Hello everyone and welcome back to Nalu Mind the Flow.
Today is day nine of our 28 day journey so if you are joining for the first time welcome and if you're returning after one or more days welcome back.
We're following Nalu,
A fictional character,
As they practice various mindfulness techniques that they learn from their friends on a neighbor island.
We've been practicing,
Observing the breath,
Watching the breath,
Listening to the breath,
Feeling it and we've started to take control of the breathing to see how that might also have an impact on our attitudes and aspect.
Yesterday we looked at the box breathing technique and today we're going to repeat box breathing and this is just because it gives us a little bit more practice with it and this is the kind of technique that you can use in a number of situations outside your practice mindfulness practice and you can use it outside in life so it's great to have a little bit of practice time with this technique.
So if you're joining for the first time what we'll do today is we will follow Nalu follow Nalu as they've learned this box breathing technique and the technique is called a box because it inhales for a count it holds the breath for a count it exhales for a count and then it holds the breath for a count and today we'll do a count of four.
So sit back relax you're welcome to have your eyes opened or closed depending on your preference and we're gonna start again with the box breathing.
So first we'll start with an inhale for the count of four so go ahead and inhale for one two three four and hold for two three four and exhale two three four and then hold two three four.
So as you can see you can let the breath return to normal as you can see it's fairly simple but if you're not accustomed to doing conscious breathing or control breathing you might it might feel a little bit strange to you if this ever happens you're welcome to just return to your normal breathing at that time and pick it up again whenever you feel like it.
So we're gonna go ahead and take three box series together and then allow ourselves to just let the breath flow to our normal our normal natural breathing.
So getting ready to inhale one two three four and hold two three four and exhale two three four and hold two three four and then inhale two three four and then holding the breath two three four and then exhaling two three four and then holding on the exhale two three four and one more time inhaling two three four and then holding two three four and then exhaling two three four and then holding two three four and then going ahead and letting the breath just return back to normal.
It might be that after activity like that you might want to let out a sigh or take a deep breath or any of those things are perfectly acceptable and very natural for the body to want to be doing and other than that just let the breath return back to normal and observe the breathing much like we have in previous days just watching the breath come in naturally and watching the breath go out naturally.
And I'll stand by here on mute for just a minute and I'll come back on and we'll take one more round of box breathing and then we'll let the breath return to normal.
And then we're just observing the breathing as it naturally happens noticing the breath go in and noticing the breath go out.
And then we begin to think about we'll be taking another box breathing here in just a moment.
And so getting ready then we're going to start with the inhale and inhaling on one two three four and then holding two three four and then exhaling two three four and then holding on the exhale two three four and then another inhale for four two three four and then holding for a count of four two three four and then exhaling two three four and then three four and one last time inhaling one two three four and then holding three four and then exhaling three four and then holding on the exhale three four and then just let the breath return back to natural maybe take a deep breath if you need one or let out a sigh that works too and just let the breathing go back to natural and then we'll use the observation of the breath just watching the breath happen for the next few minutes and just observe and watch as the breathing has returned back to normal and it seems to appear to breathing be breathing you in and out and now that we've had a few minutes of quiet time together and we've taken a little bit of practice on box breathing might begin to start to hear the sounds of the room again as they naturally occur notice your sensations of your seat in the chair just returning yourself to regular waking awareness full of alertness and readiness to go I really appreciate you coming by today's Nalu Mind the Flow and I hope that this practice is something that you can use in your life and throughout your day and I'll welcome you to return on future days for Nalu tomorrow we will take the box breath and start to turn it into a circular breath so something from the yoga tradition we'll look at how we might access the breathing in in yet another way of being controlled so thank you
