guiding the breath back down to deepen into your body,
To calm the nervous system,
To stabilise.
As we prepare for the practice,
Finding for yourself a comfortable position.
This could be seated,
It could be lying down or propped up in bed,
It could be in the bath.
Just somewhere comfortable that the posture of your body is not going to distract you from the practice,
But in which you can remain aware and focused.
So coming to this position now,
Taking a moment to settle and then as you're ready,
Bringing your attention to your breath.
At first,
Just watching the breath.
Take interest in what you first notice about your breath when the mind is drawn to it.
Perhaps you notice its pace,
Maybe fast or slow,
Erratic or regular,
Deep or shallow.
And as you start to become familiar with the breath as it is now,
Beginning to notice where you are breathing,
Which parts of the body are sensing the breath,
Are feeling the breath.
Do you feel it more in the head and the neck,
The shoulders and the chest or the belly?
And if it does feel as if some of the breath is missing,
Like you can't grasp it fully,
Then let's start to imagine this missing breath,
This breath that's just out of reach,
Is like a balloon just above your head.
A balloon from a children's birthday party,
It's just been blown up.
It's just above your head there and you're reaching your arms up to grasp that balloon and that balloon represents your breath,
The full volume of your breath.
And as you watch your mind's eye reaching up for that balloon now,
You start to begin a practice of drawing that balloon down,
Bringing that breath back down into the body,
Gently,
Gently.
Just like you'd be guiding a helium balloon down,
As if to give it a hug.
So as you inhale,
Find where that breath is in your body now and then as you exhale,
Imagine you're grasping the bottom of that helium balloon and you're pulling it down a little bit further.
Inhale,
Noticing where the breath is in the body.
Exhale,
Gently guiding that balloon a little bit further down.
You might get to a point where it feels as if that balloon represents the space around your skull and your neck,
Where you start to feel that balloon as it does symbolize the breath in your body.
On the inhale,
Noticing where the breath is.
On the exhale,
Gently guiding it a little bit lower into the body.
Each time you inhale,
Noticing the space that the air takes up in your body.
And exhale with that gentle drawing down and deepening.
You may notice that slowly,
Slowly you're starting to sense on that inhale that the breath is in your chest.
And that as you exhale,
You draw that space for the breath to fill a little deeper into the chest cavity.
So that with each inhale that follows,
That balloon can expand a little more into the chest,
As if that is part of its natural place to be.
As you exhale that balloon sinking a little deeper down,
Filling into the space of your chest and your abdominal cavity.
Inhale the balloon filling out the front,
The back and the sides of the lungs,
The chest.
Exhale it draws down.
Slowly starting to notice the breath moving gently within the rib cage as that balloon draws down and the ribs expand in all directions.
And as on the next exhale you keep drawing that balloon down,
There's more space now below the ribs.
And on those inhales the breath's not filling just in the chest cavity but also down into the abdomen.
And with every following exhale that balloon's dropping down,
Starting to find a final resting point where it settles itself onto the base of the diaphragm.
So that now the breath and its place in the body start to become reunited.
The breath expanding on the inhale and settling on the exhale.
And then just allowing that settling to continue with each breath now.
As if that helium balloon has lost its ability to float and dropped all the way down to the ground now.
Succumbing to the gentle guidance of gravity.
And noticing now how well the breath fits naturally into this cavity for which it was created to receive the breath.
How well the breath can fit and expand between the ribs,
In the lungs,
In the chest,
In the belly.
And how it can just as easily sigh out.
And I invite you to continue to bask in this breathing practice and this breath for as long as it feels sustainable and comfortable for you.
If you do have the time and the capacity to stay here,
The more you can practice being in this place with your breath.
The more familiar you'll be next time you need to gently guide it back to settle down and into the chest and the belly.
But as you feel called to complete your practice,
Just gently letting go of the need to visualize anything.
Just letting the breath be what it will naturally be now.
And sealing your practice by bringing your hands or the soles of your feet to touch the base of support on which you sit or lie.
A final connection of grounding and stabilization of breath and body.
Namaste.
