When you sit down to meditate,
One of the challenges can be that your mind and your body are flying,
They're busy,
They're stepping out of a very,
Very busy life into a little bit of quiet time.
And breaking the connection with that busyness can be a challenge.
We use two simple techniques at the beginning of every practice that helps to achieve that.
And the first of those is just simply called six breaths.
Now this great simple breathing exercise is wonderful for calming both the nervous system and an overworked mind.
And it works on the basis of a timed breath where you make the exhale longer than the inhale.
When you breathe in,
Your heart accelerates.
When you breathe out,
Your heart decelerates.
So when you make your exhale a few counts longer than your inhale,
The vagus nerve,
Which is a major nerve running from the neck down through the diaphragm,
Sends a signal to your brain to turn up your parasympathetic nervous system and turn down your sympathetic nervous system.
The sympathetic nervous system commands your fight or flight response.
And when it fires,
Your heart rate and your breathing speed up.
And stress hormones like cortisol start pumping through your bloodstream,
Preparing your body to face a threat.
If the threat is,
That car is driving straight at me,
Well then this is helpful.
But if the threat is,
I'm a few minutes late for work or I'm upset I missed my bus,
It's not particularly helpful and it can even be damaging because when cortisol is elevated in your body for too long or is elevated too frequently,
It disturbs all of your hormonal systems.
The parasympathetic nervous system on the other hand controls your rest,
Relax and digest response.
And when that system is dominant,
Your breathing slows,
Your heart rate drops,
Your blood pressure lowers as the blood vessels relax and your body is put into a state of calm and healing.
Putting your body in this parasympathetic state is actually really easy.
All you need to do is set your exhale to be longer than your inhale.
And we're going to do that by counting.
So when we start the practice in a moment,
I'm going to encourage you to count how long it takes to do an inhale and then just make your exhale slightly longer.
I like to start with two counts for in and four counts for out.
So as I'm breathing in,
Counting one,
Two,
As I'm breathing out counting one,
Two,
Three,
Four.
And I put a one count pause at the top of the inhale and a one count count pause at the bottom of the exhale.
So let's give it a go.
To begin,
Just sit upright,
Not stiff,
Not too erect,
But upright and attentive.
Make yourself comfortable.
Put your hands somewhere that they won't distract you.
Keep your body largely symmetrical and just gently close your eyes and begin breathing through your nose,
Counting as you do.
So count how long your inhale is.
If it's two,
Hold the breath for a count of one and then exhale gently,
Counting out to keep that exhale longer.
If your inhale was a two,
Your exhale is a three,
Four or five.
And when you reach the end of the exhale,
Hold the breath for a count of one.
Now while you're doing this,
Keep your breathing even and smooth.
If the two to four count feels too short,
Well then you can try increasing the breath lengths to four in and six out or six in and eight out,
Whatever works for you.
The thing is not to get yourself anxious about the counting and not to push yourself.
The most important and basic thing is that your exhale is longer than the inhale.
The absolute length of the breath is unimportant.
So let's take a few minutes to do six of these breaths.
I will count the first one,
Then I'll leave you to do the last five and then we'll carry on.
So breathing in,
One,
Two,
Breathing out,
One,
Two,
Three,
Four,
Pausing for one count and breathing in.
And so carry on like that for a few breaths.
I'm going to go silent.
Okay.
Okay.
Good.
Now over that time,
I did about six breaths.
You may have done more,
You may have done less.
This is not something to stress over.
In fact,
The last thing in the world you want to do is make an exercise which is designed to calm you stressful.
So just do what's comfortable for you,
Making the exhale longer than the inhale.
And as you begin to practice this at the beginning of every practice every day,
You'll find that this becomes very,
Very normal.
Let me suggest something to you.
Even though I had you close your eyes to do this practice,
You can do this as you're walking,
You can do it as you're talking to somebody,
You can do it anytime you feel triggered,
Anxious,
Angry or upset.
It's a wonderful way of triggering the parasympathetic nervous system.
And it's the first of two techniques that we're going to use at the front of every practice in this series.
