Mindfulness of breathing.
To begin find a comfortable sitting position on a chair or on a cushion or whatever works best for you.
You may like to feel your feet on the floor or sit with your legs crossed,
With your eyes closed or half closed,
Whatever you prefer.
And now just take a moment to feel into your body.
Do you notice any tension in your body?
Any sensations?
Or anything else?
And then place your attention on your breathing.
Let's start by taking a few deeper breaths.
Breathing in deeply and out fully.
Where in your body do you notice the breathing the most?
Do you notice it more at your nose?
How the breath enters your body?
Or in your chest?
Or maybe in the belly?
Whatever place you notice you're breathing the most,
Let's just focus on that one point for a moment.
Noticing the breath entering and leaving your body naturally.
There's no need to change your breathing.
Just allow your breathing to flow naturally.
Your body knows how to breathe.
Just trust it and allow your body to breathe.
All we are doing is paying attention and noticing the breath.
Paying attention to the breathing that usually just happens without us even having to think of it.
Now with the mindfulness of breathing we're actually becoming aware of our breathing.
Just allowing it to be.
Noticing the breath flowing in and out.
And then you might even notice that between your in-breath and your out-breath there's a little bit of a pause.
There's a stillness and a little space.
Now let's pay attention to this little pause between your in-breath and out-breath.
And once you have breathed out fully there's another little space,
Another little pause before you inhale again.
And if your mind wanders that's totally fine.
That's what the mind does.
It's normal.
Just allow the mind to wander,
Not trying to control it.
Just as soon as we notice that the mind has wandered let's guide it back gently and kindly to focus on the breathing again.
And you may say in your mind as you're breathing in the word in and as you're breathing out the word out.
This might help you to focus a little bit more and easier on your breathing.
Breathing in saying the word in,
Breathing out the word out.
The main point of your practice is that your concentration is focused upon the process of breathing itself.
And distractions from your mind do arise many many times and that's totally okay.
Just simply in this case notice that you have become distracted and then just gently kindly guiding your mind back to return back to the breathing and maybe noting and saying to yourself thinking or feeling if a body sensation has distracted you and then returning to the breath.
See if you could possibly follow one whole breath breathing all in and fully out.
And now in your own time bringing this short meditation to a close.
Come back to a full awareness of the body sitting on the chair or sitting on the ground noticing any contact with your buttocks and the chair or the ground or the cushion.
Bring your awareness back to the space and room around you.
When you're ready gently open your eyes.
Take in your surroundings and re-engage with the day and see if you can take this quality of awareness with you into your day moment by moment.
