Beginners Breathing Meditation

This is the perfect beginner's meditation, clear instruction, and keeping it simple. We'll let the mind rest and notice the movements of the mind and using our kind breath to soften that movement. This practice is about 15 minutes long and will help you bring a bit of space into your day.

Transcript

And close your eyes if you want to.

And remember this isn't mind control,

This isn't hypnosis,

Or not taking you into some sort of trance state.

Wherever you are,

You're not under any sort of mind control.

We are just practicing.

That's all we're doing.

Just for the next 15 minutes we're just practicing.

It doesn't matter how well you do,

Just practice.

And I invite you just to bring some attention to the body first.

And we start with a few touch points.

Now,

This dragging of attention away from the external world and internally is this sort of first shift into your meditation where you're beginning to become interested in what is happening within us.

Now wonderfully the science points to holding a little bit of attention in the body in this way is good for us.

That actually stimulates what we call our relaxation response system.

And so holding some attention in your feet just for a bit,

And by holding attention I mean just feeling sensations in your toes,

Your heels,

Your arches,

Whatever you can feel.

Just feeling your feet on the floor,

That's all we're doing.

Or wherever they are,

If they're underneath your legs,

If you're sat on a cushion.

And then with that same awareness,

That same attention,

I just invite you just to bring it into the legs,

So anywhere from your sort of ankles to your hips.

And again,

Just holding a bit of attention there,

That's all we're doing.

Just feeling the sensations.

Doesn't matter good or bad,

Important,

Less important.

Just feeling whatever is there.

Not trying to change it.

And then gently guiding it further into the hands.

Feeling the hands on your lap.

Or by your sides.

Just hold a little attention there,

Just feeling the sensations,

That's all we're doing.

This holding attention is the mind training.

Now we're taking back a little of that control that we feel that we've lost.

Learning just to hold our attention not so much on the thoughts,

But on other things.

This isn't distraction.

We're making conscious decisions.

We're choosing where we want to hold our attention.

And from here,

All I'd invite you to do now is just begin to sort of notice the movement of the breath.

Just like you could feel your sensations in your feet and your legs and your hands.

Maybe you did,

Maybe you didn't.

It's okay.

But just seeing if you can notice that you're breathing.

This doesn't mean taking a big deep breath or changing your breath in any way.

We're just noticing that we're breathing.

Now a good place to start is just at the nose.

And the body might naturally take a few deep breaths,

And that's okay too.

It may naturally go a little shallower,

And that's okay too.

It may naturally try and control the breathing,

And that's normal as well.

But ultimately all we're trying to feel is sensations.

That's it.

And again,

From an evidence-based point of view,

This holding of attention to our breath relaxes us.

Actually,

It's just this simple process of watching us breathe.

We don't need to hyperventilate all the time with some of those crazy breathing practices.

Just watching our breath,

Watching the movement of our breath is seen as an act of compassion and stimulates our parasympathetic system,

Which is the natural balancing system to our stress response.

It releases anti-inflammatories into the system.

Just watching your breath,

A simple act of that.

And what we're going to do is just work one breath at a time.

And by one breath at a time means we're not worried about the last breath,

We're not looking forward to the next breath.

We're just quite content watching this breath.

And this breath.

Now I'm just going to go a little quiet just for a minute or so.

I just want you to practice just holding attention on any sensation in your breath.

If you find one strong of another's,

Then sure,

Watch that.

No right,

No wrong,

No good,

No bad,

Not at the moment.

Just practice.

Enjoy.

Now Now what you may have noticed is the mind did its thing.

It got distracted.

Maybe there's people in the house around you,

You can hear your kids yelling and screaming.

Maybe there's cars or trains or aeroplanes.

Maybe you're thinking about emails that you sent.

Maybe you're thinking about people,

Anything.

Random thoughts just come out of nowhere,

Distract us,

Which is why we're here.

This is why we're practicing,

Because we're trying to get better with a distracted mind.

It's not a time to go,

Oh,

I'm terrible at this.

This is why we're here,

To begin to put together a process of working better with distraction.

So what we're going to do,

At any point you find you get distracted by anything other than the sensations of your breath.

We just bring our attention back to the sensations.

It doesn't matter how much or how little.

It doesn't matter what it was.

There's no good,

No bad,

No important,

Less important,

Just for the next couple of minutes.

I'm just going to let all distractions be distractions,

All thoughts be thoughts,

All sounds be sounds.

And all we're trying to do is just practice holding our attention on the sensations of our breath.

And just keep coming back over and over.

Even if you've got to do it a thousand times over the next three minutes,

Or maybe you only do it once,

We just watch our mind,

Gets distracted,

Comes back to the breath again.

And we go round and round as often as we can,

The more the better.

Failure is excellent.

I'm going to go a little quiet,

And I just want you to practice.

Breath.

Distraction.

And breath.

And breath.

And breath.

And breath.

And remember,

Distractions are important.

So we just notice them,

Come back to the breath.

Don't criticize,

Don't judge.

No expectation,

Always with kindness,

And not trying to stop thinking.

Just practicing holding our attention somewhere that isn't just thinking.

And wonderfully,

The side effect can be relaxation.

Relaxation isn't the goal,

Just a wonderful side effect.

It's something of a good practice.

Now with me,

As we breath in,

In your thoughts,

Or you can say it aloud if you want to,

But in your thoughts,

It's probably simpler.

As you breath in,

Just saying in.

And feeling the sensations,

You're going to breath in,

Feel the sensation,

And remind yourself that you're breath in.

As you're breath out,

Again,

In the same way,

You're feeling the sensation and reminding yourself that you're breath out,

And you can hold attention to it and say out.

You're going to breath in and say in,

And out,

And say out.

In and out.

Just keep repeating,

Over and over.

You get distracted,

You come back to your breath,

And just breath in and in,

And out,

And out.

Enjoy.

Now just changing the practice a little as we breath in.

As you breath in,

Just saying calm,

Almost like we could breath calm into the body.

So breath in and say calm.

As you breath out,

I just want you to sort of imagine the calmness and just rest as you breath out.

Like all your work is done.

You're going to breath in,

Calm,

Breath out,

Rest and let go.

Calm and rest.

Finally,

Keep going with calm and rest.

So you're breath in,

Calm,

Breath out and resting.

I want you to begin to open your eyes and still continuing on with the calm and rest.

You can open your eyes if you don't already.

Just breath in,

Calm,

Rest.

Breath in,

Calm,

Rest.

Keep going,

Two or three more breaths.

Alright.

So,

I hope you enjoyed that little simple breathing practice.

Now,

You can practice in our calm rest anywhere.

The wonderful thing about breathing,

It goes with you everywhere you are.

It just takes a moment,

One breath,

Conscious breath.

Bring some focus inwards.

Holding that attention,

That's what we're practicing.

Holding that attention somewhere that's not just our thoughts.

Not that thinking is bad.

We're just practicing consciously holding attention to other things just to begin to soften its grasp.

Okay?

So,

Yeah,

It's a portable relaxation device.

It's very true.

Okay.