Find a comfortable seated position.
Maybe the feet are crossed or you're seated on a chair.
But just notice the soles of your feet or the parts of your legs that are contacting the floor beneath you.
Just invite your awareness of your brain to contact and connect with the texture of the soles of your shoes or the surface beneath you.
As you feel your shin begin to soften and relax down into your feet,
The knees relaxing,
The thighs becoming heavy.
As you feel your pelvis sink and soften into the chair that you're seated in.
Taking a big breath in and out.
Slowly letting the sit bones sink into the seat beneath you.
And one by one,
Can you stack your vertebra,
The bones of your spine,
Up the length of your spine.
Slowly inviting this softness,
This ease,
Leaning into the chair behind you.
And with each breath in,
You feel your body become a little buoyant and with each breath out,
You notice this softness,
This surrender,
The receiving of the support in the chair beneath you.
Start to notice your breath and just observe its natural rhythm ebbing and flowing in.
Can you notice where your breath is arriving in your body?
Maybe you can notice your chest rising and falling.
Maybe you notice movement in your belly.
Maybe there's something else that you notice.
But as you continue to be affectionately curious and be affectionately curious about your body,
Can your mind begin to notice the characteristics of your breath?
Can you observe the temperature of your breath arriving on your nostrils?
Maybe notice the texture,
Does it feel smooth or does the breath feel a little rough?
What sound does your breath make,
If any?
Just observing and noticing that ebb and flow of your breath.
Giving your mind something to latch onto by noticing the characteristics or the location of the breath in your body.
And can you visualize a little ball of light out in front of you?
Maybe give it a size,
A texture,
A color.
And let that ball of light now come and float over onto your left shoulder.
And when you next breathe in,
That ball of light's gonna brighten and enlargen.
And as you breathe out,
That ball of light is gonna descend down,
Floating from your left shoulder to hover in front of your left hip.
It's a gentle pause and then as you breathe in,
That ball of light's gonna bounce over from your left to your right hip.
Gentle pause,
Then breathing out,
It rises from the right hip back up to the right shoulder.
The next breath,
It's gonna move from the right shoulder to the left shoulder.
So we're tracing a square from our shoulders around to our hips and that movement of that ball that your mind is following moves with your breath.
So as you get to the corners of this square,
Notice that there's a gentle pause as the tide of your breath changes direction.
That slow and steady pivot as the breath changes direction to come in or to flow out.
So let your mind be focused on holding this ball of light as it moves around in a square.
There's nowhere you need to be,
Just being present with your body and being affectionately curious about when your mind does wonder what it notices and then gently bringing it back,
Tracing this ball of light around that square.
When you next come back up to have the ball on the left shoulder,
We're going to change the shape from a square to a rectangle.
So as you breathe in,
Let that ball of light expand and broaden and as you slowly breathe out,
We're gonna have a long,
Slow descent with that exhale down the long side of that rectangle.
A gentle pause as you next breathe in,
The ball of light coming from your left hip to your right hip.
Long,
Slow breath out as that ball of light travels from your right hip up to your right shoulder.
A breath in over to the left and a long,
Slow exhale as it descends down the long side of the rectangle.
So what we're inviting in here is the breath to start to lengthen on the exhale.
What we know is these long,
Slow exhales elicit our relaxation response.
They move us from fight or flight or feeling our nervous system be mobilized over into safety,
Into connection.
So there's no need to inhale the whole room,
Just gently letting your breath have a long exhale as you trace down the long sides of that rectangle,
Moving from the shoulders to shoulders and long down to the hips.
Two more rounds.
Just breathing and tracing that rectangle,
Pausing on the corners to notice that feeling of your breath changing direction,
Allowing your body to detect what it feels like to be in connection,
To be safe with the body.
Slow,
Slow and steady with the breath.
And wherever you are in your cycle of breathing now,
Just release your breath back to its natural rhythm.
There's no need to control the breath,
But your mind might need to still have something to connect to.
So come back to those characteristics as your breath just finds its own ebb and flow,
It finds its rhythm.
Can you notice the temperature of your breath coming back in on your nostrils?
The sound,
The texture?
Is it smooth or rough?
What can you notice about how your body is feeling?
Have you still received the support from the chair or are you holding or gripping somewhere?
Are there different emotions,
Sensations that are emerging that you can just acknowledge?
Accept and be present with.
Maybe there's tiredness,
A different awareness of exhaustion.
Maybe there's happiness.
Maybe there's a sense of surrender that's been a little while since you felt that.
Maybe there's space to feel what you haven't felt in a while.
But just connect with and maybe say out loud if it feels comfortable with you,
Name the feeling that you're having.
I am happy.
I am tired.
I am connected.
I am safe.
Just being with your body in this moment.
Being with your natural breath.
And gently starting to bring the hands together.
Rubbing the palms together to create some warmth in the hands.
And once the palms feel warm enough,
You're gonna place those palms over your eyes with the fingers gently letting the light in as you begin to open and blink the eyes.
Just coming back to the same place.
Just coming back into the space that you're in.
Noticing what your eyes might first latch onto.
Observing the smells,
The sounds,
The feeling in your body.
Depending on how much time or space you have,
You might like to journal or jot down some thoughts or feelings that came up while you were doing this breathing.
Or you might just feel that this pause has been enough to move on to the next thing that you're planning to do.
Go gently.
