Good morning and congratulations to starting your day in a mindful manner.
Every day contains all of life and every morning is like a small birth.
Get into your meditation position.
You may sit on the edge of a chair or do a lotus or half lotus.
Make sure your spine is straight and you are sitting on your sitting bones and let your hands rest on your knees.
If you wish you may connect your thumb and your index finger and close your eyes.
Just by closing your eyes you can feel the energy of morning circulating in your body.
As you breathe naturally observe your breath.
How does it feel?
Does it come easy or do you feel tension?
Just observe.
Feel the air on your skin.
Relax your shoulders.
Relax your jaw.
Relax your stomach and open your chest.
Relax your eyeballs.
Feel how they are rounded and let your eyelids cover them gently like lotus leaves.
Feel the sensation of your breath entering your nostrils and follow your breath from your nostrils through your throat until deep into your stomach.
Now imagine your breath to be a white mist and breathe in deeply through your nose and let this white mist gather at the base of your spine.
Hold for a moment and then breathe out the white mist up your spine and out through your nostrils breathing out all the toxins.
Again breathe in this white mist.
You can imagine the mist over a green field in the early morning and let it gather at the base of your spine.
Hold for a moment and breathe it out.
Breathe in the white mist.
Gather it at the base of your spine and breathe it back out through your nose.
In white mist.
Hold it at the base of your spine and out through your nose.
In.
Gather it and out and then return to your natural breathing.
Your spine is straight.
Your shoulders are relaxed and slightly back.
Your jaw is relaxed.
Now we come to Ujjayi breathing.
Imagine you are blowing your breath against a window which becomes foggy maybe with a ha sound.
Feel how this sound creates a little constriction inside your throat making it narrower.
And now breathe in only through your nose creating that very same sound through your in and out breath.
Long in-breath with Ujjayi.
Long out-breath with Ujjayi.
And feel how your Ujjayi out-breath is stabilizing your posture.
In and out.
In and out.
In and out.
And come back to your natural breathing.
Now we come to alternate nostril breathing.
Lift your right hand and lay your index and your middle finger on your forehead so you can prepare to close your left nostril with your ring finger and your right nostril with your thumb.
Once your hand is in position close your left nostril with your ring finger and breathe in through your right nostril.
Hold and close the right nostril with your thumb and breathe out through your left nostril.
Breathe in through your left nostril.
Close it and hold and breathe out through the right.
Breathe in through the right.
Hold and close and breathe out through the left.
Breathe in through the left.
Hold and out through the right.
In through the right.
Hold and out through the left.
In through the left.
Hold and out through the right.
One more time.
In through the right.
Hold and out through the left.
And return to your natural breathing and let your hand rest.
Your spine is straight,
Your shoulders relaxed,
Your jaw relaxed.
Now we will come to combine the UJ with the alternative nostril breathing.
Start by breathing in and out your nose with UJ doing this constricted sound in your throat.
Let your in and out UJ breath become longer and slower.
Now breathe in UJ.
Hold,
Lift your left hand putting index and middle finger on your forehead,
Closing your right nostril with the ring finger and breathe out through your left nostril silently without UJ and rest your hand back on your lap.
Let's do it again.
We breathe in through both nostrils with UJ.
Hold and lift our left hand,
Close the left nostril with a thumb and breathe out through the right nostril silently without UJ and put your hand down.
Breathe in with UJ through both nostrils,
Close the right nostril and breathe out to the left silently.
If you wish you may variate the hands you are using to close the nostrils.
In breath with UJ through both nostrils,
Close the left and breathe out silently through the right.
In through both with UJ,
Out silently through the left nostril.
In with UJ through both,
Out on the right silently.
In through both with UJ,
Out through the left silently.
One more time.
In through both with UJ and out to the right silently and relax into your natural breathing.
Now we do the same exercise but switch.
So we lift our right hand,
Close the left nostril and breathe in silently through the right.
Hold and put our hand down and breathe out with the UJ sound through both nostrils.
Lift either hand,
Close your right nostril and breathe in silently through the left.
Hold hand down and out through both nostrils with UJ.
In silently through the right,
Hold and out with UJ through both.
In silently through the left,
Hold and out with UJ through both.
In silently through the right,
Hold,
Out with UJ through both.
In silently through the left and hold and out with UJ through both.
One more time.
In silently through the right and hold and out with UJ through both and return to your natural breathing.
The last exercise is called Kapalapati and it is a true energizer for your day.
Sit with a straight spine,
Relaxed shoulders,
Relaxed jaw.
Breathe in deeply,
Lift your chest and now we do 20 active out and passive in-breaths as if your navel was hitting your spine.
And return to your natural breathing for a few moments and feel the heat that was created.
Again,
This time we try 40.
Breathe in deeply,
Lift your chest and active out passive in-breaths.
And return to your natural breathing and feel the heat.
Relax your eyelids,
Feel the taste in your mouth,
Feel the sensation on your skin.
And now close off all outward senses and feel inside of you.
Which emotion do you meet there with all other senses closed?
Which feeling is there?
And ask yourself,
Am I this emotion or am I the observer of this emotion?
Now think of someone or something for who or for what you are grateful for in your life.
What does this feeling of gratitude do with you?
Can you locate that feeling somewhere in your body?
Namaste.
The divine in me sees the divine in you.
I wish you a wonderful day.
Let us close this session together with one Om.
Breathe in deeply.
Om.
