Welcome to this 10-minute guided practice on mindfulness of breath.
So allow yourself to get into a comfortable but alert position.
If you're sitting in a chair,
Have your feet flat on the ground with your back nice and straight.
And if you're sitting on a meditation bench or cushion,
Just allow the body to be relaxed and alert.
We'll start the practice with a bow.
So begin by taking some nice long,
Deep breaths,
Allowing the lungs to fill all the way to the very top,
And then exhaling out all the way to the bottom of the breath fully and completely.
And after a couple of rounds of long,
Deep breaths,
Allow your breathing to resume its natural rhythm.
And in this practice,
We're simply going to follow the rhythm of the breath to fully experience the inhale and the exhale of each breath to the best of our ability.
I invite you to locate a place in your body where it's the most easy and comfortable to experience the movements associated with the breath,
The physical sensations that happen with the inhale and the exhale.
It may be the gentle rise and fall of your belly or your chest.
It may be the subtle sensations of air entering and exiting the nostrils.
Or it could be something else.
Just taking a moment to really tune into and focus on just what it feels like to be in a body that's breathing effortlessly all on its own.
And you may be experiencing thoughts and feelings.
And those thoughts and feelings may be taking you away from this experience of observing and experiencing the breath.
And if that's the case,
That's okay.
I encourage you to engage in this practice with an attitude of non-judgmental awareness.
There's no doing this well or doing this poorly.
And with a real attitude of kindness and curiosity,
Just noticing what it's like to try and bring the focus of attention into the present moment,
Observing and experiencing the breath.
The mind will continue thinking and you may continue experiencing emotions.
And again,
That's okay.
The purpose of this practice is not to stop thoughts or to stop feelings,
But rather to focus the attention away from thoughts and away from feelings and bring the attention to the body breathing.
You can think of it like being in a crowded restaurant and you're having lunch with a dear friend and there's all sorts of background noise from other conversations and the general sounds of the environment.
But you're able to focus your attention and attend to just the voice of your friend as you're listening to them speak.
In a similar fashion in this practice,
You're focusing your attention on the breath and your thoughts just become background noise like the background noise in a restaurant.
The thoughts just don't matter.
Allow them to be and do your best to just pay them no mind at all.
And just taking a moment now to notice where your attention is.
Perhaps it's traveled off into the future thinking and planning for what you have going on later today.
Perhaps it's drifted back into the past thinking about things that have already happened,
Replaying events or conversations.
If any of that has happened,
It's okay.
This is now a moment of mindfulness to bring the attention back to the breath and to the experience of the body breathing.
With that attitude of kindness and curiosity,
Openness and ease.
Focus.
Thank you.
Thank you.
And as we bring the practice to a close,
Taking one more deep breath,
Filling the lungs again all the way to the very top and relaxing and exhaling all the way down to the bottom of the breath.
Just taking a moment now to notice how you feel in your body and in your mind after 10 minutes of practice with mindful breathing.
I'm going to take a moment to notice how you feel in your mind after 10 minutes of practice
