I want to lead a mindfulness of breathing practice today.
That's it,
Just the mindfulness of breathing.
Sometimes I like to lead mindfulness of breathing leading into open awareness and sometimes I just like to lead open awareness and sometimes I just like to lead mindfulness of breathing.
Today I'm just going to lead mindfulness of breathing.
So I want you to find your comfortable position.
If you're sitting I want you to make sure your back is straight.
I don't think it's good to just slouch and lounge around and meditate so make sure your back is straight if you're sitting.
If you like to lay down lay down on your back and if you're the rare person that likes to stand and meditate just stand up straight have really good posture if you can.
And we will begin by taking some deep breaths.
Oh first your hands it's important that you have a plan for your hands.
I like to recommend one of two different things.
One is what I call the bowl.
One hand on top of the other thumbs gently touching resting in your lap.
One hand so the thumbs make a kind of circle.
And a lot of people say that one hand or the other being on top makes a difference and is important and I don't I don't agree with that.
I think it doesn't matter.
So this I call this the bowl and fancy people who are into fancy terminology call this the cosmic mudra.
Mudra means hand position and I think that that's too heavy of a term it makes it sound hokey.
So that is one hand position I reckon and the other one is called relaxation mudra or relaxation hand position.
That's just hands on your legs not quite on your knees but almost on your knees just resting.
The point is that we have a plan for what our hands are doing because if we don't have a plan then they can easily be a point of fidgeting.
And lastly second to lastly if you're in a chair firmly plant your feet on the floor and if you're sitting on a cushion on the floor sit cross-legged whatever cross-legged position is going to make your feet not fall asleep.
And this is an eyes open practice so I'm going to practice with my eyes open I'm going to put my attention on a wall that's that's behind my computer here and if you have a wall like that I think that's great.
What we want to find is something we can look at that is sort of boring and not going to distract us so I recommend looking at a wall or if you don't have a wall like that look kind of put your eyes downward and look at the floor just a little bit of a down angle and look at the floor.
So hands legs I okay I covered everything so I'm gonna ring my bell and we're gonna take three deep heavy breaths and then I will give the instruction after that and then I'm gonna ring it three times now and at the end I'll ring it two times to bring an end.
So we will just sit for a while here we go I'm ringing it now.
Okay begin by taking three deep heavy breaths.
And then following that we want to just breathe normally.
We don't want to try to breathe slow or fast we just want to breathe and I want you to bring your attention to your breath.
This is going to be our focus for our meditation practice our anchor so when we bring our attention on the breath then whenever something comes to distract us or take us out of the meditation we're gonna just bring our attention back to the breath.
So I start thinking about what I'll do later I notice I'm thinking I bring my attention back to my breathing.
I start I start thinking about something that happened today I notice I'm remembering and I bring my attention back to my breathing the breath is always there for us to return to.
The reason why we say the breath is a good anchor is because it's something that is always with us and unless we have a problem we don't think about it that much.
It's always with us it's happening all the time but we unless there's a problem we're not bringing attention to it so that's why it functions well as an anchor.
So bring your attention to the in breath and just notice you're breathing in and then notice you're breathing out in out in out and there's two different options for how to focus on the breath and one is to pay attention to the way it comes into and out of your nose and if that's really difficult another option is to pay attention to the way your belly rises and falls.
It's rising and falling with each breath but unless we're paying attention we don't know it and even if both of these are very hard for you you can kind of rest your hands on your belly and that'll help put the attention there.
That's what when I meditate with my kids that's generally the practice they want is to put their hands on their belly and actually physically feel it both ways basically feel the expansion in their belly but also feel it rising and falling with their hands and I think that's a good practice as well if you have a lot of trouble and a lot of people like to do the practice of counting and that is where you mentally note one on the in breath two on the out breath in one out two in one out two so in this way every time you start daydreaming every time you have a thought or a memory or a feeling you just go back to one on the next in breath we don't want to beat ourselves up when we struggle because we're always gonna struggle we just want to go back to one on the next in breath that one is always there.
So in one out two in one out two in one out two and we will just sit here breathing together for a little while I'll mind the time and I will ring my bell two times two times when we are done following our breath in one out two in one out two in one out two out two in one out two in one out two in one out two in one out two in one out two in one out two.
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That is all for today.
I hope you have gotten something out of sitting and doing that breathing meditation with me.
Thank you for taking the time to sit with me and have a good day.
