This is a recording of the five-minute sober breathing space.
So finding a comfortable position seated,
Standing,
Lying down and perhaps closing your eyes or if you'd like to keep your eyes open you can simply lower your gaze and have a soft focus to the eyes.
And bringing our attention and our awareness to the fact that we're breathing and just taking one or two breaths in and out.
Perhaps feeling the rhythm of the breath,
The pace of the breath,
Feeling the breath in the body.
And now bringing your mind to a situation or a circumstance that has been very challenging or that you might imagine a circumstance that might be challenging in the future.
And this situation,
Person,
An event might have an emotion that tends to trigger reactions.
So perhaps imagining yourself,
The person,
The place,
The situation and perhaps tuning into the feelings that all of that might elicit for you.
Really putting yourself into that story.
And you might be beginning to feel some discomfort or reactivity.
So here we can use the S of sober to stop right here at this very challenging point and make a choice to step out of automatic and automatic pilot reaction.
And the next step is to O,
Observe,
Becoming really aware of what is happening with you right now.
Maybe first noticing physical sensations,
What's happening in the body.
Perhaps noticing a tightening of the chest or the heart accelerating,
Emotions,
Maybe noticing thoughts that accompany those emotions,
Dialogue,
Judgments.
Noticing to any kind of urges,
Physical urges that you might be having as a response to the reaction,
The trigger.
So not pushing it away,
Rather just observing it,
Not forcing it out,
Just acknowledging it.
Just noticing,
Observing,
Sensing and feeling.
Sober.
So now the B of sober.
This is our third step.
And here we can begin to gather our attention,
Really summon it and bring it towards the body and just let it rest on the breath.
Aware of the movement and sensation of the breath,
The feeling of the breath in maybe the abdomen.
Maybe you can sense the rise and fall of each in-breath and out-breath.
And just perhaps moving that sensation to the chest area if that's more vivid for you.
Noticing the ribcage expand,
The feeling sensation of the lungs gently expanding and gently falling back.
And then perhaps the breath might be noticeable,
Felt experienced around the nostrils,
The tip of the nose perhaps.
So experimenting with the belly,
The chest or the nostrils and just breathing,
Placing our attention,
Breathing and feeling the movement of the in-breath and the out-breath right here,
Right now.
So E is our next letter for this sober breathing space.
We're going to now expand the attention.
We've gathered the attention,
We've placed it on the breath and now we're going to expand the attention and expand the awareness to include the sense of the whole body sitting,
Standing,
Maybe sensing the feet or the hands,
Maybe sensing tightness or tension and shoulders or neck.
Just bringing that awarenessing,
That feeling sense as we expand our awareness to include our whole body.
And our last letter of the sober breathing space is R.
So here from this greater place of calm and sense of awareness,
Sense of noticing,
We can make a choice to respond rather than react.
We can choose to speak or not speak,
Interact with a person or not interact,
Stay or go and likewise we can choose to respond by having some compassion and kindness and directing that compassion and kindness towards ourselves.
So as you imagine yourself making this choice,
Responding in this sober breathing space,
Allow the awareness of the body on the breath and this heartful kind friendly attitude towards yourself to be present with you.
