Guided Breath Awareness Practice
This simple practice is the start of any Breathwork journey, The beginning step to awakening your connection to yourself and your inner healing potential. Bridging the gap between your unconscious and conscious. Breathwork starts with awareness, no practice can exist without it. So drop into this 15-minute practice every day to begin your journey back to yourself. Connect to your breath to connect to yourself.
Transcript
Hello and welcome to this breath awareness practice.
My name is Georgina Rose and I am a trauma-informed breathwork facilitator and somatic practitioner as well as a yoga teacher and I'm going to be guiding you through today a little practice which helps you to ground into your space,
To ground into your body,
To ground into your breath and this is a really great practice to do at any time whether you're just doing it on its own,
If you're feeling a little bit overwhelmed,
A little bit anxious or maybe you're in a state of depression or overwhelm and you're needing to come back to yourself,
Back to your body or whether you are about to drop into a bigger breathwork practice,
This is the perfect way to start to bring awareness to yourself,
To your breath,
To start to level out through the nervous system and find a sense of calm within yourself.
So before we even begin anything at all I'm going to invite you just to get yourself in a nice comfortable position.
Now this could be seated,
This could be lying down and your seated position you could be in a chair,
You could be on a cushion,
On the floor and if you're lying down just allowing yourself to get comfortable with the pillows so that your head isn't raised too much but that you feel supported and then I'm going to invite you just to pause for a moment and just check in and see is there any way that you can be even just 1% more comfortable in your body.
If there's any adjustments that you need to make then I invite you to make those adjustments now.
Once you're there take a deep breath in through the nose,
Don't worry too much about what this looks like,
What this feels like but just welcome a free moving breath in through the nose to fill up your body and then on the exhale open the mouth and softly sigh it out the mouth.
You're going to do that two more times taking a nice big cleansing breath in through the nose and exhale soft sigh out the mouth.
One more time just like that breathe it in,
Exhale let it go and then just return to your natural breath,
Return to a natural rhythm of breathing where you don't have to think about your breath,
You don't have to think about how you're breathing or paying attention to anything and just let your attention rest in my voice in the words that I'm sharing with you.
So often we don't pay attention to our breath,
Now the breath,
That intake of breath is the first thing that we do once we're born and that gentle releasing breath out is the last thing we do before we move on from our human bodies,
From this human life and so often we don't pay attention,
We don't pay attention to this life-giving movement action that we create within our body over 20,
000 times in a day and so this practice is really an opportunity for you to take a few minutes out of your day and you can do this in the car,
You can do this when you first wake up,
You can do this before you go to bed,
You can do this whilst you're in the shower,
In the bath,
Anything at all whilst you're doing your food shopping,
This can be done at any time in your day,
There's no time that you can't do this and it is literally just to allow yourself to watch the breath,
To notice the breath,
We spend so much time of our day up in our minds,
Up in the space in our heads instead of in our bodies where we feel ourselves grounded and can connect into the moment,
Our minds language is thought,
Our bodies language is feeling and so today this breath awareness is going to get you into that feeling body,
Into the now,
Into the moment and so we're gonna drop in,
So if at this point you need to adjust anything at all then I welcome you to adjust your body,
Adjust your position,
Move in any way,
Take a sip of drink if you need to,
Let's just settle in and first of all I'm just gonna bring you to become aware of your body,
Of where you're sitting,
Of how you're sitting,
Noticing if you're slumping in the body,
In the spine if you're seated and if you are I just encourage you to see if you can find a little more room in the spine,
So this doesn't mean that you have to come to a seated position where the spine is rigid,
Where you're holding and gripping in the body to maintain this lengthened position,
Only to see if there can just be a light lift through the crown of the head towards the ceiling,
This doesn't have to be a grand gesture this can just be a soft gentle movement in an upwards direction to help you find a little more room through that space in the spine and if that's all that you can do is to bring the intention to rise through the crown of the head then that's perfect,
As you come into this comfortable seat,
As you come into this way of being where you can just allow yourself to rest without thinking about the body's position,
Without allowing it to take your attention away,
I want you to start to draw your awareness into your breath,
Into how you're breathing in this moment and there's nothing that you need to do here,
Nothing that you need to change other than just to notice,
Other than just to watch your breath as it's moving in and out of the body,
As you do so I encourage you just to notice where do you feel the breath first,
Where do you notice the breath showing up for you in your body,
Perhaps you feel it in the chest filling up as you breathe in and then it's softening back down again as you breathe out,
Maybe it's in the sides of the ribcage,
Maybe it's the belly,
Maybe it's in the nose or the mouth whatever and however you're breathing,
Just notice and bring awareness to where you find the breath in your body first,
Where your attention rests into your breath first and as you do so just start to notice the other areas of your body where you feel the breath starting to span outwards,
This doesn't have to be a quick response,
This doesn't have to be a darting action in the mind's eye to find all the places but just slowly start the exploration to see where you notice the breath in your body,
As you notice where it lands within your body just start to witness its qualities and this could be to do with the depth of the breath,
How deep,
How shallow you might be breathing today,
How challenged or how easy the breath feels as it moves in and out,
Are you breathing in and out of your nose or your mouth or maybe it's a combination of the both,
Just allowing yourself to witness these qualities and any others that come up for you,
Does the breath feel soft or does it feel quite hard as you breathe it in,
Is it quick,
Is it slow,
Is there a sharpness to it on the inhale and exhale or maybe it's gentle and slow,
Just paying attention to how you're breathing today as this is going to be an indication of how your nervous system is,
What state your nervous system is in,
Our breath is that life-giving force of energy and it is the one thing that we have control over that can affect our nervous system,
So just noticing here today how that looks for you because your nervous system is the gateway into healing and this is for acute or chronic illnesses,
Injuries,
Physically,
Mentally,
Emotionally,
The breath is the gateway and so as you're watching your breath,
As you're allowing it room to be as it is,
I want you to notice what areas of the body feel a little bit tight,
A little bit restricted and see how it feels to invite the breath to move to those areas and if this isn't available for you here today that's okay,
Just noticing and being with it and then from here if you aren't breathing in through the nose I'm going to invite you now to start to breathe in through the nose where you can,
If you notice at any point that your jaw clenches and just releasing that jaw,
Releasing that lower jaw away from the top and letting it soften,
Breathing in through the nose and either letting it float out of the mouth or back out through the nose and where you can once you've found that gentle rhythm that feels nice and natural in your body I'm going to invite you to begin to explore lengthening that breath out,
Taking some deeper inhales and longer exhales.
Deeper inhales does not mean that they are up in the chest,
That they are sharp breaths in but these are slow,
Gentle,
Soft,
Deep breaths where the breath can journey a little further down into the torso.
So if today you noticed your breath right up in the chest just allow it to move down towards the ribcage if that's available.
If you're feeling the breath around the ribcage and the middle part of the lungs see if you can draw the breath down towards the belly and the belly is soft if you're working with that diaphragmatic breathing where you get to play with the expansion and softening of the navel of the belly just let it be really soft as you breathe in and breathe out as this will engage the diaphragm,
One of our major breathing muscles in the body.
Just letting yourself feel that breath filling up the body and releasing it again,
Slowly softly releasing without the need to rush,
Seeing where you can even if these extensions of the breath are a millisecond longer.
That's perfect,
Doesn't have to be a few seconds longer,
Even just a millisecond is the progress that your body needs to shift its nervous system state and just letting yourself feel the breath moving in this way,
In the rhythm that supports you in this moment.
Inhaling fully,
Exhaling fully and just take two more breaths here noticing how it feels to breathe in this way in your body again.
Notice the textures,
Notice the qualities,
Notice where you feel this in your body,
How it feels in your body and then take one more breath in through the nose and then take a gentle sigh out the mouth with me.
Now I invite you just to allow your breath to return to its natural rhythm,
To an easy steady rhythm which just supports you where your body gets to breathe itself,
Where you aren't thinking about how you're breathing,
Where it's showing up for you but just letting your body breathe itself.
Noticing how you feel after this practice and I hope that this practice was nurturing for you and helped you just to regain a little bit of connection into yourself,
Into your day,
Into your body,
Connecting breath and body together and moving away from the mind,
From that thinking mind.
You can come back to this practice at any time and I look forward to breathing with you again soon.
