Hello everyone and welcome to this session on breathing from headlines.
If you do nothing else,
Please do just listen to this fundamental exercise which we can all practice together wherever we are.
The breath is the one thing that we both can have some aspect of control over and also is automatic.
So just bear that in mind that our breath reflects how we are in any moment and we also have the possibility to alter how we are in any moment by simple breathing exercises,
By regulating our breath.
Of course in meditation ultimately we allow everything to be,
Yet at the beginning of the practice it can be very helpful to help still the mind,
To quieten the mind through the very simple practice that we're going to be doing today in following the breath.
So if you're sitting comfortably and you can gently close your eyes and turn your attention inwards and just very gently with the simplest of instructions just become aware of your breath.
Breathing in and breathing out and just place your attention at the tip of your nostrils with your mouth gently closed,
Your jaw relaxed,
Just allowing and feeling the breath coming in at the point of the nostril and breathing out.
You may feel the breath as you breathe in slightly cooler and as you breathe out slightly warmer.
And just at the beginning of the practice I'm going to ask you to practice this,
What we call deep body breathing,
That we've referred to elsewhere in the other exercises.
So this is where your tummy is your bellows and you can put your hands on your tummy and as you breathe in you can feel your tummy expanding and then as you breathe out it contracts.
And then once you're aware of this you can on the in breath allow yourself to fully fill up,
Imagining all of the air filling the bottom of the lungs,
The center and then the top.
And then as we breathe out we breathe out from the top of the lungs,
The center and then all of the air from the bottom of the lungs deep in the tummy.
And we're going to practice just holding the breath at the top of the inhale just for a couple of seconds and then again holding the breath at the bottom of the exhale.
So we inhale two,
Three,
Four,
Hold the breath two,
Three,
Four and then we exhale,
Hold the breath,
Inhale,
Hold,
Exhale,
Slowly,
Hold,
Inhale,
Hold,
Exhale,
Hold.
And then just allow your breath to return to its normal rhythm.
So another training and this is really training our attention and is very useful and very often people as I do when I first started think this is really a nutty waste of time exercise.
And actually it teaches us a lot and I'm going to just ask you just to become aware of the breath.
And you're just going to count your breath for ten inhales.
So we're going to inhale,
One,
Exhale,
Inhale,
Two,
Exhale,
Inhale,
Three,
All the way up to ten.
Four.
Five.
Six.
Seven.
Eight.
Nine.
Ten.
And just like the grand old Duke of York who had 10,
000 men,
Once we've marched up to the top of the hill and got to ten we then marched them down again and we start again at one.
And just repeat this exercise again which I won't do on the tape but you can just do it for yourself.
And what you will find is that after the first couple of breaths your mind will take you completely away and you will forget what number you're on and that's totally normal.
And when you do that you just literally start again at the beginning.
So this is just a training of focus and it will show you how our minds work by themselves.
Just like our kidneys or our liver we can't turn them on and off at will and neither can we turn our thoughts on and off at will.
They come and they go and that is the workings of the mind.
So no use getting angry or frustrated because our minds are just doing what they're supposed to just like every other organ in the body.
So you may now be feeling a little calmer and just sitting on the chair we're just going to breathe together.
Breathing in and breathing out.
Observing our body and our thoughts.
And if something distracts us,
Sound in the room,
Sound outside,
Pain,
A niggle,
A thought,
When we are aware of that we simply come back to the breath.
We're using the breath because it's always with us.
We don't have to go and pull it down from a book or go and look for it in another place.
It's just there all the time with us.
And we're just giving ourselves permission to spend some time with ourselves and our breath.
Being here together,
Breathing in,
Breathing out,
Allowing the future to be parked.
When we finish our exercise we can get on with our day but for now we're going to give us the delicious opportunity just to be here.
There may be feelings coming from the past of guilt or regret.
We just allow those to be there and if we have an emotional response perhaps after a while sometimes this exercise becomes deep and tears come to our eyes.
We just allow them again to be there to further pin compassion for ourselves and of course for others.
Using a simple technique,
This natural phenomena of breathing in,
Breathing out,
In breath,
Out breath.
Noticing the different quality of the in to the out.
The in is filling and the out is releasing.
So if you have any tension,
The in breath you fill out and the out breath you let go.
Let go of the tension,
Anything that you find there.
Noticing,
Feeling the breath coming in through the nostrils and out through the nostrils.
So I suggest you just put your timer on for say 10 minutes and simply breathe,
Observing your thoughts.
Seeing if the mind quietens over a period of time.
Well thank you very much.
That's the end of our session for today from Headlines and just in your day if you can just become aware of your breathing like a thermometer placed in your mouth to become aware of your temperature and when you remember and perhaps when you're feeling really stressed just take a minute just to breathe.
You don't have to tell anyone about it or do any major movement just literally breathe in,
Breathe out,
Breathe in and breathing out.
Thank you.
