Welcome to your first day of meditation.
I'm glad to be here with you and I wish you success on your journey.
Each day,
I will take you through a short instruction followed by the day's meditation.
These recordings will average around 10 minutes at the outset.
The last five minutes will be meditation practice.
If you wish to skip directly to the meditation,
I've included that timestamp for you in today's email.
Our first and most important lesson is about breathing.
The breath is central to meditation and it is the first and most common focal point for most people when they begin a practice.
It's so important because when we take control of our breathing,
We gain the ability to influence our nervous systems.
At the basis of my teachings,
I explain how the state of the autonomic nervous system influences almost every aspect of our being,
Most notably our state of mind.
The autonomic nervous system is part of the nervous system that runs our internal organs.
It is out of our conscious control.
When our body-mind perceives a threat of any kind,
We move into the stress response,
Which causes changes to the heartbeat,
Our breathing,
Our digestion,
And pumps adrenaline and cortisol into the system.
When we're stressed,
Our minds perceive the world as dangerous and our unconscious mental emotional patterning takes over.
We lose our ability to stay present and we tend to misapprehend other people's motivations and really the world in general.
The stress response is wonderful when we're being attacked by the lion in the jungle.
It gives us the ability to fight or run away.
That's why it's called fight or flight.
But it's less valuable when we're trying to complete tasks at work,
Communicating with friends or colleagues.
The world appears dangerous to us and so we react in kind.
When we're relaxed,
Our minds perceive the world is safe.
We're able to let go of our defenses and have a deeper look inside.
From this place,
We can make decisions based on something more true for us.
We're able to apprehend reality more clearly and respond to challenges with greater poise.
If you've ever watched someone on their back sleeping,
You'll notice that their belly goes up and down when they breathe.
If you notice someone stressed,
You can barely tell that they're breathing because they take very shallow chest breaths.
When we breathe deeply into our bellies during meditation,
We can mimic the relaxed breathing and coax our body minds to believe that we're safe,
Switching the nervous system into rest mode and activating our deeper knowing.
This breathing will be key to all of our meditations going forward and I hope too much of your life.
So here's how to do a belly breath.
Put your hand on your abdomen,
Right around your belly button.
Without thinking about breathing,
Push your hand out as though you were showing me that you're pregnant.
Your abdominal muscles should have extended outward.
Now do that again,
But also take a breath in at the same time.
So breathing in,
Your belly goes out.
That is a belly breath.
When you breathe out,
Your belly comes back in.
Now we will sit and meditate.
Sitting comfortably with your back straight,
Legs crossed or feet on the floor as long as you're comfortable.
Taking a belly breath in through your nose and then breathing out.
The breath out can be through your nose,
It can be through your mouth.
Just taking a few breaths in and out.
And as we meditate on the breath,
We'll utilize the breath for meditation.
We'll try to focus all of our attention on the breath.
When we breathe in,
We listen to the breath.
We feel the body expanding from the abdomen up into the chest.
And we can even imagine what a breath might look like coming in to the lungs and then exhaling.
Breathing in and breathing out.
And as we begin to equalize the in-breath and the out-breath,
Our nervous system starts to relax.
We feel a greater sense of calm and peace come over us.
We breathe in,
We focus on the feeling.
We focus on the sound.
We focus on the visual.
For those moments,
We don't hear our thoughts.
And then in the next moment,
There's a thought.
We bring ourselves back to the breath.
Breathing in and breathing out.
Allowing your body to accept a breath deeper into your abdomen.
Getting more oxygen into your body.
Allowing the diaphragm to move down.
Gently massage your digestive organs.
Breathing in and out.
And as you focus on your breath,
You can gently elongate the breath in and elongate the breath out.
Gently going out with the breath in.
Belly coming in with the breath out.
And when you do this on your own,
You can gently bring the breath in for a longer count and out for a longer count.
Just to your comfort level.
But slowing the breath allows for your body systems to slow,
Your heartbeat to relax and slow down.
Lets your entire body begin to let go.
Focusing on the breath.
And as our nervous system relaxes,
We begin to feel safer,
More clear,
More able to meet the challenges of our day with poise and presence.
To bring the belly breath into your day and congratulate yourself on completing your first day of meditation.
