Breathing and Body Awareness for Relaxation and Peace

This meditation uses a specific breathing technique to help calm your mind. The awareness of your own body assists you in deep relaxation and to experience peace in the now. Gentle piano music uplifts. Happiness is an inside job. In-Joy!

Transcript

Resting back into the floor in a sitting position or you're laying down,

Make sure that your physical needs are taken care of.

If you're sitting in a chair,

It's very comfortable.

If you're laying down,

Your legs are raised or just sitting in a position or laying in a position that you can be in for the next 30 minutes without your leg falling asleep or just being completely comfortable.

Become aware of your breath.

Just notice your breath without changing it as it goes in and as it goes out.

Follow the line of your breath as it comes in through your nose and down your throat and into your chest or your belly somewhere.

Observing your breath,

The pathway as it goes in and as it goes out.

Notice how open this breathing space is.

It may have edges around it,

Behind it,

Below it,

In your back somewhere or your belly,

But the breathing space itself is completely open.

It may be small and short,

But it's open.

It's receiving prana or oxygen 24 hours a day without you even thinking about it.

The oxygen of your whole body was this open.

So what we'll do in this breathing exercise is bring breath to more parts of your body,

Opening your body with your awareness and your breath with the oxygen.

Following that line of your breath,

Observing your breath as it goes in and as it goes out.

Your breath reflects your mind.

So when you're anxious,

Your breath is quick.

When you're upset,

Your breath is quick.

And when you're relaxed,

Your breath is very long and soft.

So you can actually use your breath as a tool to help slow your mind down.

This is a form of meditation focusing on the breath.

Observing your breath as it goes in and as it goes out.

Place a hand on your belly,

Right around where your belly button is.

And visualize in your mind's eye for a moment a balloon.

And when you breathe air into the balloon,

Notice that the balloon actually fills up with air from the bottom up.

The balloon gets tight at the bottom first.

Fills up at the bottom first.

Even though the air is coming in through the top of the hole of the balloon,

The air is filling up from the bottom.

And this is actually how the air is moving in your body too.

So as you inhale,

Inhale down in towards where your hand is,

Into the bottom of your belly.

This deepens and expands your breath without you even trying.

And also shows you how the breath is moving in your body.

Inhaling down towards where your hand is with a long,

Easy emptying.

Aim your in-breath to the bottom of your belly.

This may take some time to get comfortable with.

And that's okay.

A couple more breaths here,

Inhaling down towards the lowest part of your belly,

Doing some balloon breathing on the inhale.

And then visualize in your mind's eye again that balloon.

When the air leaves the balloon,

It actually leaves from the bottom up as well.

Visualize your balloon and notice that your balloon will get soft at the bottom first.

And this is how the air is leaving your belly too.

This is not as easy to get.

So just have your hand on your belly,

Inhaling from your belly up.

And now with a long,

Easy emptying from the belly out.

Inhaling down into where that hand is.

See if you can get a sense of the breath leaving your body from down into your belly.

Couple more balloon breaths here.

You can soften your hand and release your hand away from your belly whenever you get a comfortable sense of this.

Next we'll do a three chamber breath.

We're gonna divide your torso into three chambers.

The first chamber being the lower chamber.

So continue with this balloon breathing.

Inhaling down into your belly,

Into the lowest part of your belly,

With a long,

Easy emptying.

This time as the breath goes down into your belly,

See if you can feel your breath going down into your hips and filling up the hollows of your hips and the tops of your legs,

Filling up your abdomen.

Inhaling down into that hip area,

See if you can feel the breath expanding your low back.

With always a long,

Easy emptying.

Inhaling into that first chamber,

Filling up all those spaces,

The hollows of your legs,

Getting the breath down as far into your lower torso and your upper legs as you can.

Learning how to direct the breath in your body is very powerful.

Continuing to breathe as I talk.

They say that any dis-ease or uncomfortableness or pain that you have in your body is a lack of prana or a lack of breath,

A lack of oxygen.

So you can heal different parts of your body by creating more oxygen to go into those spaces that are tight or painful.

Breathing now into the second chamber,

Aiming your breath now into your mid torso.

You can place a hand onto your torso if you like,

So you can aim that breath around your mid section.

Inhaling,

Feeling your ribs expand as you breathe.

That whole mid section of your ribs,

Your torso.

Get a sense of your breath filling into the back of your rib cage,

Expanding your whole mid torso with breath.

Inhaling with a long,

Easy emptying.

Expanding your mid torso with just your breath.

A couple more breaths here.

And then moving up into your upper torso.

Breathing your breath now into your chest and your shoulders.

Inhaling into your chest with a long,

Easy emptying,

Feeling your shoulders soften as you release your breath.

Inhaling into your chest,

See if you can get a sense of that breath coming into the hollows of your shoulders and up into your neck and your shoulder blades as your body softens with the exhale.

No forcing or straining with any of these breaths.

It's your awareness.

Inhaling into your chest area with a long,

Easy emptying.

Noticing how your upper torso now is expanding with breath,

Every inch of it.

Couple more breaths here.

And next we'll do a full three chamber breath.

So on your next in breath,

Inhaling down into your belly,

Up through your mid torso and up into your chest with a long,

Easy emptying.

Again from the belly up,

Just like when you learned that balloon breathing.

Inhaling into your belly from the bottom up,

Up through your torso into your chest with a long,

Easy emptying,

Softening your belly,

Releasing the air from your torso and then your chest.

Couple more of these full three chamber breaths.

Noticing how big this breath is.

How much more oxygen you're getting in than your regular breath.

One or two more breaths here,

Full three chamber breaths.

Easy and gentle though,

No forcing or straining.

Your neck or your chin should not be jutting out.

Everything is relaxed.

And then bringing your breath back to normal.

Back to your original breath that we were doing at the beginning.

Noticing how small this breath seems now.

And maybe it feels a little more open.

How much opening in your torso did we do with just your breath?

This is the power of your breath.

Couple more breaths here.

Notice also too how much your mind is relaxed.

This is what I talked about at the beginning,

Is that your breath reflects your mind so you can use the breath as a tool to slow your mind down.

Another breathing technique I'd like to teach you next is called Ujaya breath.

It's also called the ocean breath.

It sounds like this.

If you have clear sinuses,

Your mouth is actually closed and you're breathing in through your nose and exhaling,

Inhaling and exhaling through your nose.

It's in the back of your throat,

This sound.

And if you can't get it right away,

Try opening your mouth and going,

It's a little easier to get.

Doing that a few times.

And then closing your mouth.

And getting that same sound with your mouth closed.

It's just a little louder noise in the back of your throat,

The Ujaya breath.

The Ujaya breath is a very,

Very powerful breath.

It's the first sound you heard the first nine months of your physical existence in your mother's womb was the sound of her breath.

So this sound is very nurturing to your entire physiology.

It's also the ocean breath,

Known as the ocean breath,

Which is probably the most ancient sound we know of on the earth,

The sound of the ocean.

You can continue doing this Ujaya breathing as I talk to you about the importance of this breath and the effects of it.

It's the vibration of the breath.

Everything in the world is vibration.

That's how Beethoven wrote music.

He was deaf and he would put his ear to the floor to feel the vibration.

Everything in the world is vibration.

So the vibration of this breath actually nurtures every single cell in your body and calms your mind.

So the Ujaya breath is something that I teach every person that I teach meditation or yoga to.

It's something that I do all day long,

Especially if I'm in traffic or paying bills or in any type of situation that would normally cause some anxiousness in the body.

I do the Ujaya breath.

It calms the entire physiology by just breathing,

Just doing the breath.

You can use this as a tool at any time.

It also is a powerful breath in that one hour of breathing the Ujaya breath is like three hours of sleep.

You can use it to fall asleep at night.

You'll get a much deeper sleep.

There's many,

Many different types of breathing techniques that you can learn,

But the Ujaya breath is something I like to teach because it is the most versatile,

The easiest.

You can do it anywhere.

And if you just have to remember one breath,

This is the breath that you should remember and use throughout your day.

Noticing how your whole body feels now after all this breathing that we've been doing.

I want to take you through a meditation now that you're calm and you've learned how to breathe.

I want you to become something in nature,

A lake,

A tree,

A blade of grass,

A creek.

Anything you like in nature,

Become that.

Pick the first thing that comes to your mind.

And what happens to you,

Visualize it's summertime now.

What happens to you in the summer?

It's a warm,

Hot summer day.

What's happening around you?

What's interacting in nature around you on a hot summer day?

The breeze is blowing,

But even that doesn't cool because it's so warm.

To the cool summer evening,

Noticing what's going on in you and around you in this thing that you've become in nature.

It's getting a little cooler now.

The summer nights are getting cooler and even the days are getting cooler as fall begins to set in.

The leaves begin to turn.

How does this affect you?

The change of seasons into the fall weather.

Cool nights,

Cool days,

Getting colder every day.

The change of seasons moving into winter.

How does this affect you?

What changes are going on in you and around you as the season begins to change to winter?

Getting colder and colder now.

The first snow begins to fall.

How does this affect you?

A chilly winter day,

An even colder winter night.

The coldest day of the winter.

Ice everywhere.

How does this feel?

What is affected in you by this icy cold winter's day?

How does this affect the things in nature around you?

The days are beginning to get warmer now.

Gradually the days are becoming warmer.

Signs of spring are starting to show all around you and in you.

What are the changes that begin to happen with the coming of the spring?

What is the feeling that is in the air?

What is the different interaction in things around you?

As spring comes into full bloom,

The most beautiful,

Cool spring day you can imagine,

How do you feel?

This is how life is.

The seasons of our life.

And just as your thing in nature accepts and goes through the changes of each season,

This is how our life is supposed to be.

The seasons come,

The harshness of the winter,

The beautiful spring,

The changing of the seasons,

And just accepting this.

Just like nature does,

Whether it's a harsh storm,

Surviving a harsh storm,

Or enjoying a beautiful summer's day,

It always happens.

There's always a summer day and there's always a harsh winter day.

The key is to not be affected so deeply by some of the harshness.

And finding that center with your breath and with meditation helps to do that.

It gives you an inner stability that no one can take away from you.

Taking time for yourself,

Going inward.

My wish is that you'll take time for yourself every day,

Even if it's just five minutes,

For your breathing,

For your yoga,

For something you enjoy.

Laying back onto the floor or on the couch,

Somewhere very comfortable,

So you can let go of any attention that you might have on your body and just turn inward,

Becoming aware of your toes,

All 10 toes,

Inside of your toes,

The bones of your toes,

The little muscles and ligaments onto those tiny bones of your toes,

And the outside of your toes,

The nails of each toe,

The skin,

Becoming aware of all 10 toes,

Outside and inside.

Noticing the bottoms of your feet,

The soles of your feet,

The insides of the soles of your feet,

All the little bones in your feet,

The muscles,

The ligaments,

The blood flowing through those muscles,

All the little veins that bring the blood flow and the oxygen to those muscles,

Your ankles,

Becoming aware of the inside of your foot,

Both feet,

The bones,

The tissues,

The blood,

And the outside of both feet,

The skin,

Becoming aware of both feet,

Outside and inside.

Noticing your ankles,

The joints,

All the muscles that rotate your ankles all the way around,

That allow your ankles to move and rotate up and down,

All around,

Becoming aware of your calves,

Your shin bones,

Your calves resting on the floor,

How does that feel,

The sensation of them feeling on the floor,

The insides of your calves,

Your shin bones,

That long shin bone,

And the calf muscle that attaches in the shin,

The very small shin bone,

And the little muscles that attach onto the shin bone.

Noticing your lower leg,

Outside and inside,

Becoming aware of your knees and how they're resting into the floor,

Do they feel comfortable there?

Noticing your kneecaps inside,

Your knee joints,

All the muscles that connect to move that knee and that attach onto that kneecap,

Noticing your whole knee joint outside and inside,

Becoming aware of your upper leg,

Your thighs,

The inside of your thighs,

Those thigh bones connecting from those knees all the way up and resting into those hip sockets,

And all the muscles that attach from those knees up onto those hips and running along your thighs,

The large muscle of the thigh bone,

The hamstring muscles,

Your inner thighs and outer thighs,

Becoming aware of your thighs outside and inside,

Noticing both legs,

The bones of both legs,

The muscles of both legs,

The blood circulating into those legs and into those feet,

And the skin of both legs.

Becoming aware of your back resting against the floor,

The backs of your shoulder blades,

The back of your rib cage,

Behind your waist resting against the floor,

Is it flat or is there a little arch there?

Your low back resting against the floor into your butt and your sit bones,

Becoming aware of your spine beginning at your tailbone,

Noticing in your mind's eye your tailbone,

Becoming aware of that spine.

Spine is the extension of your brain,

Holds your spinal cord in the cerebrospinal fluid,

Becoming aware of your tailbone and follow it vertebra by vertebra,

Noticing the discs in between each vertebra and all the little muscles that rotate those vertebra in so many different directions,

Vertebra by vertebra up through your low back,

Through your waist,

Up behind your chest,

Between your shoulder blades,

Up through your neck into the base of your skull,

Becoming aware of your whole spine from your tailbone into your skull and back again.

Breathe into that spine,

Breathe into the length of your spine,

Your breath comes in through your solar plexus right above your belly button and in the middle of your rib cage,

The breath comes in through your solar plexus and fills up along the length of your spine up and down,

Feeling your breath massage you from the inside out,

Inhaling up through your spine with a long easy emptying.

A couple more breaths like that in through your solar plexus and along your spine,

Becoming aware of your belly,

All the organs in your abdominal cavity and how they rest in the spots that they find in that hip and pelvic cavity,

Becoming aware of the organs and the blood flow through your organs,

Your intestines,

Up into your mid-chest,

Through your solar plexus into your mid-chest and inside of your chest,

Your heart and your lungs and your liver,

Your gallbladder,

Becoming aware of all those organs inside your chest and your belly,

Noticing the organs,

The blood flow,

All the muscles that attach,

Those muscles actually that are on the outside of each organ and the veins attached onto those muscles bringing the oxygen and nutrients to your whole body,

Becoming aware of your heart,

When you feel your heart beat,

Either picture it in your mind's eye or actually feel it in your chest,

Feel the heart pumping the blood through your whole body,

Feel the heart pumping the blood from your chest and the blood reaching down to your toes,

Becoming aware of your whole torso inside and your torso outside,

The front of your torso,

The back of your torso resting against the floor,

Becoming aware of the sensations,

Noticing your hands,

The outside of your hands,

The backs of your hands and the fronts of your hands,

The insides of your hands,

Feeling the blood flow and oxygen tingling in your hands,

Can you actually feel that heart beating in your hands,

The heart that's pumping the blood and the oxygen from your heart extending all the way out to your body,

Can you feel the heartbeat in your hands,

Becoming aware of both hands outside and inside and the tingling of the circulation inside of your hands,

Noticing your wrists,

Your forearms,

The muscles of your forearms,

The bones of those forearms,

Your elbows,

The elbow joint inside and outside,

Your upper arms,

The bones of your upper arms and the muscles,

Your biceps,

Becoming aware of both arms,

The inside,

The bones of both arms,

The muscles of both arms and the outsides of your arms,

Your skin,

Noticing how the air feels on the outside of your arms or the sensation of the floor underneath your arms,

Becoming aware of your neck,

Inside of your neck,

Your throat,

The inside of your throat up into your eustachian tubes into your inner ears,

Your inner ears to the inside of your mouth,

Your tongue,

Teeth and gums,

The roof of your mouth and the floor of your mouth,

You may be able to soften the back of your jaw to soften the inside of your head and jaw a little bit more,

Becoming aware of your bones of your face,

The bones of your forehead,

Inside of your head,

Your forebrain,

Midbrain and backbrain,

The outside of your head,

Your hair,

Your skull,

The outside of your face,

Your forehead,

Your eyebrows,

Your eyelids,

Your eyelashes,

Your eyeballs and eye sockets,

Your nose,

The length of your nose,

The tip of your nose,

Your cheeks and your cheekbones,

Your mouth,

Your jawline,

Your chin,

Your outer ears,

Becoming aware of your face and your head outside and inside and now becoming aware of your whole body including your feet and legs,

Hands and arms,

Torso,

Neck,

Face and head and resting in your whole body,

Resting in the awareness of your body.

Reviews

Really enjoyed the focus on the breath to start with, really helped me relax :)

Very nice, appreciated the space of silence at the end. Thank you.

Great visualization of the breath. Thank you

Very useful combination of breath exercises and body scan. Very relaxing and grounding. Thoroughly enjoyed it and will come back to it, I am sure. The background music was just right for me. Thank you. 🙏

Thank you for your teaching of the breath and this meditation. I feel blessed to have found you today. I will return to practice what you teach. I really needed this and feel so much better. 🙏🏻

What a wonderful journey into the breath...the ocean breath was a great relaxer to me...I love the explanation of it as the first sounds we all heard in our first 9 months of life! Thank you! Will bookmark!

Best ever meditation! I could feel every part of my body and relax into it with my breath. Thank you

Wonderful..first time I felt my cells come alive..thank you