Welcome to this 10-minute meditation on the breath.
We'll take a moment to find a comfortable seat and take any gentle movements that you might need to allow yourself to settle into stillness.
Grounding into both sit bones,
Finding this comfortable place and then resting the hands on the knees and bring the thumb and the forefinger to touch.
We'll close down the eyes when you're ready.
You just start to take some deep breaths,
Noticing without any judgment and without any story how you're feeling in this moment.
Notice the energy in the body and the quality of the breath at the start of this practice.
Using your inhale,
Feel the crown of the head reach tall towards the ceiling and with your exhale feel the sit bones ground even more into the earth below.
We'll start to engage a samariti breathing.
This means our inhale and our exhale are of an even length.
You might choose to count the breath to a count of four or whatever length serves you or simply feel into the rhythm of the breath using your intuition to find an even steady flow.
Let's take a deep breath in through the nose and let it out through the mouth.
Two more like that in through the nose and releasing through the mouth.
Releasing with your exhale any tension or stress,
Anxiety that just doesn't serve you in this moment and acknowledging to ourselves the time that we are carving out to do this practice knowing that any thoughts or any tasks in our life will be there whenever we need them and right now is simply about you in your body focusing on your breath.
As we watch the breath you might like to engage your ujjayi breath creating a gentle constriction at the back of the throat making the sound of the ocean allowing the sound of the breath to draw the mind's focus inward.
And taking our inhalations and exhalations in through the nose we'll start to notice the sensation of the breath on the nose taking our attention to the nostrils only noticing how the breath feels in this one place in the body as it comes in and as it leaves.
You might notice particular sensations maybe the air feels cool on the way in and a little bit warmer as it comes back out.
Perhaps one of the nostrils is more blocked than the other.
I'm just taking this time to notice both nostrils noticing the air move in and out of the nose as we breathe evenly in and evenly back out.
And if the mind starts to wander as the mind will do gently guide it back to the breath and the sensation of the breath on the nostrils.
We'll bring our attention down to the throat space.
Breathing in through the nose feel the air as it travels into the throat in this central place inside the neck noticing the sensations that you can feel here with the inhale and the exhale of the breath.
Maybe enhancing the ujjayi breath in this moment to feel even more deeply into the throat space.
Focusing the mind on this area of the body simply observing as the breath moves in and out.
And then we'll draw our attention downward to the chest and the lungs following the breath further into the body.
Notice how the chest expands with every inhalation and notice how it shrinks down with the exhalation.
Feeling the transition of the breath as it moves in and out of the lungs.
We'll draw our attention now to the belly.
Breathing deeply into the belly allowing the belly to be soft and see if you can start to draw the breath all the way down to the base of the belly breathing as deeply as you might have breathed all day.
And as we start to expand through the belly with our inhale breath feel the body start to energize.
With the exhale breath feel the body release and notice this sensation of calm that washes over you.
With every inhale drawing the breath more deeply into the belly space and every exhale allow yourself to let something go.
We'll take three rounds of breath together breathing deeply in and out of the nose.
And starting to notice the sensations in the body that have arisen after these short moments just allowing ourselves to connect to the breath to quiet the mind and to simply be in the present moment.
We'll take the hands to heart center.
O regarded man is a Hindu.
Sanau gunaktu,
Savir yam ka rava vai,
Tejas vina vareta mastu ma vidvisha vai.
Om shanti,
Om.
Now bowing the head to the heart,
We bring the thumbs to the third eye center between the eyebrows.
And in gratitude and thanks for ourselves for taking this time on the mat to ground into our bodies and our spirits.
And then thanks for all of the students and teachers on this yogic path.
We bow and we say namaste.
Namaste.
